13. Chapter 13
Chapter 13
“ W e’re nearly halfway through the competition, ladies and gentlemen,” yelled Sir Beckwith-Parsons. “Which means the challenges will only get harder. Today, for example, we have . . .” He threw out his arm, indicating the long table beside the judges.
Two pixies pulled a black satin cloth off it to reveal a row of tiny cloches.
“Beneath each of these cloches is a single ingredient that has been pureed. Our contestants must taste the puree and guess the ingredient.” He raised a finger. “However, there’s a catch.”
Two more pixies rolled in a trolley containing a ladder with a third pixie on top of it. The highest pixie held strips of black satin.
“All of the contestants will be blindfolded.” Sir Beckwith-Parsons gestured to Mr. Bronson. “If you will.”
Mr. Bronson approached the contestants with a small cloth bag held out. “Pick a number – no peeking – and arrange yourselves in order.”
Massimo smiled at Cemre when he chose a token with the number directly after hers and shuffled into place.
The pixies rolled their trolley behind the row of contestants, stopping at each one so the ladder-top pixie could fasten on a blindfold.
This isn’t so bad, thought Cemre. I trust my sense of taste. She’d gone to bed early the previous night, avoiding conversation with the others. Massimo had thrown her a concerned glance, but she’d forced a smile and a yawn, which seemed to convince him well enough not to press for details. Sleep hadn’t come, though, only the endless spiralling misery of her despair.
“The first three contestants to guess incorrectly will go into the second round,” said Sir Beckwith-Parsons. “And believe me, it’s a doozy.”
His evil grin was the last thing Cemre saw before the blindfold was tied around her head. The loss of her sight was more disorienting than she’d expected. The roar of the crowd seemed louder, the stage lights hotter.
“First up: Mr. Oliynyk.”
The scrabble of little feet, a clink of metal, and more scrabbling told Cemre a pixie was carting the taster to Tsytryn.
After a moment, his gravelly voice rumbled, “Pomelo.”
The judges allowed a long pause, the orchestra drawing out the anticipatory tremolo of the violins.
“Correct!” shouted Mr. Bronson. “That was easy, but they’ll get harder as we go along.”
Next up was Qhari.
“I’m not sure,” he said in a shaky voice. “I’m confused.”
Cemre hated not being able to see his face or send him an encouraging smile.
“Parsnip?”
Cemre wanted to shove one of the trembling violins down the hesitating judge’s throat.
“Correct!” yelled Mr. Ogleby.
It was her turn. She jumped when the pixie touched her hand and slid a small bowl into it, then a spoon into the other hand.
She held the bowl close to her face and sniffed it, then immediately jerked it away. It stank of rotting meat.
That had been eaten by a dog and regurgitated into an old sweaty sock.
Which had then been left in a neglected pigsty.
She slapped a hand over her mouth and tried not to retch visibly. Had they actually given her a bowl of pureed rotten meat? Surely not.
“I’m not being funny, but that’s fair buzzing, that is,” mumbled Rhydian from somewhere to her left. “Ych a fi.”
Did she really have to put the putrid paste into her mouth? She didn’t have a choice.
Holding her breath, she dipped the spoon into the bowl, feeling for when it connected with the soft substance inside. She drew the spoon up to her mouth, hoping for a fire bell to ring, a shout of “Wait, don’t eat that!”, or some other miraculous salvation.
But none came, and the puree went into her mouth.
She allowed herself to breathe. The paste did not taste as it smelled. It had the texture of banana, but not even the old brown squishy ones she’d collected in the past had ever smelled anywhere near as bad as this ingredient. She swished her tongue around the mush, tasting something like custard or vanilla. It was certainly sweet but with a muskiness to it, a bit like brie. The texture was all wrong for brie, though.
She was completely baffled. She scraped her mind for anything she’d tasted or smelled that came anywhere close to this, but the only words her brain would return were old cheese and old custard .
Custard didn’t count as an ingredient on its own, so her only hope was cheese. Perhaps their pureeing of the cheese had caused the odd texture?
“Brie?” she hazarded.
