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The next time he sees Sazed is in Skuld.
It started when a seeker in the city sent a message to the bureau that he'd been overcome by the effect of a Relic in an old wine cellar. But when the Bureau dispatched their famed reclaimers it turned out it was just the fumes from a few broken bottles at the back of the room. The seeker slunk back to the moon with his head down, but Magnus, Merle and Taako decided to spend a couple of days in Skuld, as a holiday. It seemed like a good idea until they realised there was literally nothing to do in Skuld.
They spent a night trying to find a club that played any music younger than Magnus, and the next morning took an architectural tour of the city with a cluster of grey-haired pensioners. It was run by a bald goblin with a drawling voice and even thicker glasses than Merle. Taako stopped listening to their guide after they passed the third pre-schism chapel in as many minutes, and let Magnus do all the nodding and “Oh, that’s so interesting” interjections.
When he saw the sign outside the pub on the corner, he squinted at it for a minute. His gaze traced out the shape of the letters with some effort, recognizing them but assuming he’d mistaken the words. After the fourth check, there was no doubt.
Sazed’s Diner.
Taako wandered away from the tour group with his eyes locked on the sign. He didn’t even check for horse traffic as he crossed the cobbles and stepped onto the curb on the far side of the street. He was sure it was a coincidence: it wasn’t a common name, but it wasn’t unique in the continent. Yet his brain was pulsing with the shock of seeing it, of thinking it, after everything that he learned in Refuge.
He tugged his blue-tinted sunglasses down his nose with two fingers. He could see tables through the window, about half of the them occupied by middle-aged couples or grandmothers feeding sticky cakes to dolled-up children. A few older orcs in fisherman's boots had lined up at the bar, even though it was barely past noon.
There was a heavyset shape moving around the tables, distributing fashionably small cups of coffee. It was hard to make them out through the warped glass of the leadlight windows. Taako willed the waiter to turn around, his gaze digging into a spot between their shoulderblades. He was thinking, don't be him. Don't be him. Don't be him like he was charging up a spell. His hands were wrapped around the Umbra staff, twisting the fabric between his fingers.
Don't be him.
Sazed turned around, the last coffee in his hand, and saw Taako watching him. Two incredible forces pulled Taako in two directions, and he saw two visions of himself: one sprinting away down the Skuld street, in whatever direction opened before him, and the other raising the Umbra staff and blasting the biggest fireball he could conjure through the window of the pub. Instead he was trapped with indecision, and stood stupid and silent as Sazed's mouth opened. Sazed put the coffee down on the nearest table and hurried to the door.
Taako turned and started walking away. He heard the door of the diner jerk open. The bell hanging from the lintel gave a bouncy tinkle.
"Wait," Sazed said, and somehow hearing him was so much worse than seeing him.
Taako stopped and turned around. He had dressed today in a slouched summer smock belted with a thick leather band, which he'd stolen from Magnus because it looked vintage. He'd plaited his hair immaculately, pinned his hat at the perfect angle to cast alluring shadows across his face, and bought a new pair of sandals studded with rhinestones from a market near their lodgings. Yet none of his glitz and glamour could shield him from the sight of Sazed standing in the doorway.
Sazed looked tired, but healthy. He wore a red-and-white striped apron, and a matching kerchief around his hair, his horns just peeping out. He'd put on weight since Taako had seen him. Just a bit - and honestly? It made him look good. Never trust a skinny cook.
"You should come in," Sazed said at last, stepping aside and motioning into the pub.
"No way," said Taako.
Sazed twitched a little, blinking. "What's wrong?"
"You know," Taako said, his tongue thick in his mouth. "And I know. So now you know that I know."
"Taako—" his name, in Sazed's mouth, and all the memories that brought back that were now tainted and wilted, Gods, Taako hated him so much. Sazed took a step out of the doorway, towards him, and Taako stepped away to match it. He propped the umbra staff in front of him like a cane. He wasn't sure, but it felt like it was quivering a little. Sazed's expression was pained. "The diner closes at eleven on Tuesdays. Come by after that and we can talk."
Taako gave a harsh, high giggle. "About what?"
"We're still married," Sazed snapped, turning half away from him. "I've been trying to track you down for months to sign the divorce papers. Where have you been?"
Taako stared at him. The whip-crack turn in the conversation was disorienting. He felt stuck between several different responses, most of them curses, and said nothing instead. Sazed stepped back into the pub. "Come by tonight, or don't. I'm sick of chasing you." And he pulled the door closed with another trill of the bell.
