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

glanced at her fingers, the sinuous and
the petrified. Let the lionman turn to stone next. Let him die.
    Guilt slimed over her. How could she have
thought something so cruel? Even if he had called her a snake
girl.
    With a clopping of goat hooves, Old Janny
approached the swordsman and draped an arm over his shoulder. “No
stranger myself to having a belly full of poisons. What you have to
do is pop your own cork. Flip your flagon. Tickle the dragon.”
    “What?” He clenched his stomach.
    “Throw up,” the empress said. “Like a mother
bird.”
    “Touch the back of your throat.” Old Janny
made stabbing motions into her own mouth.
    The lionman eyed Solin, who tiptoed closer
on his crutches. The lionman shivered and reached into his jaws.
Taking his paw out again, he frowned.
    “I don’t think I can,” he said. “My cat
hand’s too wide, and it’s all going numb.”
    Aja swiveled around in a coil shape to
stand. She would feel awful if he did turn to rock. He was the
empress’s friend. Aja had to help him. Even if he said mean things,
older brothers did that all the time. That’s what Aja had seen.
    “Janny.” The lionman opened his mouth in a
spread of fangs. “You do it.”
    Old Janny jerked her hand back. “Sorry. I’m
allergic to fangs.”
    Aja tried to think how to help. She could
punch the lionman in the stomach. No, the hiss of her asps warned
her that they would bite the lionman. Oh, she had a better idea. A
great one.
    “Take a feather from Ryn,” she said, “use it
to—”
    “Look.” He held up his paw. The tips of
human fingers stood out among the fur. His claws had changed back
into nails. “It’s curing me. I’ll be all right.”
    “You won’t be.” Aja lifted her two petrified
fingers. Someone had to pay attention to her. “You’ll be
stone.”
    The empress flapped her wing until a feather
shook loose. “Catch it.”
    “Yes,” Old Janny said, “scratch your throat
with it.”
    “Get that basilisk out of you,” the empress
said, “or I’ll only have a statue to sing to.”
    The lionman slapped the feather between his
paw hands and did the deed. He stumbled out of the lamplight,
retching.
    The djinn held out an urn for him. Between
the splatters of vomit, she said, “Mankind is unquestionably the
highest form of life.”
    The lionman reeled back into view and
scooped his sword from the carpet. His hands had changed back to
human ones. Eyeing Solin, he stood over the empress. “I feel better
already.”
    “Your breath smells worse.” The empress
stroked his whiskered chin with her sky of plumage. “But you’re
still mine.”
    “You saved my life, both of you.”
    He said it to the empress and Old Janny, not
to Aja. And the feather had been her idea. The lionman’s brown and
black eyes gazed at the empress with a warm concern, a drippy
devotion.
    Aja wished the empress had never come.
Everyone loved her. That would’ve been bearable if she had stayed
far away in her palace. Now she’d arrived at Aja’s city to eat at
her Banquet.
    Aja didn’t have the stomach for anymore
basilisk pâté. Not with the faint sting of vomit in the air. Aja
pushed away her plate. She lifted her chalice. Its glass was so
thin and delicate that the drink seemed to float. Her snakes twined
over it, at last cooperating. The liquid changed hue as it tilted,
from yellowish to clear, to red, to emerald. It sloshed with the
sound of distant melodies. They reminded Aja of songs performed for
royalty on the other side of walled-off gardens.
    Aja drank. This time, the music played for
her.
    Harps plinked around her in a cascade of
metal notes. Lutes strummed through the darkness, and panpipes
whispered songs of promise from somewhere behind her ear.
    She swished the drink, and the music changed
from loving to thoughtful. Swirling her glass increased the tempo.
Tambourines urged her heart to a faster beat. Bells sang. Metal
clappers danced a melody of life too precious to waste.
    Aja looked to