The wobble of the violins seemed to aggravate her unsteady legs. If the judges didn’t answer soon, she’d fall over.
“I’m afraid that is incorrect,” said Sir Beckwith-Parsons.
Cemre’s knees went weightless.
“You may remove your blindfold and step to the side,” the judge continued. “You will be going into the second round.”
With shaking hands, Cemre pulled off the black strip of cloth, then stumbled to the side indicated by a pixie. She was alone, no one else having missed their guess yet.
“Because the ingredient was not guessed correctly,” said Mr. Ogleby, “it passes to the next contestant.”
The next contestant was Massimo, of course.
Cemre waited, heart heavy and trembling like a cast-iron pan tottering on the edge of an uneven stovetop, about to tumble to the floor.
Massimo lifted the spoon of awful to his mouth and tasted it. He only swished it around his mouth for a second before exclaiming, “Ah, it is durian fruit.”
“That is correct,” announced Mr. Bronson.
Durian fruit? She’d never even heard of it.
Sir Beckwith-Parsons threw a sneer at Cemre. “It is an exotic fruit from the land of Tarantara 1 2 . Not easy to come by.”
Of course she wouldn’t know what it was. How would she ever have had the money to afford such a rare and expensive item? And of course Massimo – a prince – would have tasted the delicacy. Not that she ever wanted to encounter the foul substance again, though the flavour had certainly been much better than the smell, in the same way that a clean floor is much better than one covered in vomit.
Her legs couldn’t hold still as she waited to the side for two other hapless contestants to join her. She was certain the audience could see them shaking. She tried to brace one, but it only made the other vibrate even harder. She broadened her stance, putting on all her manly confidence, but it was no good. She ended up shifting her weight from foot to foot, hoping the audience was too focused on the tasting going on to notice her.
A dark elf chef joined her after being unable to identify celeriac, and then on his second turn, Qhari guessed mushroom instead of truffle. Another expensive ingredient that he’d likely never encountered in the isolated highlands of his home, Ch’uya Chokolati.
Their efforts to win over the audience hadn’t helped in this challenge. Once again, it had come down to privilege, money, exclusivity. Cemre’s wings twitched with the simultaneous anger and terror she was trying so hard to keep off her face.
“We have our three contestants for the second round,” announced Mr. Bronson. “Now, what will we make them do?”
Pixies carted off the table containing the cloches from the taste test, passing another set of pixies with a new, smaller table sporting just three cloches. Each of the three judges stepped up behind a cloche.
“For round two, you must cook with . . .” began Mr. Ogleby.
The three judges whipped away the cloches in unison. Beneath one of them sat a watermelon-sized greenish brown fruit covered in spikes, like an overenthusiastic mace. The other two cloches held truffles and celeriac respectively, which meant, the fruit must be—
“. . . the ingredient you guessed incorrectly!” finished Mr. Ogleby.
Cemre’s stomach dissolved into mush that strongly resembled the stinky puree she’d had to ingest. Perhaps it was festering in there, every second getting fouler and more likely to return the way it had come.
How on earth could she produce a tasty dish that stank of overflowing sewer?
“Your time starts now!”
The contestants ran forward and grabbed their assigned ingredient, carrying it back to their bench.
Cemre didn’t want to cut it open, not without something to cover her nose. How did you cook something you couldn’t stand the smell of? It was the opposite of how she cooked for Taurine. Focusing on texture and look and—
Wait. It wasn’t the opposite at all. She had to think beyond the smell. Beyond the taste. Which, after all, had been fairly mild and faintly sweet.
What was the texture like, though? When it hadn’t been pureed?
She untied her neckerchief and retied it around her nose and mouth, earning a chuckle from the audience. A heavy meat cleaver did the job of splitting the fruit in two. Despite her mouth-cover, the pong of rotting onion and putrefied carrion had her gagging.
She breathed through her mouth as she picked apart the soft pillowy flesh. It definitely had a consistency that would work well in a creamy dessert. She just had to think of what to pair with it. Something crunchy, something fresh, perhaps a touch of salt, variations in temperature . . . Oh! And if she made an ice cream with the durian, the freezing process might subdue the smell somewhat.
