The dining room received them in light turned down to the gleam of old gold. Magelight spheres in wrought settings burned at half strength, and the long polished table of dark walnut swam in that glow like an altar. It could have seated a dozen guests. Instead of place settings, four naked girls lay full length on the cool polish.
One opposite each chair, breathing so shallowly they seemed part of the service. Nothing covered their skin but food and ice. The thinnest ribbons of cured meat along the collarbones, berries in the hollows of the thighs, neat spheres of ricotta on the bellies. Mounds of crushed ice were melting on their breasts, and the meltwater gathered in their navels and broke away in runnels onto the polish. The girls gazed absently at the ceiling, where painted nymphs cavorted amid the gilt. The living plates studied the painted ones, and the painted ones had the better luck.
It smelled of the sea off the oysters and of the rose-water the living porcelain had been wiped with. Under the ceiling, air driven by cooling charms kept up a hum on the edge of hearing.
Along the table, behind the tall chair-backs, four serving girls waited, wrapped like presents. Sleeveless blouses, buttoned to the throat, strained across their chests. Narrow black skirts to the knee, cinched by starched aprons tied hard.
Kali had claimed the armchair by the window, one leg hooked over the armrest, and was breaking a pomegranate apart, prising out the dark seeds with a fingernail, one by one. Naama stood shadow-still at Izabella's shoulder.
"Brother." Izabella tipped a hand toward the table. "We've been waiting for you."
"You did send for me." Jean drew out a chair for Sophie and took his own beside her.
"No, I mean before. Before you knocked us flat with your news. I wanted your help choosing whom to send to the Scarlet Muse trials. This year I'm taking the cup off that bitch Velasco."
"What is there to choose?" Felix heaved a martyr's sigh. "Who raises the daughters of a house better than a devoted father? My Olga and Aiko stand head and shoulders above your girls."
"We'll see what they're worth against my Hilda and Aliya. First to three wins." Izabella shut the debate like a fan.
Jean had known that look since the days his sister used to filch sweets for them both from the top shelf of the pantry. He had never learned to refuse it then. He could not now.
"Very well, sister. Let's play."
The hosts sat opposite their guests. Behind Felix's chair stood his red-haired favourite, Olga. Aiko fell to Izabella, a slim, exotic brunette. Behind Sophie's chair Aliya took her place, a quiet girl with thin wrists who had grown up with her in this house. And at Jean's back stood Hilda, a tall blonde, and he felt the warmth of her body before he heard her breathe.
"Good girls understand their parents without words. Isn't that so, my dear?"
Naama rolled her eyes. Kali leaned forward, studying the red demoness over her pomegranate, but Naama withdrew deeper into the shadow and bowed her head.
"They are the face of this family," Izabella said, minting every word. "Daughters of the House must be flawless."
"Then let the first round be a contest of attentiveness." Felix rubbed his palms together. "None of us says what he wants. We talk only among ourselves. Daughters, listen and watch. Your task is to work out what pleases the one you serve tonight. Guess wrong and you are out of the game."
"Sly old fox," Izabella snorted. "It's Olga serving you tonight."
"And your Aliya grew up at Sophie's side, but you don't hear me complaining," Felix parried. "What is it, my dear? Afraid to lose?"
Instead of answering, Izabella turned to her daughter.
"Sophie, everything here is your favourite. The cook went to the market himself for the oysters."
"Oysters are too slimy, Mama." Sophie pushed the tender flesh away with a look.
"But they feed a woman's power." Izabella's smile went no deeper than her lips. "We wouldn't want Jean going hungry, would we?"
Aiko detached herself from her mistress's chair. The whole exchange of barbs had gone past her ears; she had fished two words out of it, a pearl out of the shell. A woman's power. Slices of camembert lay on the plate-girl's mons. Aiko lifted one free and served it to her mistress on a thin crisp of bread.
"Oh, Mama, I wish I had your problems." Sophie surveyed her father's plate. "And Father, I see, has stopped watching his figure altogether. Smoked brisket, as always?"
"Meat gives strength, sweetheart." Felix slapped his considerable shoulders. "Only your mother can live on fruit and wine."
"Was it I who killed the bottle of Cairene at breakfast? You never touched the brie. Guzzled the lot straight down."
"Sister, I can't believe I'm defending Felix, but it was Cairene," Jean put in. "It wants nothing with it but nuts. Eating alongside it only spoils the wine. Well. Perhaps one strip of cured venison."
On the last words, Jean cut a glance at Sophie.
Olga was already moving. The master had pinned the fruit on his wife; that meant he wanted it himself. She took a fig from the thigh of her plate and offered it on an open palm, the way one offers sugar to a horse. Felix sank his teeth in, gave a low blissful rumble, and ran his hand up her thigh.
"Clever girl, daughter." He smoothed his palm over her backside and left it there, kneading. "Listen to your brother, my dear. Whatever else the man lacks, it isn't taste."
"Oh yes." Izabella leaned in. "There's something special here for him. Pheasant pâté with truffles. Your favourite, Jean. Remember? Every year on your birthday..."
"A remarkable memory, Mama, at your age," Sophie slipped in.
Aliya had long since learned to hear what stood behind Sophie's honeyed tones, and knew that the sweeter the mistress's voice, the tighter the teeth behind that smile. She had marked where Jean's glance had gone a second earlier, and she laid before Sophie a strip of cured venison you could have cut fruit with. Sophie tore into the meat, table manners forgotten, stripping it fibre by fibre. And, thinking no one saw, she covered the servant's hands with her own and pressed them gently.
