“The pudding merchant is here, Your Grace.”
Even though she’d made a vow to behave, it took Talasyn exactly the length of a heartbeat to decide to let Alaric wait a bit longer. With the contingent of Lachis-dalo trailing after her, she scurried out of her wing of the palace, through the marble hallways, and down the front steps of the Roof of Heaven, where a small crowd of servants had gathered to greet the merchant who sailed up the limestone cliffs on his dugout twice a month.
He was a skinny man who wore a perennial betel-nut-stained smile beneath his wide-brimmed straw hat. On his spry shoulders he balanced a bamboo pole with large aluminum buckets dangling from each end. One bucket contained fresh soybean curds kept warm by a Firewarren-infused aether heart; the other, tiny pearls of palm starch suspended in brown sugar syrup.
Most of the nobles within the palace were too stuffy for street fare, but Talasyn had no such qualms. Servants bowed and curtsied to her, but they had long since learned that she preferred to wait her turn like everyone else. They did become a little quieter, though, a little less rowdy as they chatted among themselves and with the merchant. Talasyn rather suspected that they’d been bringing him up to speed about news from the palace and the upcoming wedding before she arrived.
She stood awkwardly in the middle of the throng. It was as though she were an island, surrounded by waves of camaraderie that steered clear of her shores. It was a sensation that she was all too familiar with from her time at Hornbill’s Head and in the Sardovian regiments.
No matter her status, it seemed that it would always be her lot in life to feel alone.
Suddenly, the various streams of lyrical chatter cut off. Talasyn looked around, a nervous little flutter running through her at the sight of Alaric making his way down the palace steps.
Sevraim was never far behind his liege, but today he hung back, with Talasyn’s own guards. The hushed servants scattered before the Night Emperor as he strode toward her. Some appeared afraid, others resentful—but it couldn’t be denied that typical Nenavarene inquisitiveness overrode all other emotions. They stared and they stared, whispering behind their hands.
Alaric’s pale features grew stonier at being on the receiving end of such unabashed scrutiny. “We have an appointment,” he reminded Talasyn.
“We do,” she said in even tones. “Beforehand, however, I would like some pudding.”
“Pudding?” he repeated blankly. His gray eyes flitted to the merchant, whose sunny smile had faded, replaced with an expression that suggested he was tempted to dive behind his buckets for cover.
The wall of people that had previously stood between the merchant and Talasyn had melted away. “Two, please,” she said kindly in Nenavarene, handing him a silver coin that she fished out from her pocket. A cupful of pudding was worth only three brass pieces, but she figured that the man deserved extra for having to put up with her betrothed.
“Y-yes, Your Grace,” the merchant stammered. He retrieved two wooden cups from his dugout and ladled generous amounts of snow-white soybean curd and dark sugar syrup into them, sticking a wooden spoon into each mixture before passing both cups to Talasyn.
She held one cup out to Alaric with an air of challenge. The spectators leaned forward eagerly, waiting to see if the fearsome Night Emperor from the land across the Eversea would partake of such a humble repast.
Alaric took the cup from Talasyn as gingerly as though it were a venomous snake. The sun-warmed leather of his gauntlet brushed against her bare fingers as he did so, and that nervous little flutter coursed through her again. Where was that coming from?
Shrugging it off, she brought her cup closer to her lips and scarfed down a spoonful of pudding. The starch pearls burst between her teeth and the silky soybean curd melted on her tongue in a warm wash of sweet syrup. She nearly closed her eyes at how delicious it was. This had definitely been worth being late for training.
Alaric tentatively spooned pudding into his mouth, skepticism radiating from his form. One of the serving-girls giggled and was promptly shushed by another, who was desperately trying to muffle her own giggles.
“Well?” Talasyn demanded as Alaric chewed thoughtfully.
He was a proper little lord, she would give him that. He waited until he’d swallowed to respond. “It’s interesting.”
Offended on behalf of her beloved pudding, she turned her nose up at him before moving away so that everyone else could get to the merchant. Alaric followed her and they finished their cups in silence, facing each other beside the docked dugout ship. In spite of his bland assessment of the pudding’s qualities, Alaric ate every last bit of soybean curd and drank the remaining syrup.
Talasyn found it surreal that the Master of the Shadowforged Legion had a sweet tooth. Then again, it must have been a novelty to him, as it had been to her when she reclaimed her birthright. Back on the Northwest Continent, sugar and soybeans had been strictly rationed due to the war effort.
They returned their spoons and empty cups to the pudding merchant. The high sun of early afternoon beat down on the limestone cliffs, alleviated by a fresh, brisk breeze blowing in from the distant Eversea. And it was some impulse—some abrupt yearning to not spend the afternoon cooped up inside the palace walls—that made Talasyn ask Alaric, “Do you want to aethermance out here today?”
He shrugged. The plush swell of his bottom lip glistened with a hint of syrup, and her gaze lingered for far too long. “Wherever you like, Lachis’ka.”
Alaric could still taste brown sugar on his tongue as Talasyn led him to a grove of plumeria trees that carpeted the space between the southernmost wall of the palace and the edge of the limestone cliffs. There were plumerias in Kesath, too, but their flowers were typically fuchsia in color. The blooms speckling the green leaves of the Nenavarene variety were as pristine white as the Roof of Heaven’s facade, with star-shaped splashes of yellow at their center.
Sevraim and the Lachis-dalo remained at the edge of the grove while Alaric and Talasyn wandered further in. The trees grew closely together, enough that their rounded crowns would shield the two aethermancers from view of the windows or the patrolling guards.
Alaric was glad to be free of curious stares from nosy Nenavarene, but something had been weighing on his mind all day thus far. Once he and Talasyn assumed meditation poses on the grass, beneath the plumerias, he could no longer stop himself.
“Is there something troubling you?” he asked, which marked the second instance in as many days wherein he regretted asking someone a question as soon as it left his lips.
From where she sat, framed against bark and leaves and white flowers, Talasyn blinked at him as though he’d lost his mind.