Archie and Nori returned to the Academy in silence and went into the attic. More than anything, they needed to get away from the cruel, cruel world. The dusty attic was their only sanctuary. Nori sat against the wall as Archie paced back and forth. The attic may have been silent, but in their minds, they were screaming.

Finally, Nori broke the silence, her voice flat and distant as if speaking from a trance. “I’m going to poison the risotto.”

Archie stopped pacing. “What?”

“Fugu. Pufferfish. Prepared incorrectly. They’d all die by midnight.”

“Nori!”

“I could do it.” She nodded to her own words, oblivious to Archie’s protesting. “I could get Tataki to get the fish.”

“Nori!” Archie gave her shoulder a gentle shove to knock her out of her murderous trance. “No! Besides, Tataki told me he only does what his family wants him to do, and I doubt they want to assassinate someone.”

“You’re right…” Nori sighed. She groaned and put her face in her hands. “But we have to do something!”

“What is there to do?”

“We could help her run away.”

“Nori, she’s seven. Where’s she gonna go?” Archie spoke with exasperation and anger, each word battering Nori down.. “You think all of Caviar Court isn’t going to go looking for her? And what about us? We draw attention to her, we draw attention to us, we draw attention to the kulkida risotto, we’re dead.”

“I just…” An ugly sob escaped from her lips. She dug her face deeper into her hands. “I feel so guilty. We’re doing all of this because of me.”

“Nori…”

She looked up at him, tears streaming down her face, strands of black hair stuck in her wet eyelashes. “All because I couldn’t take it! I couldn’t take the way they treated me, so I had to run away! And now…now! That…that pig. I made him that way. And I just passed my fate on to the next little girl.”

Archie didn’t know what to do. He noticed the common trend. Little girl gets beaten. He doesn’t know what to do. Best friend starts crying. He doesn’t know what to do. Everytime someone else got hurt, he froze.

But he had to say something. He had to do something.

“Nori…I think…I think he was always going to become a Glutton. It was, uh…predestination? There’s something about that kind of…wealth. Or maybe it’s that kind of person, but—”

“I can’t talk about this,” Nori interrupted. “I need to sleep. I’ve been so tired lately. Just…we’ll talk about it in the morning.”

But the morning brought no new answers. They considered getting Aubergine involved but decided against it—for the time being at least. To get anyone involved would be to tell them about the kulkida risotto. But maybe life in prison would be worth saving that little girl.

The only thing Archie was sure of was that he had failed. It was just as Rowan had said all along. Their powers were a gift. And Archie made the same mistake as Rowan had—he abandoned his morals and principals in favor of an easy payday.

They could have done it right. It would have been work from dawn until dusk everyday for months, but they could have done jobs for the common people of the city. Jobs that really helped. Jobs that made them use their gift to gift others. It was too late to go back, but it wasn’t too late to start.

And so Archie found himself at the gate to the keep standing face-to-face with a man that he had brushed off all too many times.

“I’d like to cook for you tonight,” he said.

Stop Him scratched the black curls tucked inside his helmet and squinted at Archie. “Why?”

Archie laughed—it was a miracle that he remembered how. “I just want to do something good for someone.”

“Hm…” Stop Him sucked on one of his teeth. He let it go with a pop! “This a trick?”

“No. I promise.

“Alright. I’ll get someone to take my post.”

“Great. Um, I was thinking we could do it down in the Roots? If that’s alright? There’s this place called The Gift near the corner—”

“Aye, I know it. Me wife and kids go there all the time.”

“You’re married?”

Stop Him growled. Archie threw his hands up in forfeit.

“Tonight, then?” Archie asked.

“Aye.”

Archie left long before sunset to walk down to the Roots. Considering money had gotten them into this mess, he didn’t want to spend any on the tram—and he didn’t mind walking to collect his thoughts. As he made his way down the mesa, so too did the sun, casting the cobbled streets and white-brick buildings in rays of gold. Little flocks of robins filled the sky looking for one last insect or crumb from a food stand before darkness settled over the city.