Hilda hesitated at Jean's shoulder. He had spoken of nuts. But the mistress had said pâté, and the mistress had known her brother longer than serving girls live. She spread pâté on a crisp of bread and offered it. Jean bit, chewed. Then bit again.
"I haven't eaten this since I was twelve."
"What a pity." Felix's smile spread wide. "It seems your girl doesn't listen to her master, Izabella."
"The first point is yours." Izabella folded her fan. "Daughters, I think you're too warm. Take off your tops and air yourselves."
Hilda unbuttoned her blouse from the throat down, watching Jean while she did it. Her heavy breasts swung free, and the small mole below the right collarbone caught the amber light. Aliya undressed without a sound, folded her blouse on the sideboard, and came back to her place crimson to the collarbones.
"Papa is proud of you, daughters," Felix informed Olga and Aiko.
Jean levelled his breathing by old court habit, drilled into him long before the pact. It worked less well than usual. From the armchair by the window flowed Kali's interest, heady as sweet wine, and all his breeding foundered in it.
"Who's hungry?" Izabella blotted her lips with her napkin. "I think it's time we moved on to the hot course."
"You are so cruel, my dear." Felix shook his head. "Have you no pity for our porcelain? They're our daughters too."
"Girls." Izabella did not so much as glance at him. "Make us plates of cheese on the porcelain for the bisque. The terms are simple. Spill, and you've lost."
The serving girls carried in silver ladles. Molten raclette poured hissing onto the plates' bare bellies and settled in dense rings. Skin flared red faster than the stream could cool, and the girls flinched, breath snagging behind clenched teeth, but not one made a sound, as if the voice were the only thing at this table still theirs to govern.
"Was that necessary? Look at them. They're all red now."
"At the Scarlet Muse they will compete in every discipline. If they can't bear a little pain, they have no business hoping for the cup."
Hilda tilted the silver tureen over the ring on her plate's belly, and thick, steaming seafood bisque poured in. The girl beneath it quivered.
When she had finished, Hilda took a spoon by the tip of its handle and held it up midway between herself and Jean, looking up at him from under her lashes, so that he would have to reach for it himself if he wanted it.
Look how bold, came Kali's thought, seasoned with open glee.
"The soup is very hot, Your Grace. You will need the spoon."
"Well, since you have it." Jean leaned back in his chair, declining her rules. "You'll just have to feed me."
Hilda glowed. She dipped the spoon and brought it to his lips. The bisque scalded his palate, thick, sweet with crab, sharp with saffron. She watched him swallow, breathing faster every time. Izabella observed the feeding without troubling to hide her pleasure.
"With such a powerful ally..." Izabella slid a glance at Kali. The demoness was picking seeds out of her pomegranate and laying them on her tongue one at a time, scarlet juice running down her wrist. "Father will certainly reconsider his decision. You could return to court. Take the position you deserve."
"And what position do you consider I deserve?" Jean accepted another spoonful from Hilda.
"Your place! Your heritage! Look around you." She swept a hand across the room. "This is what our blood obliges. You threw it away seventeen years ago. But now, with a bond like this... Father will restore your name. Sophie's prospects—"
"To become grandfather's next pawn, like you?" Sophie interrupted, raising one eyebrow in exactly the way her uncle did.
Izabella went white. The answer did not come at once.
"I'm only thinking of your future, darling."
"Of my future, or your past, Mother?" Sophie squeezed Jean's wrist under the table. "I would gladly renounce every right to share his fate. If it is good enough for him, it is good enough for me. And tomorrow belongs to the Danteses, you'll see."
Aliya finished last. She left her palms on the table on either side of the plate-girl, bowed her head, and went still.
"Mistress..." The word was a plea. "Will you permit me to take my hands away? Or do you wish... to punish them for their slowness?"
Anticipation crawled along the bond. Sophie sat very straight, looking at the bowed nape of her friend's neck, at the defenceless parting in her dark hair. Reach out. Take.
"What a clever little thing you are," Izabella beamed. "I knew what I was doing when I trusted you with Sophie."
"Aliya. Don't."
"As you command, mistress." Aliya lowered her eyes and took her hands away without a word.
"A draw, I think." Felix tossed his spoon onto the porcelain's belly. "This contest wants an edge. Since you show our daughters no mercy, neither shall I. Shall we have sashimi?"
"Observe that I didn't propose it." Izabella raised both palms.
"Smelled blood, did you?" Felix chuckled.
"Your turn to choose, dear. Do as you like."
"Daughters, serve us sashimi. We'll test your skill and your speed. Last to finish takes no point. Whoever cuts the porcelain answers in blood, fivefold. Whoever serves anything unfit sleeps in the cellar."
Maurice came in with several servants. One pass of his hand through the air lifted the cooled cheese from the girls' bellies, and the servants packed the skin with fresh crushed ice. The plate-girls came up in gooseflesh to their collarbones. Cold now crept over the scalded places. On top went pearl-fleshed scallops, oysters, translucent fillet. Olga was the first to raise the traditional sushi knife, long as a forearm and honed until the edge ran blue.
Four blades went gliding above living bodies.
The plates stopped breathing. Now they were afraid even to tremble.