He popped off the container’s lid underwater. The unicorn drink drifted out like a sparkling perfume. He gulped one waft of pink. Tendrils of color twined toward Aja, and she licked one. The lake water was cold and hard on her tongue. The unicorn piss tasted of peach juice, sunrise, and dried flower petals.
The swordsman made a muffled “Mmmmm!” sound, and so did she.
Aja felt herself solidify. She could move freely, and she snatched the decanter’s lid to stopper it. The swordsman wrapped her arms around his chest. She held on, and they swam upward. He threw the container of unicorn water ahead of him like a spear, then paddled his way to reach it again.
The swordsman thrust the decanter out of the lake and onto the floating carpet. He and Aja surfaced to cheers. He hauled himself out and up. She crawled after him to sprawl shivering on the carpet. Her robes weighed her down like chains. Each inch stung with cold.
“So that’s w-what swimming through snow f-feels like,” Aja said.
She had lost all sensation in her fingers. She had to hold her knife between both stiff hands. The blade clattered on the plate, but she cut a slice of fire dragon. She tipped her chin against the rim of the plate and slurped it into her mouth. It was either that or beg someone else to feed her.
After a few bites, heat roared back. The lake steamed off her. The corners of her drying robe fluttered and curled. Her words puffed out with water vapor.
“Pass the djinn bottle.”
The cycle of drinking and eating passed in a frenzy, between fire and water, from steak to steak. Once when three guests needed the djinn liquor, Janny’s hair caught fire. Aja helped splash lake water on it. The river dragon tended to make the guests weep, for the flavor if nothing else. Tears dried in streaks of salt down their cheeks. No one took the time to rub them off. Only the lord’s face stayed pristine.
Aja lost track of how many times she gulped unicorn water or chewed dragon. She only knew that the extremes troubled her less and less. She could savor the river dragon’s pizzazz without fear of drowning. She could bask in the spicy blaze of the other steak without breaking a sweat.
She had cleared her plate. They had eaten all the dragon. Looking up, she saw Janny turn the vial and bottle upside down.
“Not a drop left,” Janny said with a grin of triumph.
“We did it.” Aja leapt to the center of the carpet. Her every muscle hummed with a desire to be used, to be tested. She wanted to celebrate how strong she felt. “We’re all alive.”
Aja pulled the empress to her feet. The two women spun about each other, hands bridging between them. They broke off to dance. The empress’s former awkwardness had vanished, and she moved with a liquid flow. She beckoned Solin.
“You promised to dance with me.”
He laughed, his face flush. His hand already danced across his plate using the chopsticks like small crutches. Even when he smiled, a scowl remained as a downturned barb at the edges of his lips. Swinging himself upright on his bronze-shod supports, he glided around the empress. His crutches never landed on a toe or a platter. He balanced on one crutch, flipped, and twirled around the other guests. Aja thought of them all he had the most grace.
Aja jumped, swinging her hands and turning in the air. Her leap carried her further than ever before. She flew over the swordsman’s head. Ha!What joy! What an expression on his face.
“You’re some cricket,” he said.
She landed on the far side of the carpet, where Janny and the lord were speaking.
He bowed partway to Janny. “…she may not need you anymore, but she’ll want to see you. My caravan can take you to her in the Dominion.”
“Would be grand to see that jewel-studded girl again,” Janny said. “You know, you aren’t so bad, as soul-slurping tyrants go.”
Part of Aja wanted to wait and hear what they were saying. The rest of her couldn’t slow down long enough to find out. She twirled ankles over wrists and sprang over the cookware, above the guests. “Fly, Aja,” the empress said. “Fly!” Further than fancy, past what any normal human could hope to jump, Aja outdistanced the end of the carpet. She went over the lake. She had done it. She’d gone too far.
“Help!”
She twisted in the air. Stars shone as points on the lake’s surface. Not the lake again. A bed of needles, anything but the lake.
“No!”
Her body curled itself into a ball. She braced for the shock of impact.
