ONE HUNDRED SEVENTY: A Fun Way to do Supper

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<<…and one of the hover ferries donated by Makuinlo Scholar City, Artona I, has been in service since yesterday. If you haven’t seen it yet, it’s stunning. The vessel should be completely able to resist Submerger particles, but wizards will also be on board for every crossing to ensure safe journeys. The modifications to the second ferry will be finished soon. It’s due to be teleported in Sunday evening.

<<Thanks for listening to the morning news with us. That was our last story for today. Our extended coverage of the disaster will continue tomorrow, and we’ll be having a discussion about the proposals for the new Span. We know we’re getting a rail connection. Why stop there? How can we make it even better than before? If you have ideas, call in and let us know!

<<We’ll also hear from Doctor John Singh, who lost his home and office in the floods. He’ll be telling us how he approaches these stressful times and how you parents can explain it all to your children. Now…>>

The woman’s peppy voice was suddenly joined by the first notes of a fast-paced song.

<<We have the latest from Sona and Yodel! They’re in the middle of their world tour, but home is on their minds. They’ve decided to donate all of their profits from 2040 to the rebuilding. So you can feel great about dancing to this one, Anesidora. Happy Thanksgiving! I’m Rēśama, and this is Radio Above.>>

The chatter ended, and the cafeteria at Matadero filled with a voice singing in Punjabi. A metal tray sailed through the air, and Alden caught it.

Preserve just the tray, he thought. Flip.

The last bit of a banana peel fell into the trashcan beside him. Then he unpreserved and added the tray to one of the clean stacks on the table at his back.

“No,” Kabir was saying to whoever he’d just called. He reached for another dirty plate and tossed it gently to Alden. “I don’t understand why it’s impossible to get pre-thawed turkeys. It’s Thanksgiving. You’re a grocery store. I’m willing to pay whatever…yes, I know I should have prepared in advance for a large gathering!”

The next plate flew a little far to the left and Alden almost overturned the trash reaching for it. He managed to snag it out of the air and preserve it in the same instant.

“What about chickens?” Kabir asked in a desperate voice. “Maybe you have some very big ones?”

Alden caught another plate. They’d started in the kitchen with the worst of the dishes, and with a more verbal cleaning system where Kabir chanted, “Take it, take it, take it!” for Alden in between searching through supplies and trying to formulate a plan.

Alden had become a connoisseur of falling food visuals over the past half hour. Watching things that looked really stuck-on fall prey to gravity all at once was satisfying. He was planning many future dish “washing” sessions with people who weren’t worried that a wizard named Momo-neen would be disappointed if there wasn’t stuffing stuffed into appropriately sized poultry.

Kabir had almost hyperventilated when the first store he’d called said cranberries were sold out, so now didn’t seem like a good time for Alden to ask for more challenging plate tosses or to spend a few extra minutes experimenting with preserving different layers of grime.

Haoyu’s going to love chucking things at me, though. And there’s dinner tonight. I bet we’ll have tons of dishes.

If a Rabbit with a dedicated dishwashing skill showed up, he would arm wrestle them for the privilege.

Kabir’s call ended, and his shoulders slumped. “I’m going to have to ask her for help.”

“Who?” Alden caught a bowl.

Bowl only. Flip.

He couldn’t resist giving one gentle toss straight up, trying to get it to hold its preservation when his hands weren’t on it.

Total failure He lost preservation and entrustment the moment he let go of it.

I only held onto Zeridee because I desperately wanted to, and because I was in that too-intense headspace. I can’t desperately want to protect a cereal bowl and throw it at the same time.

“Ms. Velra,” Kabir answered. “If I call her, there will probably be turkeys falling from the sky within the hour.”

“You don’t want to ask her for help?” She was the one who’d loaned Kabir to the wizards in the first place, but his reluctance was understandable. “I don’t blame you. Considering how everything has been going with her…”

“How everything has been going with her” was the subtlest way he could refer to the situation.

Just about ten minutes ago, the radio station had played a clip of Aulia making yet another statement. This time she was calling on High Council members to prove that they weren’t SAL sympathizers trying to frame her. She also suggested a public tattooing ceremony to magically bind them to their oaths of office, conducted by wizards approved by the Artonan Grand Senate. In the past, she’d apparently run on promises that she would be willing to do that herself.

Alden thought it wasn’t half bad as far as ideas went. Why not have politicians swear unbreakable oaths to do their jobs honestly? But the councilors were all united against it.

“I don’t want to talk to her,” Kabir said. “If I talk to her, I’ll feel too guilty to quit. I’d rather wait until I’ve received an official offer from Momo-neen so that I can’t back out.”

“Are you really going to go work for a wizard?”

