Chapter 349: Chopping Onions

Chapter 349: Chopping Onions

Damicar was on his knees, really leaning back into the bawling. He wasnt in pain, but something had properly upset him.

In these sorts of situations, you cant assume level of distress equates to seriousness of cause. You get just as many tears per square attention-seeker when someones loved one dies as when their football team gets robbed in a major cup final.

What did you do? I said to Laney. Damicar was incoherent, doing his impression of Jodie Foster in the classic movie Nell.

Ahh mow nik chick fil a leeeesbian.

Why do you assume it was I who caused the poor boy to lose his composure? It is very rare for someone as universally beloved as myself to cause any sort of turmoil. It could have been one of these degenerate islanders.

Not producing enough turmoil was never going to be an issue for Laney. She was a turmoil factory.

The islanders didnt seem very impressed with the accusation they were degenerates, but what were they going to do, point to the wonderfully presented garnish on their plate of human liver and kidneys?

Laney responded to the cold looks in her customary way, which is to say, she redefined it to suit her own way of thinking.

And please stop drooling like that. Yes, I would be delicious, but I am forbidden meat. Your master has staked his claim already. Forbidden. Meat. Now she was talking to them like a pack of dogs with eyes on her packet of biscuits (which she was one biscuit short of).

I am not their master, and I havent forbidden them from eating you, I said. Now, be quiet. Damicar, calm down. Whatever happened, its okay, we can fix it. He wasnt responding. His mouth was open with strings of saliva connecting his upper and lower lips, snot streaming from his nose, and his eyes all red and puffy.

Here, I took out the doll of Damicar that Mrs Somya had made. Show me on the voodoo doll where the nasty girl touched you.

One of the reasons I was reluctant to change my shabby clothes for a more impressive set were the pockets. My trousers had loads of them, and I made it a habit to load them with whatever shit I came across. You never knew when it might come in handy. It made for some odd bulges, but then I had those even when my pockets were empty.

Damicar momentarily paused his descent into trauma-induced anguish to look at the doll. Id stuck the arm back on as best I could by stuffing it into the tightly woven straw his body was made of so it looked like him again.

He reached out a trembling finger and poked his effigy in the tummy area.

Using a voodoo doll for this purpose was probably not a great idea. You would have thought the arm falling off would have broken its effectiveness. Nope.

Damicar let out a sharp groan and doubled over, his forehead slamming into the sand. Not what I had in mind, but at least it provided some new information.

Did you do something to his stomach? I said to Laney.

Certainly not. We havent been physical in any way, Im not that sort of woman.

You arent any sort of woman. What happened while I was gone?

Cooking, said Laney. Lots of cooking. And I graciously put aside my right of leadership by birth, which I have oodles and oodles of, and acted as his assistant. Her eyes widened. Hard to believe, I know. No more princess and peasant, we were simply commoner and much more important lady. He added the ingredients, I added the seasoning.

Damicar rose up from his self-inflicted winding I couldnt be held responsible for simply providing the opportunity with a primal wail.

Thats why youre upset? Because she added too much salt to your recipe? Fucking chefs who think theyre artists It doesnt matter how much time it takes to make, it all comes out the same from the other end.

Laney leaned in, her face a picture of faux-concern. Do you think he may have become distressed because I improved upon his efforts? Its a common reaction from those around me when I show them how to do things properly.

Why are you even here, Laney? Shouldnt you be on the walls of Fengarad demoralising the troops?

Laney fixed me with a narrow-eyed stare. If you mean my absence will leave the men and women of the Fengarad army disheartened, then yes you are correct. No shift in reality was too wrenching for Laney to pull off. But I was sent here as a special envoy.

No, because she can have you executed.

She was over with the islanders, getting them into orderly lines, occasionally berating them for salivating in her presence. They werent looking at her with hungry eyes, just resentment.

I have things to do, Damicar, and Ill need your help.

You spoke with the Council?

I did. Lovely people. Theyre going to do their best to try and get me killed. We, on the other hand, will show them their best isnt good enough. Right?

Damicar nodded. My ability to inspire the troops was almost as well-honed as Laneys.

What happened to Richina, by the way? There was no sign of Lazarus-in-a-toga.

She returned to the shrine to wait for you. She said you would go there once you returned.

Yeah, but that can wait.

She was right, that was where I meant to go, but I needed to take care of a few things first. Things that would take time to get ready, so had to be started as soon as possible.

I hadnt spoken to Wesley up until now because I had a habit of speaking out loud to her without realising it, and I didnt want to be overheard. Being aware of a problem is the first step to a solution, but solutions arent always easy to come by. In that case, the next step is to not expose the vulnerability in public.

Once I got back into the shrine, I would be able to speak freely, to her and to Arthur. I had a question or seventeen. First, though, I wanted to speak to Captain Somya.

Lets go find the Captain and tell him he can stand down, I said to Damicar. Giving him something to do helped pull Damicar back together after the ordeal of having too much salt and pepper imposed on him against his will.

I left Laney in charge, much to her delight, and the islanders dismay. I was bringing justice to those in need of correction, like the UN, only effective. I might even bring civilisation to this island of zero morality. So far, with Damicars help, Id got them to stop eating raw human flesh and start cooking it with herbs and spices. It was only a short step from there to the kind of behaviour acceptable in France, and from there, civilised society was within sight.

Damicar cheered up the further away we got from his nemesis. He even picked a few plants as we walked, crushing leaves between his fingers and sniffing them. Which reminded me of one of the questions Id been pondering.

That powder you found, the one that allowed the islanders to absorb the poison, what was it?

Anything to do with his culinary obsession he was, of course, happy to talk about. It is from a mythical plant, or at least I believed it to be, called Godsbane. It has a very distinctive scent, described as pigs armpit in the books Ive read, which I recognised immediately. I was quite shocked to find it existed.

And you have to eat someone whos eaten it to get the effect? This had been how it was explained to me. It sounded ridiculous.

Its supposed to be the food of a mythical creature I dont know if it too exists called the golden wing. It digests godsbane and regurgitates it to its chicks, or so the legend goes. The golden wing is a huge raptor that is immune to all hurt and pain. Its supposed to be immortal, but no ones ever seen one as far as I know. Ive never heard of it working on people.

Despite what Arthur had told me, I still suspected his true goal was to achieve some kind of godhood. Perhaps making people immortal was part of that, and the islanders were his guinea pigs.

You cant think of another way of using it? I asked Damicar. If its that powerful, could we find another application?

I have been thinking about that since I found that sample. Perhaps if I could study the plant itself I asked some of the island people where they procured it from, but they wouldnt tell me. A secret on an island of secrets.

Yep, one more for the list.

We found the captain back at the cove. His men were ready to launch the boat to come to my rescue, or row out to sea. He showed no reaction at my return other than a nod. His mother sat by a fire, even though it was baking hot. She was staring blindly into the flames while her fingers wove dry grass into dolls, as Id asked her. I had a few more to add to the list.

The Council had been smart to keep their faces hidden. It made it impossible for me to get voodoo dolls of them made, but they should have done the same for the rest of their crew. The captain of their ship, for example.