There was just one problem with that plan. His spices were back at the wreckage of the Galley. That was a long walk. Too long for his legs, most like.

He shrugged. Nothing too worrying. He could ask a Shattered to go get what he needed.

“Could you…?” he began.

Wait. He hesitated. It was true he could ask one of the blues for help...but how would they know what to take and what to leave behind? That was asking a lot from someone unversed in seasonings. Charles could think of one obvious way for him to get over to the Galley, even with his frail leg. Requesting it, however, was so embarrassing he could hardly get the words out.

“I...I need you to..,” he stammered.

The bearded Shattered tilted his head.

“He needs you to carry him,” Magnus said. “Put him on your back and take him to the Galley.” Without missing a beat, the giant blue lifted a mortified Charles and slung him over-shoulder like a sack of potatoes. In the next instant the boa, the blues, Magnus, and the outdoor kitchen were flying away from him. Chef and Shattered were in motion, crossing the sea in a fluid sprint.

“If you’re afraid to acknowledge your shortcomings, you’ll never be a proper chef!” Magnus called after him. The uminara saw him away with a wave and a grin.

Charles simmered. That completely goes against what you told me before! This man! He was such a...such a...

He centered himself and stuffed down his anger. No more childish outbursts. He would not let himself be riled up again.

Still though, if he was supposed to be learning something from what Magnus was doing, he didn’t have the slightest clue what it might be. Was there even a lesson to be learned at all? That was always a possibility. Amélie DeRose, the Boulier sommelier in charge of serving and informing diners on all matters of wine, liked to lead him in circles with riddles that had no clear answer.

Perhaps that’s all this was. It was best not to overthink it.

The sun had nearly dipped past the horizon when Charles’ preparations came to a close. That was also when the first of the crows arrived. It landed in the pile of the colossal boa’s guts and started tearing away bits of flesh. Two more joined it. Then many more. A murder gradually flooded over every inch they could reach with their black beaks, drawn by the easy meal lying in the open snow. They pecked and plucked and ravaged. Some even tore at each other, fighting savagely over the best pieces.

“If only human diners were so easy to please,” Magnus said quietly.

Charles was ignoring the birds. He had something far more important to focus on. He smiled approvingly at his nearly-completed dish. Everything was coming together now. He was a chef riding high on the rush of creation. He felt elated. Almost giddy. “In just a few minutes, I think we’ll have something truly special,” he said. “This will blow our normal faire out of the water. A real taste of Boulier cooking.”

“Is that so?”

The elation died. The crows sprang skyward in a flurry of feathers. A tower of red rose tall among the white and green. Cardinal Thorne stood in their presence as if he had materialized from thin air. It nearly startled Charles out of his wits, but he did a good job of hiding it. Engrossed in cooking or not, he should have noticed such a large man before he got this close. Thorne’s size and strength were concerning; the fact that he did not carelessly throw them around, that he knew how to move with subtlety when it suited his needs, concerned Charles more.

Thorne found an oak stump wide enough to accommodate him and sat. Then he folded his arms and waited, the barest of amused smiles appearing at the corners of his lips. No doubt he had come to check their progress, but now that he had heard Charles’ boasting, he would want to know firsthand how much of it held true. Expectations had been raised high before the dish had even been served. What would happen if those expectations were not met?

Something truly special.

Now you’ve gone and done it. You just had to stroke your own ego.

Charles breathed, deep and full of nerves. The aroma of his dish had changed. The heat had sauteed and crisped the surface to perfection. It was complete.

Oh well. There was no turning back now. He pulled the finished product from the heat, applied a few final minor cosmetic tweaks, then served it on a platter from the Galley. In place of a traditional serving cloche, he settled for an upturned stockpot.

The stockpot lifted.

When the burst of steam cleared, Charles was (just a little) pleased to see Thorne’s face shift in surprise. Surprise and confusion. For once, the young chef had managed to catch him off-guard.

