Kingfisher

by Patricia A. Mckillip

  “You’re late,” a voice grumbled amid the cloud. A lean, black-haired man carrying a clipboard took shape, scanned their faces and his list. “Marcia Holmes. You know your station.”

  “Yes,” she said, vanishing into what looked like rows of counters half a mile long, cooks lined at them, vigorously chopping, clanging pot lids, whirring machinery, shouting for this or that.

  “And you—” the man said. “I’m not seeing you. Who are you?”

  “Pierce Oliver.”

  “You’re not—” He flung up his hands, his list taking flight, settling again. “Never mind. What have you got in there?” Pierce pulled the knife out of his pack. The broad blade picked up light from somewhere, flashed silver. The man stared at it, his harried face suddenly slack with wonder, as though he recognized it though he could not remember why or from where. He pulled his thoughts back together abruptly. “All right. We have seven hundred and forty-nine knights to feed in seven hours, including the king and his knighted children. And, of course, everyone else in the palace not invited to the formal dinner must be fed as well. There are extra uniforms and aprons on that rack, and an empty station at the third counter. Get dressed, get over there, and start chopping.”

  Pierce threw on black trousers and a tunic, found his place, and began to feed the knife whatever anyone put within his reach. He had no time to think, except to marvel that he had somehow muddled his way under the king’s roof. The knife melted through anything it was given. It minced garlic, chopped onions, sliced tomatoes, diced potatoes. The wicked edge, neatly balanced, rocked its way across walnuts or celery as easily as it cleaved slabs of raw beef into fine ribbons, and fresh chives and parsley into airy flakes. He had no idea what he was making, only that the thinnest rounds of unpeeled lemon were involved, endless narrow strips of red pepper, vast quantities of apple wedges and butterflied prawns.

  After an hour or three, Pierce felt he had merged, melted into the kitchen. Its relentless heat, its endless alphabet of smells, its clatters, whirs, bangs, whacks, and sizzles had become his skin. His hand had grown a knife at the end of it; his feet existed in some other universe. He could toss a lime and part it six different ways before the wedges landed on his board. He could pare an avocado and catch the falling pieces. He could notch the green end of an onion in three strokes as it flew. He could julienne a carrot in midair.

  He wondered if his father would be among those he would help feed.

  He hardly noticed the chaos he was creating around him. Odd strands of light caught and swirled around the blade, then flashed across the counters, snagging themselves in metal and steel, in bowls and whisks, in other blades. Things groaned, smoked, clattered to the floor. Equipment froze or overheated; squalls of black smoke, hot, oily steam, collided with shouts and curses from the cooks. Pierce, oblivious, tossed yet another of a seemingly endless supply of oranges to peel it in one spiraling stroke when he realized abruptly that the knife was no longer in his hand.

  The orange thumped down on his cutting board and bounced off. A woman wearing the king’s crest on her hat and apron caught it with one hand. With the other, she laid the knife across the board, where, for the first time in hours, it was still.

  She said succinctly, holding Pierce’s eyes in her dark, furious gaze, “This is not working. I don’t know you, I don’t know what that knife is, but you are creating havoc every time you move. Whatever purpose that knife has, it does not belong in my kitchen. And neither do you. Remove it and yourself so we can at least try to function again.” Pierce opened his mouth; she pointed her finger. “Out!”

  “I’m sorry—”

  “Just go away before something else breaks.”

  Pierce tucked the knife into his pack and, following the rigid finger that seemed to him to point the wrong direction, he slunk out of the kitchen.

  He got lost before he could find his way.

  He roamed through empty classrooms, dorms, a staff room, and a dining hall before he found a door around a corner beyond the hangar-sized bathrooms. He pushed it open and heard the world cheer, as though he had done something of magnificent import. The cheering died away. A voice spoke loudly, incoherently. He walked outside, found himself in a small, walled garden with a couple of benches, shadowed by huge trees with narrow, silvery leaves. A statue stood among the shadows, its face broken and blurred, its eyes blind with mold. Its head was angled toward the invisible crowd cheering again somewhere beyond the old stone wall.

