Chapter Seven: A Taste Like Bass or Haddock

Charles was unused to having so much attention at once. He was finding the spotlight did not agree with him.

Everyone was staring. Staring at him. The Spears. The Shattered. The conscripts and the prisoners. Magnus and Luet. But none stared more fiercely than Cardinal Thorne. Charles tried not to squirm. He looked to Cade for courage and balled his fist until his nerves calmed down. “Well...yes,” he said in as firm a voice as he could muster. “I have cooked snake meat. A few times. Enough to know their basic anatomy and how the process works. But that doesn’t mean I’m skilled enough for something of this scale. Those snakes were at least a hundred times smaller than this-”

Thorne would have none of it. “I have no need for excuses,” he said. He stood steadier now; his strength seemed to be returning to him. “And I have no need for the useless. Speak frankly, Charles Boulier. Can you do this?” For a moment Charles seriously asked himself that question. Could he? Was he capable enough? The ghosts inside him whispered ‘no’. The doubts that plagued him shouted to give up. That he would never succeed. He pushed them away and steeled himself.

He met Thorne’s gaze. What he was about to say must be true and honest in his own heart. If this man decided he was lying....

He had to believe in himself.

“Yes,” he said. “I can do it.”

“The matter is decided then,” Thorne said in a tone that put all debate to rest. He brandished his bloodied spear toward the crowd, and with the other hand gripped the young chef’s entire shoulder. “Hear me! Young Charles will lead the effort to prepare these beasts and restore our provisions. He will see to it that none go hungry.” Charles blanched. He wasn’t sure he could promise that much. “The rest of you have your own roles to fulfill. Now is no time for doubt. The One Mercy watches over us always. In turn, we must demonstrate that we are worthy of its grace. We will bury our dead. We will see to our wounded. Then we will work until the work is done. Any man caught shirking their duty will answer to me. You are dismissed. Move out.” The crowd obeyed. In minutes, it had dispersed. Thorne then leaned in and lowered his voice so only the eleve could hear. “I have faith that you will find the way, just as you found the way to survive on your own long enough for me to return. It is not yet your time.”

With those strange and unsettling words, Thorne made to leave. A soft snow was beginning to fall. No wind blew, so the flakes fell straight down. They fell and fell until they covered the ground in a thin blanket that dulled the sounds of nature and men. Something in the curtain of falling white and the shrinking back of the cardinal called a distant memory to the forefront of Charles’ mind. He saw a day long past. He stood there as vividly as he stood in the present. It had been a bleak day, like this one, with another snowfall and another man that towered above him walking away without looking back. It was someone Charles had loved much more than himself. Someone he would have given anything to be accepted by. He held out his hand and spoke without thought.

“Wait!”

The memory vanished. Thorne paused and turned back. Through the hole in the white of his half-moon mask, his remaining eye bore straight through Charles. Even with only one, his glare carried the menace of a hundred lesser warriors. Until today, Charles had never done anything but cower under that eye. Only now did he take note of the color. It was a deep, haunting grey.

“What do you need now, Charles Boulier?”

Charles’ mind was blank. What did he need? Why had he called out? Surely there was a reason. “The...the snake!” he remembered. “It will be a great effort.” He gestured to his fellow chefs. “There’s no chance we can do it with just the three of us. We...we need more manpower. Some extra hands from the Shattered would go a long way.”

Thorne was not amused by that.

“Impertinence,” he said darkly. He strode back—the weight of his massive footsteps made even a light walk seem intimidating—and lowered himself until his mask was all Charles could see. He almost had to kneel for their faces to be level. “My Shattered already face days without rest. Why should I spare any to solve a problem you helped create? Speak then!”

Charles pointed toward the area where the snakes had first popped out of the cairns. He managed to do so without shaking. “Because we’re going to need them if we want to prep and cook that bigger boa over there.”

Thorne’s expression was nonplussed. He gestured to the carcass that had destroyed the Green Galley. “What of this snake? You risked your life to lure it all this way. Now you wish to ignore it and leave it for later?”

