He found a chamber below the stovetop with kindling inside. He lit it, and it blazed fast, growing too large. When he tried to fan it away, the flame burned his hand. He yanked away.
“Something wrong?” Rye said. Tahki looked up. Rye was watching him.
“No,” Tahki said. He grabbed the iron pan and set it on the hot plate and then tossed his bread in.
The bread wasn’t doing anything. He remembered watching merchants fry food. It usually sizzled. Why wasn’t it sizzling?
He glanced up. Rye stared at the pan.
“What?” Tahki said.
Rye shook his head. “Just wondering what you’re doing.”
“Frying bread.”
Rye raised an eyebrow. He waited a moment and then walked over to Tahki and looked in the pan.
“What did you coat it with?” he said.
“Coat it?” Tahki looked down. “Oh.” He grabbed butter from one of the shelves, cut off half the stick, and plopped it in.
“Is this how you normally cook?” Rye said. “It’s a wonder you aren’t five hundred pounds. I’ve never seen anyone make fried bread like that before.”
“Well, this is how we make it back home.” Tahki moved the bread around until it started to smoke. “Shit.” He grabbed the pan. The hot iron burned the same hand the fire had before and he released the handle. It clanked back onto the stove. The smoke grew thicker. Tahki swept the room for some water, but by the time he found a jug, Rye had removed the pan from the stove and thrown the bread in the sink. It was completely black on one side, white on the other.
Rye placed the pan back on the stove. “Don’t think I’ve ever met anyone who couldn’t fry bread.”
“I’m used to my kitchen back home,” Tahki snapped. His hand hurt. He blew on the burn.
“Did your family have money?” Rye said.
“What?”
“You can’t cook. You acted like meeting a prince wasn’t anything special. You think very highly of your architectural work, so you’re educated. You think people who grew up in the lower cities have no chance in the world. So I assume you come from money.”
Tahki scowled. “So what if I do?”
“You should know this isn’t a normal castle. There isn’t anyone to serve you or hunt for you or make your bed.”
“I can do all those things just fine,” Tahki said. Was he supposed to have made his bed? He’d just left his pillow and blanket on the floor. Had someone made his bed back home? He’d never noticed.
His hand stung. He held it close to his body. Rye watched him a moment before reaching for the bread. He cut a new slice with no jagged edges. With his free hand, he cracked an egg in a bowl and beat it with a fork, then coated the bread in egg and dropped it in the pan.
Tahki started to protest, but Rye moved so fluently he couldn’t ask him to stop. He stood behind Rye, close enough to smell coffee and linseed oil and salt.
After a minute, Rye jerked the pan forward and back, arm muscles flexing as he flipped the bread. It sizzled. The cooked side glistened with golden fried egg. Tahki stared. With every small motion, Rye’s muscles tensed, then relaxed, then flexed. His bare shoulders rolled, the bones in his right wrist rotating smoothly when he flicked the pan.
Tahki had never paid attention to anyone’s arms before. Maybe he hadn’t gotten enough sleep. Sometimes when he was groggy, he would fixate on small things, like how dark his pencil marks were or how textured his paper was. He tried to shake off the fixation. He felt like some swooning twelve-year-old who’d found their first crush. Maybe entering a new country triggered some hidden urges.
His father would have been delighted. He’d done everything in his power to try to get Tahki to take interest in someone—anyone—because it would be healthy. It would be normal. But Tahki had always been more interested in the homes they visited than the inhabitants. Even when his father discovered Tahki preferred men—and he would be denied grandchildren—he still pushed him to date. There were services, his father told him, that offered a surrogate mother or man, if two men or two women were married and wanted children. The entire conversation had been uncomfortable. Dating seemed like such a chore. He had architecture, and that was enough.
“Can I ask you something?” Rye said.
Tahki focused his eyes on the bread. “Nothing’s stopped you so far.”
Rye glanced up at him. “Yesterday, on the way to the castle, you said ‘gods.’”
Tahki shrugged. “So?”
Rye was silent. When he opened his mouth again, he spoke carefully. “As in multiple gods. As in southern religion.”
It took a moment to register what Rye implied. Most countries around the world believed in what they called the Mother Goddess. A single female deity who created and watched over the world. The only country who still believed in the old gods was Dhaulen’aii.
Panic swept over him. Rye watched the bread. In his mind, Tahki listed all the countries he could remember and tried to think if any still followed the older religions.
“Pa’kakin,” Tahki said.
“What?”
“My father was an orphan. He grew up in a Pa’kakin household.” They believed two gods created all life. It was a smaller religion, and very cruel, full of sin and punishment, but oftentimes the people of Pa’kakin would take in orphans and raise them to spread the word of their gods. “Wealth was from my mother’s side,” Tahki went on. “When my father married her, he stopped practicing, but he still said ‘gods’ all the time. Habit. Guess I picked it up.”
Rye flipped the bread onto a plate and handed it to Tahki. It smelled delicious and looked perfectly golden.
“I see,” Rye said. He walked to the cabinets and took out a jar of what looked like mashed leaves in gravy and handed it to Tahki. “For your burn.” And then he walked out of the room before Tahki could say thank you.
He ate alone, scrutinizing the