By the time Archie managed to walk to The Gift, he figured out why it felt right to serve dinner there. Rowan had the right of it, after all. Archie was a Chef. One of the lucky few. For every thousand people, only one would know the joys of creating magic. As such, Archie had a duty to spread that joy to others. That’s what The Gift was for.

However, Archie had not figured out how to get into the place. He had hoped in vain that he might be able to find a key hidden under some rock somewhere, but found nothing. The door was locked, the windows closed tight.

But not all the windows.

Up on the second floor, amidst the bushes and bees that filled Rowan’s balcony, the window was just slightly ajar. Archie tried to jump up to grab the balcony rail, coming up several feet short. He felt the rough stone of the building, recognizing that it’d be impossible to get any kind of foothold. There were no ladders, no boxes to climb, no apparent way to get up. Archie stared up at the balcony, stumped.

And then an idea struck him.

He rubbed his empty palms together, back and forth, back and forth. Something formed between them and still he rubbed, back and forth, back and forth. The thing grew, the edges of a noodle spilling out on either side of his hands. And he kept rubbing his palms together, rolling the noodle in his hand, back and forth, back and forth, until it grew to nearly two feet long.

The essence in the conjured noodle was less than that of a naturally created noodle, but there was just enough for Archie to give it a shot. He stroked one end of the noodle, transforming its essence into stickiness. And then, gripping the other end of the noodle, he flung it at the balcony, the noodle stretching and wrapping around the railing before sticking to itself.

Even in his most advanced competitions with Julienne, Archie hadn’t gone this far with his magic. He always imagined he’d have a big breakthrough in some big fight—whipping licertes or restraining a Glutton or battling in the arena. Not breaking and entering. But Archie wasn’t disappointed. This felt like a nobler cause.

He put one foot on the wall, letting his shoe grip the stone. And then, ever so gingerly, ever so slow, he put his second foot against the wall, letting the noodle support all of his weight. He infused the noodle with more and more essence, afraid to let his hands off for even a moment. So rather than climbing through physical force, he let his essence do the work, contracting the noodle and bringing him along as he walked up the wall.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

The bees paid Archie no mind, and Archie was soon up on the rooftop, walking among the crops and deciding what to make.

Soon after, as Archie put chicken legs into the oven, he saw a familiar face at the door dressed in unfamiliar attire. Archie waved him in.

Stop Him wore a blue tunic with intricate knots going down the chest. The loopy bits of rope matched his curly black hair, which—unencumbered by a helmet—grew three inches in all directions from his head before draping down and splitting onto either side of his shoulders. In a guard’s attire, he seemed a brute, but here, in what Archie assumed was his nicest clothing, he managed a certain civility that bordered on nobility.

“I thought you might have been lying,” Stop Him said. He occupied his hands by brushing down his tunic, but his face couldn’t hide his awkwardness.

“No,” Archie said with a smile. “I really wanted to do this. My sponsor—the guy that runs this place—he does this. Every night, he invites a guest to dinner. In times like these…”

Archie’s voice trailed off. He tried to swallow down his pensiveness. “He says it’s very fulfilling, these dinners. I thought I’d try it with you. We’ve certainly had our run-ins.”

“Hm.” Stop Him nodded once and looked around the room.

“I’m sorry about my friend,” Archie started.

“The Harper?”

Archie nodded.

Stop Him breathed in through his nose. “Nothing to be done. People like them run the world.”

Archie turned to hide his frown, acting as if he needed to check in the oven. “So…tell me about yourself.”

Stop Him had stopped awkwardly in the middle of the room, surrounded by a sea of empty tables and chairs, just the half-wall separating the two. “What do you want to know?”

Archie chuckled. “Let’s start with names, I suppose. I’m Archie.”

“Chrysanth.”

The delicateness of the name surprised Archie. “As in chrysanthemum?”