“We can’t cook that one.”

“Why not?!”

Charles’ hands trembled again. He chose his words delicately.

“Rather...we shouldn’t cook that one. If you look, there are parasites in one of the-.” The eleve nearly said “eye sockets” and covered his face with his hand like a pirate’s patch, but the hollow hole where Thorne’s missing eye once sat, poised less than a foot from his face, killed the words in his throat. He tried not to stare or stutter. Somehow the hole seemed to glare at him even harder than the masked eye. “Um...in its head,” Charles continued. “And I’m fairly certain I saw the stomach or some other organ rupture in the fighting earlier. That means the meat could be tainted. Eating it now might make your men sick, which would only worsen our standing. We should focus our efforts on the larger boa. It’s healthier and will yield more than enough meat on its own.” It really is too bad, though, he thought. This one is much closer to the kitchen. “It’s the most prudent option, but we won’t be able to manage alone.” Charles looked at Thorne. Thorne looked at Charles. For a moment, the only noise was the soft rush of shallow creeks winding along the crest of the Highlands.

“No,” Thorne finally said. “No, you cannot. How many then?” Charles went blank again. In all honesty, he had not expected to get this far.

“Um…”

“How many Shattered do you need?” Thorne said again, less patiently this time.

“For something this demanding...at least ten?” he estimated. “Perhaps twenty.”

“Ten is the most that can be spared. You will have them, Charles Boulier, but see that you make quick use of them. There are pressing needs besides your own.” When Thorne left again with a sweep of his red cloak, he did so without interruption. For reasons he did not understand, Charles’ eyes lingered on his back as it grew smaller in the falling snow. The negotiations had ended. They had been left to fulfill their duties.

Luet opted not to accompany them to the larger boa’s body.

“I’ll try to salvage what’s left of the cache,” he said. He had spent several minutes rooting and rummaging through the wreckage of the once-proud Galley. “All in all, it could have been worse. Anything that wasn’t dead-center got away pretty clean. Looks like Dreya’s resident hellspawn missed the stove and spices. Most of the kitchenware held up alright, too. Your stockpot’s still in one piece at least,” he noted to Charles. The young chef felt a great deal lighter when he heard that. His mind had been feeding him all sorts of horrific images, mostly of finding his belongings from Lutz squashed flat as a flapjack.

“How fortunate for you,” Magnus said with a harsh edge. “The rest of our food, meanwhile, looks like Thorne sat on it.” He looked to Luet and said “just do what you’re able,” in a way that conveyed he did not have high expectations. Then he gripped Charles hard on the shoulder. “You, little apprentice, are coming with me.”

The eleve and the uminara crossed what was left of the woven sea. It was a very different walk than the one Charles had made earlier. Much of the sea looked like it had been picked up by a great pair of hands, then thrown full-force back down to the ground. Chaos didn’t begin to describe it. It lay strewn with wreckage and waste, dotted by columns of smoke and small groups of Shattered working desperately to repair it to some semblance of normalcy, while others carried wounded on their backs or across their shoulders. Thorne had not exaggerated; restoring this would take days at the very least. Charles did not speak the entire walk. All he could do was wonder how much of what he saw had been caused by him alone. He thought and thought and thought in circles.

“You know, I’m just going to say it. This thing is too fucking big not to be in the ocean.”

Charles snapped to his senses. A fanged head the size of a cottage lay before him. Silver scales stained with blood splayed out to his right for the length of a city street. They had arrived.

Oh gods, he thought.

It was much, much bigger up close. Almost absurdly gigantic. How had the Spears actually beaten this thing, he asked himself? It was a literal monster.

But of course he knew the answer. The Spears of Mercy had come out the victor because they were monsters themselves. “Colossal boas keep growing for as long as they’re alive,” Charles noted. “And they can live for centuries.”

