Chapter 43
“We’ve been waiting on you,” Misia says.
She’s seated at the dining table, as sharp as a chess piece with her close-cropped hair.
Behind her, standing by the stove and wearing oven mitts, is the raw-boned middle daughter of the Bakers, Irma, the one who makes Jonas’s favorite currant tarts.
Two large planks of wood and several more chairs have been brought in to create a table big enough to accommodate the dinner party.
The Tzus—Jarek, Misia, and Gryphon. The Khans—Perez, Boudicca, Lozen, and Leonidas, but not Leo’s wife, Hedda, or their four sons.
Then David Seingalt and his children, Marina and Simon.
Oscar.
Gran.
I think I’m falling. I reach for something solid and find Gryphon. I cling to him. The smell of roasting meat is overpowering in the crowded space, the scent greasy and aggressive.
“Your aunt and uncle couldn’t make it to our dinner,” Misia says, her voice syrupy with faux disappointment. “An illness in the Plumber House they had to tend to.”
My eyes fly to Jarek. Had he gotten word of the heresy Augustus shared with me? Had his Guardians hurt the Plumber family? But the man’s face gives away nothing.
“The youngest was sent home from school with what might be the flu,” Gran says. She appears surprisingly alert, her voice clear, shaded with the perfect tinge of regret. “Must be the start of the season.”
Oscar keeps glancing urgently down at his arm and back up at me, moving only his eyes.
It’s like they’re trying to escape his head.
Why is he here? The Seingalts and the Khans are friendly with the Tzus.
Irma, impossibly, appears to be cooking for us, like a servant of yore.
And Gran is clearly here as a reminder of the power Jarek and Misia hold over me. But Oscar?
You were at Oscar’s trying on your dress.
That’s when I realize it’s not his arm he’s looking at. It’s his shirt. Clothes. I finally understand. “It was so kind of you to invite me to your home this afternoon to see the progress you’d made on my wedding dress, Oscar.”
His head droops in relief.
Misia’s lip curls. “We were concerned when you didn’t arrive with your Tailor.”
Oscar tugs surreptitiously at his collar.
Another leap. “I was changing out of the dress. No reason for both of us to keep you waiting.”
Jarek appears bored with the exchange. “I’m hungry.”
“I think it’s done,” Irma says, turning to peek inside the oven, “but I can’t be sure.”
“It’ll be done enough,” Jarek mutters. He reaches for a basket of fresh bread—bread that wasn’t here when I left this morning—and pulls out a potato roll.
He squishes it into a ball and shoves the whole thing in his mouth.
I feel sick to my stomach, imagining how Marie would have savored it.
I lose the thought quickly, though, as every nerve in my body calls out that I’m in danger.
I just don’t know what kind.
“It was so nice of the Tzus to invite us all over,” Gran says to no one in particular. Her cheeks are pale and shiny. I hope they didn’t make her walk here. “It’s been so long since I’ve enjoyed dinner at another’s House.”
Irma pulls a large pan out of the oven. She struggles to lift it.
Gryphon goes to help her, leaving me standing near the door.
When I spot the monstrosity he brings to the table, I wish I still had him to lean on.
It’s an enormous pink mound of meat, larger than a newborn lamb.
I’ve never seen flesh that size cooked whole, only flecks of it swimming in stew or pie, or strips cut and dried.
“What is that?” I blurt out.
Jarek smiles. “It smells wonderful, doesn’t it? It’s a wild pig harvested from the woods.”
Gryphon maneuvers the roasting pan to the center of the table, setting it between bowls of steaming corn, baked plums, whipped potatoes, and a pot of garlic butter. It’s a feast, but the idea of keeping it to ourselves while the village slowly starves sours my appetite.
“A pig?” I know from our books that they were large, tube-shaped animals with stubby legs and snouts for noses.
The male, called a pigboar, had razor-sharp tusks.
I’d never seen them inside the Wall, and this huge meat lump?
It could be any creature. There’s no head, no legs.
Just roasted flesh in the shape of a giant loaf of bread.
Gryphon shakes his head at me, once, quickly, his meaning clear.
Don’t eat it.
My belly burbles uneasily.
“Sit,” Misia commands me. “Irma has been kind enough to cook us dinner. You disrespect her by standing.”
That would be true if this was Irma’s home, but it’s not, which means we disrespect her by not offering her food we’ve cooked.
I catch Irma staring at the table with open hunger.
It’s mealtime across the village, and she’s surely worked a full day, just like the rest of us.