The aesthetic chosen for this dish was a lush array of reds and oranges. The outer layers of the pale boa meat had been thoroughly transformed. Crisped from tough and chewy into a crunch that gave way to softer, more pleasant textures inside. The aroma was sweet, with a hint of sugariness, but carried a spicy edge that stung one’s sense of smell like the crack of a whip.

“What...have you done to it?” Thorne asked.

“Why not have a taste and find out?”

Without his father’s knife in his hands, Charles’ would never have been bold enough to say anything like that. In most things, he lacked courage. He had never been one to take much risk. Even speaking his mind was often a struggle. Only cooking and the kitchen could make him forget his usual fears. “Sweet and Spicy Serpent a la Boulier. Ready for the table.”

Bon vierre. Eat this. It’s far more than a savage like you deserves. Charles turned his back and prepared to walk away. He did not care to see Boulier cooking and technique wasted on the unworthy. I only went this far for my fellow Dreyans. Perhaps he had done it for the Shattered, too, if he was honest with himself. They deserved to have a shred of decency in their lives now and then. But Thorne and the rest of his reds? Why should people like them get to enjoy his family’s cooking? In what world was it fair after the things they had done? As if a man like you could appreciate our craft.

Thorne picked a dried fruit from the surface and held it to the light of the sunset. Eight points jutted from the red-brown center. “Star anise,” he said softly. Charles paused in his tracks and glanced back. The raider held up another spice. A round, dark berry the size of a raindrop. “And juniper berries.” He cut away a delicate square of the snake meat and tasted the dish. The way he carefully leveled his utensil to eat from the left of his mouth without disturbing his mask was refined in a strange way.

The grey of his eye lit up through the hole in the half-moon. Briefly, and then it was gone.

Then Thorne began naming the ingredients Charles had painstakingly chosen to balance his dish. He named almost all of them, one by one.

“Flakes of chili pepper,” he said. “Cinnamon, for sweetness. A touch of demon vine, freshly cut. Cilantro and basil. Garlic and diced tomatoes. Lemon juice for an acidic touch. You boiled the meat in saltwater to combat its natural gamey taste, then gave the surface texture by frying it in egg and flour. Then you added even further variety of texture by topping it with blackmoon mushrooms and chopped bacon.”

Charles was speechless.

How...this can’t...

“I see my faith in you was not misplaced. You have done well.” Thorne picked a blade of grass and held it to his lips. When he blew, a great whistle echoed across the Highland crags. After a brief quiet, his call was answered. There was a rush of air. A subtle stirring of the wind. Like a bolt of lightning flashing to earth, the crimson drake plummeted from starry skies and landed before its master with a dramatic flurry of beating wings. Magnus gaped; unlike Charles, he had likely never seen Thorne’s pet as anything more than a speck in the sky. Luet handled the drake’s arrival with less dignity. He let loose a quick, shrill scream and hid himself behind the serving table. Charles fought the urge to join him. He took a step back from the drake despite himself. Like the colossal boas, it was a lot more imposing up close. Thorne took a hearty slab of steak from the serving plate and tossed it overhead. Without missing a step, the drake snatched it midair and gulped it down without hesitation. Thorne then approached without the slightest fear or reservation. He made a sign with his hands, and the drake stretched its left wing out wide. When Thorne brought his massive fist down on a flattened palm, the drake stiffened and held perfectly still in its strange pose. The image of a dog and owner came to Charles’ mind.

Stay.

“You are too reckless, Oculus,” Thorne said harshly. Charles blinked in confusion. Then he realized Thorne was scolding the drake, an animal even larger than he was, as if it were a child caught sneaking cookies before supper.

Oculus...Oculus was its name.