  Pierce walked across the yard, slung his pack straps over one shoulder, and hoisted himself into a tree beside the statue.

  The wall dropped dizzyingly on the other side into a vast bowl shored up by brickwork and concrete and ringed with tier upon tier of seats. Groups of dark figures lounged here and there watching what was going on across the field below. From that high place, he could see, across the bowl, what seemed a miniature city of graceful buildings and towers, the past and present of Wyvernhold history, the lacework of stone ruins among high, colorful, modern designs, all surrounded by enormous, sprawling walls. Beyond them, he saw the busy span of the bridge he had driven across, so long ago it seemed impossible to him that it had been only that morning.

  He took his eyes off the restless, mesmerizing roil and glitter of sea, and looked down at the movement below.

  There seemed a number of things going on at once, some of which he recognized from programs that the antiquated television in the only sports bar in Desolation Point pulled out of the turbulent air around the cape. He had seen the ancient jousting games: riders and horses arrayed in colorful swaths of cloth galloping headlong toward a wooden figure that spun if it were struck by the long pole in the rider’s hand. It hit the rider with its own straw-stuffed cudgel if the rider missed. The scattered watchers seemed to be rooting for the wooden knight: they clapped and whistled vigorously whenever a rider got walloped by the cudgel.

  They were knights, Pierce realized: the darkly clad among the audience in the seats, and the contenders on the field. They jousted; they raced; they shot arrows that spanned the millennium between longbows and tech bows. They fought with broadswords, with rapiers; they fought without weapons in a dozen different styles, none of which Pierce could name. On a far end of the field, behind which the seats were empty, they shot weapons that spat blood-red streaks of lightning; the most accurate of them caused their small, flying targets to mist into oblivion.

  Pierce couldn’t see faces; language from the microphone came to him garbled with echoes. He moved impulsively, drawn by the knights, wanting to be among them. He slid off the tree branch onto the top of the wall, then rolled to hang by his hands before he dropped to the platform behind the last row of seats. He rose cautiously, not wanting to attract the attention of any of the wicked weapons on the field. He still wore the black kitchen uniform; at a distance, he might be unremarkable. He found an aisle between the tiers of seats, walked down the steep slope, and finally understood the announcer’s voice.

  “Sir Val Duresse has won the Dragon Claw match. Dame Maggie Leighton’s team has scored highest in the jousting so far. Second place in jousting is still held by Sir Block of Wood and Straw. Team Sir Jeffry Holmes places third. Next team of challengers led by Dame Rachel Thistledon please get your mounts to the lists. Good luck to you against Sir Cudgel. Sir Alexander Beamus has won Section Three of the longbow tournament. Whoever it was that just dropped over the wall from the kitchen yard, please proceed down the aisle and onto the field, where you will be allowed to prove your right to be among us. Good luck, Sir Kitchen Knight.”

  Pierce, one foot suspended, nearly lost his balance and bounced down the aisle onto the field. He righted himself, arms flailing, pack bouncing, and heard laughter, applause. If he turned then and there, he could make it back without anyone likely to recognize him later. But scrambling back over the wall using the backs of seats and dangling tree limbs would become an event in itself, to
be won or lost by the red-haired chopper whose long black apron was luffing like a sail in the wind. It made no difference, he realized, whether he humiliated himself up a tree or on the field; one or the other was inevitable.

  He untied the apron; it whirled off like a runaway shadow. He continued down, his face burning at the cheers and whistles from the crowd.

  He saw the announcer gesturing to him as he reached the field. He dodged around a whirling pair of kickboxers and nearly found himself one of a row of targets in a sports bow contest.

  “Careful, Sir Kitchen Knight.”

  Sir Kitchen Clown, more like, Pierce thought grimly.

  “Watch out for— Oops.”

  Pierce dove across the grass, out of range of a pair of knights in full antique armor flailing broadswords half-blindly at one another. He got to his feet, looked around wildly for the next attack.

