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“Don’t try to palm this off on Adam. You must be new here, otherwise you’d know no one sits down on feast days. We need everybody we’ve got to get the meals out. The bloody crows have staked out a couple of my best girls on the main table to have their way with, but no more coming to supply the bastards with food. Come along now.” She pulled me to my feet, then paused for a second by an internal door in the kitchen, listening to the dull roar coming from beyond it. “If we don’t get the food out there fast, there’ll be a bloody riot.”
“But my clothes…” I said, looking down at the sauce stained shirt I was wearing.
“Don’t think that’ll be enough to excuse you. Here now.” She reached over to unhook a voluminous white pinafore from beside the door. “Now tie your hair up neater than that and put one of these on.” She passed me something that looked like a cloth bathing cap but with an extensive frill that fell in my eyes when I pulled it on. “Very good, now come on.”
The noise got louder as she opened the door, directing me down a dark corridor that led into a serving area. Women loaded their arms up with big platters of various delicacies. I nodded when I looked at it, they were bigger than I was used to, but I’d learned the fine art of carrying six plates at the same time long ago, so one or two of these couldn’t be too hard. Then I saw the women returning from serving.
“They’re feral today,” one woman snapped as she entered the room. She was tugging the pieces of her pinafore back into place, using the waist tie to secure it, but I could still see the raking red marks along her neck and shoulders. “Poor Annie… We’ll have to break the news to her mother.”
“She knew what she was doing, sending her daughter to work the banquet. The money’ll help her dry her tears,” the original woman said, passing her another platter. “Well, new girl, ready to earn your hazard pay?”
Was I? I didn’t need to do any of this. This woman was human, she didn’t have the strength to compel me to do anything, and anyway, a quick check in with Adam would have set her straight. I looked to the open doorway the other women entered and disappeared through, heard the waves of raucous noise coming from it, and wondered. We’d talked about the Volken, seen them in visions, plotted and planned our way around them, but apart from those we saw at the gate and passed as we walked to the kitchens, I’d seen little of them. Who were these people that threatened my home? Why were they like this? The guys had taken point all the way here, but now it was as if all my experience dealing with dickhead customers at the diner had come to this. I could use my skills as a waitress to deliver some platters and get some real information to report back to the guys. I reached over and grabbed the nearest platter, hoisting it to my shoulder.
The woman who’d dragged me here nodded grimly, then pointed a finger to the door. “Take that to the nobs at the high table. That’s several thousand marks of fish eggs on there, though the gods only know why anyone would pay so much for it. Be careful not to drop it, and be in and out, no matter what you see. You tarry, you’re next. Lizzy, show her where to go.”
There’s a curious kind of unreality that comes from watching films like Schindler’s List. There’s the black and white thing, and the differences in people’s dress and speech, but mostly it's the conflicting awareness of watching something that should be the fare of some kind of gore-porn film and knowing it actually happened. People’s brains blown out for arbitrary reasons, using others as target practice, hauling kids away to be gassed, people hiding in latrines full of piss and shit to avoid it, all both completely terrifying and somehow prosaic as it happens. Over and over, people’s lives are ruined or ended, and for what? What did the Nazis achieve with this completely wanton massacre?
There was something of that feel when I walked in. The first things I noticed were the noise and the many, many bodies, sitting at long tables complete with pristine white tablecloths and shining metal cutlery. Great gleaming tankards were at every place setting, and large bottles of wine and spirits were scattered all over the tables. Volken, each in their best armour, every single piece gleaming with the kind of dull, well-oiled look of conditioned leather, drank and filled theirs and their comrades’ cups with gusto.
Nothing too untoward about that. People get boisterous at feasts.
Then there were the crystals. Great clusters, like those we had pulled from the ruins only to be taken by the Uldariel, were mounted on elaborate plinths. They marked each quadrant of the room, glowing softly, as did the many smaller ones the men wore. The largest was in the centre, carved into the form of Lonan, his head thrown back, frozen mid howl.
But in contrast with all this food and drink and geologic formations and art were the screams and the specially designed tables.
“Come on,” Lizzy said, giving me a nudge. “You stare, you might be next.”