“You’re well-informed,” Magnus said. “Earlier, you figured out there was something wrong with their behavior. You caught on just as fast as Thorne did.” No sarcasm. No smirk. It was a rare compliment.

“My father’s carnender taught me,” Charles said. That was the truth. Or half of it, anyways. Boregard’s lessons had given him a strong nudge, to be sure, but it hadn’t been long before Charles was spending long afternoons and evenings alone in the Boulier library, studying everything from badgers to butterflies. Those were gentler days. He missed them now more than ever. “He’s always telling me it’s important for a chef to know about animals.”

“That’s because it is,” Magnus said bluntly. “Your butcher has the right of it. All chefs owe nature due respect.” He pressed a hand against the silver scales. “Or fear, when it’s warranted. We humans live comfortable lives in our modern cities, but stray just outside them and this world of ours is still a wild, dangerous place, and not to be taken lightly. An eleve who can’t get that through their skull will grow into an ignorant fool at best and a dead fool at worst. I’ve seen plenty of both.”

Charles pressed a hand to the scales as well. They were smoother than he’d been expecting. The skin was still warm to the touch. “Now that I compare it with this one, I think the boa that chased me through camp probably wasn’t grown yet,” he said.

“Not grown? You’re telling me that was a child?”

“More of an adolescent. Maybe seventy-five years old, if I had to take a shot in the dark.”

Magnus gazed into the lifeless purple iris. “And this one?”

“Much, much older. Must be two hundred, at least. Maybe three.”

Magnus merely whistled at that. The Shattered Thorne had promised were coming into view now. A set of six arrived first. Then another four not long after. There was no more time for idle chit-chat. “Well,” Charles said, breaking the silence. “I suppose we should get started. Chef, what do-”

“No,” Magnus said, cutting him short. “Not Chef. Not for this.”

“But-.”

“You heard the red cyclops.” He pointed his sea serpent at Charles’ chest. “You are in charge of this project. That makes you,” he said, giving Charles a prod. “Lead Chef for today, and frankly I could use the break.” He continued to prod as he spoke over Charles' protests. “That means you take charge, give some orders and delegate. So you tell me, Chef. How do we go about this?” Magnus folded his arms and waited. No advice. No hints. His rigid look and posture reminded Charles of another cook. Among the Boulier kitchen’s masters, there was a man the young chef respected more than anyone except Father. A foreigner from far-off lands living in Dreya who used to stand back and let him take the reins on difficult tasks now and then.

Erickson used to test me like this. Charles cleared his throat. When he spoke, he was direct.

“We need to remove its head,” he said.

“Bold start. What’s your reasoning?” Magnus’ stony face revealed nothing. He was not going to say whether he thought this was a good approach.

“Colossal boas aren’t venomous, but their mouths are quite filthy.” That gruesome detail, unfortunately, Charles did not need a book to confirm. He had taken a blast of the smaller boa’s breath right in the face earlier. It was the sort of experience that wasn’t quickly forgotten. “We don’t want to risk any of that going into the final dish. This is the safest way to prepare it.”

“I see. How do we manage that?”

A fair question. Charles mulled on it. How would they manage that? Slicing through your everyday snake was simple enough. Any decent knife could do the job. But this? Charles glanced at the dead boa’s head. The neck was almost twice as thick than he was tall. He would need a flight of stairs just to get on top of it.

“It shouldn’t be too hard to break through its vertebrae,” he said. “We’d need the right tools, though. And someone very strong to wield them.” How many swings had he guessed it would take to bring down the marquee? Fifty? A hundred? This would take that and a good deal more.

“Do the Spears keep any larger weapons around that might be able to help us?

“You could always give the armory a look.”

Charles frowned. His leg was throbbing badly. Light spasms were still striking every minute or so. It would take forever for him to limp to the armory cart and back, and it wasn’t like he’d be able to carry heavy weapons and keep himself upright. Magnus knew that. So why had he…?