The water caught her. A fountain flow cradled her above the lake’s surface. Liquid tentacles propped her up, and where they touched her she felt no cold, only coolness.
The empress called out from the carpet. “Now you’re a dragon, Aja!”
Aja checked, but she wasn’t. She had no scales, no horns, no fangs. If anything, she must have become lighter because she stood on the water. The surface around her feet didn’t break but only dimpled like around a fly’s legs.
“How’re you doing that?” The swordsman waved to the water, and it spiraled up in clear ribbons to flow between his fingers. “How am I doing it?”
Aja didn’t question. She willed herself toward the mountaintops, and the lake surged with her magic. A throne of water carried her into the sky, thousands of droplets blasting after her and drizzling back down in a rain. She hurled skyward. Speed that once would have crushed her insides now did not so much as turn over her stomach.
She splashed down at the lake’s edge. The carpet was now distant. She waved to reassure the other guests. Then she raced up a peak. Moving was joy. Her bare feet chopped through the snowdrifts. The fluff could not chill her. It burst around her in powder, moonlight, and steam.
The mountain climbed higher than snow. Aja dashed up a cliff. Her fingers latched into rock, fracturing off boulders in her ascent to the top. The peak ended in a spike. She leaped skyward, above lake, snow, and stone, higher than the world. All was beneath her, even clouds.
Aja soared and whooped. “Hahaiiiaaiia!”
She let herself fall. The mountains careened around her. She sailed downward toward their rocky slopes, angling herself in the air. Sharp turns, faster, diving. She would land at speed. What need had she to fear? She was too strong to die now.
A woman of fire zipped around her. “Respectable, for a human.”
“Starlight on Dunes!” Aja flared out a hand to the djinn, but she had already seared away.
Aja touched down and started sledding. She plowed snow to either side of her in white geysers. She had to weave around boulders. Or maybe she didn’t. She thwacked through the rocks. The stone had no power to harm her, and she slid all the way to the lake.
The swordsman hefted a rock from the shore, then tossed it clear over the lake. Beside him, the empress sang, and the waters rose in waves that broke in rhythm with her voice.
Behind them on a melting patch of snowbank, Janny called out to him. “Look. I’m steaming.”
Aja skated over the lake with Solin. Sheets of water sprayed out from their turns. Even with her newfound power, she couldn’t match the one-legged man in purity of movement. Poised on a crutch, he swung his legs from one side to the other. He made waves, and Aja delighted in jumping over them. She sent a few of her own his way, and she clapped when he pinwheeled.
Only one guest remained on the carpet. The stillness of the lord drew Aja’s eye.
She whisked to him. “Don’t you want to stretch your new self? But then, you could already breathe fire.”
“Right now I’m doing something even more impressive,” the lord said. “I’m restraining myself.”
“Oh?” Aja wove the water around her into rings, bracelets, and a necklace that shone with the silver of the night’s lights.
“No man values restraint higher than he who has just indulged.” The lord gazed at the empty platters, strewn with flower petals. “I ate the dragon. I fear that when the time comes to hold back, my appetites will wrest control.”
“There are more courses. Can you imagine how they’ll be m
ore exciting than this?”
“Two more courses. Thirteen in total. You still think you can keep everyone alive to the end of the Banquet?”
“I know I can.”
“She who feels immortal is closest to death,” the lord said. “This I tell you, the Chef will not allow six guests to leave alive.”
“But if we’re careful to the—”
“Perfect etiquette won’t be enough. The Chef will extract his price.”
“How do you know?”
Instead of answering, the lord lifted one red petal to his nose. He inhaled, and the petal quivered. “Aja, I have a warning for you.”
She would like to know why he hadn’t answered her question.
“I overheard the djinn speaking to you about breaking her lamp. You must not do this.”
“It’s not right,” Aja said. “The djinn shouldn’t be a slave.”
“Perhaps not, but her first act of freedom will be to incinerate you. Her vengeance will burn the Chef to ash along with us guests. She may even set fire to a city.”