“Twice now your own carelessness has injured you. The time for battle will come when you are older and stronger,” Thorne said.“For now, you must be patient and remember your place. You are my eyes. Not my blade.” He examined the gash in the narrow flesh closely. The drake made small, stifled cries of pain, but it did not budge an inch. Dried blood still clung to where the boa had marked it. To Charles, it looked quite serious, but the cardinal seemed unconcerned. “It is not broken. I should leave you to your pain as a lesson in humility.” Thorne closed his eyes and sighed. “But...I will apply a salve this evening to soothe the worst of the discomfort. You will heal well, so long as you do not strain yourself.” The series of hand signs that followed were far more complex than the first. Charles caught a meeting of the thumbs and index fingers, a turn of the left palm with the pinky extended, and a swift sweep of the arm toward the far side of camp before he lost track. When Thorne’s hands grew still, the crimson drake flashed into the blackened skies as quickly as it had come. “He will alert the others and gather them here. See that you are ready for them.”

Oculus’ vision, apparently, was far sharper than Charles’ when it came to interpreting rapid hand signs. The drake was swift in fulfilling his duty; in short order there were steady streams of raiders pouring into the clearing surrounding the fallen boa.

For once, the Shattered did not take the role of serving dinner. There were so many wounded unable to walk that the blues had to take shifts running rations where they were needed. Instead, Charles, Luet, and Magnus found themselves passing out plates and distributing snake meat. The whole thing had turned into a crude buffet of sorts. The young chef suppressed a pang of anger with every Spear he served. He shrugged off the doctor’s malice and the twins’ scorn. He smiled as Cade passed, and the other boy flashed a quick grin back.

“Will this be enough?” Thorne asked when it was his turn. He gestured to the stockpile of leftovers behind the serving table. It was cold enough for them to sit in the open air without fear of spoiling. All in all, dinner had used only a small portion of what they pulled from the boa’s body. A very small portion.

Magnus nodded reluctantly. “We should manage, Your Eminence. For a while at least.” Charles raised a brow at that. He had seen enough pantries to know they were sitting on a feast fit for a king and his court. Manage? Our biggest problem will be finding a way to store all the leftovers. It was an answer that withheld some truth, but couldn’t be called a lie, either. Not truly. In any case, it seemed to satisfy Thorne.

When he left, only Charles and Magnus remained. The line had all but trickled to a stop. Men ate in hudddled groups, but rarely spoke to one another. The night air was quiet. Quiet and, to the eleve, painfully awkward.

Charles did not know what to say. In truth, he still felt very guilty about what he had done to the Galley. It had lingered in the back of his mind all day. Of all the ways you could wrong a chef, destroying his kitchen had to be among the gravest. It might have just been a tent to most, but it clearly meant a great deal to this man. There was no way he would have reacted the way he did otherwise.

Things couldn’t stand as they were. As a Boulier...no, as a fellow chef, he had to speak up.

“Magnus...I want to-.”

“Make amends for your fuckup this morning?” Magnus finished. The red-haired man casually pulled an object from his pocket. It was a worn smoking pipe. Dark brown, well-made. Fashioned from pear or rosewood. Surprisingly ornate and expensive-looking, given its owner. It was a very nice pipe, though Charles had no recollection of ever seeing Magnus using it. The older chef continued. “I thought we were past that. You heard the baker oaf. Most of our equipment survived, and now we have our food supply back. An ample supply, I might add. I'd say you’re redeemed. No need to keep dredging up what can’t be undone.”

“But...if you’re not still upset, then why did you keep taking jabs at me when we were cooking today?”

Magnus smiled calmly at him. “I felt like it.”

You! Charles bristled but held his tongue. He wasn’t that annoyed, really. Somehow he just felt relieved the red-haired chef didn’t resent him. He found himself thinking the man beside him a strange creature, one he didn’t fully understand just yet. Magnus could be volatile as an old bomb. In the moment, he exploded with rage at even minor stresses. It was natural as breathing to him. Yet in contrast...once the fires cooled, he seemed to accept life's changes, hardships, and the pain of loss far more readily than other chefs Charles had known, or even adults in general. Accident or not, if a giant snake had ever fallen on the Boulier kitchen, Father would have held it over his head for the next century.

“I didn’t know you smoked.”

“I quit, for my wife’s sake. She can’t stand the smell,” Magnus said. He packed a thumbful of tobacco and took a couple quick, testing draws. A spark from his flint, and he looked every bit a stern ship captain peering out at harsh seas. The ring of smoke he blew floated away on the evening air. “Never could bring myself to toss this thing away, though. She’ll kill me when I come home, but I think I’ll need to take up the habit a short while if I’m to make it back with my sanity intact.”

