“No. Don’t let Stillwater see you back here.” He hesitated; she
glared at him fiercely. “Go and watch over Sage. She doesn’t have a single
weapon.”
She has you, Pierce thought, and stepped back out of the vault into a
battlefield.
So it seemed, with all the darkly uniformed knights pouring through the doors.
Pierce heard Stillwater’s voice trying for reason, humor; the young men
ignored him, milling among the indignant diners, picking up this and that,
invading the tiny space behind the bar, rattling through bottles and
glassware. Then one stepped through the vault curtains, and Stillwater’s
voice cracked a martini glass with his shout.
“No!”
The knights stared at him, motionless. Then, like a wave, they broke, tumbled
across the room, and flowed through the steel walls of the vault toward the
kitchen.
Pierce heard Carrie scream.
He spun, dove into the flow.
By the time he had shouldered his way back into the kitchen, he found Carrie
standing on top of the table among Stillwater’s machines. She held the tongs
like a weapon, vigorously smacking hands probing the strange machines that
could turn their fingers into froth.
“What are you looking for?” she demanded. “This is just a kitchen! I’m
cooking here! If you’ll tell me what you’re looking for—” She paused to
whack the head of a knight who had turned a machine upside down and was
shaking it. “Be careful with that! You have no idea how dangerous it is.”
He glanced up at her with sudden interest. “Seriously? It’s a weapon?”
“You would not believe.”
“Then it belongs by right to the god Severen.”
She stared at him, her tongs suspended. She said slowly, “I never thought of
it that way. You’re right. Take them. Take them all.”
Across a noisy, chaotic distance, Pierce heard a hoarse, deep reverberation,
as though the air had growled. Then Stillwater was in the kitchen, melting
through the crush of knights, leaping lightly onto the table beside Carrie
like some graceful, powerful creature made of air and muscle, for whom bones
were optional.
“What are you doing?” he demanded; his voice still held the snarling edge to
it. His eyes were on Carrie, but it was a knight who answered.
“We are here in Severen’s name. We are Knights of the Rising God, come to
proclaim the god’s ascendancy above all others—”
“This is a restaurant, not a church! We cook in here.”
“You cook in a vessel that belongs to Severen.” Pierce recognized the
knights’ obstinate, humorless, boneheaded leader, Sir Niles Camden. “A great
cauldron made of pure gold, that feeds everyone who comes here whatever they
crave, and it constantly replenishes itself, it is never empty. We want it.
Such a vessel is dedicated, by its nature, by its never-ending power enclosed
in gold, to the god Severen. Praise him. In the name of King Arden, we have
come to return the sacred vessel to the god.”
“You disgrace the name of King Arden.” Somehow Leith and Val had pushed
their way into the tightly crowded kitchen. “You disrupt people’s lives and
steal from them,” Leith continued sharply. “You are not true knights, and no
true god would accept your worship. You’re nothing but marauding thieves.”
“We are questing knights, Sir Leith,” Prince Ingram protested. “You can’t
change facts by calling people names.”
“You’re trashing a restaurant kitchen. How proud would your father be of
that?”
“Enough!” Stillwater roared. The sound filled the kitchen and seemed to
vibrate through his face, shake it free to reveal the bole and burls beneath
the mask. This time, Pierce was not the only one to see it. Carrie stared at
him, her eyes huge. Stillwater reached out, gripping her with fingers that
coiled like bindweed around and around her arm. “There is nothing in this
kitchen but what you see. I don’t cook in gold. It is soft, malleable; it
changes shape too easily under pressure. I make my own machines; they work
their wonders by such power that you would never understand. A god who values
gold possesses no more than human powers. I feed the hungry. You knights won’
t find what you’re looking for under this roof. But if you stay, I will cook
for you, with my machines, a meal that you will never forget. If you stay, my
wife Sage will seat you and bring you whatever you want to drink. Carrie will
help me cook for you. Stay. Sit at our tables. Enjoy what we bring you; that’
s all you need to do here.”
“That’s all you’ll ever do,” Carrie cried. “Don’t listen—”