The Tasters Guild (21 page)

She had little knowledge of the twisting streets and even less of where she might find Axle. Soon she came to a small square—congregating around the once-lovely fountain were the baleful forms of Rocamadour vultures, their untidy roosts making piles of filth. At the sight of the birds, she took a step back, unconsciously, and found herself against something soft, something that wasn’t there a second ago—not some
thing
, she realized as she turned, startled.

Some
one
.

Snaith’s hunched spine and protruding belly made him an appalling sight indeed, but his scarlet robes—the robes of the Watchmen—caused the young girl’s blood to run cold.

He regarded Ivy with interest, his eyes shining from beneath his jutting forehead and odd, paunchy cheeks.

“You’re late,” he assessed. As if to demonstrate this, a discordant bell chimed nearby. He glared at her. “Well?”

Ivy’s heart was in her throat, but she managed to nod.

The subrector held out his arm—at the end of his red cloak, one blunt, pudgy finger pointed to the nearby door. On it, Ivy noticed as she swallowed hard, was a peculiar symbol. An ox head—a swarm of bees flying forth from its mouth. Pulling her cloak about her tightly, she ducked as she passed him by, entering the lecture hall.

And oh, what a hall this was! It was long and narrow, with a ceiling as high as the cliffs around her, tiered with balconies and velvet chairs. In the center was an extraordinarily long dinner table. It was hung with low chandeliers and set with the most alluring of golden flatware, and laid with a meal like no other. Running along its great length was a supper of such splendid proportions as Ivy had never seen—not at any trestleman’s table, not in the royal halls of Templar at the queen’s table. Attending to the feast was a long row of impeccably dressed waiters, poised and ready.

Every type of food was represented in its most alluring form. Tarts burst with sweet fillings and were kissed with crystals of sugar. Buttery rolls nearly popped with their own plumpness, beside carved pats of butter. Roasts glistened, each outshining the last in delectability. The gravy steamed and puddled invitingly. Fowl and beast were arranged in a fashion of utter temptability, and it was all Ivy could do not to rush
to the table and begin eating. It had been some time since her last hot meal—she had left Breaux’s compound before her breakfast.

The long table was assembled in front of receding stone benches, and here the students waited. Ivy joined them.

Snaith advanced on the lectern and faced the group.

“Let us begin.”

He eyed the assembly, his body swiveling as his ruined neck could no longer turn.

“I am sure you are all well prepared for today’s final exam.”

Ivy looked about as the Guild’s pupils, in varying states of preparedness, all awaited their examination. A few were reviewing their notes, paging through for any last glimmer of knowledge. Ivy’s nearest neighbor was muttering to himself, arranging his Guild-issued utensils and brushing up on the
Field Guide
.

With mounting horror, Ivy returned her attention to the front of the lecture hall, where Snaith was now seated at the head of the impossibly long dinner table, snapping a taster’s collar about his drooping chin. His thick lips were unusually wet as he leaned over a silver-domed credenza and, with practiced authority, flicked the polished lid open. Inside, a selection of bone-handled carving knives, the smallest about the size of a trestleman’s pinkie, the largest—a broad knife meant for both hacking and carving—suitable for an entire steer. But the one that brought a wave of revulsion over Ivy was a
modest one, off to the side, with a particularly nasty-looking hook blade, not polished like the rest of the subrector’s collection. His fingers fidgeted over the tool, pausing to lovingly thumb the crooked teeth of the instrument—and Ivy felt her flesh crawl. His attentions finally alighted upon something in the middling range, something polished and sleek, meant for carving food, and once chosen, he brandished it—gleaming—to the crowd. Beside the knives awaited a long, thick emery, and he took this now and began artfully running it up and down the sharp edge of the blade, producing an uncomfortable noise.

“Let us not delay any further. You—” He pointed his steely spear directly at her. “Last in, first up.”

The room of tasters turned to her expectantly, and Ivy noticed among the foreign faces a few smirks. She looked behind her, hoping to find someone rising in her stead, but the benches merely carried on upward, seemingly forever. With great reluctance, she stood.

“Yesss,” Snaith coaxed.

Ivy arrived at the staged table.

“Your three?” he asked.

Ivy blinked. “My three?”

“Choose your three.” Snaith’s voice was tinged with impatience. “The three dishes you wish to taste for the final exam in Irresistible Meals.”

She looked at the table again from this closer vantage
point. A heaping bowl of fruit beckoned her, dewy and great, like a living still life. It was all she could do to not reach out and pluck a pomegranate from the platter. In fact, there wasn’t a thing within reach—within sight—that she wouldn’t eat readily. Her stomach grumbled.

Ivy looked about—all thoughts of the many eyes upon her forgotten in her hunger. She walked along the endless display, past large roasts and savory side dishes, until she came to the desserts. In the very center, a majestic chocolate cake iced with little white flowerbuds sat upon a crystal plate. How was she to choose only three?

Somehow she pointed, and quite soon before her a place was set, and she sat down to a meal of buttery, crisp fried chicken, a savory corn pudding, and the cake. For each, Snaith served her himself, fastidious with the presentation, dismissing the waiters who stepped forward eagerly.

Of course, Ivy knew she was eating at a table of the Tasters’ Guild, in a class designed to test its tasters’ abilities to detect poisons. And she knew also that she was better equipped than most at poison detection because she was better than most at making poisons. But she was no match for the Guild’s most dreaded course—it was mandatory, after all, to take Irresistible Meals, and not uncommon for a student to repeat it several times until receiving a passing grade. Or die trying.

This was to be the end of her inner debate. The food before her smelled like nothing else. And seeing as there
was no one there to tell her otherwise, she began with the dessert.

