Qijne cocked her head. “Mer,” she said experimentally, then seemed to dismiss the word—and Glim—with a shake of her head. “Well,” she said. “Come, then. We’ll go to my kitchen.”
Annaïg lifted her chin. “Why should I?” she asked.
Qijne blinked again, then leaned in close and spoke in a casual, confidential manner. “I don’t need all of you, you know. Your legs, for instance—not very useful to me. More of a problem, really, if I imagined you were prone to running off.”
Each word was like an icicle driven in her back. There was no doubt that the woman was serious.
Qijne patted her on the shoulder. “Come along,” she said.
And she came, telling herself that this was what she needed to be doing, trying to learn something about the enemy, trying to find out how to stop this unholy thing.
But it was hard to keep that in her head, because she had never in her life been more afraid of anyone than she was of Qijne.
EIGHT
“This isn’t a kitchen,” Annaïg whispered to Glim. “This is …”
But she had no word for it.
Her first impression was of a forge, or furnace, because enormous rectangular pits of almost white-hot stone lined up down the center of a vast chamber carved and polished from the living rock. Above the pits innumerable metal grates, boxes, cages, and baskets depended from chains, and vast sooty hoods sucked most of the heat and fumes up higher still into Umbriel. Left and right, red maws gaped from the walls—ovens, obviously, but really more like furnaces. Between them, beings strange and familiar crowded and hurried about long counters and cabinets, wielding knives, cleavers, pots, pans, saws, awls, and hundreds of unidentifiable implements.
Though the smells here were generally cleaner than those of the Midden, they were just as varied, and decidedly more alien.
So was the staff; many of them resembled the peoples she knew—there were in particular many who looked like mer; there were others for which—like the place itself—she had no name. She saw thick figures with brick-red skin, fierce faces, and small horns on their heads, working next to ghostly pale blue-haired beings, spherical mouselike creatures with stripes, and a veritable horde of monkeylike creatures with goblinesque faces. These last scrambled along the shelves and cabinets, tossing bottles and tins from shelves in the stone that rose sixty feet along the walls, although in most of the room the ceiling crushed down almost to the level of the tallest head.
But Qijne led her through all of this, past searing chunks of meat, huge snakelike creatures battering against the bars of their cages as the heat killed them, cauldrons that smelled of leek and licorice, boiling blood, molasses.
After a hundred paces the cooking pits were replaced by tables crowded with more delicate equipment of glass and bright metal. Some were clearly made for distillation, this made obvious by the coils that rose above; others resembled retorts, parsers, and fermentation vats. Along the walls were what amounted to vaster versions of these things, distilling, parsing, and fermenting tons of material.
It was breathtaking, and for a moment Annaïg forgot her situation in wonder of it.
But then something caught her eye that brought it all back: a cable, the thickest she had seen yet, pulsing with the pearly light of soul stuff and, more specifically, the life force of the people of Lil-moth. It passed through various glass collars filled with liquid and colored gases, and insectile filaments and extremely fine tubing coiled and wound into what might be condensation chambers.
She felt tears forming, and trembled with the effort to keep them back.
For the first time since entering the kitchens, Qijne spoke.
“You like my kitchen,” she said. “I see it.”
Her throat caught, but then breath came, and something seemed to rise up through her, inflating her. She focused her gaze on Qijne’s eyes.
“It’s amazing,” she admitted. “I don’t understand most of it.”
“You really know nothing of Umbriel, do you?”
“Only that it is murdering people.”
“Murdering? That’s a strange word.”
“It’s the right word. Why? Why is Umbriel doing this?”
“What a meaningless question,” Qijne said. “And how unknowable.” She took Annaïg’s chin between thumb and forefinger. “I’ll let you know what questions are worth asking, little thing. Give me all the attention and love you possess, and you will thrive here. Otherwise, it’s the sump. Yes?”
“Yes.”
“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.”
Annaïg 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, Chef.”
“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, Annaïg thought. I’m learning weaknesses already. Things that will help Attrebus.
“So here we are,” she said.
Annaïg 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.”