Chapter 2 #2
“Ligua. They’re omnivores.” Inkiri tapped the painted creature with a finger. “Easy to keep for their wool, because they don’t mind food scraps and leftovers. Some people like to eat them.”
Nokim shivered. “The raw and iced brain is supposedly a delicacy. I think mashed potatoes are much better.”
I made a face at the thought of iced brains. “Agreed.”
Inkiri clicked and gently pushed me forward.
Up ahead, the hallway turned to the right, but the room nearest the corner had been opened, and inside, Fellisse, Lissir, and Vergis were lounging on the floor around a large low table.
Fellisse and Lissir were wearing the purple hotel clothes.
Vergis, unsurprisingly, had stuck with his cargo pants and hoodie.
I assumed that was a private dining room.
Its walls had fruit trees painted on them, all stylized and each sticking to one color scheme—green, blue, white, red, or yellow—and the colors were repeated in the floor cushions and the glassware on the table.
Whoever ran this hotel paid a lot of attention to detail.
Lissir beamed at us and put his cup down to jump to his feet. He was in front of me in moments, taking both my hands in his and squeezing them.
“You are well, Rory?”
I shrugged. “I am, actually. Never felt better.”
Fellisse made a happy rumbling sound. “He speaks again. Good.”
Vergis snorted. “I beg to differ. I liked him just fine when he wasn’t talking.”
Lissir turned and hissed something at Vergis in their language, and I was pretty sure at least some of it was cussing. Not that Vergis cared. He just grabbed a morsel of food straight off a plate and stuffed it into his mouth while casting a level look at me.
“We are very happy you’re better, Rory,” Lissir said. “All of us are happy about that. And for whatever you did at the Stone, we are grateful. You saved us. Thank you.”
I looked up at Lissir. His orange eyes were bright, and his silver-gray skin appeared healthy to me. He was fine. I’d seen Fellisse carry him, seen him bleeding. There had been a lot of blood everywhere, but there was no sign of anyone being hurt now, and that was the greatest relief ever.
I touched Lissir’s shoulder to make sure he was real, was really okay. “You got shot, right? You got hurt back at the lake as well? An arrow?”
He nodded. “But I’m hurt no more. I was healed.” He tilted his head and lifted his hand to his left horn. “Apart from this.”
I craned my neck until I saw the mark in his horn, a single, straight line; the kind you only noticed when you were looking for it.
I ran my finger over it. It was rough, but faint. “Oh, sorry. Does that hurt?”
Lissir clicked, and so did the others. “No, and you don’t need to be sorry. I’m quite aware that it could have been much worse. By rights, it should have been worse. I look like I was in a fight, and that adds some distinction.”
Inkiri clicked. “You don’t need distinction, Lissir. You were in fights before this, and we all think you’re very distinguished.”
“Thank you for that, but a good mark makes for a great story.”
Lissir smiled and patted Inkiri on the arm before dragging me over to sit next to him at the table.
Inkiri folded his legs under him to my left, Nokim sat down across from us next to Fellisse, and I finally got the chance to gape at all the strange food on the table.
It was colorful and prettily set out on individual plates, and not knowing what anything was or what I was getting myself into was exciting.
While Inkiri poured me something from a decanter made of pale green glass, I asked, “What out of all of this isn’t going to kill me or send me to the bathroom for days?”
Fellisse hummed. “It should all be fine. Vergis tells me his human father ate everything we have here, with no adverse effects.”
Vergis’s human father? That was something to investigate later.
For now, I was excited to try all the food.
Ravenous too. The utensils were pretty self-explanatory: a two-pronged spork, except it was narrower than your average spork, and a set of one big and one smaller spoon.
They were placed at twelve o’clock by the little plate in front of me, and with any luck, my human table manners were acceptable.
The others were eating already, but like with that sandwich they had fed me when Inkiri had first found me, it seemed me eating was the main attraction.
Inkiri and Lissir put bits of this and that on my plate.
Hopefully, that was considered a normal thing and not them thinking my arms were too weak to hold serving bowls.
With all eyes on me, I tried my first bite of Aer food.
It looked like a round shortbread cookie.
There were seeds—or something that looked like seeds—on the top, dark purple ones, and the cookie itself was a golden brown.
It was sweet, but not overpoweringly so.
Crisp, but a little chewy on the inside.
It tasted fruity, fragrant, almost a scent rather than a flavor.
