Magic Banquet (25 page)

The djinn caught the amulet. She towed Aja
into the sky.

The Chef called after the djinn. “Then meet
me back in the kitchen, slave. Today, I become the Lord of the
Feast.”

Aja screamed, fingernails outstretched to
the friends lost in the blackness below. The empress, the
swordsman, Old Janny, Solin, and the lord—everyone she had sworn to
save.

Struggling against the djinn seared Aja’s
hands. It was like reaching into a fire, white-blaze pain and
nothing to grasp. She was dragged into a gateway of stars.

Digesting the Banquet:

The One

A door slammed behind Aja. Her numb feet
stumbled up steps. She reeled into the blindness of the day. Any
moment her feet would sink into the street’s chocolate slabs. The
buildings would soon sag in sugary collapse.

Except they were made not of sweets but
stone. The ground wasn’t chocolate but clay. Everything stayed
solid, for now. She licked a wall, and it tasted of dusty dryness.
The normalness of it all seemed fake.

Sweet scents trickled from carts of
merchants selling date bars, and she winced.

People flowed around Aja. Their babble
quieted to a hush. The crowd parted around her. Unfocused faces
slid by.

Aja felt lost in her home city and alone.
This Jaraah was true. These people were real, but all the ones she
cared about were back in the candy city.

Her left hand hurt from clenching her robes.
She had been holding a knot of fabric. When she tweezed the folds
apart, a chunk of speckled white tumbled onto the street.
The
Cheese of Life.
She snatched it up and blew off the sand.

A hope stung her. She could use the morsel
to bring one friend back to life.

Aja returned to the warehouse door. It was
locked. The windows were high and barred. She could climb the
walls.

Her fingers fumbled over the bricks. There
were no handholds. Or she couldn’t feel them. She couldn’t stop
thinking of the others’ fate. The guests might still be lying in
the chocolate mud, stuffed to death.

Each breath was a struggle for them, for
her. Aja had escaped, even if her heart still pounded for its life.
The Chef hadn’t chosen to kill her. Next time they met she wouldn’t
be so lucky.

Aja couldn’t make herself go back. Her hands
were slippery and trembling. She couldn’t lift herself to climb.
She had eaten a treasure of food, and its weight dragged her down.
What good would trying do? They had been so helpless in the candy
city. Even if Aja found a way into the kitchen, she could never get
past the Chef.

He would find her. He’d change his mind and
kill her, too.

No, she had to stay away. Even if she felt
miserable abandoning the other guests, she had her own life to
think of.
I can’t help them.

Someone asked her, “Are you well, Young
Light of Day?”

She shuddered.

Another faceless man said, “May knowledge
illuminate your way.”

Their concern and kindness hid judgment. Aja
could tell that the strangers only spoke to her because they could
see her guilt. They knew she had failed her friends and left them
to die. They wished to see her weep.

A man bowed before her, touching his face.
He had painted baboon designs in kohl below his eyes. “May this
servant of god assist you in any way?”

“Who are you?” Aja backed away. “How do you
know me?”

“Forgive me, Blessing of God, but it’s rare
to see a woman alone wearing such treasures.” He waved his ringed
hand to her chest.

From her neck hung an amulet of turquoise
wings, silver beak, and sapphire eye. The heaviness came from the
empress’s jewelry. Bracelets of gold shackled Aja’s wrists, and a
gemstone belt constricted her waist. Where did the riches come
from?

She could only think the djinn had bound Aja
with the jewelry.
These all belonged to past Banquet guests.
The coldness of death clung to the gold.

“I…I just left the Midnight Banquet,” Aja
said. She had escaped, and the rest would die. They could be dead
already.

“Praise the Founder you live! Is it true
what they say, that they serve mandrake root that shrieks if
improperly seasoned?”

A boy stepped out of the crowd, her
schoolmate, Garid Grease Breath. He had backed away from the
Banquet. She couldn’t believe it had been just last night.

“You made it, Roach Legs—er!—what was your
name?” He touched her arm. They never touched her. “I’ll share my
sesame candy if you tell me what the Banquet was like.”

Bile burned up Aja’s throat. She backed away
from Garid and bumped into more people. They were all too
close.

“You have to tell us.”

