Chapter 26
The cooks had started sautéing, grilling, and fricasseeing, and delicious scents wafted into the air, but Rylana barely noticed.
She’d slipped away from Vormalt to prowl around the arena, looking for the goblin that had disappeared.
She should have leaped upon him as soon as she’d recognized him, peacekeepers be damned.
But the uniformed gnomes eyed her as she moved away from the benches, probably wondering why someone from the audience was leaving their seat so early in the competition.
She lifted a hand toward one of the vendors to pretend she’d come down for a snack, but she surveyed the area intently and looked behind the stage as well.
A few of the men and women with press credentials were writing while others yawned and chatted, probably wondering why they’d been assigned to cover a cooking contest.
“Rock candy, ma’am?” the dwarf she’d flagged down asked. “One copper.”
Rylana produced a coin and almost grunted at the heft of the bag that he plopped into her palm. “You sure this is rock candy and not just rocks? This must weigh ten pounds.”
“No more than five, certainly. But good candy has the heft of rocks, yes, ma’am.” He shifted the box in his hands. Its weight was probably the sole reason for the thick muscles on his arms and in his neck. “It’s a traditional dwarven dessert.”
“You could knock out an elephant with this.”
“Maybe a small rhinoceros, ma’am.”
As the dwarf turned away, it occurred to Rylana that the bags might make decent projectiles, at least at short range. She had excellent aim but could only throw such a weight so far. “Wait.”
He turned back.
“I’ll take three more bags.” Rylana held up a finger while she dug for more coins.
“You haven’t tried the first yet.”
“I’m a woman who can appreciate a dessert with heft.”
While Rylana extracted three more coppers, a boy with a coin trotted up to him.
“One, please.”
The vendor accepted his coin and gave him a bag, but he fumbled it and dropped it on his toe.
“Ouch,” he yelped, grabbing his foot and hopping around on one leg.
“A large rhinoceros,” Rylana murmured as the kid hobbled away.
The dwarf smirked, filled her arms with the rest of her order, and headed toward the seats. Aware of a golem passing nearby, Rylana opened one of the bags and pretended to inspect the contents while she searched for the missing goblin.
“One minute’s worth of sand left in the hourglass,” the announcer called through her megaphone, then turned toward the stage. “Plate your dishes, chefs.”
The goblin wasn’t with the press. He could be lurking behind the stage, and Rylana wouldn’t be able to see him from her location. He also could have gone to the lavatory and not be up to anything nefarious, but she doubted it.
The announcer banged a mallet on a gong. “Time is up! Back away from your dishes, chefs.”
“You’ll need to return to the seats, ma’am,” a uniformed gnome told Rylana, a towering golem behind him.
“Yes, of course.” She went as far as to stand at the end of the front bench while the dishes were delivered to the judges.
Each plate had a number but nothing else to indicate who had cooked what.
Since their tables were to the side of and below the stage, they shouldn’t have been able to see much of the actual cooking.
The judges picked up their silverware to sample the offerings, then scribbled ratings in pads. Reminded of the night Jildarin had asked her to assess his meals, Rylana decided he must have done his research in regard to how the contest would unfold.
Rylana looked at him. He gave her a confident nod as each judge received a small portion to taste.
“As we wait for the results from the first round,” the announcer said, “chefs may begin thinking about the second. The ingredients that will be used are orcish fieldthrash, freshwater octopus, and maple syrup.”
Murmurs went through the crowd, the audience agreeing that the required ingredients were growing more challenging. Rylana was fairly certain that the fieldthrash was a weed, maybe even one that was poisonous without proper preparation. Jildarin tapped his chin thoughtfully.
Two men tallying up the ratings took a piece of paper to the announcer.
“We have the results from the first round,” the woman called through her megaphone.
“Right now, the three chefs in the lead are Lady Saslin, the elf chef from Twigs and Bears, Yerin, food critic for the Lumi Lake Chronicles and chef at Celestial Ceremony, and, finally, Jildarin, the chef of the Dragon Diner.”
Cheers, murmurs of surprise, and an indignant, “What about Chef Doxlor?” came from the crowd.
Rylana gave Jildarin an approving gesture, but the announcer had said they could begin the second dish, and he was with the other chefs, gathering ingredients from the pantries and iceboxes.