A murmur went through the crowd, and Cemre looked around to see what they were reacting to. Qhari was at the bench directly behind her, sweating bullets. One look at his distraught face and pain radiated down Cemre’s legs. She didn’t want to go home, but she didn’t want him to go either. He’d worked so hard and travelled so far to get here, much farther than her.
But though he fumbled with his wooden spoon as she glanced at him, he seemed to have the elements of a savoury dish neatly laid out. She’d only tasted truffle since she’d joined the competition, but she could see that Qhari was on the right track. If only he would believe in himself, he’d likely take the egg.
The third contestant, Mr. Pickle, was the reason for the crowd’s reaction. Smoke swirling around him, he dropped a burnt pan into a wash trough. He’d have to restart whatever he’d been making.
Cemre pushed down the urge to run and help, turning deliberately back to her own bench and focusing on her dish. She’d hardly begun, after all. She got stuck into her durian fruit milk base, quickly cooling it in an ice bath before sliding it into the churner and working the contraption until her arm hurt and a beautiful creamy ice cream had formed. She scooped out three neat quenelles, placed them on a dish, and set it inside the freezer compartment.
Now for her accompaniments. She whipped up a batch of crisp coconut biscuits and a salted fish sauce caramel which Rhydian had taught her.
And of course, she couldn’t forget the presentation. A grating of lime zest over the ice cream would add colour and a bit of citrus scent that would hopefully distract from the durian smell.
Now if only she had some edible flowers. They didn’t keep them in the pantry. Honeysuckle crept over the wall in the courtyard Massimo had shown her, though.
She looked at the clock. Three minutes to go. Could she make it?
She didn’t give herself time to decide. She bolted off the stage to a chorus of questioning noises. Would they penalize her for leaving the stage? There had been nothing in the rules about it. Only that they couldn’t leave the theatre for the duration of the competition. But the courtyard was inside the theatre.
She sprinted past befuddled pixies. The stage manager called something after her as she fled down the passage to the courtyard door. She didn’t remember it being so far. The sunlight blinded her, but she staggered to where she knew the honeysuckle grew and plucked the fuzzy outlines of the blooms, dropping them into a makeshift pouch created by bunching up her chef’s jacket. She only needed a few. Then she was sprinting back down the passage, blinking into the gloom. The countdown echoed towards her from the stage.
“. . . Eight . . . Seven . . .”
She could see the wings; she’d be there in—
A pixie stepped in front of her and she tripped, crashing to the floor.
“. . . Five . . . Four . . .”
She was back on her feet, her wrist stinging from the collision but holding the flowers safe in their nest.
“. . . Three . . . Two . . .”
She hurled the flowers on top of her dish.
“One . . . That’s it!”
Cemre leaned on the bench and panted, dragging oxygen into her abused lungs. Her wrist and elbow smarted from the fall. She was scared to look at her dish, but she forced her eyes over to it.
It looked . . . beautiful.
A thrill raced from her toes to her chest and exploded into happy little fireworks. She’d done it! The honeysuckle blossoms had fallen in an artful, evenly spaced pattern. The smooth yellow ice cream quenelles, the bright green lime zest, the yellow-white-pale-green of the flowers, the caramelized coconut biscuits, the glistening golden-brown sauce in its jug . . . it was almost enough to distract one from the smell.
She turned to Qhari, hoping to see a smile of success on his face, but the poor man stared glumly at his dish. It looked delicious to Cemre, but perhaps the flavours hadn’t gone according to plan?
She caught his eye and smiled. He returned it half-heartedly and mopped his brow with his neckerchief.
The dark elf at the other bench seemed even more distraught, and Cemre guiltily hoped he would be the one to go, not them.
They tasted his dish first, and the criticism was scathing, giving Cemre a tiny mustard seed of hope.
Qhari came next. While the judges were not impressed by his minimalistic elements, they praised his truffle sauce. Mr. Bronson drank it straight out of the jug. Surely Qhari would not be leaving today.
Then it was Cemre’s turn. As she walked her dish up to the bench, a whiff of freshly used lavatory made her nose twitch. She pulled her shoulders back and held the dish farther out in front of her before depositing it before the judges.
