Chapter 13

With no shared language available, all she could do under the gaze of Prince Anthony's blood-red eyes was shake her head desperately in refusal.

And Anthony wore the expression of a man who has decided the matter: I'm aware you find it unpleasant. Fine. It's unpleasant. Eat it enough times and you'll get used to it.

And just as this threatened to continue, salvation arrived in the form of Patricia.

Patricia, hair somewhat wild, carrying a stack of antique volumes heavy enough to kill a man, muttering to herself and paying attention to nobody, walked into the rigid atmosphere of the hall.

"Right. My esteemed Lord Anthony." She kept going. "That iron discipline of yours from the army, the you will finish your plate approach, is not going to work here."

"You have to understand that Earth humans are an extremely fussy organism where food is concerned. She is not one of the Blood and obviously cannot adapt to our food. This is as absurd as expecting you to sustain yourself on those sulfur-rich hard leaves from Ferrous."

"Spare me the revolting comparisons, Patricia. All those years of etiquette instruction, entirely wasted. From the sound of it you already know what she can eat. Let's hear it." Anthony tapped a finger on the tabletop, indicating she should sit and explain.

Patricia threw a grateful and flirtatious look at Mark, who had pulled out her chair, spread every one of her antique volumes across the table, sat down, and delivered her conclusion. "Simply put, human food comes in two categories. One: the corpses of animals. Two: the corpses of plants."

Prince Anthony merely raised an eyebrow very slightly, indicating she should continue.

The rest of the Blood were less composed. A small disturbance went around the room immediately.

More than a few servers looked at Mary in astonishment, wearing expressions that said clearly: that's barbaric.

"The corpses of... animals?" Anthony narrowed his eyes, examining the woman across the table, who was blinking blankly. "With that build and those teeth? I find that difficult to picture."

"Don't underestimate her, Lord Anthony." Patricia picked it up, beaming. "Earth humans are not physically formidable, but they are a famously intelligent species, extremely skilled at tool-making and at cooperative action. In point of fact, right up until the destruction of Earth, there was not a single species on that planet capable of genuinely contending with humans."

She paused, then delivered the summary in an easy tone. "Which is to say that on Earth, every organism was a potential human food source."

Mary, still blank-faced and sitting there, became aware that the looks now falling on her from around the room had acquired something faintly, distinctly like... respect for an apex predator.

Patricia continued to report at extraordinary speed while turning pages. "In particular, the group to which the human in front of you belongs. By the historical record, this may be a branch highly representative in the areas of ingredient fusion and fast-food culture. They aren't necessarily noted for attempting the most bizarre ingredients. Their most striking characteristic is a formidable capacity for cultural integration and commercialization. They excel at taking dietary elements from every corner of their world, modifying them, recombining them, and pushing them out globally. More importantly, they developed an extraordinarily efficient standardized system of food production and supply, which made complex flavors remarkably convenient to obtain. In a sense they did not develop the handling of food into an art. They developed making food convenient, appealing and ubiquitous into a powerful industry and a global cultural phenomenon."

At this point Patricia blinked with real excitement. "Isn't that fascinating? A civilization that didn't fixate on exploring the boundaries of food, and instead invented an entirely new model for distributing it rapidly. For us, cooking equals extraction. Their core competency looks more like efficient extraction, standardized synthesis and global distribution. Ah, observing the survival strategies of different civilizations is genuinely delightful."

"But surely all of those Earth species no longer exist?" Mark raised a practical question. "Is there anything on Thorne she can actually eat?"

Patricia lifted an eyebrow. "By my research, Earth humans adapt very well. If it's carbon-based it's essentially on the menu. As for flavor, their technique is sophisticated. They'll find a way to make it taste good."

"By what method?" Prince Anthony asked.

"Primarily a chemical reaction called fire, I believe. The historical material is extremely thin. A great deal of this is inference. The specific operation isn't clear to me."

"Fire." Prince Anthony considered it for a moment, then raised a hand and summoned the court's dragon handler. "Bring me a Gakadragon. Choose one with strong flame capability."

And so...

Hm?

Hold on.

Mary stood, open-mouthed, between two toes of an enormous beast, listened to Patricia's translation, and pointed a shaking finger at the twenty-meter-tall creature above her, which was roaring at the sky and breathing like thunder. Her lips trembled. "He — he wants me to use — to use this one — to cook?"

Mary was an only child.

Her family hadn't spoiled her exactly, but they genuinely hadn't had her doing much work in the kitchen.

Thrown into one, she could probably produce a technically undemanding omelet, or something even less demanding: instant macaroni tipped out of a packet.

Cooking with a live fire-breathing dragon, an art requiring extraordinary nerve and technique, was entirely beyond her.

But Mary had her own strengths, and they were the plainest survival wisdom ordinary people have possessed for a thousand years: make do.

For instance. No electric light? Use a flashlight.

No flashlight? Light a candle.

No candle? Burn some branches.

No fire at all? Borrow somebody else's. There are always more methods than there are problems.

Mary had no ability to use a fire-breathing dragon as a stove. But she quickly identified this beast's other value.

Because that dragon looked like it had a great deal of meat on it.

She licked her lips without thinking about it, ran her eyes back and forth across the thick hind legs and the rib section, then turned to Patricia and explained with a combination of gestures and vocabulary.

When Patricia understood, she raised her eyebrows in surprise, and something admiring came onto her face.

Alien efficiency is a marvel.

Before long the things Mary had requested were delivered.

Under the curious observation of the assembled Blood, Mary first picked up a knife giving off a faint blue light.

She swung it casually and the corner of a table made of hardened metal fell off.

Extremely sharp.

What had this knife previously been for?