Kingfisher(82)

“Trying to make it eat tongs.”

“I can—”

“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—”

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.