Delegate. Charles turned to a pair of the tallest, most broadly built among the Shattered. One had a thick, dark beard but, like the rest of the broken Spears, was shaved clean atop his head. He refused to make eye contact with anyone but his fellow blues. The other was missing his pinkie and half the ring finger on his left hand, but still looked muscular and powerful enough to flatten most men with a single blow. This one did not move in the slightest until the young chef had finished speaking. “If you don’t mind, we need weapons that can help us slice through the neck,” Charles said. “The larger, the better. Could you please fetch something like that for us?” They did not answer or even nod their heads, but both blues swiftly departed in the direction of the Spear’s armory. I suppose that’s a yes. While they waited, Magnus prodded for more details. He wanted to know the rest of what Charles had in mind.

“So we lop off its head. Then what?”

“After that, we’ll need to skin and clean the carcass,” Charles said. He made a chopping motion with his hand, starting at tail and bringing it up toward the neck. “That calls for one continuous cut along its length, and then…”

“Then?” Magnus said.

“Then...removing the organs.” That would be a crude, nasty business. Difficult, too. A cut like that would call for a chef very skilled with their fillet knife. Charles didn’t doubt his own hand, but he was still the youngest chef present and had no experience with giant beasts. Perhaps the best choice was someone used to performing similar cuts on large fish? Someone who had dealt with cornered kraken...

“I...I’d like you to make the opening when it’s time to clean the snake, Magnus.”

The sea chef gave a small smirk. He seemed amused. “If you gave a toothless order like that on the ships I’ve cooked in, you’d have your crewmates snickering behind your back in a day and disregarding you completely within a week. Try again. With a little fire this time.”

Toothless. Charles felt his face flush hot. Shame was no stranger to him. He’d felt it thousands of times in his life. This was different. It felt worse. It was emasculation, not just from an older man, but an older chef who outranked him.

“You…,” The sheer nerve. How dare he talk down like that! The anger was welling up. A spark of rage, just like the one he’d thrown at Thorne atop the forest oasis, took over before he could stop it.

“Just make the cut, you...you fish fucker!” he shouted.

“Is that any way to speak to a man whose kitchen you ruined?” Magnus said darkly. Then he closed his eyes and smirked, just a little. “That was better. It will do for now, I think. Your wish is my command, Chef.” He lowered himself in an exaggerated bow.

Charles simmered. He felt a second wave of embarrassment. How could he have lost his composure like that? Swearing and shouting? It was completely unbecoming of a Boulier. What was happening to him? He would never have done anything like that before his time in the Green Galley. He’s messing with me. Is this revenge for what happened earlier? He took a deep breath to stuff down his irritation. By the second breath he was still livid, but he could at least make it look like he was calm. “We’ll need to give the insides a thorough rinse after we remove its organs,” he said. “Any of these creeks will do, but we’ll need a few fires going, and the largest stockpots we’ve got to boil the water beforehand. From there...” Charles scratched his chin. “From there we’ll need to separate usable meat from the bones.” That was where the boa’s sheer size would make things interesting. Most snakes had a common problem when it came to their meat: they were absolutely filled with nasty bones. Tiny, toothpick-sized rib bones that were easy for a chef to miss and easier for a diner to choke on. They either all had to be carefully removed—a tedious process—or avoided with steady knifework that carefully peeled fillets from the rib cage, not unlike a cooked fish.

There was zero chance of missing a bone from this snake. These ‘toothpicks’ were long as men and thick as a pine tree. One could cut meat away without even touching the ribs and still be left with slabs of meat like headstones. That’s fitting enough, Charles thought. If you tried to finish one in a single sitting, you’d probably die.

“You know, you could almost call cuts like that a steak,” Magnus noted. Charles considered that. A steak of snake meat? Who ever heard of such a thing?

The pair of Shattered returned bearing large armfuls of steel. When asked which weapon they felt best to remove the head, the bearded blue took hold of a hilt jutting from the pile and handed it off to his eight-fingered brother.