---[]---
There were seven terrible meals, of which Glamor Springs was the victim of the fifth.
---[]---
It started with Aunty, of course, who choked on the stew Taako made when he was eleven. Aunty was the first victim of the seven disastrous meals, and he still counted that as the worst, even worse than Glamour Springs, because nothing ruined his life like losing Aunty. He won't even give Sazed that pride of place in his memorial shelf of nobody's-fucking-business.
The second victim of a terrible meal was the Troubadour cook, when Taako was twelve. He was an old man, still strong enough to carry a sack of flour through the name-forgotten town where Taako was sleeping rough. He stopped and looked at Taako, who sat in the stoop of a shrine to Glut, the Muse of Feasting. He was braiding his hair: he learned by now that hair which was filthy but tidy generally let you move about without anyone calling the city watch. Illusions becoming transmutation.
The old man said, "You want a hot meal, kid?"
"You're not hot enough for me," Taako shot back, because he was lucky enough to be good at thieving and didn’t need anything else.
The old man laughed. "No thank you, lad, no thank you. I just need someone to peel potatoes and make sure my pots don't boil over."
That sounded alright, so Taako followed the old man back to the Troubadour's camp, on the grass of a long avenue at the edge of town. They were a party of fourteen, on tour indefinitely since their Neverwinter theatre was burned down by a rival opera house. They rehearsed while Taako helped the cook make dinner; they sang, they danced, they performed acrobatics with the trees as their scaffold, and they unfurled enormous, trailing costumes for repair. Taako could barely keep his eyes off them while he washed yams and dug the eyes out of potatoes and kneaded dough for cinnamon scrolls. The leader was a stunningly handsome half-elf who'd dyed his temples grey to look more authoritative. Taako tugged on his sleeve. "Can I join your troop?"
The leader glanced him over with narrowed eyes. "What's your talent?"
Taako thought about it for a moment. "I can cook like the devil, my dude. You don't even have to pay me if you give me a bed and food."
That was the last time in his life he would ever say something so generous, but it was all the Troubadour leader needed to hear. He fired the cook that night and hired Taako instead. The old man packed up, swearing and cursing the Troubadours and their disloyalty, and simply fixing Taako with a glare of malice that would have been dangerous if he'd been a wizard. He took all of the fresh-baked cinnamon scrolls with him. He wasn't going to waste his best dessert somewhere he wasn't appreciated.
The next day when they left town, they saw the old man's body being carried out of a local inn on a stretcher. His mouth hung open and his pupils were blown huge. "Botulism," said the pathology warlock from the city watch, when they all stopped to rubberneck. "Contaminated flour. There's three other cases across town. We've already shut down the mill."
"That could have been us," the leader of the Troubadours said with obvious glee at the gory sight. "If he hadn't taken those cinnamon scrolls with him. It would have been all of us."
Nobody blamed Taako, of course. It was a coincidence: bad luck for the old man, good luck for the Troubadours. But it took him a long time to get that slack-jawed face out of his thoughts.
---[]---
He worked for the Troubadours for three years, before he realised he deserved to be paid and jumped ship. He took up with a party of pilgrim wizards, along with the Troubadour's resentful and underpaid horsemaster. The two of them kept the wizards and their mounts fed and cared for during a long summer of lecturing at every magic school on the continent. But they were still paying Taako barely enough for shoes and shampoo, so as soon as the wizards got home for winter he stole the horsemaster's best grooming brush and answered a "help wanted" sign outside a tour company in Calimport.
For a few years he was the dogsbody chef on trips with aristocratic retirees looking to see every land in Faerun before the consumption finally got them. The tourists were demanding and the hours were long, but at least the company gave him a stipend for clothes and hair products so that he could keep up their image of luxury travel. Then an off-season wyvern finally attacked a party of sightseers and ate three members of the Duchy of Skuld, and the company went bust from the lawsuits. Taako had to go back to work for a travelling circus for a while, cooking pounds of toffee-plums and sausages to sell during the shows, but at least he knew how to haggle for his salary this time. He took up a job with a mercenary guild as soon as he could. Mercenaries were always rich, especially when they were unionised. Nobody ignored invoices from big men with knives strapped to every finger.