A woman smacked the last speaker. “Show some
respect for this young scholar. She’s clearly noble.”

“She could be an enchantress.”

The citizens seemed enchanted by her jewelry
and her dining. They all accepted her. Aja had gotten everything
she wanted. Her success tasted like vinegar, stinging and sour.

If Aja opened her mouth to answer, she would
vomit.

The man with the sign of the baboon painted
below his eyes tapped his lower lip, staring at Aja. “And that bird
amulet. Did this forgetful servant see it but yesterday….”

Aja dashed away. She could no longer stand
their stares. If only they had scorned her. They didn’t care about
her, only what she had eaten. They would’ve rather met a dinner
menu. How could she ever speak of the Banquet? She couldn’t boast
of what had killed her friends. No, Aja would never tell another
soul.

Down another street, and then she had to
stop for breath. She worried someone else would try to confront her
with kindness.

Her heart lifted in an unexpected spiral
when she spotted one of the guests, the swordsman.
He’s
alive?
His back was to her, and his scimitar with its
pyramid etchings and hieroglyphs was strapped from shoulder to hip.
He wore a braided wig of black this morning in the fashion of the
capital. He was speaking to the man with the baboon designs painted
on his face, but Aja had to interrupt.

“How did you escape the….” She choked back
her words when the guard turned to her.

This man had matching eyes, both irises
black. His face was too round, his chin too soft to be the
swordsman. He wore a sweeping plate of gemstones across his chest.
He had to be one of the empress’s guards, just not the one Aja
knew.

“That’s her.” The man with kohl-shaded eyes
pointed at Aja. The royal guard glared at her, and so did three
other hulks like him. They wore similar fan plates of gemstones
over their chests. The others had axes bigger than Aja.

“Where’d you get that necklace?” A royal
guard clamped his fingers over Aja’s wrist. His grip ground the
bones in her hand together. She forced herself not to let go of the
Cheese of Life.

“The Midnight Banquet,” Aja said, “but you
shouldn’t go there. The Chef—”

“Take us.” Another guard gripped the back of
her neck and shoved her forward.

Aja led them to the warehouse. Two of their
gem-and-bronze axes smashed open the door. The royal guards stepped
into the gloom.

“You said there was a banquet here?”

Shoulder-high urns packed the warehouse. A
camel symbol was painted on each along with numbers. Aja’s nose
prickled with the scent of salt.

“These weren’t here last night,” Aja said.
“There’s a kitchen below. That’s where the empress is. Now won’t
you let me go?”

The royal guards dragged her between the
looming urns. The stair steps chill-stung the soles of her feet,
and she yanked against the heavy hands holding her.

“We can’t go into the kitchen. He’ll kill us
all and—No!”

A guard shoved the door open. Aja cringed,
turning away from any incoming blast of steam.

“Mighty cold for a kitchen,” the royal guard
said. He lifted a reed torch. It illuminated more urns. No steam.
No oven fire. Only a cellar.

“It’s gone,” Aja said.

The coldness of the floor shivered up her
legs until her shoulders shook and her teeth chattered. The
warehouse smelled of dusty dryness, not of fine dining. There
couldn’t have been a Banquet here. Aja must’ve hunger-dreamed it
all, but, no, she couldn’t have imagined so much.

Fingers reached from the shadows to tighten
around her throat. A royal guard’s scented oils made Aja’s eyes
water. He asked, “Now, girl, you ready to tell us what really
happened?”

What could she say?

They ripped the bird necklace off her. She
was thrown into the cellar.

“You know what happens to idiots who lie to
us? They’re drowned in sand.”

“Or executed by scorpion sting,” another
royal guard said.

“No, it’ll be more painful than that for
her.”

“And longer. The vizier will think of
something new for a girl strutting around with the stolen jewels of
a kidnapped empress.”

The burrowing hurt in Aja kept her from
speaking above a whisper. “I tried to save her. I—”

“Me, I don’t have the vizier’s gift for
punishments.” The guard’s torch stained the cellar roof with smoke.
“Maybe it’ll be drowning in scorpions.”

“Better remember who took the empress by the
time we’re back.” The guardsmen tromped out of the cellar. They
took the torch. The light from the closing door narrowed to a
sliver of red.

