Kingfisher(39)



“Ah,” he said tentatively. “I’m not sure— Is this the right—?”

“The royal kitchens, back entrance. They needed so many extras for the king’s Assembly that you’ll probably meet everyone you know here. Come on.”

Dumbfounded, he grabbed his pack and hurried after her.

He caught up with her as she pulled open a door into what looked like an enormous cave filled with dimly moving figures. A cloud of steam smelling of bread, chocolate, onions, roasting meat blew around them and out.

“You’re late,” a voice grumbled amid the cloud. A lean, black-haired man carrying a clipboard took shape, scanned their faces and his list. “Marcia Holmes. You know your station.”

“Yes,” she said, vanishing into what looked like rows of counters half a mile long, cooks lined at them, vigorously chopping, clanging pot lids, whirring machinery, shouting for this or that.

“And you—” the man said. “I’m not seeing you. Who are you?”

“Pierce Oliver.”

“You’re not—” He flung up his hands, his list taking flight, settling again. “Never mind. What have you got in there?” Pierce pulled the knife out of his pack. The broad blade picked up light from somewhere, flashed silver. The man stared at it, his harried face suddenly slack with wonder, as though he recognized it though he could not remember why or from where. He pulled his thoughts back together abruptly. “All right. We have seven hundred and forty-nine knights to feed in seven hours, including the king and his knighted children. And, of course, everyone else in the palace not invited to the formal dinner must be fed as well. There are extra uniforms and aprons on that rack, and an empty station at the third counter. Get dressed, get over there, and start chopping.”

Pierce threw on black trousers and a tunic, found his place, and began to feed the knife whatever anyone put within his reach. He had no time to think, except to marvel that he had somehow muddled his way under the king’s roof. The knife melted through anything it was given. It minced garlic, chopped onions, sliced tomatoes, diced potatoes. The wicked edge, neatly balanced, rocked its way across walnuts or celery as easily as it cleaved slabs of raw beef into fine ribbons, and fresh chives and parsley into airy flakes. He had no idea what he was making, only that the thinnest rounds of unpeeled lemon were involved, endless narrow strips of red pepper, vast quantities of apple wedges and butterflied prawns.

After an hour or three, Pierce felt he had merged, melted into the kitchen. Its relentless heat, its endless alphabet of smells, its clatters, whirs, bangs, whacks, and sizzles had become his skin. His hand had grown a knife at the end of it; his feet existed in some other universe. He could toss a lime and part it six different ways before the wedges landed on his board. He could pare an avocado and catch the falling pieces. He could notch the green end of an onion in three strokes as it flew. He could julienne a carrot in midair.

He wondered if his father would be among those he would help feed.

He hardly noticed the chaos he was creating around him. Odd strands of light caught and swirled around the blade, then flashed across the counters, snagging themselves in metal and steel, in bowls and whisks, in other blades. Things groaned, smoked, clattered to the floor. Equipment froze or overheated; squalls of black smoke, hot, oily steam, collided with shouts and curses from the cooks. Pierce, oblivious, tossed yet another of a seemingly endless supply of oranges to peel it in one spiraling stroke when he realized abruptly that the knife was no longer in his hand.

The orange thumped down on his cutting board and bounced off. A woman wearing the king’s crest on her hat and apron caught it with one hand. With the other, she laid the knife across the board, where, for the first time in hours, it was still.

She said succinctly, holding Pierce’s eyes in her dark, furious gaze, “This is not working. I don’t know you, I don’t know what that knife is, but you are creating havoc every time you move. Whatever purpose that knife has, it does not belong in my kitchen. And neither do you. Remove it and yourself so we can at least try to function again.” Pierce opened his mouth; she pointed her finger. “Out!”

“I’m sorry—”

“Just go away before something else breaks.”

Pierce tucked the knife into his pack and, following the rigid finger that seemed to him to point the wrong direction, he slunk out of the kitchen.

He got lost before he could find his way.

He roamed through empty classrooms, dorms, a staff room, and a dining hall before he found a door around a corner beyond the hangar-sized bathrooms. He pushed it open and heard the world cheer, as though he had done something of magnificent import. The cheering died away. A voice spoke loudly, incoherently. He walked outside, found himself in a small, walled garden with a couple of benches, shadowed by huge trees with narrow, silvery leaves. A statue stood among the shadows, its face broken and blurred, its eyes blind with mold. Its head was angled toward the invisible crowd cheering again somewhere beyond the old stone wall.

Pierce walked across the yard, slung his pack straps over one shoulder, and hoisted himself into a tree beside the statue.

The wall dropped dizzyingly on the other side into a vast bowl shored up by brickwork and concrete and ringed with tier upon tier of seats. Groups of dark figures lounged here and there watching what was going on across the field below. From that high place, he could see, across the bowl, what seemed a miniature city of graceful buildings and towers, the past and present of Wyvernhold history, the lacework of stone ruins among high, colorful, modern designs, all surrounded by enormous, sprawling walls. Beyond them, he saw the busy span of the bridge he had driven across, so long ago it seemed impossible to him that it had been only that morning.

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