The Last Banquet of Temporal Confections Read online

  There is an art to knowing what people need. Oh, they would all take the flatbread if they could, but do they need it?

  At first they do not advertise that there is anything special about some of the pastries in their shop. Danny is still working out the strengths and flavors. The first few pastries and confections come with barely a hint, a flash. A memory easily dismissed as natural. The sort of thing that keeps people returning to a bakery where they feel so content, so rejuvenated. So understood. With the increased income, Saffron arranges the shop and sews new curtains and freshens the paint. She hires Rosie to work alongside them, and that gives Danny more time to develop the recipes, strengthen the flavors. Rosie is a natural third point to their triangle; her open, gregarious warmth is a fire they kindle themselves by. She helps them turn the bakery from a shop to a café ; she encourages customers not to just buy their regular bread and go, but to sit and linger, try that extra morsel of unusual pastry and feel at peace.

  This morning, Rosie is laughing with a regular about something that happened last night. Rosie has changed the last two years; her curls are the same, but she has swapped her ribbons and laces for steel-toed boots and the cry of Resistance.

  Saffron understands that the new Regent Michal, at first so sympathetic, so distraught about the sudden treachery of Lord Searle, has slowly been closing his velvet glove around the city. She understands that there have been rumors of people taken. Rumors of Bad Things. But she only has one sister, and rumors are not here and now, they are not the shop and bread and cheese and chairs.

  She pulls Rosie behind the counter, by the trays of day-old regular bread, and says as much.

  Rosie’s chin sets. It is not the first time they’ve had this conversation. “I have to do something,” she tells Saffron. She drops her voice. “You know the little print shop, down the street?”

  The printer. An outspoken, angry man. Yes.

  “You know they took him, Saffy. Tortured him. Just for printing the truth about what’s been happening to the girls. The disappearances—”

  “Who says, though?” says Saffron, who can’t believe in things happening to people she knows.

  Rosie gives her a look. “His body was all covered up at the hanging. So you wouldn’t see what had been done to him. I saw—”

  “You went there?”

  “I can’t stay here, safe in a bakery,” says Rosie, voice rising. “I have to try.”

  “We are doing good work here,” Saffron says, helplessly.

  Rosie shakes her head. “This is not the only good work there is to be done. Can’t you see that?”

  They are close to understanding each other, but then Saffron lets slip: “Can’t someone else do that work?” and that makes Rosie shake her head, and stomp away, off to heft some flour bags around, take out her frustration.

  Yes, Rosie has changed. Or no, not changed, perhaps, but grown up. Matured into something that was there all along.

  She can’t just stay in her bakery, Rosie says. But why not? Why can’t there be room for someone who takes care of people, one person at a time? Who feeds them bread for their bodies and confections for their souls and does good work on a single, individual level? Saffron is heavy with resentment, she is prickly with the wish to prove Rosie wrong.

  That is when the enforcer comes in.

  He wears the emblem of the palace; the R of the Regency, the eagle of the Duke. He saunters up and says politely, “We have reports of miscreants disturbing the peace last night.”

  “Everything is just fine here,” Saffron says.

  “And your employees?” he says. “Where were they?”

  “We have but one,” she says, “and she is a law-abiding citizen.” Her heart is thumping inside and he can surely see her pallor. What did Rosie do? For that is her first thought, that Rosie and her group of troublemaker friends must have done something. This man would not be here for nothing. Around the store she sees the customers who have finished their pastries quietly slipping away, their peace at an end.

  The enforcer’s eyes follow her gaze; he looks languidly around the room like a bored cat. “This is a sort of opium den, is it?” he says, gesturing at a man’s slack face.

  “Merely a bakery,” Saffron says.

  “Please produce your license,” he says, more politely yet, and she understands how to do this part, this part is rote. She gets it from the back room, a few steps away through that curtain. Her eyes sweep the room for Danny—surely Danny will know what to do—but he is out on a buying errand, and she sees only her sister, crouched and silent, hiding behind a barrel of flour.

