"I know," Annaig said, swallowing the sudden lump in her throat. "I don't actually need Argonian blood. I'm just explaining. It comes down to this: I think I can make a metagastrologic."

"This is a nonsense word."

"No. It's something I've read about, something the Ayleids-ancient people from my world-once used in their banquets."

"A drug."

"Yes, but the only sense that they affect is taste-nothing else. No general hallucination, no loss of clarity. Look, the essential flavors are sweet, sour, salty, and hot, right?"

"Of course. And with the lower lords like Ghol you can add dead, quick, and ethereat, at the same level."

"Really? How interesting." She wanted to know more about that, but didn't want her idea to lose momentum. "Anyway," she pushed on, "a good dish will still balance those essentials, yes?"

"Yes. Or contrast them."

"So with a metagastrologic, the first taste of the dish will have a certain balance of flavors, but as it lingers on the tongue, they begin to change. Salty is confused for sweet, ah-ethereat for hot, and so forth. And it will keep happening, different each time."

Slyr just looked at her for a long moment.

"You can do this?" she finally asked.

"Yes."

"Such a dish would have to be carefully thought out, so that no matter what inversion of flavors occurred, most would be pleasurable."

"It would require a chef of some skill," Annaig agreed.

"Well," Slyr sighed, "it will not be boring, at least. I will go work on a foundation."

Annaig tried not to watch her depart, but she finally stole a glance to make sure she was gone. Then she closed her eyes and thanked the gods, carefully opened the bottle, and smelled its contents.

"That's not it either, Luc," she said. "Keep trying. But-um, I'll ask you to see them, okay? I don't want you interrupting my chain of thought. Just keep them in your cabinet."

"Luc do," the hob said, and started toward the wall.

"First go and find the chef and tell her we need this snake quickened."

"Luc do." He bounded off.

A few moments later he came back following Qijne's hob, which had the baton. Annaig placed the viper on the table, put the sharp edge of a cleaver on its neck, and touched it with the baton.

When it twitched to life, it jerked back and nearly slipped free, but its head caught and she put all her weight on the cleaver so the edge bit, then followed the skull back to the neck, slicing cleanly through. The body fell away, twitching, which gave the hobs something to hoot about.

She expressed the venom into a glass vial and set to work.

Hours passed, and so absorbed was she in the task that she hadn't realized Qijne was watching her.

"Chef?"

"What's your hob doing going through the cabinets? Everything up there is known to me already."

"But not to me," Annaig answered. "And if I'm to be a proper cook to Lord Ghol, I need to be familiar with all of it."

Qijne's expression didn't change, but her glaze flickered down to Annaig's work in progress.

"Not really doing anything you're supposed to do," she observed.

"This is for the meal," she said. "An additive."

"Explain."

Annaig went back over the general properties of the metagastrologic.

The chef tilted her head slowly left, then right. "You're cooking, in other words. When you're supposed to be cataloging."

"I am, Chef."

"Which is not what I told you to do."

"No, Chef. But Slyr is worried-"

"Slyr? Slyr put you up to this?"

"No, Chef. It was my idea. We failed last night. I didn't want us to fail again."

"No, no of course not," Qijne said vaguely. Her eyes lost focus. "Carry on. Only know that if it does not please him, I will kill Slyr and cut off one of your feet, right?"

"Right, Chef."

"That's not a joke, if you think I'm joking."

"I don't think you're joking, Chef," Annaig said.

After the meal went up, Slyr wandered off, her face pinched with fear. Annaig slipped off, too, and had a look at her locket, but got nothing but darkness. She went back to the dormitory to wait for her meal.

A bit later Slyr rushed into the room.

"Come on," she said. "Come with me."

She followed the chef through the winding corridors and great pantries of the kitchen and into what appeared to be a wine cellar-there were thousands of bottles of something, anyway, racked all around her.

"Through here." Slyr was indicating a sort of hole in the wall just barely wide enough to slip through.

It led into a small chamber illuminated by faint light. Once in it, she could see the light came from the sky-the chamber was at the bottom of a high, narrow shaft.

Slyr handed her a bottle and a basket of something that smelled really good.