“I’ve never wanted to before, but now I have an inbox full of messages from people who want to know what I know about Libra, Orpheus, magical water, and Aulia Velra. Like maybe people stand around discussing their plans to blow up Matadero while I’m mincing garlic. The woman I went on a few dates with last month called to say we shouldn’t see each other! Getting away sounds fine now. Momo-neen seems to be part of some kind of anthropology club? She said they could hire me for almost a year.”

Utensils clattered as he swept them onto the last tray and walked over to present them to Alden.

“Do you think it’s traitorous of me to abandon ship when Ms. Velra’s in trouble?” Kabir asked.

Alden was trying to pick up six forks at once, defining them as a single set in his mind. He managed it, but when he shook them, some of the food was still stuck. Hmmmmm…can’t hold a conversation and perfectly define a stack.

He dropped them back on the tray again and went for a single one. “I don’t think you’re a traitor. She’s just your boss, right?”

Kabir shook his head. “The line blurs when your boss is Aulia Velra. Most people imagine she’s horrible to work for, but she’s not. Demanding, impulsive, impossible to reason with—yes. She’ll wake you up at two o’clock in the morning to have you make cookies. Half of her family…no, more like eighty percent…I have wanted to poison them before.”

That sounded less joking than Alden thought it should.

“But Ms. Velra pays very well,” said Kabir. “And she’ll wake you up to ask for ginger cookies at two o’clock in the morning, but she will also laugh with you when you burn them and tell you about the time she burned a pan full on purpose because her mother forced her to make them for the boy her parents wanted her to marry.”

“That would have been a long time ago.” Alden was struggling to imagine an Aulia who had parents trying to manage her life and choose her fiancé.

“Not many people know this kind of thing,” said Kabir. “She only talks about the time before the Artonans arrived when we’re drinking champagne in the middle of the night.”

He paused, then coughed. “Non-alcoholic champagne.”

“I don’t care if it was real champagne,” said Alden. “Can you imagine if that was what the authorities used as an excuse to arrest her, though?”

That prompted a sharp bark of a laugh from Kabir. “They’ll never imprison her for longer than a day. Not even if she stands on the tip of the Needle and drops whiskey barrels on the people below her. That’s what I believe.”

Interesting. “Because of how important she is to some Artonans?”

The sounds of utensils clattering surrounded them.

“That too, maybe,” Kabir said. “But even if she wasn’t that…she’s one of the originals. Your generation doesn’t really understand them. You think that only the loud few like Aulia are still relevant and the others are all relics. That they’re all too busy working on the Triplanets or bouncing grandchildren on their knees to understand Anesidora today.”

“Remember I’m new,” Alden pointed out. “Until earlier this year Anesidora was kind of…”

A theme park. A fantasy land. That place where everyone seemed to have money, magic, and access to more of the universe than the average person could dream of.

He’d known better than that; he’d had enough glimpses to add a touch of reality to the place. But it still had been a spot on the map that was simultaneously more and less than what it was in truth.

“That’s right!” said Kabir. “I don’t know how I forgot with the accent. But my point is that the old ones are different. And they look out for each other. I’ve served meals to some people you would be surprised to know Aulia considers friends, and the things they talk about…it would take more than a few missing neighborhoods to really upset them. That’s the impression I get.”

Kabir looked down at the almost empty tray. “You’re fast.”

“This is great for me.” Alden grabbed a spoon. “You holding the tray out like you’re presenting them to me is enough right now. It’s good to know things like that.”

They were almost finished.

Stolen novel; please report.

“America,” Kabir said. “You’re from there. There must be so many turkeys in America right now. Just lying around. But locating them and getting them teleported in…I don’t know how to do it. Most of the Artonans won’t be back until night, and the sun sets late this time of year. But it’s still not possible.”

An idea came to mind suddenly. “I could ask my friend Natalie. I’m sure she’s got a turkey.”

“I can’t take your friend’s turkey. And just one wouldn’t be enough to feed all of them.”

“Yeah, but Natalie’s turkey would be loaded with holiday spirit. Literally. She’s got Cook of the Moment. You could add little pieces of it to the sandwiches you were planning on serving before you realized what day it was and everyone would get a taste.”

“Cook of the Moment? In that case, I definitely can’t take your friend’s turkey.” But he looked interested. “I could buy it, though. If you think she would be willing to sell it?”

She’s business-minded. And she’s very interested in working on the Triplanets.

“She might be really eager to sell you the magic turkey. I can ask. Let me go call her.”

If she says yes, Emilija will never forgive me.

******

Back in his room, where his call wouldn’t be overheard by Kabir or any stray wizards, he spent a few minutes thinking about what to say so that he wouldn’t slip up and reveal some kind of critical Matadero intel and also so that Natalie would have as much of the full picture as possible.

Everyone knows the visiting Artonans come back here every night, so that’s not a secret. They have the polite fiction that they’re working on the facilities, so I won’t say anything to contradict it. But the fact that they must consume food isn’t exactly a secret either.