  “This is not a country fair, Sir Kitchen Knight,” the announcer said reproachfully. “You can’t just wander around among the exhibits. Sir Guy Morton is now the top contender in the Ribbon Dance style of street fighting. Challengers welcome. Dame Cynthia Barkley has so far scored highest in the Wyvern’s Eye competition, obliterating eight out of ten targets.”

  Pierce reached him finally, after coming unnervingly close to getting scrambled under the hooves of a charger finishing a gallop down the tilting list. The announcer was a burly blond knight with an easy, confident smile that Pierce guessed he had worn sliding out of the womb. He stood on a platform overlooking the field, with a microphone in one hand and an earpiece in one ear, receiving information from the enclosure high in the seats above him.

  “Welcome, Sir Kitchen Knight,” he said cheerfully, then held the mike under Pierce’s nose. “Do we have a name?” Pierce opened his mouth; the mike was suddenly no longer there. “No? Then Sir No Name it will be, since a knight without a name is a knight without a history, kitchen or otherwise, and who can say what feats and marvels you might perform on the field? Who can say, that is, but you?”

  The mike was in front of Pierce again; the announcer cocked a brow, said briefly into it, “Anything?”

  “What?”

  “What,” the announcer asked more precisely “is your weapon of choice? Hands, feet, longbow, lance, pistol, Wyvern’s Eye—”

  “Kitchen knife?” Pierce said uncertainly, all he could think of. The mike swooped back to him; he said into it, “Knife?”

  A cheer went up. “Knife it is. What style?”

  “What?”

  “Longshore Style, Double-Handed, Chained Blades, Eastern, Old Style—”

  “Ah,” Pierce said, and got the mike’s attention. “Deli Style?”

  The announcer grunted with amusement. “Not familiar with that one. Do you have your weapon with you?”

  “Yes,” Pierce sighed.

  “A field squire will escort you to the Field of Knives. Wait there for your challengers. Let’s hear it for Sir No Name, who will introduce us to the art of knife-fighting Deli Style.” He held up the mike to catch the raucous reaction. Pierce closed his eyes, wishing he had taken his chances with the tree.

  He followed his escort to a square patch of grass with mysterious colored lines painted on it. He unpacked his knife and stood bleakly in the center where the lines converged, waiting. Around him, in other painted squares, men and women fought with unbelievable dexterity and grace, with and without weapons, their patterns of movement as varied as dance and likely as old. Surely, he thought, none of those skilled in such subtle and deadly moves would be interested in the knife-weavings of Slicing the Onion or Cubing the Tenderloin.

  He was wrong.

  A tall, lithe knight with long red hair in a knot on his head walked up the front of his opponent, did a backflip off his chin, and knocked the feet from under him on the way back up. The explosion from the nearby crowd obscured the announcement of the knight’s victory. He held out his hand, helped his dazed opponent up, then he bounded into Pierce’s square and bowed gravely. Pierce, stunned, could only stare at him and hope one of them would disappear.

  “Since you have no name to give,” the young man said briskly, “I won’t bother you with mine. Anyway, I expect to lose to you since I’ve never heard of Deli Style fighting. Can you show me a few basic moves before we start?”

  Pierce found his voice finally. “You just walked up that knight.”

  “Yes, but that was a totally different style.”

  “You don’t even have a knife.”

  “I’ll get one,” the nameless knight said patiently. “If you could give me an example of the style, I’ll know which knife to choose.” He waited, while Pierce’s mind went blank at the idea. “Please? Just one simple move?”

  Pierce stirred finally, an underwater slowness in his bones. Feeling ridiculous, he tossed an invisible fruit in the air with one hand; with the other he sent the knife flashing after it, describing a little circle in the air, before he caught the falling fruit. “Coring the Apple,” he said, and tossed it again, cutting the air with five vertical, precisely parallel turns of the blade. “Wedging the Apple.” He caught the wedges, which usually fell on the cutting board, and stood awkwardly, his empty hand cupped, wondering what to do with the nonexistent pieces.

  The knight’s eyes had narrowed. He gazed at Pierce out of eyes the pale blue of a winter sky; his lean, comely face, with its red brows and lashes, was without expression. “Can you do another,” he suggested finally. “I’m not quite getting this.”

