John Wright - Orphans of Chaos

Victor looked in my eyes and he saw that I wanted Colin’s strong hands on me. I wanted to be helpless in his arms. He saw how pleased, how flustered I was by the sensation. He saw everything.

But that wasn’t the message I wanted him to see. It was your hands, Victor, I wanted; your strength I want to triumph over me.

Victor turned away, his face cold. My heart reached a nadir. If I could have died by a sheer critical mass of misery, I would have ignited into a ball of darkness, then and there, and taken most of the school with me.

Colin was oblivious to all this. He spoke in a tone of lilting mockery.

He said, “I was telling the serving wench what I wanted for breakfast.”

Victor said, “Well, if you two are done with your mating ritual, we have serious business.”

Colin let go of me and jumped back.

It felt strange, for a moment, to have my hands loose and free. The misery in my heart changed shape suddenly. It was as if it said in my ear: don’t blow yourself up in a ball of darkness! Just get Colin!

Good idea.

I carefully stepped over and picked up Mr. Glum’s hammer from the table.

“Tut! Tut!” said Colin, scampering back out of range. “Serious business to discuss!” To Victor he said, “She wants to hurt me!”

Victor threw himself down in his chair and put his feet on the table. “Probably serves you right. Amelia, make sure you get Mr. Glum’s fingerprints on his hammer after you do the deed.”

Colin backed up, pointing a finger at me. “You’re not going to kill me on an empty stomach, are you? None of us has eaten yet. This may be the only day we will ever have the run of the kitchen!”

Quentin smiled, and then laughed. He said, “That is true, Victor. Food first. Death later.”

Victor looked at Quentin, looked at his own feet on the table, frowned a little nervously, and sat up, putting his feet back on the floor. “True enough. Amelia, no skull bashing till later. Colin, stop acting like a jerk. Quentin, decide what you want us to make you for breaky. It’s the least we can do since we can’t undo your memory block yet.”

Well, I was not going to disobey a direct order from Victor. Besides, their lightheartedness was contagious. I reluctantly put the hammer back down on the table.

“What happened?” I asked. “You were gone for only a moment.”

Victor said, “We could see from the front door that there were workingmen swarming all over the Great Hall. They’re pulling the roof apart to lift the table out. The table you say we need. If they pull it out the way they put it in, it should be kept under a tarp in the Blacksmith’s Shed until they can find a lorry big enough to haul it.”

Vanity said, “The good news is, no one else is up yet, though.”

Quentin said, “Maybe we should run, and run now. Just pick a direction and keep moving. Between Dr. Fell’s drugs and Mr. Glum’s hammer, and what little Amelia already said, we may be in a lot more danger than we know.”

Victor said, “Amelia? How dangerous is it? More dangerous than heading out along the highway without money? So dangerous that we can’t wait for you to tell us your story?”

I said, “The War God will kill anyone who kills us. And it would cause a war. And I don’t want to run without at least breaking into that safe. I can’t see into the new directions without the hyperlight it gives off. And I am not walking anywhere until someone helps me take this damn thing off!”

Colin said loudly, “I object! The serving girl is trying to get out of uniform!”

Colin was staring at my cleavage again. I made an angry noise and started to reach for my buttons to do them up.

Quentin said, “Wait a moment.” He looked at Vanity, who was also beginning to tug at her skirt, and to reach for her buttons. Vanity and I stopped.

Quentin looked at Victor. “I think we should have a ruling on this, Victor.”

Victor nodded, trying not to smile. “Quentin’s right. He has been viciously attacked, I dare say, wounded, by Dr. Fell. We all need to do our part to keep Quentin in good spirits, don’t you agree, girls?”

Vanity put her hands on her hips. “What are you saying? I only did this to distract Mr. Glum!”

Victor rose to his feet. “Very good. Commendable. Now stay like that until I say otherwise. You too, Amelia.”

Vanity and I looked at each other. She squinted at me, a little impish smirk begging to appear on her lips. She was waiting to see what I would do. I was waiting to see what she would do.

Colin stepped up behind me and swatted me across the bottom. “Go to, wench! Go to! Your kitchen awaits!”

He did not duck quickly enough to avoid my counter swing. Victor put his arms around Mr. Glum and unceremoniously dumped him on the carpet. He straightened and said, “You’re going into the kitchen, too, Colin. Only Quentin is excused.”

Colin was holding his mouth. “Of course. Wouldn’t miss it. Kitchen is where the girls are.”

Quentin stood and picked up his chair. “Since this seems to be sort of an impromptu birthday for me, I will come and watch. Whichever girl isn’t involved in some part of the cooking process will dote on me. Agreed?”

Victor said, “Agreed.”

Colin said, “And the other girl will be…”

“…Kicking you in the balls, over and over again,” I said. “Agreed?”

“Agreed!” said Vanity.

She took Quentin’s arm and I took the other one. We both pressed up against him, wiggling our bottoms and batting our eyelashes, as we escorted him to the kitchen.

Colin muttered, “Fie. And he says he’s not a magician.”

How long does it take for happiness to be complete? I do not know how long we were in the kitchen. I suppose, objectively, it might have been as little as an hour, or even less. But it seemed to last all day. Like an endless vacation.

The kitchen was huge. All the brightwork gleamed, all the pots and pans and kettles and knives were ranked and racked and arranged by size. There were two little refrigerators and a big walk-in, and a stovetop the size of Scotland and Wales combined.

And we could have anything we wanted. For the first time in our lives, we made what we fancied in whatever way suited us. An omelette of a dozen eggs; beef that we fried in grease instead of boiling; slabs of bacon as thick as your hand; cooking sherry poured into measuring cups and drunk as toasts. Mostly, we made a mess.

Colin drank coffee for the first time in his life, the grownups’ drink. He made a face and pronounced it an abomination. But he drank a second cup, just because it had been forbidden him for so long.

Vanity had always wanted to taste a hamburger; she ground up several types of meat in the blender, and used toast for buns, and cucumber because we found no pickles. She put catsup mixed with horseradish on the resulting mass, calling it “secret sauce,” and claimed she had made a Big Mac. It looked like ground meat on toast to me, but when she gave me a bite, it was delicious. No matter what it tasted like, it was delicious, because she had made it with her own hands.

Quentin was juggling eggs with one hand, six, seven, and eight, while ordering me hither and thither for the various things he wanted in his giant omelette.

And, to my astonishment, Victor could cook. He took one cookbook off the shelf of ninety or so that Cook had, and flipped the pages as fast as his thumb would move. Then he measured and chopped and set timers and mixed with the precision of a machine, or a mad scientist. He was good at it. We ended up eating almost all what he made, because what we started turned out somewhat burnt, or raw.

We sat on the spotless floor in a big circle, plates and bowls and saucers spread about us in Roman luxury, eating everything with our fingers.