“Is that a fucking claymore?” Magnus said incredulously, raising a brow.

It was. Likely a prize of conquest captured from a Highlands settlement. The average saber, scimitar or spatha was inconsequential compared to what the Shattered had chosen to play their role. With the enormous blade in his grip, the eight-fingered blue looked no less a raider than his red counterparts. He climbed the colossal boa without difficulty, positioned himself at the neck, and brought his all downward with devastating force.

He pierced the skin with a spray of blood. Then he struck again. And again. Then four more blows. Then a dozen. Around the twentieth swing, the blue started to shout and scream wildly. There was a cracking of bone and the splattering of more blood, but even after Charles was certain his own arms would have fallen off from sheer exhaustion, the Shattered persevered. He swung and screamed without end.

Something was wrong with him.

How is he still going? He really should take a rest and let one of the others step in.

But when he moved to intervene, the bearded blue stepped in front of him. He did not utter a single word, but he shook his head fervently. Do not.

“Maybe, uh...maybe we’ll just leave him to it for a while,” Charles suggested, backing away slowly. He morbidly wondered just who or what the Shattered was imagining when he brought down that blade. Magnus merely mouthed ‘good call’ and followed.

In the end, dead flesh managed to outlast the living, and a new pair of hands took over when the spent blue could no longer raise the sword. It took four shifts of Shattered nearly an hour before the deed was done.

When the head did finally part from the rest of the boa, it stunned everyone by rolling for about twenty feet, only to come to a rest when it flipped and settled with the broad flat of its nose facing downward. It was a stroke of pure luck that the ground they called their kitchen was steady and had no significant slope. There was no telling how far it might have gone or what might have fallen in its path otherwise. Charles cursed himself. As Lead Chef, any failure in planning or preparation fell squarely on his shoulders. Idiot! You should have had it tied down first. If someone had been standing in front of that...

Ten years. Ten years of training and thousands of lessons under Father and his masters had readied Charles for nearly any feat involving food, but it had not readied him for what it was like to cook with an ingredient that was this big. How could it have? The Boulier manor had its limits, and they stopped at what couldn’t fit through the door. Working with food of this scale...

Any small step could be lethal. You can’t let your guard down for a second.

“You might want to take a firm step back,” Magnus said. The uminara was preparing to make his cut. He seemed to be measuring the task before him, casually turning the fillet knife over in his hands, and from the subtle grin spreading on his face, one might think the difficulty excited him. “Once I unseal this bastard, its guts aren’t gonna stand around and have a smoke before they come rushing. Try to imagine a tidal wave of complete foulness.” Charles needed no further convincing. He took a dozen steps back, then moved well to the side. After everything he had survived today, he had no intention of suffocating under a giant liver.

Magnus let go of a deep breath and closed his eyes. When they opened, he was like a completely different chef, one Charles had never met before now. Austere. Devoid of all emotion. Focused. Then he began. For all his casual vulgarity and arrogance, his knifework was nothing short of artistry. Finer and more precise than Charles could have managed on his best day. He is as capable as any of Father’s masters. There are few cuts in the culinary world that force the chef to walk as they work, yet Magnus did not seem troubled in the slightest. The blade flowed like a natural extension of his hand. He always seemed to know exactly where the ideal path through the skin was, and he made what would have been challenging for even an experienced chef look as simple as uncorking a bottle of wine. He had the entire length of the boa well and open in just over a minute. Most of the guts—along with the heart, lungs, liver, and a great deal else—did indeed come rushing out in a great clamor, but it still took both chefs and Shattered combined to ease the last bits free of the hollowed serpent completely. By the time they were left with a properly cleaned serpent, a flood of red flowed across the curtain of white snow. Steam rose from the pile of innards in the winter cold.

The most difficult steps were behind them.

Charles checked off a list of orders in his head. Heating the creekwater. Rinsing. Removing the meat. Cooking. Distribution. Until now, they had gotten by with only a single person working on the boa at once. That would no longer suffice. He organized the blues into several teams, each dedicated to their role as a link in a greater chain.