Was that a nostril flare from Sir Beckwith-Parsons? Had Mr. Ogleby been standing nearer the bench a second ago?
“Well, what have you made for us today?” asked Mr. Ogleby.
“Durian ice cream, coconut biscuits, and a fish sauce caramel.”
Mr. Bronson poked a flower with his spoon. “What’s this?”
“Honeysuckle, sir.”
He exchanged a confused glance with Mr. Ogleby. “Do we keep those in the pantry?”
“Of course not,” replied Mr. Ogleby. “That’s why he bolted out of here earlier.”
“Is that allowed?”
Cemre stuck out her chest. I own the world. “It isn’t not allowed, sir.”
Sir Beckwith-Parsons squinted. “Hmmm.” He summoned a pixie and mumbled something to it the megalophone didn’t catch. Then he squinted at Cemre again. She wondered how he could see through the almost non-existent slits. “We’ll taste in the meantime.”
Cemre’s stomach somersaulted while her dessert was divided up onto three plates. It landed with a triumphant pose and began a round of pirouettes as the judges took their first mouthfuls. It caught hold of a flying trapeze and performed a series of mid-air flips as the judges chewed and stared thoughtfully into the middle distance.
Mr. Ogleby flung down his spoon, making Cemre jump, and leaned on the table, holding her eyes with an assessing purse of the mouth.
Mr. Bronson smacked his lips and set down his own spoon. He watched Sir Beckwith-Parsons glare at the dessert while chewing. The lord finally swallowed and met the gazes of the other two judges.
The violins fluttered and jerked like a dying swan.
Sir Beckwith-Parsons cleared his throat loudly, and the violins silenced. “If you can overcome the smell of putrescent rubbish cart” – he puffed out a breath, as though disappointed – “it isn’t bad.”
The crowd cheered and applauded.
“It was really quite ingenious to make an ice cream to moderate the smell,” said Mr. Ogleby. “And of course, the zest and honeysuckle helped too.”
“A fish sauce caramel,” said Mr. Bronson, poking his spoon into the jug. “Well I never.”
Sir Beckwith-Parsons held up a finger. “There is, of course, the matter of you leaving the stage during the round. We may have to disqualify you.”
Cemre’s stomach dangled from the trapeze, swaying to build up momentum.
Mrs. Dudley trotted across the stage and whispered into the lord’s ear. Cemre’s stomach swung wider and wider.
Sir Beckwith-Parsons nodded, and Mrs. Dudley left the stage. “I have conferred with our expert.”
Cemre’s stomach let go of the trapeze and leapt . . .
“It appears there is nothing in the rules to prohibit someone from leaving the stage during a round.”
The audience cheered, and Cemre’s stomach landed on its feet with arms raised in victory.
“However,” the lord bellowed over the roar of the crowd, “from now on, we will not tolerate such behaviour. It detracts from the seriousness of the competition.”
The crowd was a mix of boos and cheers. Cemre returned to her bench, and a body collided with hers from behind, nearly knocking her off her feet. It was Qhari, half-laughing, half-crying.
Sir Beckwith-Parsons flung out an irritable come-hither gesture. “Come forward.”
The three contestants lined up. Cemre could hear Qhari’s nervous breathing beside her. Her own stomach appeared to be performing an encore of its trapeze act.
“The contestant going home today will be . . .”
They weren’t going to give a lengthy discourse on each dish this time? Cemre wondered why they’d decided to hurry ahead.
“Mr. Pickle.”
Cemre couldn’t help it; her knees wobbled and she bent forward to brace them with her hands, breathing out a tremulous sigh.
Qhari – a gentleman – shook the other contestant’s hand before thumping Cemre on the back and whispering, “Well done!”
Cemre straightened and managed to nod agreement. The acrobatics in her mid-section, directly after the contact with the durian fruit, were causing some complications with her breakfast.
She was hustled off the stage by beleaguered pixies and almost straight into Massimo’s arms. She pushed away, covering her mouth, and bolted for the lavatory.
