Dozens of grotty blankets were set out on the floor, covered with food: bowls of bony chicken marinated in cheap almond wine, soft thresher-fish tails wrapped in bacon and soaked in vinegar, and brown bread flavored with sausage grease. There were also salted peas and lentils as well as bowls of past-ripe tomatoes and pears.
Doña Sofia’s hand briefly settled over Locke’s, long enough for him to feel the assorted calluses and chemical burns no manicure could conceal. She was a true alchemical botanist, then; this barge was her direct handiwork as well as her general design. A formidable talent—by implication, a calculating woman.
At present, a hugely muscled nichavezzo (“punishing hand”), one of the duke’s own household guard, was handing out the beatings. The soldier was armored in black leather, with a gleaming steel breastplate and a steel helmet crested with the freshly severed fin of a giant flying fish. Scales and spines scintillated as the soldier stepped back and forth under the bright sun, striking out seemingly at leisure with an iron-shod staff.
Calo and Galdo whisked damp cloths off serving platters and bowls, revealing the full extent of the meal for the first time. There were indeed sausages, neatly sliced and fried in oil with quartered pears. There were also split red peppers stuffed with almond paste and spinach; dumplings of thin bread folded over chicken, fried until the bread was as translucent as paper; and cold black beans in wine and mustard sauce.
There was stewed mutton with onions and ginger, stuffed eels in spiced wine sauce, and green-apple tarts baked by Jean (with a liberal dose of Austershalin brandy poured over the fruit).
A small waterfall plunges through a hole in the floor, down into the catacombs beneath the Echo Hole, where dark water can be heard rushing.
Then came the cask, a heavy dark object that plunged into the black canal at the base of the waterfall with a loud splash and a geyser of water.
To be continued
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