Maybe it was a remnant from their training as Spears, but their teamwork was always seamless. As soon as one took a boiling stockpot away to toss its contents against the inner walls of the boa, another placed a fresh one ready for the flames. Charles instructed the Shattered on where best to make cuts along the wall of meat, while Magnus demonstrated proper technique. It was a new lesson in old material. The blues knew blades well enough, but the blades they were accustomed to were far less subtle than a chef’s instruments. The work continued well into the afternoon. The snow settled, and the isolated quiet of the Highlands crept over them.

As if he could divine the future, Luet joined them just as the preparation was coming to a close.

“Well? How did it go?” Charles asked.

From Luet’s deflated expression, it had not gone well at all. Charles tried not to let the mounting pressure worry him. It did anyways. Everyone will be relying on the outcome of my efforts, he thought. That included the other prisoners. Cade and Luet. He even found himself thinking of Joen and Jori. The twins might be petty liars, but they did not deserve to starve. No one did. All of them were in his hands.

He absolutely could not fail. He would not.

“We start with the straightforward approach,” he said. “Salt and pepper for seasoning. Then we’ll cook it over the fire and have a taste. Let’s see what we’re working with.”

Fat from the meat dripped onto the grass. The cuts were lightly charred edges where the flames licked most closely. The actual meat was lighter than he’d been expecting. A pretty pale color, like the silver of the boa’s scales. A turn over the flames and a quick run-through with a skewer, and it was ready for a taste-test. Charles passed several skewers around to the Shattered. It was only proper; if not for their help, getting this far would have been impossible. The least he could do was make sure they had a chance to enjoy the fruits of their labor. The remaining skewers went to Magnus and Luet.

When he offered one to the pastretta, he could not help but notice Luet pull back his right hand, which had been closer to Charles, and conspicuously grabbed the skewer with a gloved left instead.

Wait...gloves?

Scars on a chef’s hands reveal a great deal about them. Charles’ own hands were lashed with tiny scars left by his paring knife over the years, and his pinky had been shortened by a bad chop very early in his training. As such, he had long held a habit of taking special note of people’s hands. Charles looked at men’s hands almost as often as he looked at their faces. Particularly cooks’ hands.

Luet had not been wearing anything over his hands when the day began, or any day prior. He had never worn gloves for the entire time the young chef had known him. Of that, Charles was certain. He thought it strange, but did not comment.

He took a final skewer for himself.

There were three bites taken as one. Three rounds of chewing. Zero swallows. Luet and Magnus sat frozen mid-chew, their faces sour.

“Tastes like-”

“Like whitefish,” Magnus finished. He squeezed the words from the corner of his lips. “Whitefish that’s been dunked in liver for a week, then buried in a shallow grave.” Per usual, Magnus’ description was as ruthless as it was accurate. In the name of the gods, what was that aftertaste? It reeked of earth. Earth and iron and some other foul thing words couldn’t even describe. Charles’ first bite of colossal boa was easily the most gamey dish he had ever tried. And he had tried a great many dishes. He did not want it in his mouth a moment longer.

“It’s...pretty awful,” Luet admitted. He finally gave up on chewing and modestly turned to toss the mouthful away. “Such a powerful first impact. I thought snake meat was supposed to have a mild flavor? It’s not exactly subtle, is it?”

Magnus spat his portion to the grass. “Subtle?” he said. “Subtle? It tastes like a mule-kick in the mouth.”

“I suppose it makes some sense though,” Charles said, holding his skewer up to the light of the fire. “Predator meat tends to have a strong gamey flair to it, and these boas are so big they can make prey of other predators.” All that flavor, forged and concentrated across the links in the food chain. Passed from eaten to eater. It seemed colossal boas carried a taste as fearsome as everything else about them.