I moaned even as this first taste of food made me truly notice how hungry I was.
Lissir clicked. “He likes vinné.”
Nokim nodded. “Everyone likes vinné.”
“Want some more of them, sweet thing?” Inkiri asked, already reaching for the serving plate.
I nodded and barely remembered to cover my mouth with a hand before I spoke. “I want to try everything.”
Nokim beamed. “I’m saying it now; he will enjoy honkora week. Inki, we can take him to all the food stalls and let him try the different foods.”
Vergis groaned. “Goddamn. Are you really going to do sightseeing, of all things?”
I was feeling daring, and also, I was sitting between Lissir and Inkiri, so I felt pretty safe and smug when I said, “It beats getting shot at and meeting big orange murder spiders who want to eat you.” Then I spooned up some whitish doughy thing about the size of a walnut and stuffed that into my mouth.
It tasted oily, and a lot like cilantro mixed with raisins. It was absolutely disgusting.
Vergis watched me as my taste buds rang the alarm, and a mean little smirk ran over his face. “You look like you like massa buns. They’re a favorite around here. It is very impolite to refuse them when they’re offered.”
Inkiri tensed. “Sweet thing, you mentioned spiders before. What happened back on the beasts’ world? Did something scare you there?”
“Hmmmmm.” I was desperate for a napkin to spit that massacre bun into. Cilantro was bad, but mixing it with raisins was just plain diabolical.
“Want another?”
Vergis’s tone was saccharine. He held a plate full of the massacre buns up in front of my face. I told myself spitting the stuff out would be bad. With as much self-control as I could muster, I kept my mouth shut tight, unable to swallow.
“We can order more. Or go out and see what the vendors have on offer,” Nokim said.
Inkiri straightened. “First, I would like Vergis to promise not to take my mate back to the beasts’ world.”
Like back at the church, before the attack, Inkiri’s tone made me feel sorry for Vergis.
I still had the massacre bun in my mouth, and that was a problem in so many ways.
But there were no napkins, and since I really, really didn’t want to cause a scene, I went for my water glass, forced myself to swallow, and washed the disgusting, oily bun down with a big swig of a lightly flavored drink.
“That was foul,” I said as Inkiri poured me more of what I figured was cold tea or some type of juice. “But about the beasts’ world, Vergis saved me, you know? Like you did at the ladies’ clothing store. Only messier.”
Inkiri frowned at me, but he relaxed.
Vergis put the massacre buns down. “Everyone’s a fucking critic. Did you say he saved you from a women’s clothing store? Any particular reason you were shopping there?”
Why oh why was my brain’s quality control so into messing up and letting my mouth spill all the embarrassing details of my life? Things had been going so well.
Nokim, thankfully, didn’t seem to notice, just held out another serving plate to me. “You want to try fried massa, Rory. It changes the flavor.” He ate one of the massacre buns as if it was a chocolate-covered marshmallow or something.
I made a face. “Thanks, but that’s a hard pass.”
Inkiri clicked at me and rubbed my back. “I’m sure we’ll find something you like much better, Sadir.”
Lissir moved, his paw foot bumping into my knee under the table. “It sounded like Rory has found what he likes best earlier.”
I looked at him and followed his line of sight.
While I had been busy drowning the damn massacre bun taste with the juice, I had missed the start of a staring contest between Inkiri and Vergis.
Vergis was lounging and looking relaxed about the whole thing while rolling his cup around in his hand, and Inkiri was busy stroking my back, his jaw tense, growling so low I could barely even hear it.
Fellisse clicked, then shifted to growl-purring. “Maybe, if Rory is feeling refreshed, Vergis can explain to him what the Stone of Destiny revealed.”
Just like that, we were back to the annoying topic. Magic.
I’d been able to forget the damn Stone existed once before.
Now, I’d seen Inkiri get hurt there, Nokim killed, and Lissir very nearly killed.
The Stone itself… I wasn’t sure what it was, but I knew it was more alive than not.
That made it scary, and this seed week party thing sounded massively alluring in contrast.
Vergis let out a long breath and ended the staring contest by turning his steely gray eyes to me instead.
“You’re not a conduit. The Stone is similar to the veils; the border zones that always connected Aer and Earth.
The Stone’s magic is not magic that draws on living sacrifices—the kind of magic I and any other ko user uses—but magic that comes from the world itself. ”