"He wasn't bored," she said. "In fact, he sent one of his servants to commend me." She looked up shyly. "Us."

"That's good news."

"News worth celebrating," Slyr said. "Try the wine."

It was dry and delicious, with a fragrance she couldn't quite place but that reminded her of anise. The basket was filled with pastry rolls stuffed with a sort of buttery meat.

"What is it?" she asked, holding up the roll she was eating.

"Orchid shrimp. They live in the sump."

"It's delicious."

"It was supposed to go to the Prixon Palace servants for their night ration. I snatched a few."

"Thank you," Annaig said.

"Yes, yes," Slyr said. "Eat. Drink."

"What about Qijne?"

"She may be-ah, as you said. But when we succeed, so does she. Lord Ghol was on the verge of becoming the patron of another kitchen. When kitchens lose patrons, people start wondering whether the master chef ought to be replaced. We did well, so she'll look the other way a bit if we take very discreet privileges."

"What sort of privileges?"

"Well ... this is about it. Having a little of the good stuff and not being watched too closely at night."

Annaig felt her face burn a bit. "Ah, Slyr-"

"Don't flatter yourself," the chef replied. "I just thought you would enjoy being here, where you can see the sky. And no noisy, smelly dormitory. I love being here, alone-I don't think anyone else knows about it. I just don't dare come here often."

"Well, then," Annaig said, "I am flattered, then."

Slyr became a little sloppy after the first bottle of wine.

"I have heard something about your friend," she confided.

Annaig nearly choked on her drink. "Really?" she gasped. "About Glim? He's okay?"

"He's in the sump."

It jagged through her like lightning.

"What?" she whispered.

But Slyr smiled.

"No, not like that," she assured her. "He's not dead. He's working in the sump. The guy who brought the shrimp mentioned him. He can breathe underwater, did you know that? All of the sump tenders are talking about him."

"Of course he can breathe underwater," she replied. "He's an Argonian."

"Another of your nonsense words? There are more like him?'

She remembered the slaughter at Lilmoth. "I hope so," she said.

"Oh," Slyr said. "They're down there."

"Don't you ever-" But she stopped herself. She couldn't trust anyone here with thoughts of somehow stopping Umbriel.

But Slyr was waiting for her to finish.

"Have you ever been above?" she asked instead.

"To the palaces? No. But it is my dream to." She looked up and her forehead wrinkled. "What are those?" she asked.

Annaig followed her regard up to the small patch of night sky.

"Stars," she said. "Haven't you ever seen stars before?"

"No. What are they?"

"Depends on who you ask or what books you read. Some say they are tiny holes in Mundus, the world, and the light we see is Aetherius beyond. Others believe they are fragments of Magnus, who made the world."

"They're beautiful."

"Yes."

And so they ate, and drank, and talked, and for the first time in many, many days Annaig felt like a real person again.

When Slyr finally curled up to sleep with her blanket, she opened her locket again.

There wasn't anything there, which meant Coo wasn't with Attrebus. She waited, hoping he would answer, but after an hour or so she fell asleep, and her dreams were troubled.

FIVE.

To Colin, the corpses looked like broken dolls flung down by a child in a tantrum. He couldn't imagine any of them ever having been alive, breathing, talking, feeling. He couldn't find any empathy even for the worst of the lot-those burnt to char-and he knew he ought to. He should at least feel sick or repelled, filled with the fear of such a thing happening to him, but he just couldn't find anything like that in him.

Well, Prince, he thought, congratulations. Well done.

"Stay away from the bodies," he told the royal guardsmen. He didn't have to tell his own people; they were professionals. "Put sentinels on the road and in the woods. Stop any wagons and route foot and horse traffic well around this. Tell them a bunch of ogres have set up camp and we have to clear 'em out.

"Gerring, you start the search for witnesses. Every house, every shack in the area. Hand, you go to Ione and Pell's Gate. Guilliam-you take Sweetwater and Eastbridge. Be discreet. See who's saying what in the taverns. You know what to do."

He nodded at a flurry of "Yes, inspector" but kept his gaze on the scene.