“Well,” Magnus said, folding his arms. “Strictly speaking, it is edible. You know, if you close your eyes, hold your nose, and think of Solis.” He glanced to Charles. “I’m sure the Spears will take it over starvation, and those blues will eat anything they’re told.”

Charles grimaced. It was not easy to hear his cooking barely pass for ‘edible’.

He will see to it that none go hungry. That had been what Thorne asked of him, had it not? His assigned mission. If putting dinner on the table was all he needed to do, hadn’t he met his goal? There were more than enough steaks to feed the entire camp. All the Spears and prisoners and conscripts. The blues, too, not that they had ever been particularly picky.

Charles remembered the skewers he had passed around to the Shattered. Anything they’re told, huh?

Maybe...maybe it wouldn’t hurt to gauge their reactions as well. The blues weren’t exactly his usual customers—they did not even speak, and barely reacted to food in general—but they had to have some sort of opinion.

As it turned out, they did. A very clear one at that. Charles swiveled in his seat to find the group of blues clearly struggling with all they had to hold down the meat he had given them. Struggling and failing. It was like watching a flock of geese choke on globs of creamy peanut butter. Be it courtesy, fear, or a lifetime of ingrained obedience pounded into their skulls, they were making every effort to meekly eat what they had been served. Yet even with all that, they couldn’t quite bring themselves to finish their first bites. Charles' face felt as though it must be flushing bright as heated steel.

My cooking is making people gag.

In an instant he had taken to his feet, apologizing profusely while assuring the blues that they did not have to force themselves to finish.

“Alright, that’s it!” he shouted, collecting the last of the leftover skewers from the grateful blues. The shame was coursing through him now. This was unacceptable. Beyond unacceptable. “If we serve this to the Spears, they’ll skewer us over a fire! And even if they didn’t, I’d skewer myself!” He pointed to the slabs of gamey meat, still dripping and steaming in the cool air. “I can’t serve a dish in this state! It’s an abomination! It’s an insult to cooking! It should be thrown down an endless abyss and forgotten by time!”

“It is what we have to work with,” Magnus said plainly. And he was correct. That was the truth of the matter. Charles knew that perfectly well. But even so...

“I won’t feed this to Cade and the others. Not like this. If this is our dish’s center, then we’re just going to have to improve it.” Surprisingly, it was Luet, not Magnus, who objected. As a chef, Magnus never had qualms about cutting corners in the name of pragmatism. Quite the contrary. The taste of what he served from the Green Galley came second to speed and efficiency. But the sea chef said nothing. He merely pulled what was left of the snake meat from his skewer and tossed it away. It seemed he was serious when he said he would let Charles take charge.

“We have enough food to feed everyone now,” Luet pointed out. “Is making it more palatable really that important?”

“It’s important to me,” Charles said, placing a hand to his chest. “Don’t you see? Our dignity as chefs is at stake.”

“Our dignity?” Luet said, narrowing his eyes. “Or your pride?”

Charles went quiet. He had no answer for that.

“What do you suggest?” Magnus asked, breaking the silence. “As long as you don’t go ruining the meat we have, I don’t see why we can’t put just a little more effort in. A dishes’ center is still only one piece of the finished product. A skilled chef could work with far less.”

Charles nodded.

“The taste of colossal boa is a lot stronger than we predicted. But that just means we need to adapt,” he explained. He paced as he spoke, scratching the wiry shorthairs on his chin. “I’m going to have to blend a rub with some of the leftovers that survived the Galley.” He rubbed his jawline. It still ached faintly from where the Spear had struck him. Yes, he thought. Yes, if this flavor was a blow to the mouth, then he’d just have to hit it right back with everything he had. He needed herbs. Oils and acids, too. That would soften up the texture and make chewing a little easier. Some fruits, maybe. Tomatoes might work. Most of all, he needed spices.

Using everything he’d learned under the watch of the Father’s masters, he would fashion an extraordinary spice blend capable of taming this beast. He grinned. This was no longer mere survival. It was a challenge befitting a Boulier chef.