“Isn’t that Jildarin a dragon himself?” someone murmured.
“I didn’t think dragons could cook,” someone else said.
“They can roast humans without trouble.”
“That wouldn’t be allowed here.”
“Are you sure? They haven’t announced the ingredients for the last meal yet.”
Rylana spotted the goblin coming out from behind the stage and ambling toward his fellow goblin who’d remained on their bench.
She was tempted to pounce on him and ask questions, but a golem stood ten feet away from her.
Even though she told herself that neither the goblins nor anyone else would be likely to start a fight or do anything illegal with so many peacekeepers around, she couldn’t help but glower suspiciously at the arsonist. He was still on Yerin’s payroll and up to something; she was certain.
The goblin spotted her and stumbled, but he recovered quickly and looked away, hurrying to join his comrade in the front row.
Hadn’t he had a lunchbox with him before? He wasn’t holding anything now, and his buddy wasn’t holding an extra one.
Rylana looked toward Yerin and caught him lifting his head to meet the gaze of the goblin. He gave a curt nod, then returned to mixing and cutting.
Oh, yes, they were up to something. Rylana longed for her mercenary days when she could have subdued an enemy, dragged him back to her camp, and questioned him at knifepoint.
“You have ten minutes left to complete your meal in this round,” the announcer called to the chefs.
The judges rubbed their hands together, ready for the next offering.
A few servers walked to their tables to collect the plates.
Because they had so many submissions yet to taste, they hadn’t finished the offerings from the first round, and the servers distributed the leftovers to people in the front row, waving for them to share the food around. That elicited cheers from the crowd.
One of the people who received a plate was the arsonist goblin.
He lifted it with a whoop, took a bite, then turned and walked up into the rows of benches, offering morsels to people seated higher.
Something told Rylana he wanted to avoid her coming over and grabbing him, not that he cared about sharing.
She shifted the bags of rock candy in her arms, half-tempted to hurl one at the back of his head and see if she could knock him out.
He wouldn’t be able to enact whatever Yerin wanted if he was unconscious.
But she couldn’t think of a way to make braining a goblin look like an accident, and a couple of peacekeepers were still watching her, probably because she was standing on the side instead of sitting, cheering, and eating bits of food.
“One minute remains,” the announcer called. “If you haven’t started plating your dish, you’d best do so now.”
Rylana caught Vormalt looking at her. He patted the bench next to him and raised his eyebrows in invitation.
Wanting her to sit down where he could keep an eye on her?
Or question her further about her father’s estate and if she might take him for a visit?
That was what she thought he’d been angling toward and deemed it more likely.
The servers jogged to the stage with trays to collect and number the second round of entries. After his dish was taken, Jildarin cleaned his knives, then shifted and stretched, like an athlete keeping limber for the next round in a boxing match. When their gazes met, he gave her a confident nod.
Rylana nodded back; though, as the judges sampled each of the entries, she eyed the goblins again, worried she would miss her opportunity to stop them.
The one who’d distributed food had ended up sitting on the top row near Vormalt.
They weren’t speaking with each other, but Rylana wondered if, through Yerin, they knew each other and were both part of his plan.
“The judges are tallying!” the announcer called with excitement.
Murmurs of speculation came from the crowd.
“Ah, here we have the results of round two. Once again, Chefs Yerin and Jildarin have been selected for the top dishes, with Jildarin's scoring one more point than Yerin’s. Chef Higlyar had the number one dish but, due to a lower score in the first round, is now in sixth place. The contest may come down to Yerin and Jildarin, with the dragon chef surprisingly two points in the lead at this time.”
Surprisingly? How offensive. It wasn’t a surprise that Jildarin's food was wonderful.
People in the benches called out for samples.
“For round three,” the announcer said as the servers took dishes to distribute, “and the final meal, the chefs will use the ingredients of turtle eggs, sea lettuce, and tarragon. Time starts now!”
Without hesitation, Jildarin strode to the pantry. Yerin shot him a dark glower and tossed a significant look toward his goblin ally before retrieving his own ingredients.
Rylana picked a route up through the benches, intending to squeeze in to sit right beside the arsonist and make sure he didn’t do anything. But when she drew close to him, the goblin turned and rose, pointing out at the lake.
“Dragon!” he cried. “A dragon is flying toward Tranquility.”