Why is she being forced to labor for someone else’s meal, preparing food she can’t eat?
“Please, Irma,” I say, ignoring Misia’s glare as I claim the open seat beside my grandmother. “Will you sit next to me? I want to hear about your schoolwork while we eat.”
“She’s done, aren’t you, girl?” Misia says. “Thank you for your help. We can take it from here.”
Irma nods and removes her apron, curtsying to Gryphon’s mother like we’re in chapel. She throws a final, longing glance at the table and disappears out the door.
Jarek removes the knife from his belt, stroking its mother-of-pearl handle. Without cleaning it, he slices off a hunk of the meat. “Who wants some?”
The Seingalts and Khans eagerly lift their plates.
“This will do me just fine,” Gran says cheerily, indicating the pot nearest to her. It holds the simple wild rice porridge I’d left slow cooking all day. Her hand is shaking, but Jarek doesn’t seem to notice.
“Nonsense,” he says. “Smell this meat. Isn’t it glorious?”
The odor is rich and cloying, unlike anything I’ve experienced before. The pink, glistening color of it clutches my guts. Even without Gryphon’s warning, I doubt that I’d have tasted it.
“At my age, there’s only so much the stomach will tolerate,” Gran says.
“Let me help you,” I tell her. I scoop her some porridge and a portion of stuffed plums, since I know she adores them. We finished the last of our summer fruit at the Apothecary House weeks ago. “Gryphon? Oscar?”
I take their plates and fill them with food from my end of the table, avoiding the slippery meat. Oscar stares at it longingly, but he doesn’t object. Misia looks like she wants to force us to taste it, but Jarek is talking, commanding all the attention in the room.
“Let’s have some pruno, as well. Misia, pour us drinks.”
“Hear! Hear!” David calls, holding out his glass.
Jarek’s wife stands, filling our cups from a pitcher.
Other than Gryphon bringing the meat to the table, only women have served the meal.
That goes down sideways. I smell the brownish liquor she pours me and wrinkle my nose.
I’ve never tried pruno, a drink normally reserved for village feasts.
It smells like fruit gone bad, and those who drink it become silly or morose.
But what’ve I got to lose? I take a sip.
The flavor’s sharp on my tongue but not as bad as I’d expected.
I take a second swallow and decide I prefer water.
Jarek drains his glass and holds it out to Misia for an immediate refill. “Our training is going well, wouldn’t you agree, Perez? Boudicca?”
Boudicca has a great, shiny lump of meat at the end of her fork, poised just outside her mouth. That’s when I realize what it reminds me of, both in sight and smell: the burnt flesh of Jarek’s wound. The bite of baked plum I’d just taken rushes back up, but I swallow it down.
“We’ve never been stronger,” Perez answers for them. His wife pops the pink bite into her mouth, smiling and nodding as she chews.
“That’s great,” Marina says, sounding as bored as humanly possible.
She looks particularly lovely tonight, her hair bound in intricate braids that cleverly join into a rope trailing over her shoulder.
Her dark blue eyes shine like river water and are equally cold.
I notice she’s also avoiding the meat, cutting it into small pieces and moving them around her plate.
“But can we talk about something that includes all of us?” she continues. “Like Friday’s party?”
David’s mouth tightens. “Quiet,” he says. Marina is unmarried, still a girl. She shouldn’t be wresting control of the conversation from an elder.
Marina turns her attention to me, ignoring the man to talk about him. “You should thank my father. He’s the one who decided your wedding would be this Friday, and that for auspiciousness, it must be held in the evening.”
I hear a rare jealousy in her voice, though I don’t think she’s glanced at Gryphon once since he and I entered.
I hope it’s a sign that whatever existed between them is over now, at least from her end of things.
It’s an unfair thought. I’m leaving, after all.
The kind thing to do would be to wish for happiness between him and Marina, but I can’t do it.
“He insists no other day will do,” she continues. “His research says it must be a big celebration, as well. Our House is vital to everything inside this Wall.”
While she talks, Simon impersonates his father, adopting his posture and prim, disapproving look so perfectly that I struggle to contain my amusement. Lozen and Leonidas don’t even try, laughing aloud at the Seingalt father.
“Quiet, I said!” David barks.
But Jarek hardly seems to notice. “None of this would be possible without the Record Keepers,” he says magnanimously. “Neither the skill we’ve obtained, nor Friday’s joyous celebration. Your knowledge,” he says, raising a glass to them, “is our power.”
Marina smiles at me across the table. “And I’ve got the key.”