  Numbly she returns, shows the man the card that should make him leave.

  He barely looks at it, lets it fall to the counter. “Please produce your sister,” he says, and this is the point she cannot forgive herself for, even as it happens.

  I must not tell him where she is, she thinks. But she is too used to being law-abiding, and she has never tried to become good at deception. Her mouth hangs open for too long, her eyes flick to the wrong side. “I have not seen her today,” she stammers at last, and the enforcer just laughs at her.

  He pushes past to the back, and he pulls her sister out. Rosie reams him with a pan, and then he casually punches her in the stomach, so hard she doubles over, and he drags her out, even as Saffron runs after them, armed with nothing. He throws her into a carriage—pushes Saffron down into the muck of the street—and then they are gone, and Saffron is weeping.

  The scene jumps forward—another linked memory. Danny finding her in the streets, near the castle. Saffron ran after the carriage until she couldn’t run anymore, then she plodded after it till she reached its entrance to the gates, and when they would not let her in, she sunk down and stayed there. She doesn’t deserve to leave the muck, because she failed to save Rosie.

  Another jump forward, because the hanging does not happen until an entire week later. The body is fully clothed, down to long sleeves and long gloves that Rosie was not wearing when she left. Saffron is left to imagine everything the cloth is hiding. Drawn iron wire fences the hanging square; it cuts red lines into Saffron’s palms. Around her the scent of lilacs blooms thick and sweet. It is spring.

  * * *

  Saffron comes back to herself in the banquet room, and her eyes are wet. She sits up straighter, calmly blots her eyes with her napkin. “The Rose-Pepper Shortbread of Sweetness Lost will show you someone you miss,” she says to the table. “All such sweet memories are tinged with sorrow.”

  She nods to the servitor to take her plate to the Duke, smiles warmly at the table to put them at ease. “You will find notes of citrus and almond in the tasting,” she says. “We find it is one of the most popular pastries among the elderly.”

  “I certainly hope you are not insinuating anything,” says the Duke, and then he laughs, and then they all do.

  They take their bites and Saffron breathes out, concentrating on what Danny has done. Three jumps this time. Usually she sees just the bakery, or just the carriage, or just the hanging. Yet somehow he has strung memories together, finding a way to let the whole terrible story unfold.

  If she had seen a fourth memory, it might well have been the aftermath. For it is a day not long after that when Danny starts experimenting on what he will call the bitter pastries. Not bitter in flavor, necessarily. Certainly deeper in flavor, more profound notes in the tasting. Memories that are both sweet and sour. Memories with a purpose.

  The first one has a rose flavor, in honor of her sister.

  Rosie is not the only person Saffron has lost in her life—her parents have both passed away—but she only ever sees Rosie when she eats the shortbread. She suspects that its creation is too inextricably bound up with her sister for her to ever see another. For awhile, there were many Seventhdays that she dedicated to nothing but the rose-pepper shortbread and her grief.

  Many months later, when she is capable of feeling anything more than numb, Saffron takes her place again at th
e front of the shop. She understands then that this recipe is what she was lacking to give the customers. Not all customers can be helped with a fennel-bright flatbread, a happy moment. There are many who need a more profound searching into their past.

  Around her now the nobles return from their journey, their faces a dizzying array of sadness, happiness, regret. It is a complex pastry.

  The next food course is served—some sort of little trussed-up birds, but Saffron barely notices. She is elsewhere, considering what Danny has shown her, considering what next is to come.

  She is not surprised when the silver bell rings and out comes the fourth of Danny’s creations tonight, another bitter pastry. It is not one that Danny has yet showcased at the castle. Only now does it make its appearance, and her heart quickens, her lips pucker, her mouth salivates for the taste.