Ivy took a small, delicate forkful of the cake, a rich, deep chocolate—so very dark and fluffy. Superb and irresistible, it was almost an inky black.

T
he nature of scourge bracken is so very unpredictable, and so very little is known about it in a land where so much is known about plants in general. Indeed, it grows in hallowed ground far away from the sun and was rescued from extinction by Hemsen Dumbcane. It holds its user captive while it searches for yet another, more powerful victim to transport into its dark realm. It attracts insects—and other creatures—to its unwilling host as it assumes power. It lulls and whispers kingly promises while laying waste to all around it—and would have probably overtaken all of Caux had not the Good King Verdigris banished it just in time.

But why it strikes down some while elevating others is a mystery.

Snaith had reserved for himself a small portion of Dumbcane’s inks and set about his plans to test this new, intriguing poison. He regretted instantly that there weren’t any orphanages in the immediate vicinity—it was a wonderfully
anonymous place to try out new and deadly wares. The next best thing: his loathsomely tedious class of untested tasters. The final exam featured a year’s worth of pernicious poisons in a tempting and distracting environment—a realistic enough occurrence in life outside the Guild’s walls. But none had learned of scourge bracken before, so no student could possibly be prepared.

Did this worry the subrector? Not at all. He plotted the exam, one that would feature this new inky toxin, and prepared to catalog his observations as carefully as he would in any hospital for the indigent or home for wayward youth.

Ivy Manx swallowed a second mouthful of velvety chocolate cake and suddenly began to feel entirely peculiar. Immediately, wavy shapes floated before her eyes, thick spots of ink—or were they insects? She waved her hands before her eyes to shoo them away, only the spots returned, this time more vigorously. Her stomach lurched in fear.

Then, inexplicably, she was far, far away from the lecture hall, in a dark and ruined garden. Clouds circled the perilous sky. Barbed wire ran along a ravaged iron fence, and beneath her feet lay nothing but charred earthen remains. It was a garden transformed, but she still knew it. She had been there before. Once prosperous and now a wasteland, this was the garden she had seen when curing Peps.

In his silent chamber high atop the Library, Vidal Verjouce
suddenly, horribly, stood. He had been in a Kingmaker reverie, blank dreams of ultimate power and burnt ground. He readied his cane.

There was an intruder in his Mind Garden.

He knew at once of Ivy.

Ivy had been standing quite vacantly, Snaith looking on with a curious expression upon his paunchy face. The girl did not clutch her sides or cry out in despair, he noted. Nor did she scream and grip her chest, as did Gripe, while a deadly stain of scourge bracken spread across her vital organs. Was there some antidote of which he was unaware? He looked about the table. He was certain he had served her an enormous dose. Yet she defied him, standing there unblinking. A rage surged within him.

The Guild’s students, unaware of his treacherous experimentation, were readying themselves for their inevitable turn at the table, and those not busy whispering were silently spraying their mouths with distilled water or using their tongue scrapers to earnestly clear their palates.

Snaith clapped his hands for his assistant—he was tiring of the impasse—and immediately she was there. Ivy watched wordlessly as Rue stood before her, speaking quite familiarly with the awful subrector.

“Failing grade!” Snaith pronounced loudly as Rue made a note.

“The Infirmary, sir?” Rue then asked. Her face was inscrutable as she reached for Ivy’s arm.

But Snaith waved the question away. He was already scanning the seating greedily for a new subject. Rue began to guide Ivy away from the curious eyes of the class, into the shadows of the large hall.

“You!” He pointed at a thin, frightened boy. “Dinner’s served!”

As the student made his way haltingly down the stone steps, Snaith turned. He watched the pair go, his assistant guiding the stiff-legged creature away from him. An evil surge of excitement swept through his belly. Fresh with the memory of the subrector Gripe, he knew she was doomed. Clearing his throat, he looked around him, and sharpened a knife.

T
here are beings that rule over fire and beings that rule over shadow, much in the same way alewives rule over troubled waters, but these creatures are mercurial, dangerous, and should not concern us here—except that Ivy now straddled these two worlds, one of light and the other of dark. The world of shadow is a suspect one, and one unused to tourists.

As Rue led her by the elbow into the dingy courtyard, Ivy saw a glimmer of these two worlds—fierce, shifting black shapes, small, insistent sparks of fire. The ox and the plaque upon the door had undergone a transformation—the bees were now dark, sleek wasps and appeared on the verge of a swarm. Upon another, a brass salamander writhed in agony as fire consumed its hide. In fact, the small courtyard seemed to hold an extraordinary amount of doors suddenly—all repellant, fierce, and glimmering with life.

Ivy stumbled on a loose stone, and Rue caught her beneath
the arms. Propping her upright again, and stealing a look back toward the lecture hall, Rue continued in the direction of the Infirmary.

They came upon a twisting alley, and with a look behind her, Rue quickly ducked into its damp mouth—their shoes dripping at once from the sluice of water that ran along the path. It was here, over the calming tones that water can bring, that Rue whispered to Ivy.

“I will take you back to Grandfather’s, but I do not know what will become of me for this,” she said.

Ivy watched Rue’s face twist and glow.

“This way.” Rue ushered Ivy home as best she could, the young subrector guiding Ivy’s stiff form through the backward alleys.

But how strange it was that Ivy’s trip home differed so entirely from Rue’s—although their path was the same! For Ivy was not walking in the sunshine, the light of day—or even within the gloom of the city’s tall spire. She walked the land of shadows—the very blackness where the walls met the street were thick, fertile places where they bred, a sweeping swath of the darkest velvet. Her own shadow towered over her and seemed to possess a distinct dislike for Rue. She began noticing strange insects that darted around her and was forced on several occasions to wave her hand about in a vain effort to dispel the pests.