I snuck looks at them as I walked to the far end of the room, past row after row of Volken. There was a large dais with bigger tables, more elaborate glassware, and what must be finer wine decanted into bottles, and the Volken that sat there had many small silver insignias to indicate whatever special rank they possessed. I drew on all my previous experiences in hospitality and kept on walking quickly and efficiently towards my target, as serving women were hauled over to what looked like specially designed tables to be tied down and raped.
I admit, I flinched a little as I heard the sound of fabric ripping. Which was weird, since I had heard one screaming her pain since I walked in. I'm not sure why that caught my attention, but it did. Then the other woman’s screams joined her sister’s as they moved to tie her down, her cries mostly muffled by the Volken’s shouts of encouragement and suggestions of what to do to the victims. I regretted my curiosity. If ever the saying ‘curiosity killed the cat’ applied to anyone, it was me.
I kept walking as the surreal nature of what was happening hit me. It wasn’t just the two of them that were being raped. There were quite a few of these tables dotted around the room, each occupied, the crystals flaring dully red in response to the women’s cries and the men’s thrusts. They looked like the eyes of the smoke wolves we’d seen through the portal to Wolflantis, watching me as I passed. If I’d seen just one of the men carrying on like this, I'd have known what to do. I’d have stepped in, crushed the fucker’s throat, and then snapped his spine with all the Tirian given strength I possessed. Instead, I kept walking, because I was blank eyed with shock, because my Tirian paced restlessly inside me but offered no counsel, because there was so fucking many of them and I had no idea how far my strength would carry me. But mostly this—I was surrounded by a culture that absolutely and completely endorsed this behaviour. I scanned the crowd as I walked, seeing but not seeing the looks of amusement, interest, enjoyment. Like predators on a thrill kill, the spectacle of taking away someone's bodily autonomy was wallowed in with gluttonous rapacity. I saw women that were untied slump to the ground—either passed out or dead, I couldn’t tell—but paid no more attention to than a tossed napkin.
“Move it, new girl,” Lizzy said. “Stop dilly dallying. No one spends any more time here than is needed. So get that food to the table, and then run back to the serving area.”
My heart broke into a thousand pieces as I did just that. All of a sudden, my attention was wholly and solely on the rapid slap of my slippers as I walked, the swish of my pinafore. Volken turned to see me pass and reached out, but then let me pass when they saw what I was toting. I did not earn any consideration in myself, but the food of whoever the elites were here did. I followed the unspoken rule here and moved up the steps with my head down, avoiding all eye contact as I moved swiftly across the stage, my footsteps echoing louder on the hollow wood structure, and then zeroed in on the largest available space on the high table, right in the centre.
“So, you really think this attack is going to do the trick? I heard that the blasted women have withdrawn all their minions behind that bloody portal of theirs. What on earth is our target if it’s a whole dimension away?”
My ears pricked up as I deposited the platter without a sound, then started removing empty platters and consolidating the contents of the others to create more space.
“Dear boy, you lack faith. We have never really attempted to broach the thing in any major way. I find it highly unlikely that whatever puny magics the bitches have mustered would withstand the full force of the Volken host and our lord. No, we’ve let them be for some time—a mistake if you ask me—and they have spread like any other vermin. Sourcing the nest of a pest always takes work, but I do not believe it beyond our capabilities.”
“Well, we will see, Lian. Once the Grand Rite is at its end, faith or not, we will know how strong the women’s powers are.”
I slid the empty platters onto my arm and then turned to leave.
“Wait!”
He didn’t specify who needed to wait, but I could only assume it was me, since the other serving girls were up at the other end of the dais. I
stood stock still and did as I had been told—don’t move, keep my eyes down, only speak when spoken to.
“How may I serve you, m’lords?”
The words came easily for something that felt like ash in my mouth. I could dimly hear the women’s screaming trail off into a gurgle, but my own ragged breath overrode it all, filling me with shame. I stood still and was a good little girl, because I’d been dumb enough to walk into the wolf’s den.
“Well, well, it seems that Maud has finally started instilling some manners in her girls. What do you think, gentlemen? This one to ring in the new year?”
