“Very well. My kitchen.” She opened her arms as if to take it all in. “There are many appetites in Umbriel. Some are coarse—meat and tubers, offal and grain. Other habitants have more spiritual appetites, subsisting on distilled essences, pure elements, tenebrous vapors. The loftiest of our lords require the most refined cuisine, that which has as its basis the very stuff of souls. And above all, they crave novelty. And that, my dear, is where you come in.”
“So that’s why you want me? To help you invent new dishes?”
“There are many sorts of dishes, dear. Umbriel needs more than raw energy to run. The sump needs tending; the Fringe Gyre needs feeding. Raw materials must be found or created. Poisons, balms, salves, entertainments, are all in great demand. Drugs to numb, to please, to bring fantastic visions. All of these things and more are done in the kitchens. And we must stay ahead of others, you see? Stay in favor. And that means new, better, more powerful, deadlier, more interesting.”
Annaig nodded. “And you believe I can help you.”
“We’ve just passed through a void; we were nearing the end of our resources. Now this whole pantry is open to us, and you know more about it than I do. I can admit that, you see? In the end you have more to learn from me than I from you, but at this moment you are my teacher. And you will help me make my kitchen the strongest.”
“What’s to stop the other kitchens from kidnapping their own help?”
She shook her head. “Most of us cannot go far from Umbriel without losing our corpus. There are certain, specialized servants we use to collect things from below.”
“The walking dead, you mean?”
“Yes, the larvae. Once incorporated, they can be brought here with certain incantations, bearing raw materials, beasts, what have you. But intelligent beings with desirable souls—”
“Are all already dead by the time your gatherers begin their work.”
“Did you interrupt me? I’m sure you didn’t.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I’m sorry,
“I’m sorry, Chef.”
Qijne nodded. “Yes, that’s how it is. And those of us in the kitchens don’t have the power to send them farther, or the incantations to bring them back here. Once the gatherers move very far from Umbriel, contact is lost.”
This is good, Annaig thought. I’m learning weaknesses already. Things that will help Attrebus.
“So here we are,” she said.
Annaig looked at the table Qijne was indicating. It was littered with leaves, bark, half-eviscerated animals, roots, stones, and what have you. There was also a ledger, ink, and a pen.
“I want to know about these things. I want you to list and describe every substance you know of that might be of use to me, and describe as well how to find them. You will do this for half of your work period. For the remainder of your shift you will cook—first you will learn how things are down here, then you will create original things. And they had better be original, do you understand?”
“I don’t—it’s overwhelming, Chef.”
“I will assign you a scamp and a hob and put a chef over you. That is far more than most that come here are given. Count your fortunes.” She waved at one of her gang, a woman with the gray skin and red eyes of a Dunmer.
“Slyr. Take charge of this one.”
Slyr lifted her knife. “Yes, Chef.”
Qijne nodded, turned and strode off.
“She’s right, you know,” Slyr said. “You don’t know how lucky you are.”
Annaig nodded, trying to read the other woman’s tone and expression, but neither told her anything.
A moment later a yellowish, sharp-toothed biped with long pointy ears walked up.
“This is your scamp,” she said. “We use the scamps for hot work. Fire doesn’t bother them very much.”
“Hello,” Annaig said.
“They take orders,” Slyr said. “They don’t talk. You don’t really need it now, so you ought to send it back to the fires. Your hob—” She snapped her fingers impatiently.
Something dropped through Annaig’s peripheral vision and she started and found herself staring into a pair of large green eyes.
It was one of the monkeylike creatures she’d seen on entering the kitchen. Closer up, she saw that, unlike a monkey, it was hairless. It did have long arms and legs, though, and its fingers were extraordinarily long, thin, and delicate.
“Me!” it squeaked.
“Name him,” Slyr said.
“What?”
“Give him a name to answer to.”
The hob opened his mouth, which was both huge and toothless, so that for an instant it resembled an infant— and more specifically looked like her cousin Luc when he was a child. It capered on the table.
“Luc,” she said. “You’ll be Luc.”
“Luc, me,” it said.
“I’ll be back to get you when it’s time to cook,” Slyr said. “This you’ll do on your own.” She glanced askance at Glim. “What about him?”
“He knows as much about these things as I do,” Annaig lied. “I need him.”
“Very well.” And Slyr, too, walked off to some other task.
Annaig realized that she and Glim were alone with Luc the hob.
“Now what?” Glim asked.
“They want—”
“I didn’t understand the words, but it’s pretty clear what they want you to do. But are you going to do it?”
“I don’t see I have much choice,” she replied.
“Sure. No one is watching us at the moment. We could escape back to the Midden through the garbage chute and then …”
“Right,” she said. “And then what?”
“Okay,” he grumbled. “Use some of this stuff to make another bottle of flying stuff. Then down the chute, back away, gone.”
“I thought we were agreed on this.”
“But you’ll be helping them, don’t you see? Helping them destroy our world.”
“Glim, I’m learning a lot, and quickly. Think about it—this is the perfect place for me. If I could have asked for a better chance to sabotage Umbriel, I couldn’t have thought of anything better. Given a little time, who knows what I can make here?”
“Yes,” he said. “I see that. But what about me?”
“Do as I do. Talk to me now and then as if you’re telling me something. Write down the things I tell you to.”
“What about that?” he asked of the hob.
She considered the thing. “Luc,” she said, “fetch me those whitish-green fronds at the far end of the table.”
“Yes, Luc me,” the hob said, bounding away and back, bearing the leaves.
“This,” Annaig dictated, “is fennel fern. It soothes the stomach. It’s used in poultices for thick-eye …”
She had almost forgotten where she was when Slyr returned, hours later.
“Time to cook,” Slyr said.
Annaig rubbed her eyes and nodded. She gestured vaguely at some of the nearby equipment. “I’m really interested in distilling essences,” she began. “How does this—”
Slyr coughed up an ugly little laugh. “Oh, no, love. You don’t start there. You start in the fire.”
“But there isn’t any fire,” she complained minutes later as she turned the hot metal wheel. The grill before her rose incrementally.