Chrysanth clenched his fist. “Make a mockery of it. Go ahead.”

“What? No. No.” Archie gestured to the tables in an attempt to placate his guest. “Please, take a seat. You stand all day.”

“Hm…” Chrysanth eyed a few chairs before settling down in one.

“I like the name,” Archie said. “You know, chrysanthemums are daisies. Like artichokes. Everyone in my family is named after some type of daisy.”

“Artichokes aren’t daisies.” Chrysanth crossed his arms. He may not have been at his post, but he was still very much on guard.

“Sure they are.” Archie stirred some cream into a pot of mashed potatoes. “Artichokes bloom, too. Big purple things. But most of the time it gets picked before then. It gets toxic once it blooms.”

A bit of curiosity made its way into Chrysanth’s demeanor. “What kind of daisy is an Archie?”

Archie laughed. “Oh, no. Archie’s just a name. Archibald. I suppose not everyone in my family was named after daisies. My father is Artichoke. Goes by Arty. And then his dad…” Archie hiccuped at the thought of the Glutton. “Also Artichoke. And his dad before him.”

“Why aren’t you an Artichoke?”

“Well…” Archie thought back to his father’s words from a fateful birthday spent in Ambrosia City. “My dad didn’t want me to be defined by the generations before me. He didn’t want me to have to be a Chef, so he didn’t name me after anything.”

Chrysanth sighed. Whatever progress Archie had made in livening him up had gone. “My father wanted me to be a Chef,” he grumbled. “Told me as a kid that being a Chef was the only way to get anywhere in this world. I suppose that’s why I’ve gotten nowhere.”

Archie looked down at his orange jacket. He had gotten so used to wearing it that he didn’t think anything of it most days. How quickly he had gone from wearing it to sleep to not even recognizing it for the status symbol that it was.

“The trick is to keep havin’ kids,” Chrysanth said. “If one of them becomes a Chef, you’re all set. I had nine brothers and sisters. Got six kids, too.”

“Did any of them manifest?”

Chrysanth grunted and shook his head. “None of my siblings. So we were still poor, just with more mouths to feed. None of my kids, neither. But…” He smiled to himself. “There’s still time for all of ‘em. Oldest is sixteen. But it’s my oldest girl, Ginger, she’s thirteen. She’s the one if any. Gots a kind heart. I think that counts for something.”

“I think so too.” Archie smiled to himself as he continued working around the kitchen.

“She works as a waitress down at this tavern. They let her cook sometimes. She’s pretty good.”

“A job at thirteen?”

Chrysanth didn’t understand Archie’s confusion. Archie might have grown up poor, but he had grown up Chef poor. “Of course. They all start working when they can. My oldest, he’s a test eater. And then—”

“Test eater?”

Chrysanth nodded. “Ya know, when Chefs want to try new effects but don’t have the stones to try it themselves.”

“Huh.”

“And then a couple of ‘em work at the stables selling movemash. One of em’ works for Triple S. The other works for Kuutsan Drive.” He laughed to himself. “Every night they come home bickering about who sold the most and which movemash is better.

“And then I gots the two little ones. Eight and six. They work in the orchards. Them Chefs can grow the things, but someone’s gotta bend over to pick up the ones that fall to the ground. Oh, and of course, there’s my wife. She was a waitress, but she, uh…she’s got a bad leg, now. So she can’t be movin’ round much. She helps at a fruit stand at the bottom of the Trunk.”

And then Archie understood something much deeper about the world he lived in. The history books were filled with Chefs, and their magic shaped the world, but it was the common man that was the support structure upon which everything could stand. For every Chef performing wondrous magic, there were hundreds of normal people performing unglamorous labor to keep the wheels of society turning. Archie came closer to understanding Rowan.

“And then there’s you,” Archie said. “A guard at the keep. That’s a high station.”

“Aye.” Chrysanth chewed on the side of his mouth. “It’s one of those, uh, whaddaya call ‘ems? Political appointment?”

