Book One – Chapter 19

He meddled out the first bowl. Everything was mercifully within reach, at a height well suited to his wings, probably because Bubs was shorter still and equally sick of getting on stools for everything. One after the other, Yu placed four horn bowls on the tray, which he had set own on the centre workbench. More would not fit.

So now he had a tray with four empty bowls.

Four steps away stood the hearth, with its two post. The left one was already scraped clean. From the other, steam curled upwards in slow, ghostly threads. Yu remembered how intense the smell had been when he had first entered the kitchen that afternoon, rich with wapa fat and softened roots. He had already smelled it though the common room, the air heavy with its oily sweetness and rich spices. He needed both the memory and focus to register it now, even when walking right up to the pot. It was not that he had grown used to it. Rather, his ability to smell, like all his other senses, had extremely dulled.

Standing discerningly close, Yu leaned over the cauldron. The surface glistened, thick with orange-brown broth. Large chunks of meat floated half-submerged, pale fat collecting in murky circles on top. Yu focused on the smell. He forced it to come back to him. At first, it was only food — the dense, blunt scent of flesh and the earth-sunken heaviness of boiled roots. He sought for more. It should be a smell of comfort. It should be enticing. But the longer he drew it in, the more it thickened and cloyed, and then it became vicious. The sweetness soured. The fat split and turned rancid in his nares. And underneath it lay something sharper still. A trace like singed feathers and tincture. The tang of metal and alcohol. The roots became marrow boiled open, pieces of bone —

Yu’s gaze flicked to the saws on the wall. Then to the surgery door. Then away again. Over the steaming pot, to the bare twin beside it. That pot had been full when he was here last. Now, nothing remained. The guests had eaten an entire cauldron. Well, they had begun before the travellers arrived, and carried on all throughout, while Yu had dealt with his burns.