“She wouldn’t do that.”
“Certainty is man’s greatest self-indulgence.” The lord flicked the crumpled petal into the lake. “Why, have you noticed a deep font of tenderness in the djinn for humans?”
Aja thought the djinn would fly away without looking back. She would find her son in the desert and bother no one. Maybe she would. Possibly. Aja had seen the hatred in the djinn. Could Aja dare free her friend?
If she was a friend at all.
Aja watched the djinn, how her flames simmered while escorting the guests back onto the carpet. She flew them out of the mountains. Down cliffs, down valleys, the lands opened out before them and dried to desert. The city of Jaraah swept into view. Aja knew those onion-domes of bronze. Until this night, she had known nothing else.
The towers had always been above her. She, a street bug. Now Aja was above everything. Magic carried her, and she was magic. She had eaten dragon. And to think, she had almost shied away from the Banquet. None of this would’ve happened if she hadn’t gone into that open warehouse door. That block building was somewhere below her now.
Jaraah was her home. Here was where the Banquet had begun.
Twelfth Course:
CHEESES OF LIFE AND DEATH
SERVED WITH OCEAN OF MILK
The Chef’s platter carried two wedges that gleamed. They reminded Aja of cheeses, except shinier. They were solid treasure or wrapped in gold leaf. Shooting stars reflected off their surfaces.
“Skimmed from the milk of gorgons.” The Chef bowed the cheese plate to the carpet. “Curdled with righteous resentment toward the divine. Smoked beneath dryad wood for extra potency. Ripened separately as newborn cheeses in the isolation of sea caves. Reunited for the first time tonight.”
Stylized snakes were painted on the platter. Their fangs ringed the food.
Aja knotted her fingers together, then pulled them apart. Too many snakes tonight. At least the cheese hadn’t come from snake milk. Wait, did snakes even give milk?
Janny padded down her wind-frazzled hair. “Did you say, ‘gorgons’?”
“As all scholars know,” the Chef said, “milk from a gorgon’s left breast brings death. That which is suckled from the right instead restores life.”
“Knew it.” Janny slapped her thigh. “Scholars are nasty old rutabagas.”
Aja turned the platter to look at a cheese from multiple sides. The gold leaf had etchings showing a woman in a ring of giant figures. Aja thought they might be gods. On the next cheese, the woman had transformed into a terror of contorted limbs and fangs.
“Which cheese is which?” Aja asked.
“I already told you. Right is life, left is death.” The Chef set a pronged knife between them with a flourish.
“Who’d want to eat death cheese?” Janny swiveled her chin from side to side, looking across the plate.
“I used bottled cat’s purr to mollify the flavor,” the Chef said. “Not every cheese matches every man’s palate. These are for those adventurous souls who would taste death before the end. The right cheese will return them to life.”
The Chef stepped back onto the balcony. He disappeared into a moon-shaped doorway. The djinn floated out of the same palace tower, carrying a cauldron full of a shimmering whiteness. She followed the carpet as it lifted away. The city streets looked different to Aja from so high. Much cleaner.
“See?” She pointed downward. “Those arch roofs cover the bazaar, and there, the line of statues is the Boulevard of Scholars. It’s so empty at night.”
The empress laughed. “Those towers shine like spiral-seashell ornaments.”
“They’re the glassmaker workshops,” Aja said.
The carpet whirled around the towers. It circled domes. The city tilted, and the night sky skewed as the rug turned. Not so much as the cheese knife fell off. The magic carpet kept all safe. Above buildings. Above doubts. Every guest had survived the dragon course, and Aja didn’t believe the last two couldn’t be any harder.
“What’s a gorgon?” the swordsman asked. He peered over the cheese plate, one brow cocked upward in a dash of wariness.
The lord took up the cheese knife. It was forked at the end like an asp’s tongue, with circular holes in the blade. He used it to push one wedge to the side. At the center of the plate, the design of a woman’s painted face stared up at them, and the surrounding snakes were her hair.
