Magic Banquet by A.E. Marling Read Free Book Online

Janny nodded to the lionman. She loosened the
empress’s veil and fed her a bite. “Keep your mouth open when you
chew, and, oh my. Let me just pick up this fan. Never thought I’d
prefer the sight of a basilisk.”
    No one offered to help Aja. The other guests
had moved their plates as far from her asps as they could. She saw
she would just have to help herself.
    Aja ignored her fork. The instrument looked
dangerous, and it would stab her tongue, if she managed to pick up
the fork at all. Neither did she touch her knife. Too risky with
her bendy fingers. Aja cut the pâté by crushing it with the side of
her hand. The food squished around her scales.
    She smushed the pâté into bits. Now she had
to get it into her mouth. She couldn’t lap it up like a dog. Not in
front of everyone. Her thumb snake gobbled up a piece. She scolded
the snake. “You’re supposed to chew first. Uh oh.”
    A tingling raced up her thumb and shot into
her hand. The snake froze, mouth closed, stiff as a stick. Its
scales dissolved into a bloodless skin.
    “Look! It’s working,” Aja said. “It…it
turned to stone.”
    The nearest snakes wound around the thumb as
they might slide over a statue. If the asps tried to nibble on her
thumb, she thought they would break their fangs. Aja grimaced,
tongue curled between her teeth.
    She could petrify every snake, but that
would leave her no moving hands. I have to eat the basilisk the
proper way , like Ryn.
    “Yum!” The empress smacked her mouth open
and closed with gusto. Even with the chewing sounds, her voice rang
with beauty. “It’s better than the stew. I could burst with flavor,
but I’ll sing instead. Ahh-ja! A-jaaaaa!”
    Aja looked up from her plate. That sounded
like her name, but the empress was facing away.
    “Ahaha-ja,” the empress sang, “your snake
sadness is a pity, but is it true that you live in this city?”
    “Um, yes.” Aja had to say it to the side of
the empress’s head.
    “Why does the Chef host his Banquets? Is it
a lure? Solin thinks the Chef wishes to harm, but I’m not so
sure.”
    A winged girl facing the other way was
singing questions for Aja and her snakes. Aja decided this was the
weirdest conversation ever. The empress might expect Aja’s answers
to rhyme. Why had the empress even asked? Because Aja lived in
Jaraah? Perhaps none of the other guests were from the city.
    “There’s always been a Midnight Banquet,”
Aja said. “Never thought of why.”
    Aja curved her hands around her plate. Her
snakes faced each other and hissed forked-tongue challenges. Except
the finger that had turned to stone.
    Had the Chef wanted to hurt her? To change
her? She thought he might’ve tricked her to come, to fatten her up
and turn her into a plump snake. But snake meat was cheap. That
didn’t make sense.
    “I don’t know what the Chef wants,” Aja
said. Chills pulsed up from her hands, as if her blood were turning
cold.
    “He has to want something.” This, Old Janny
said. “All men do. Bless them.”
    Around the streets, people spoke of the
Midnight Banquet as a kindness, a stroke of good fortune. Aja
hadn’t seen any kindness in the Chef’s eyes.
    “He’s afraid of the lord,” the empress said,
“like a bird frightened by a hawk.”
    Old Janny fed the empress another forkful.
“You mustn’t rub noses with the likes of Lord Tethiel. Not a
wholesome loaf, not like him.”
    She made an approving noise toward the
lionman.
    “Don’t blame you for conscripting him,” Old
Janny said. “An eyeful, isn’t he? A real knee knocker, if you catch
my meaning.”
    If only Old Janny would eat something and
stop talking. Aja had to focus on coaxing another snake to try the
pâté. With two adjacent asps petrified, she might hold a fork
between them.
    “Get me my youth back, and I’d be on the
empress’s guard like mud on toads,” Old Janny said. “Wasted my
youth raising children. After the fourth baby, tell me that you
aren’t owed a few