“How’s that?”

“The rest of the guards is all Acorn Guard. Chefs, the lot of ‘em. I’m the only guard at the keep that ain’t. Grand King Flambé, he put me there.”

Chrysanth spoke the name with reverence and continued with pride. “Put me out in front, too. Told me I was the face of the keep. He knows I can’t do much if some Chef decides they wanna force their way in. But he says I’m not for that. I’m the face. I let people know that this kingdom is for them, whether they Chefs or ain’t.”

Archie smiled. “Well, you do a good job of it.”

“Do I?”

And then Archie thought about it and laughed. “Actually, no.”

Chrysanth laughed with him.

“You’re always scaring people,” Archie laughed. “How many times have you gotten me for no reason?”

“Ahhh, I guess sometimes I do let my bitterness get the best of me. Hard doing, being around Chefs all day when you ain’t.” Chrysanth exhaled, his humor turning into thoughtfulness. “I should do better.”

“That’s all any of us can do, isn’t it? Try to do better?”

“I suppose so.”

Archie pulled out a bunch of glass bowls. “Well, you’re not a Chef, but that doesn’t mean you can’t cook. Come help me with this.”

“Me?” Chrysanth asked—as if he weren’t the only other person in the entire restaurant. “I’m not much of a—”

“Come on. Help grind these spices up for the sauce. You can tell your family that you cooked at a Black Jacket Restaurant.”

Chrysanth rose from his chair and looked around as if someone might mock him for believing Archie’s words. But there was no one there. No mockery. The air was warm with genuineness. Chrysanth joined Archie in the kitchen. Archie could smell a variety of perfumes, realizing how rare this night must have been for the guard.

“Alright, grind these out in equal amounts,” Archie said. “We got pepper, clove, nutmeg, ginger, cinnamon, and cardamom.”

“Wait, this ain’t gonna be spicy, is it?”

“You like spicy.”

“But my tummy don’t.”

Archie reached across the counter and tapped a little vial full of thick pink liquid. “I got this for you. It’ll settle your stomach for the night.”

“So I can have spicy and not be rolling around all night full of acid?”

“That’s right.”

Impressed, Chrysanth raised his eyebrows. “Alright, then. Gimme a pestle.”

For the next hour, the two bonded over their cooking and a roast chicken that ended up tasting as if Ambrosia herself had blessed the meat. Archie told him about manifesting and blueberry picking and Lifted Spirits and watching Tataki fight and even gave him some bouncing blueberries to take home to the kids. Archie chose not to tell the stories of the licertes or his grandfather or Mr. Ackers.

Chrysanth countered with stories about Grand King Flambé standing out at the gate for a day just greeting people and the time that Prince Waldorf tripped and fell and got his face covered in mud. He spoke non-stop through dinner, telling a story for each one of his kids.

And then another familiar face appeared at the door.

“Archie?” Rowan asked. “This is a surprise.”

Archie shot up from his chair, ready to be reprimanded. “I’m sorry! I figured it was empty, so I—”

“No, no,” Rowan said with a wave of his hand. He shuffled his grip on his suitcase. He realized what was happening and smiled. “Please, continue. I’ll get out of your way. Got some unpacking to do.”

Chrysanth stood. “No, I really should be going, it’s late.” He nodded and smiled at Archie. “Thank you for this. It was the best meal I’ve had in a long while.”

Archie returned the smile in full. “Of course.”

Archie had needed it more than Chrysanth. The encounter had filled his heart back up, but as Chrysanth left, a great weight started to press down on Archie’s mind. He felt better, but his problems hadn’t gone away.

Rowan took a heaving breath and smiled at Archie. “I’m back early. Turns out, helping Nori to stay in Ambrosia City has turned me into something of a political liability. Flambé sent me back before going to the main island. So what’ve you two been up to?”

Archie’s face melted into a somber frown filled with worry.

“I need your help.”