“Half maiden, half monster,” the lord said. “Half allure, half terror. Which half is which depends on your tastes.”
The swordsman scrunched in his neck and leaned away. “Don’t know which would be more odd. Eating cheese from a woman’s breast milk, or a half-woman’s.”
“Drinking milk from a cow might be plenty strange enough if you think about it,” Janny said. “So, don’t.”
Aja wafted air from the cheeses to her nose but smelled nothing. The gold leaf had to be trapping their scent. She used the knife to peel off the foil.
The first cheese was speckled and had the aroma of salt, bitterness, and olives.
Janny sniffed. “Wouldn’t say that smells of death.”
The second cheese astonished Aja with its redness. It smelled of nutmeg, pepper, and sharpened blades.
“Heh,” Janny said, “that one doesn’t neither.”
Aja pointed to the red cheese. “This one’s on the right, so it’s the cheese of life.”
“No, that’s the left one.” The swordsman clenched and unclenched his hand on the same side.
“Ah, I see.” Aja turned the plate until the speckled cheese was now on her right side.
“That’s a problem,” he said.
“Solin must know,” Janny said. “Don’t you, Mister Big Crutches?”
“Only know everything about dragons,” Solin said.
“It must be from the gorgon’s point of view.” Aja rotated the plate until the painted woman faced away from her. “So the speckled cheese is the right one.”
“And this one, death.” The lord sliced off a piece of red. It was a brighter hue than the crimson of his coat. “Men fear nothing more than their own mortality, except the unknown. To have tasted death and yet go on living, that is power.”
All the other guests stared. The lord cupped the cheese between the points of his fingers, drawing it closer to his mouth. His painted lips curved as he spoke.
“Do we face further ordeals in an afterlife? Or can we look forward to a blissful nothingness?”
The guests leaned in. The cheese rested on his lower lip, red on red.
“Not a life goes by without at least once wishing for death. That final delicacy. That ultimate temptation.”
Aja rested a hand on his wrist. Cold pinpricks raced up her fingers. Touching the lord hurt, but she couldn’t let him die now. They had gone through so many courses together. “Don’t eat it.”
“Why should a man fear dying?” The lord glanced to the other cheese. “With resurrection within
reach.”
That might be true, but Aja was shivery all over. The danger here had to come from something else. It wasn’t even that they flew high over the block-stack buildings. Her dragon blood would keep her safe from any fall.
“No, I dare not taste of death,” the lord said, “lest I grow fond of its peace.” The lord thrust the sliver of cheese away, dropping it onto the plate. “Better to despair of any escape from the sweet torment of life.”
Aja let out a breath among a chorus of exhalations. She looked over the guests. Who would reach for the cheese plate next? The swordsman cleared his throat.
“The priests told me what happens after death. Don’t need to try it myself.” His long and square face flinched. “No coward.”
The empress scrambled from beside him to the front of the flying carpet. “I was dead for hours tonight already.”
The lord asked, “What was it like?”
She spread her arms. “Soaring.”
The swordsman poked the speckled cheese. “Wish I’d had this to save you.”
The djinn set a cauldron of silver beside the cheese plate. “This is the Ocean of Milk.”
“A flea’s ocean,” the empress said.
“It is deeper than it looks.” The djinn held out a ladle.
Aja had seen bigger cauldrons. Inlays of cows on its side lounged in regal poses. They carried people on their backs and also what looked like tiny cities. One cow’s mouth bloomed with a lotus. The cauldron’s ladle was a cup of tortoise shell with a silver handle carved like a many-tailed serpent.
“Snakes. Why’d it have to be snakes?” Aja took the ladle.
“The gods of another land stirred the Ocean of Milk using a great serpent,” the djinn said.
The milk had an odd sheen. It didn’t reflect the stars but seemed to glow from within. A liquid moonlight, it lapped against the sides of the cauldron. Aja dipped in the ladle. It pulled from her grasp, dragged lower into the milk. She didn’t know what could’ve grabbed it. A current?
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