  Lemon Tart of Profound Regret

  It is an ordinary day in the bakery, and Saffron looks around at her regulars with satisfaction. Everything they have worked for, coming to fruition. She is closer to contentment, closer to peace than she has been in over a year. The loss of her sister will never leave her, but it is a dull ache these days that only sometimes turns sharp, breaks her down in the middle of the bakery, hand on a bag of flour. The bakery has found a new normal, and there are customers to help.

  The regulars, and she knows them by their orders.

  Apple Turnover of Happier Times, aka, the bent old woman in the moth-eaten furs. Saffron saves the curtained alcove for her, and for the fifteen minutes it takes to eat that pastry, she’s lost in a haze of remembering. Children, thinks Danny, but Saffron thinks grandchildren. Either way she lost them during the brief, bloody uprising last spring, they agree on that.

  Lavender Macaron of Long-Ago Flirtations, aka the angular man who still owns two silk scarves, despite the ever-increasing privations, despite the shabbiness of his old suit. He rotates the scarves day by day; green-stripe, violet dots. He takes tea with his macaron, and his lips curl in pleasure while he remembers. Obviously it’s a lover, but Danny is sure the lover disappeared in some dramatic way; attacking the palace, or daring to print anti-propaganda sheets. To have something worth remembering, you have to live first, says Danny, and then he looks sadly at his flour-dusted arms, knowing that he only runs a bakery.

  Lemon Tart of Profound Regret, that’s the sad one. She’s young, too young to have so much Profound Regret in her life. But she comes every day at ten, testing her sorrow. Profound Regret shows you the biggest mistake you made, the one you brood over, and there are two kinds of people who buy it. The ones that make Saffron’s heart gladden are the ones who buy it infrequently. They descend into the despair of knowing what they did, just as fresh as the day it happened.

  Then they go off and change, because of what they saw.

  Saffron knows, because they come back to tell her. Not right at first. But they come back, several months later, and buy the tart again. And this time they see something else. Something less terrible. That’s how they know they’ve moved on.

  Those are the ones Danny says the whole shop is worth it for. He’d do it all again. Some days it seems like you’re doing so little, but when he helps one of those people, his whole life is justified. On days that are really tough—the stories told about the Duke are worse than usual, the taxes are due, the Profound Regrets are too deep—Danny eats one of his Honey Chocolates of Well-Deserved Pride. He says it always shows him those moments, the ones when he helped people.

  Their current Lemon Tart comes day after day. She’s not moving on. Danny thinks Saffron should intentionally mix up her order, give her a Honey Chocolate or an Apple Turnover and see if that helps her mindset change. Saffron is considering the merits of this when he comes in.

  He’s supposed to be incognito but Saffron knows him instantly. She’s seen enough Resistance flyers to know how the Duke disguises himself when he wants to move around the city. His red hair is slicked back under a hooded cloak.

  She tries not to start, but her body betrays her. She flushes, angry and scared all at once, and she knows he sees it.

  “I have a mind to try one of your Honey Chocolates,” he says smoothly.

  Her fingers are shaking as she reaches for it. This man of all men does not deserve to relive his best moments. She has thought for so long of Resistance. She could reach for the Mint Chocolate of Deep Despair, at least. After he tastes it, he will know that mint is not honey, and he will punish her somehow—execute her? Torture her, like her sister? But first he will suffer. Oh, he will suffer.

  But it would not just be Saffron who suffers. It would be Danny. It would be the part-time employees. It would be the customers, for she is not naive enough to think that he would not seek his wrath on all who saw his humiliation. He must squash any hint of rebellion.

  Or you are afraid, says a smaller voice still.

  Saffron reaches for the chocolates and his eyes are heavy on hers; it seems he knows her thoughts. She knows why he comes unannounced. So she cannot slip him poison, not unless she has planned for this moment and made an entire tray of poisoned chocolates, and she has not.

  “I am most delighted to sample what I have asked for,” he says, and there is a world of meaning in that tongue.

