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The kitchen belongs to Roach. Everyone knows it. The knives are his knives, brought with him. The cooking pot is stained with colours which have been faded by the sun. The spices are fought over at port with men who can argue in just as many languages as he can.
Roach isn’t on board.
“You can use it, but I find so much as a spoon in the wrong place, and…”
He’d made some complicated hand gestures which suggested Jim’s punishment would be both violent and protracted.
The kitchen is quiet. The kitchen would be quieter if Archie didn’t keep touching the knives and reviewing them. She has a range of criteria she’s using. So far they’re all doing well on sharpness but their could I keep them in my cleavage ratings are more varied. Jim doesn’t know if they get a higher score if the answer’s yes or if it’s no. It’s not something they’ve ever considered when choosing a knife.
They need garlic. The recipe dictated by Nana called for as much as a young Jim could peel – it was never enough. Now, though, they have Archie, they have Olu and they have Zheng. They have extra hands and nobody has to work alone (for each person has to carry their own burden, Nana doesn’t quote in Jim’s head, because Nana’s not here and Jim knows better).
They haven’t cooked in a long time. When they were working at Jackie’s, one of her husbands made sure all the staff had enough to eat. (He was one of her favourites. He never got in trouble for it.) Roach cooked on the Revenge. There was wedding cake and devils, and boiled leather, and seagull, and then soup – and then Roach cooked on the Revenge again. Jim hasn’t cooked for friends before. This is new. This feels like standing on the edge of something.
“Orders, chef,” Olu says and throws a salute. He’s not quite smiling and Jim can tell he wants to.
“Start peeling cloves,” Jim says, “we need lots of them.”
They’re the same bulbs that kept three of them from being cursed. Some of them will have turned hard and brown in the heat, but the ones Jim’s checked so far have all been fine. Roach is good at choosing foods when he has to pick them up, and he knows how to choose things that will last. It might be a kind of witchcraft by itself. None of them would ever dare suggest as much.
Archie is the first to move. She plucks a bulb from the bushel. The dry paper skin rustles around it. She cracks it open, peeling out a clove.
She bites into the end as if it’s an apple.
Jim can’t help what their face does.
“Archie,” says Zheng, “what?”
Archie starts stripping the clove as if what she’d done is perfectly normal rather than bordering on an abomination.
“Chef told us to peel garlic,” she helpfully explains.
“Do you... think that’s a normal way to peel garlic?”
It’s Olu who asks. Jim knows it’s an honest question, no matter how it sounds. Olu’s sweet when he’s curious.
“Yeah,” Archie says, as if it’s obvious. “How else would you do it then?”
“You just,” Olu gestures vaguely, “y’know. Peel it.”
He picks up another clove from the same bulb and holds it gently. He’s good at gentle. Always has been, even if he’s good at the other stuff too. He keeps it between his forefinger and thumb, and with the other hand pulls down the string at the end, undoing it like he’s pulling a ribbon from Archie’s hair. He uses both thumbs to slip the casing off, picking it up in one hand, dropping it into a bowl and the garlic flesh into another.
“Like that,” he says, and starts over again.
“Do you need a drink?” Zheng asks Archie. She’s been watching her bite the ends and spit them into the same bowl Olu’s putting the skins, although she apparently has no objections to this, despite her strongly and strangely held beliefs in tiny worms that spread miasmas. “Raw garlic’s strong.”
Archie rolls her chest out. She looks like a pigeon. “I can take it. Cup of something does sound good though.”
Archie’s strong and she’s good at taking things. When she shows off in front of Jim, it’s fun and raucous, expecting Jim to join in. She doesn’t need to show Jim that she’s strong. They’ve seen it. Showing off to Zheng is something else. It’s not any better or worse but it’s different.
She raises the cup Zheng fetches her and downs it all in one.
“You’re both awful at this, by the way,” says Zheng.
Zheng spent months making soup. She was listening and planning and plotting, but she made the soup all the same. Olu says her soup would’ve been worth the money even without flirting as a side dish. Zheng can provide for people; she can keep a whole fleet satisfied and Auntie respects her. She knows how to cook. Roach agrees.
She picks up a ladle and a white bowl which looks like it belonged to someone richer in another lifetime. Roach keeps a barrel of brine for cooking and she moves some to the bowl, then rests the bowl on the bricks which are still glowing from the morning’s oatmeal.
If Zheng splits that bowl, Roach won’t kill her. He’s still too much in awe of her soup skills. He’ll kill Jim instead.
“What are you doing?”
“You need peeled garlic,” Zheng says, “so I’m making the garlic peel itself.”
She looks pleased with herself. She deserves to be. The water starts to bubble.
“Are you making soup?” Olu asks.
“Almost,” Zheng replies.
The water spits and sizzles on the bricks when she starts throwing cloves in. They’re ones Archie’s broken free of the plaits and started to crack apart. She’s been pausing since her drink, watching Zheng instead of biting any more free, but now she starts again. She gives Zheng another handful and their fingers brush together without making eye contact.
The garlic rolls in the brine until it’s free. Zheng leaves it to boil.
“That’s sort of soup,” says Olu. “I mean, it’s not not soup.”
“That’s like saying the sea is soup,” says Archie.
“It’s soup,” Jim agrees.
“The sea?”
“No, I mean what Zheng’s doing. At this point, it’s soup.”
“It’s not soup,” Zheng says in her captain voice. “It’s just garlic. Here.”
She starts fishing it out with the ladle. They’re building up a pile now; between Olu’s gentle hands, Archie’s fierce teeth and Zheng’s heat, the three of them are making good progress.
It should be four of them making progress. Jim’s done nothing. Idle hands for the Devil to – except the Devil’s not here now. They don’t have to fear any devils on the ship, real or imagined. Jim’s not lazy and the Devil isn’t after them and he hasn’t been for months. The Devil’s on land. He’s managing his inn.
They pick up a cleaver. They’ve got their own knife, rescued with them and then rescued by Lucius, tucked away as always, but this requires more heft. They bring the cleaver down hard, thwack, and Olu jumps.
The skin’s split apart. It only takes a bit of rolling before it’s off entirely. Jim’s fingers will smell for days. They always do after cooking like this. They always have done. As a kid, they used to wonder at it while they waited for whatever animal Nana had told them to bleed. The sulphur would stick around even after the kill when they’d scrubbed their hands close to raw.
Zheng picks up one of the cloves Jim crushed. She pulls it open. She puts it down. She smiles.
“We’ve got one last plait. Should only take a few minutes between us.”
When they go to bed, Zheng and Archie and Olu’s hands will all smell like Jim’s hands. Whoever they reach for in the night will smell of the effort of it all.
When they start cooking, it’ll be with enough garlic.