Before it slammed, the last guard said, “Or
everyone will cheer as you die.”

Aja was imprisoned in darkness.

She heard something heavy dragged against
the outside of the door. Fumbling her way toward it, she pressed
her ear against the metal coldness. The occasional ping of a
guard’s pole axe struck the stairs leading up to the warehouse. He
was pacing up and down. From what Aja had seen of this cellar,
there was no other way out.

Aja wept in the pitch black. Between the
urns of salt, she cried for the empress and her beautiful voice.
For the swordsman and his lighthearted strength. For Solin and his
grace on crutches. For Old Janny and even for the lord. He was
creepy, but he had been right about the Chef.

Aja had wanted to stop the Chef from
killing. Now she would only be known as a girl who had murdered the
empress for her necklace.

In a way, Aja would be famous.

She hated herself for crying, for sitting
there in the dark, helpless. She slammed her back against an urn.
Even that she could not budge.

Something dug into her hip. She bet a
scorpion had bit her. Or, worse, an asp. It would serve the royal
guards right if they found her here dead and bloated.

Touching her side, she found something tied
to her belt. It felt like ice but harder and heavy as the gold
bracelets on her wrists. It was long, with metal teeth at one end.
Its handle was pronged like a sunburst.

Aja held the key to the kitchen.

The surprise jolted through her, and she
dropped the Cheese of Life. She scrounged in the dark, fingers
sliding over the floor until she found the lump again. But the key!
The djinn must’ve given it to Aja along with all the jewelry. With
that key she could open a door to the kitchen. She had seen the
djinn do it.

The possibility of entering the Chef’s
kitchen was too frightening. She couldn’t move, couldn’t even cry.
The Chef might hear her. She couldn’t guess what he could do. She
clutched the key until it grew hot. Its teeth dug into her
thumb.

Why’d she give me this?
The djinn
must have believed Aja would want to steal into the kitchen, to
help the other guests, perhaps to free the djinn too by breaking
her lamp.
She must think I’m crazy.

Aja had no magic to combat the Chef’s. She
only had a bit of cheese. Aja didn’t even know how to use a sword
or any proper weapon. She had only fought off an alley dog once
using a roof tile. There was no way Aja could rescue all her
friends from the Chef.

She only knew she wanted to.

Her brow pressed against the coolness of the
cellar door. She spun the key back and forth in her hand, willing
herself to jam it in the keyhole.

It won’t work. Or, if it does, you’ll just
see them all dying and not be able to help.

She could wait there in the cellar with the
salt. She wouldn’t have to do anything more, wouldn’t have to see
the Chef ever again, and she could have her infamy. If she wanted
something else, she would have to turn the djinn’s key.

Aja’s head trembled from side to side. “Try
it, Aja. You need to. You have to. He could be cooking them right
now.”

That last thought made her scream. She
stabbed the key into the door, felt the heat as metal melted around
it. She twisted it, heard the “thud-thud-thunk” of tumblers sliding
into place. They sounded like caskets closing on her future.

Redness traced around the doorframe. Light
that had not been there before leaked from chinks in the hinges.
Her nose wrinkled at a whiff of cumin.

Aja panted, blinking furiously. This wasn’t
really happening. Her muscles felt wrung-out. She couldn’t open
that door. Not alone. But there was no one else. The guards were
all on the wrong side.

If anyone else could save the guests, she
would’ve pushed him through the door, locked it, and slunk off to
live the rest of her life in happy solitude.

Aja leaned forward, hands braced on the
door. She shoved.

Digestion, Part II:

The Kitchen

A monster brass stove hissed with steam and
pulsed with heat. Pipes wormed from the stone floor, around
stalagmites, into the oven. The chimneys reached their metal arms
into the darkness of the cavern.

This place felt deep down to Aja, far from
daylight, close to the heart of the world. The rock itself singed
her bare feet, so she tiptoed. She could not bring herself to run
toward danger.

To her right, a golem turned a spit. The
featureless man worked without pause or change in pattern. Aja
slapped her hands over her mouth. She dared not look at what turned
above the fire, but she had to. A bulky body dripped with
seasoning, ladled by another golem. The roasting thing was a giant
boar.