The next Spear in line casually snatched the fancy pipe from Magnus’ mouth, grasped it with both hands, and snapped it in two like a twig. “No drinking or smoking on the warpath. Cardinal’s decree,” he said with a hint of a smirk. He brought his palm down on the serving table, and when he lifted it only the splintered remains of the pipe remained.

Oh no.

Magnus seethed like a volcano on the verge of eruption. He took up a slab of the snake meat. For a moment, Charles thought he was going to throw it right in the Spear’s face. He braced himself for whatever madness might follow.

“Of course. The cardinal’s decree. How silly of me,” Magnus said. His words were perfectly polite, but spat with all the friendliness of a saltwater crocodile. He slowly lowered his arm. “Please, put my meat in your mouth and savor it.” He slapped the steak to a plate and handed it across the table. The Spear narrowed his eyes and looked as though he might say something back, though after a pause he grudgingly took it and moved on. All men needed to eat, even if the food came from someone they hated.

“Shaft-squeezing asshat,” Magnus growled through gritted teeth. The sea chef sighed. “Isn’t that something, Boulier? You want a small comfort, you have it right there in your hand, and then it’s gone. All because some tin can who can’t come to grips with their pint-sized pike has to take it out on you. There’s a metaphor in there somewhere.”

Charles understood...sort of. He knew loss well, but he also knew when not to cross a line. He had a feeling Magnus might still have his pipe were he not such a habitual bear-poker. Why did he have to press his luck so often by insulting and taunting these trained killers to their faces? More different mindsets could hardly be found in this world. If the uminara and the Spears had anything in common, it was a shared, strained tolerance of each other’s existence. Conflict never seemed more than a hair’s breadth away. Charles had a feeling that all it would take to ignite it was one day without patience. One party refusing to back down. And if that day ever truly came, there was only one way it could realistically end...

“You were looking for something in the wreckage after the Galley fell,” Charles said suddenly. “What was it?”

“Oh, that? Don’t worry about it. Just a trinket. Nothing important,” Magnus said, eyes darting about. He seemed strangely evasive. Eager to find some other subject to talk about. “All circumstances aside, you did do well today. More than I can say for the walking quiche. Where is your countryman, anyways? He’s supposed to be lending us a hand with the serving.”

Charles did not know. He had not seen Luet for a long while. The last place had been…

“I think he left for the pantry. He was going to return the spices and fruits we used today.”

“Hunt him down, then. I can manage this for a moment.”

Charles shuffled away between a pair of black raider tents, but not before snatching a plate stacked high with steaming meat and sweet, spicy aromas. If anyone asked about his business, he could claim he was merely delivering food to the wounded. He probably looked like a mirenne gliding around a restaurant floor, turning their head this way and that until they found the right diner. For that one moment, he almost felt home. Home in Lutz, serving customers on bustling summer nights, when the lanterns lit the outdoor pavilion like starlight. It made him lighter to feel the way he had on those rare occasions where he would see a dish all the way from the kitchen to the dinner table, and the regulars who knew him by name would wave and smile and give Father their regards.

Little did he know, he would return bearing a weight so heavy he dared not speak it aloud.

Left. Right. Straight. Right again, then a tight squeeze between a raider’s tent and the gentle hill of a cairn. Charles searched for Luet in every swell and surge of the woven sea, to no avail.

The pastretta had vanished. He did not appear at the wreckage of the Galley. He did not appear after another ten minutes of aimless walking. Nor twenty or twenty-five. After nearly half an hour, the dark notion of foul play began to whisper in the young chef’s mind. Had something happened? Was it one of the Spears? Would they harm him as revenge for their fallen brother, Eritus? Or was it something worse? Had another boa woken up from brumation and quietly stolen into camp? He watched a pair of Shattered carry an unmoving body from a pile of splintered tent frames. Are you still looking for Luet?, his anxiousness asked. Or what remains of Luet?

