lady of the house occupy the two low stools and offer words of greeting to their assembled guests. The words, whatever they are, are lost on most listeners: the food has, at last, begun to arrive.
First comes a series of sauces studded with slices of meat only intermittently identifiable. Salamander, come some shocked whispers down the long Local table. Newt and crickets and dog! But also venison and some kind of rich nut and mushrooms the color of ashes in the grate and a flavor at once sharp and earthy.
“Like a good Erlander cheese,” says the head of the Greenglass family, one of the richest and most influential in the city. He asks the servants for more, and mops it up with one of the two dozen kinds of maize pancakes in baskets placed at regular intervals along the table.
“Papa has a very fine palate,” whispers a young lady to her dining companion, a broad-shouldered young man from a smaller trading family. “He’s quite the gourmand.” The young lady’s whisper is not so soft as she imagines it to be. A wag replies: “He’s quite the glutton!” and a few guests laugh more freely than strictly politic.
The chocolate poured from tall ceramic jugs has grown thicker and a little sour, not unpleasantly so. The addition of fermented agave nectar has begun to take its effect. At the Balam table, some of the men have switched out entirely for glasses of octli, dusted with a powder of chocolate. Kaab looks longingly at the jugs, but there is no time for the women to enjoy it.
“Come, Niece,” says her aunt, at a signal from one of the servants. “It’s time.”
The women of the family hasten to the kitchen. In honor of the Local guests, they have decided to modify the traditional serving of tamales. Kaab finds herself holding a copper tray on her shoulder and a basket heaped with ant-egg tamales in the crook of her other elbow.
“What if I drop it, Aunt?” Kaab asks, very innocently.
“What if you—” Ixsaabim goes a little pale, peers at her niece, and laughs abruptly. “You little minx! You nearly had me! The great Ixkaab, dropping her food.” She laughs again and gently touches the cotton ribbons woven into Kaab’s braids. “How much you remind me of your mother, dear.”
Kaab bites back sudden tears. She ducks her head. “Thank you, Aunt Saabim.”
There’s no time for any more. The flutes have begun to play in the hall and now the drums will start and the song begins at the front of the line of women, where Kaab takes the place of honor. This feast is—nominally, and, in some small way, actually—a celebration of her arrival.
“We bring tamales,” she sings in the language of her childhood. They don’t mention the hares, because there is no word in Kindaan for saffron and the Locals wouldn’t understand in any case.
“Good God,” blurts Master Greenglass when they dance into the room, smiling and spinning. “Are those saffron hares?”
“Won’t the Duchess Tremontaine turn green when she hears of this!”
“Gracious, they’re as orange as a sunset!”
“How poetic, darling. But I expect they’ve used some kind of dye. It’ll be all turmeric, and bitter as an old radish.”
“My sister had the good fortune to attend the Duchess Tremontaine’s little soiree,” says the young lady of the indiscreet whisper. “She married a noble, you know.”
Her companion—indeed, the whole long table—knows.
“But did she truly use saffron?” asks Mistress Fenton, more tipsy than she realizes. “For it seems to me a very great expense for a house that has just suffered such a blow. Why, there were Tremontaine funds sunk into the Everfair, weren’t there? The ship that foundered in the open seas and lost all hands in a storm?”
The doomed expedition to the Garay port, whose overconfident navigators had assured their own demise nearly a year previous, had been promoted and backed by Greenglass Imports. Master Greenglass, a prudent epicure, had invested in sufficient insurance to cover his losses. So he does not allow the implication that he convinced a noble family to participate in his ill-conceived scheme to spoil his dinner.
The golden hares are set before them, carved by the servants with a flourish and served on fresh ceramic plates.
“It is saffron!” proclaims Master Greenglass, over the sound of Fenton encouraging Mistress Fenton to speak more quietly. “I’ll bet my cellar on it! God’s horns, this must be enough saffron to dye the hair of twenty noblewomen. All over, if you know what I mean.”
Kaab, passing behind him, does not know what he means. Rafe chokes on his chocolate.
“Well, taste that, dear. That isn’t turmeric.”
“I suppose not. And did you try those dumplings? What is that inside? Some kind of cheese?”
“I can’t say that I know . . . and I’m afraid to find out, quite honestly!”
At the other end of the table, Mistress Fenton stares dreamily down at the remains of her ant-egg tamale.
“I dare say the whole Hill will be jealous when they hear of this. A true banquet from the chocolate lands! Oh, how happy I am that you brought me, Fenton. And that you sold them all that saffron! Will it be very hard to get more?”
“Yes, it was quite clever of me,” says Fenton, with a pointed look at his son. “But I had a good man on hand to handle the negotiations.”
The young Fenton raises his eyes to the ceiling, as if to pray for divine intervention.
The glow of success has finally descended upon the Balams, watching the contented jostling among their Local guests. No hares have been dropped, and quite a few have been picked clean. Ixsaabim turns to her young and handsome husband.
“Dearest, I think we should see what that woman wants.”
She does not have to specify which woman.
Chuleb rubs his chin. “Fenton tells me there are rumors. You remember the ship last year? The Everfair?”
“The one their navigators took so far off course it sunk within miles of the Garay coast and they didn’t even realize it?”
“Many families lost their fortunes. And Fenton suggested Tremontaine might be one of them.”
Saabim looks thoughtful. “That might be true, but the nobles here aren’t like those at home. They can’t be stripped of their positions for dishonorable actions. They all have debts, but so long as they keep their land no one seems to care. She’ll have influence, my morning star. And influence is always valuable.”
“She is very clever,” he says. “And she likes to pretend that she isn’t. It is a combination that worries me.”
“Well, so am I clever, and so are you. So is Kaab for that matter, though she’s impetuous enough that you can’t always notice. I understand that this saffron woman might wish to use us for some political end, my precious flower, but we have our own tools at our disposal.”
“True,” says her husband. Kaab has vanished from the table—probably gone back to the kitchens.
“And the situation at home is too unstable. If the Tullan . . .” She can’t finish. He puts a discreet hand on her stomach, where the baby has just started to show.
“I’ll write her,” he says. “I’ll tell her to come here to us. She won’t like it, but if she’s serious she will. I’ll tell her to call three days hence.”
Saabim squeezes her husband’s hand beneath the table and gives him a quick, hard kiss. She looks around to see if anyone noticed, and smiles, satisfied.
Someone in a modest headdress of shimmering feathers standing in the shadow of the kitchen hallway, within hearing distance of the head of the Balam table, did notice. And she smiles.
“Three days hence,” says the spy under her breath, and walks back for more