  Her eyes close—her fingers close on the wrapper around the chocolate, bring it up. She puts it on the plate with nerveless fingers.

  It is the Honey Chocolate.

  Her voice shakes as she tells him the price. Her moment has come, her moment has gone.

  The Duke takes the chocolate, sits down at a table in the corner. A young man leans casually against the wall, fiddling with his belt knife. He doesn’t fool Saffron. The Duke goes off into a haze of remembering and for eight heartstopping minutes she cleans the counter and tends to the customers as the Duke looks off in the distance and the young man watches the two of them, his eyes flicking back and forth, watching to see if the bakery worker has lied to the Duke.

  She regrets her choice already. She does not need a Lemon Tart to know that.

  She regrets it even more when, two nights later, the Duke’s guards take Danny out of their bed in the middle of the night.

  She is left to make her own way to the castle and offer herself up as sacrifice. A willing check on any rebellious tendencies my Danny might have. To sell herself to the Traitor King.

  A common food-taster.

  * * *

  Saffron blinks back tears. She has not seen Danny in so long. The Duke does not trust them together. He has taken Saffron’s measure—correctly assessed her as ineffectual, not a threat. She is plain, ordinary, and the Duke is not so foolish as to spend the coin of her in the wrong place. She is much more valuable alive and whole and as a check on Danny. So the Duke left her free rein of the upstairs servants’ quarters—as long as she does not enter the second kitchen. The second kitchen was turned over to Danny; his tools and herbs brought from the bakery, and he is confined to it. The only way they can communicate is through the confections themselves. There is always at least one confection during a meal that he knows will call up a sweet memory of the two of them—something she can feast upon for a week, and remember.

  But this banquet has been leading her step by step forward, as if in a story. Both she and Danny know the purpose of the Lemon Tart too well. She has been reminded of how she failed to act, which must mean that he is prompting her that she will need to act. But in what way?

  Perhaps it is poison, she thinks. Perhaps he is telling her that this is the only way to strike against the Duke. A slow-acting poison; something she will recognize, but must pretend to be fine.

  But she can’t imagine Danny choosing that method, even if she ordered him to. And at this point, she would order him to. She stiffens her spine, watches the nobles eating their own lemon tarts. She has spent a year practicing dissembling. Her courage and her warm smiles will not fail her now. She is ready for whatever comes.

  Or perhaps there is something else he is reminding h
er of. Those small jumps that the pastries have been taking. The Lemon Tart memory skipping ahead, to Danny’s disappearance, to her own application at the castle. Those are not part of the original memory. They are linked somehow, just as she saw with the crostini, with the shortbread. Not enough that anyone would notice, because no one understands the subtleties of how the pastries work, not like she and Danny. Were those extra memories there to warn her of something specific?

  But maybe that is not it, either. Sometimes she thinks she is going mad. Danny is long gone, and these pastries are normal pastries done by a normal pastry chef, their memories some collective dream that she convinces the nobles to believe in, once a week.

  The cheese plate comes and goes while she feels more and more adrift, lost in her own memories, wishful thinking, and nonsense. These banquets will go on for eternity, and she will eat lemon tarts of regret forever, and nothing will change.

  For now the after-dinner liqueurs are being passed around, the meal is over, and there has been no dramatic change tonight. She is disappointed; she wants the Duke gone so badly that she almost feels she will run at him herself, with the silver fork. See what damage she can do before they kill her. Danny was always the patient one, the one performing the endless tweaking of recipes in search of the correct formula, the one able to wait until the exact moment. Cooking is all about timing.

  Ah, but wait. There is one more plate. Her heart quickens—

  But she can tell at a glance it is a chocolate, a dark chocolate-shelled truffle with an amber-colored drop at the top.

  The Honey Chocolate of Well-Deserved Pride.

  It makes her sick to think of the Duke eating this confection. Who knows what sort of disgusting thing the Duke will find pride in tonight?