The thoughts swirling. His leg throbbed. Charles passed from concern to worry, from worry to fearfulness, and was approaching full-blown panic when he caught a flash of green in the corner of his eye. He took a half-step back and saw a hunched figure squatting in a hid-away space where several tents pressed against each other, forming a triangle surrounded by low walls. It was the sort of quiet nook one would sneak away to if they did not want to be bothered or seen, and inside it sat the missing pastry chef.

A pair of gloves lay at the ground next to his feet. When Charles realized what the gloves had been concealing, his jaw fell.

Hideous purple splotches covered the flat of Luet’s right palm and wrist. Blood was pooling beneath his skin in some places. In others, it flowed openly, soaking the cloth that had been wrapped into a makeshift tourniquet. It was like the hand of a corpse or someone suffering a horrible disease. There was almost as much purple swelling above the wrist as there was normal skin. Luet swore softly. He was trying desperately to get a new cloth in place, but with every small touch against the purple he had to bite his lip to stifle noises of agony. The eleve was not a doctor, but he did not need to be to recognize it was a grave injury. Far too grave to perform the duties of a chef. He cannot grip a knife with that hand. If the Spears find out he cannot cook, they'll murder him on the spot.

Charles stepped into the hidden triangle.

“Luet…,” he said in disbelief. “What’s happened to y-.”

Luet had his good hand against the eleve’s mouth before he could finish.

“Keep your voice down,” he spat in hushed tones. He brought them both to a low crouch. “What are you doing here? Go back!”

“Are you mad!?” Charles whispered back. “What if the Spears see you like this? What’s happened to your hand?” He tried to take a closer look, but Luet hid the hand from view. “Let me see it. It looks pretty bad, but I might be able to blend something that helps. Let me help you, Luet.”

Luet pushed him away.

“Just be quiet!” he nearly shouted. Then he remembered where he was and covered his mouth. There was no trace of the usual friendliness in his face. Only anger, sorrow, bitterness, and resentment. He looked as though he was not sure whether to laugh, cry or scream. “I don’t need sympathy! Not from you! It’s none of your business! Just leave me be!” With the fresh bandages still unwrapped and hanging limply from his wrist, Luet ran away into the night air.

Fog was rolling in low. Hopefully it would keep anyone else from seeing what Charles had seen. He prayed that when he returned to the serving table alone, Magnus would somehow sense his mood and leave the matter alone.

That prayer went unanswered.

“Well?” the sea chef said impatiently. “You were gone so long I could have trained a monkey to help run this table quicker. What was it?”

“It’s nothing,” Charles said quickly. “He just got turned around. The fog made him lose his way. I set him back straight, but he probably won’t be done until we’re finished serving.”

“Typical dessert chef. Arrives late, no idea what he's doing, and by the time he gets his act together the customers have had enough and gone home.”

The table was manned by two for the remainder of the evening. When the camp fell quiet and the Spears and Shattered once more dispersed, Magnus gave Charles leave to sleep for the evening. “Starting tomorrow, I’ll be taking the reins again,” the uminara said. “Any objections?”

“None,” Charles said without hesitation. One day as Lead Chef had been one too many.

“I thought not.”

“Where will we sleep with the kitchen-tent out of commission?”

Magnus jabbed his chef’s knife at a trio of low raider tents. “Thorne was gracious enough to lend us those until the Galley is restored. Their owners won’t be needing them anymore.”

Charles crawled into the center tent, to the left of Luet. On a different day, he might have laid on his back and obsessed on the idea of sleeping in a tent that used to belong to another man. A man who was dead now. Instead he plummeted to darkness. It would be a rough sleep at best, and he would ultimately wake feeling more tired than when he had closed his eyes. That night, for the first time in many weeks, he would have dreams. Not of riders in red, great snakes, or one-eyed giants. Not of any of his countless fears about the present. Not of what tomorrow might bring. Charles dreamed of days gone by, and his memories were haunted by the ghosts of those he used to know.