She didn’t make it, but her breakfast had been sufficiently small to stay in her mouth until she was bent over the porcelain. She spat it out and continued to retch up bile.
A warm hand rubbed her back. “Cuoricina,” said the gentle voice. “It is all right. You are safe.”
Safe. She didn’t feel safe. The challenges got harder each time. She gagged and coughed up more bile. And for the judges, harder meant more exclusive ingredients, more advanced techniques available only to the trained, those privileged to work with top chefs.
Things she hadn’t had access to because of poverty and gender.
She’d only gotten this far because she’d pretended to be a man, pretended to have training. But her pretence was falling apart. She couldn’t fake a privileged life.
Her attention shifted to the hand rubbing her back, but she refused to draw any comfort from it. She shrugged her shoulders violently, flicking Massimo away.
“Dolcezza, what—”
“Don’t!” She stood up, wiping bile from her lips, though a different sort of bile poured out from between them. “You can’t possibly understand what it is to be poor, so poor you’re grateful for a crate of mushy cucumbers or a stale bread roll. You’ve had everything you’ve ever wanted all your life. You’ll likely have this competition too.”
Massimo gaped in stunned silence.
She pushed past him to the wash basin and rinsed out her mouth. When she was finished, he watched her with a wary expression, as though expecting another attack.
“I know your life has not been easy,” he said slowly. “It is true that my position has allowed me many advantages. I do not know what it is to be hungry. Not truly. But cuoricina, how can you say I will have the competition because of this? Your skill is exceptional. Both of us, we have worked hard, we have an equal chance to—"
“How can I possibly compete with someone like you? You’ve had the luxury to taste ingredients I’ve never heard of! You’ve worked with the best chef in the world. How can you tell me we have an equal chance?”
Massimo’s throat bobbed. Cemre couldn’t ignore the hurt in his big brown eyes, so she avoided looking at them altogether. It wasn’t fair that she should feel a pang in her legs because of him. His suffering was nothing compared to hers.
“You will win,” she said, bitterness coating her tongue, “or one of the other chefs who have the favour of the judges, of society. And afterwards, there is nothing for me. You will always have your palace kitchen and your palace chef. You will always have cooking for the fun of it in your life. I will always struggle to keep my family alive.”
She waited for him to argue with her, wanted him to argue with her, to tell her that being a prince didn’t allow that kind of freedom. She waited for him to promise she wouldn’t be alone after the competition, that he would step in and save her. She waited.
“I’m sorry you . . . I wish to . . .” His lips clamped shut, and he stared at the ground. Finally, he nodded. “You need time for yourself. I will leave you.”
He slipped out the door, shutting it quietly behind him.
Cemre wanted to scream. She wanted to run after him and tell him she didn’t mean any of it. But that would be a lie, because she had meant it, she did resent his fortunate upbringing, the power he wielded because of his gender, the sheer number of opportunities open to him.
It simply wasn’t fair that, whether she won the competition or not, at the end of it, she would lose everything that made her happy. Massimo would go back to hiding in the royal kitchen, cooking with the best equipment and ingredients.
And she would go back to her family . . . if they still wanted her. Perhaps she’d end up under Mr. Ogleby’s thumb, forever hidden by a moustache and cooking what someone else told her to cook. And it wasn’t that she didn’t want to do whatever was necessary in order to provide for her family. Of course she did – she loved them. But she felt as if she’d found a part of herself she hadn’t known existed. She’d discovered how it felt to touch happiness. And now she’d never touch it again.
1. Tarantara, an island nation known for the world’s largest flower, the world’s most populous island, and the reptile with the world’s most disgusting saliva 43 .
2. The Commode Dragon, although considered a lesser of the dragon species due to its size, is a formidable predator in its own right due to its peculiar method of taking down prey. Its saliva emits a scent so foul, so potent, the dragon need only breathe in the general direction of its victim in order to stun it powerfully enough to be able to saunter over and enjoy dinner at its leisure. Surviving observers have described the scent as “worse than a blocked lavatory in a curry house”, “akin to a laundry bin at a dysentery hospital”, and “almost as bad as the River Loo at low tide in midsummer.”