surety that it had even happened was the lasting smell of damp on your carpets.
So you went to Ianthe, and you asked her how to make soup.
“Oh, it’s easy,” said the Princess of Ida breezily. Despite Augustine’s increasing critiques she showed no signs of temper, as might have been anticipated; in fact she seemed to get more carefree with every failure. “You cut up an onion, burn it at the bottom of the pot, put in a few vegetables, and then some meat. It won’t taste like anything, so put in a few teaspoons of salt, and then it’ll taste like a few teaspoons of salt.”
In obedience to the Emperor, you made soup. You had never seen anybody cook before. You did not like it. There were technical manuals on the subject in a kitchen drawer, and you pored over those, rather than attempting Ianthe’s air on the theme of salt. By the evening of the third day after your interrupted bath, you had not slept for eighty-six hours, but you had read a book, and you had made soup three times. During sleeping hours you lay beneath your bed, in the dark, hardly breathing, staring up at the dustless ribs of the steel mattress slats—you prayed to the corpse of the Locked Tomb, or you said to yourself, “Oh, God! Oh, God! Oh, God!” until it slurred together on your tongue and joined the orchestra of whispers that thrummed between your ears, waiting for the assault that did not come.
It was also on the third day post-Ortus that the tension in the Mithraeum gained weight and sharpness, like salt water forming crystals. This had nothing to do with you. It was the countdown that Augustine had issued to Ianthe.
“Five more days,” he had said to her. You knew, because he had said it over breakfast, right in front of you and Mercy. “You’ve five days left, my chick. If you don’t start using that sword arm properly by then, I shan’t bother to teach you a damn thing more. I’m not interested in charity cases. If I were, I’d be teaching Harrow.”
In another lifetime you might have been icily furious, or at the very least chagrined. In this one, you were simply looking at your knife, and your fork, and your spoon, and trying to remember which did what. The spoon, with its concave pit, was probably for transferring liquids. In its back you caught sight of Ianthe, who had put her colourless chin in her hand and was leaning her head into it, as though listening without much interest to a bedtime story.
“As you will it, brother.”
Everyone was snappish and cross—except Ianthe, and except you. You drifted through the Mithraeum with your great sword on your back and your hand never far from the end—pommel—of your rapier. And you made soup.
Two days after Augustine’s ultimatum, perhaps impressed with your newfound understanding of soup or hungry for social cohesion, a frazzled God asked you to make everyone dinner. You opened more of the recipe books—you spent some time cleaning out your weights and measures, and picking through the warehouse-sized supply rooms for the most appropriate ingredients—and, for a long time, you locked yourself in the bathroom, to do what you had to do. One hundred and twenty-six hours. You no longer felt pain. Sometimes your jaw rattled to itself, but it was almost musical.
That night you made soup more carefully than ever. The recipe said it had to cook for a long time. You paced up and down the kitchen, distracted and startled by lights as the air grew steamy and a little sweet-smelling. When the alarm sounded to say it was done you nearly screamed. It took you a while to turn it off. You tested the result of your labour, after a moment’s hesitation: you still hated strong flavours, and it took you a while to understand tastes. The soup did not taste like anything very specific, but you did not add Ianthe’s teaspoons of salt.
You transferred it to a big tureen, and when you all sat down around the table, the Emperor served everyone, like he always did: on those first few days in the Mithraeum you had been terrified by the idea of the God of the Nine Houses serving you food, but it was just his way. He was pleased with you. He smiled that rueful, dented smile, and he rested his hand on your shoulder, very lightly, when he filled your bowl. “As