Stillwater, his open, genial face restored, tapped her lips lightly with
a forefinger. “She worries about me working too hard. But I feel like
cooking. Cooking for you. All day and through the night, as long as you want
to stay.”
In his grasp, Carrie, her lips tightly closed, turned her head frantically,
trying to push out words. Pierce, swayed hither and yon by the murmuring,
surging crowd, felt something sharp threaten to dig into his elbow. He
straightened his arm slowly, jostling for space, and pulled the kitchen knife
out of his sleeve. His fingers closed tightly around the familiar handle,
something to hold on to when there seemed nothing else. Val had a weapon out,
too, he saw: The Wyvern’s Eye was cupped in his hands, though, surrounded by
the eerie magic of Stillwater’s machines, the eye remained oddly dark.
The knights were looking at Niles Camden, who finally proffered judgment. “If
you let one or two of us watch you cook—”
“Certainly.”
“To see that nothing handled is of metals dedicated to Severen.”
“Yes.”
“And that these machines truly cook, and are not weapons, and therefore
dedicated to the god—”
“Of course.”
“Then maybe we can—”
The knife slid out of Pierce’s hand as someone passed him. His fingers
tightened on air. He glanced around, startled, but saw only the listening
knights, and Sage, who had slipped in somehow, likely at the sound of her
name. Her back to Pierce, she eased herself around, between, toward her
husband on the table, whose hold on Carrie had taken on a less fantastic
shape.
“Ah,” Stillwater said, smiling at the ripple through the crowd. “And here
Sage is to help you all find places at our tables. If you would follow her—”
Out, he meant to say, when a seam of silver parted the air above Sage, caught
light as it spun itself down. Somehow, Stillwater’s word got stuck. His mouth
opened wider and wider around it; still he could not push it out. His fingers
uncurled; Carrie stumbled away from him as he bent down over himself. Knights
near the table backed abruptly into one another, away from Sage and the
strangely afflicted Stillwater, who was losing masks like leaves dropping away
from him, until only one was left.
The word came out finally, a stunned shriek, and Pierce saw the kitchen knife
again, nailing the chef among his machines to the table by one bloody foot.
“Take the machines,” Sage cried, turning away from him to face the knights.
“Take them all to Severluna and throw them into the river. They are weapons.
They are as powerful and destructive as any you carry. Go away and take them
with you and never, ever eat anything they might tempt you with, because you
will never again want anything but air until you die.”
The bones were sharp in her wan, wasted face; her long hair hung limply; her
eyes were hollowed with a human hunger. Behind her, Stillwater was tugging at
the knife in his foot; it refused to give him up. Pierce would not have
recognized him. His hair was a cloud of tangled dark, his eyes an astonishing
peacock blue flecked with gold, his lean, high-boned face wild in its beauty,
a face that had been once worn very close to earth.
A wolf howled from the street outside. Then it howled at the door, and again,
within the walls. Stillwater stopped moving, gazed incredulously toward the
sound. Carrie, who stood holding one of his machines, a soda siphon by the
look of it, above his head in case he escaped, smiled suddenly at what bounded
through the knights, knocking half of them off their feet.
“Hey, Dad.”
The wolf leaped up onto the table; machines wobbled and crashed. The wolf
snarled, showing teeth inches from Stillwater’s face.
“You can’t be here,” Stillwater panted raggedly. “You can’t get past my
wards. You never could. You—”
He stopped speaking. His face turned reluctantly, angle by angle, toward what
his eyes did not want to see.
Three women stood across the threshold of his escape.
At first glance, Pierce guessed, they were family, stopping in for a bite:
daughter, mother, grandmother. Their eyes held a similar expression of
recognition, satisfaction, the successful completion of some task, maybe
something as simple as finally finding the time to meet together. Then he felt
his skin prickle. What they recognized was Stillwater, or whatever went by
that name, now that he had shed every disguise. They knew his oldest face.
An odd cast of light behind them caused their shadows to meet in front of
them, form one long, straight line of dark that rolled through the old vault,
into the kitchen to the table. Knights, oddly silent, swallowing their words,
shifted away from that dark, pushing against one another to avoid its stark
edges.
“There you are,” the oldest said. Her eyes were smudged silver, her hair
white as moonlight.