  Pierce drew breath, held it. It seemed easier to acquiesce than to try to explain, which would probably result in his getting walked up and knocked down, then jumped on a few times. The explanation was inevitable.

  “Look—”

  “Just show me.”

  Pierce closed his eyes briefly, then, in rapid succession, showed him Scalloping the Potato, Fine-shaving the Ham, and Butterflying the Flying Prawn. The knife had warmed to his grip by the time he finished; he was vaguely aware of the flashes that came from it as metal caught the sun. When he stopped, the knight was regarding him with a peculiar, skewed stare, blinking rapidly as though light from the sun’s reflection had streaked across his eyes.

  He said finally, very softly, “Who are you?”

  “My name is Pierce Oliver,” Pierce answered, relieved that the knight had asked before he attacked. “And I’m not a knight. I was just in the kitchen accidentally—”

  “Yes. You made me remember something. My mother used to chop like that. That same magical blinding tangle of knife moves. I loved to watch that when I was little. She was—is still, I think—a sorceress.”

  Pierce swallowed. His heart seemed to shift and glide in his chest like a fish easing from shadow into underwater light. His eyes stung, blurred. “On Cape Mistbegotten?”

  There was silence. When he could see again, the knight had crossed the battle lines to stand in front of him. His pale, intent eyes were very wide.

  “Heloise Duresse. She is my mother.”

  “Heloise Oliver.” Pierce heard his voice shake. “She took her maiden name when—after she left you here in Severluna. She is my mother.”

  The knight, still holding his eyes, gave a short nod, as though in recognition. “You look like her. I remember that, now, too. And your father?”

  “My father—” He paused to swallow again. “She didn’t tell my father about me when he returned to Severluna after he saw her for the last time at Cape Mistbegotten.”

  “So.” The knight’s hands rose, clamped above Pierce’s elbows. “So you are my brother.” He smiled then, the astonishment and pleasure in his face making Pierce’s eyes burn again. “This is amazing. I always felt I lacked a brother and finally here you are. My name is Val Duresse. Our father is—” He stopped. His eyes flicked away from Pierce, then back again, an odd, wry expression in them. “Well, he’s not on the field. I
’m not sure where he is now. He’s not good at keeping his cell turned on. We’ll find him later, at the Assembly.”

  Pierce’s heart pounded suddenly at the thought, which had been, until that second, only a marvelous possibility. “Will he—I mean, he doesn’t even know I exist. And I’m not a knight; I can’t just—”

  “Yes, you can. You walked onto this field in a kitchen uniform and challenged every knight here. I accepted your challenge, and you won before we even began to fight.”

  “I haven’t got a clue—”

  “There is that,” Val agreed, with his quick, charming smile. “We live in enlightened times. Not every knight chooses to fight or carries a weapon. There are other ways to serve. Come and choose a knife for me. I want to learn more of your Deli Style. And if that’s all you know about fighting, so should you.”

  12

  On another part of the field, Daimon faced an unknown knight.

  Like a shadow, the knight matched Daimon’s height and reach. He wore black from head to foot; his head was rendered invisible by an acorn-shaped helm with a finger’s breadth of a slit across it for sight. Nothing on the mantle flowing from his shoulders indicated, by ancient beast or heraldic device, who he might be. Daimon was similarly hidden in red, his body sheathed in metal, his helm densely padded against the mighty heave and thrust of the black knight’s broadsword. The helm smelled of oil, copper, and old sweat; the air he breathed was thick and hot and merciless.

  He was battling, it seemed, something maddeningly unnameable, as old as time and as elusive as mist. This dark, faceless knight was a manifestation of the idea he had been struggling with since the moment his mother had appeared out of nowhere and offered him a realm of enchantment and a consort’s place beside the young woman who already ruled him. That offer was weighted with implications heavier than the shield he raised against the dark knight’s sword hammering away at it. He could not decide which was more incredible: the intriguing, compelling, and even justifiable offer itself, or the faceless, nameless stranger Daimon saw in himself who might accept it.