They were escorting a caravan of merchants through the sword mountains when they ate the third terrible meal in Taako's life. They were camped in a corrie just below the pass one night, with the sheer cliffs rising around them and the lake full of stars. It was the head mercenary's birthday, and the next city was only two days away, so Taako cooked up a huge feast. He found some powdered gelatin and sugar, baked fresh bread with the non-mouldy cheese, and turned the last of the bacon and eggs into a massive omelette in his biggest saucepan, which was as wide as his outstretched arms. He put all his skill into it, a full three-course dinner and dessert, using all the wild herbs and fruit he could gather during the journey that day. The merchants even brought out two casks of their exported wine. The meal was delicious. Everyone was singing and inventing stories about sexual conquests that almost certainly never happened.
Taako was scraping out the dregs of omelette from the enormous saucepan when he heard the faint, wet squelch of an arrow puncturing someone's throat.
Too much wine and too much food makes for not enough caution. The bandits had gotten right up to the shadows of the wagons without anyone seeing them. Taako hid under the saucepan, curled up as small as he could make himself, listening to the massacre with the smell of burnt omelette filling his nose. When it all went quiet, he stayed absolutely still and tried not to breathe. The bandits finally found him when they lifted up the saucepan. (It was a decent saucepan. In hindsight, Taako fully agreed it was worth acquiring.)
He kept his eyes closed as they grabbed his arms and dragged him to his feet. "I didn't see your faces, fellows!" he squeaked. "I didn't see anything! I'm just the cook. Take what you want, I don't give a rat's arsehole!"
"How old are you, kid?" someone poked him in the stomach. Not with a weapon, but it hurt a bit anyway.
"Fourteen," said Taako. He was twenty-one, and tall for his age, but they sounded like human accents, and humans were rubbish at judging elf ages.
"We could use a cook. Let's take him with us," someone said, and Taako's knees gave way.
---[]---
He lost track of how long he lived with the bandits. He considered trying to escape several times, but their camp was deep in the forest, with crooked mountains in all directions, and it was a particularly wet and cold winter that year. There was honour among the thieves, but not for him; he was invisible to the burly cutthroats and vagabonds. They only noticed him if he failed to keep the cave tidy and the latrines clean, or didn't have a hot meal waiting when they returned from a raid, or didn't bring them each a cup of tea in the evenings. The only one who took interest in him was the leader, a broad-shouldered woman with a bush of white hair that she slicked back with mud for battle. This, Taako told her as he handed her a bowl of stew on the first day of his captivity, was so disgusting that she ought to be arrested for it. She laughed like a roaring bear and cuffed him around the head. "I like you. I don't like elflings, but I like you. Maybe we'll make a killer out of you yet."
By the end of winter, Taako had resigned himself to this life. He was now having to tie his hair with dried flax-fronds, and all but five of the teeth had broken off his comb. The rivers were too cold to wash in, except in days of bright sunlight, which were few and far between. What little soap he could scrounge, he had to keep for his hands and for the dishes. He was given none of the spoils from the bandit's raids. The leader had often invited him along, but he had no combat skills, and plenty of incentive to keep his blood inside his body. He had decided he would be trapped here for all eternity.
The only pleasure left was cooking. The leader of the bandits was as keen a hunter as she was a murderer, and Taako quickly scraped together everything he'd ever learned to build firepits and ovens that could broil entire wild boars and roast forty parsnips at once. The bandits were quite happy to take his shopping lists and bring back whatever non-perishable ingredients they could steal, though sometimes he had to wash the blood and brains off the barrels and sacks so they didn't attract flies. Taako was miserable, but the food got better and better as he figured out how to turn the cave into a kitchen that could have served royalty.
But as spring broke, the local laird must have finally got sick of the peons and traders complaining about the bandits, and he brought in a new sheriff to end the raids. The sheriff recruited militia from the whole county, scheduled travellers into much larger groups with more guards, and set up better barricades around all the towns. The bandits started losing fights and coming home empty-handed.
"Something has to be done," the leader growled around the campfire, chewing unhappily on dried meat in a rooty sauce, as there hadn't been much in the way of fresh ingredients lately. "We've got to teach this sheriff a lesson."
They couldn't attack the sheriff himself. He was too well-guarded. But they learned that the sheriff's family were attending a wedding in a vineyard near an outlying town. It would be a long journey to reach them, and the bandits would have only one night to act, but the leader goaded them into the plan.
Taako listened to them as he hunched over the dishes. He knew by now how cruel they were and he felt sick to his stomach imagining what they would do for their revenge. But that gave him an idea for what would turn out to be the fourth terrible meal in his life. The night before they left for the wedding, Taako crushed foxglove leaves into the evening tea. He'd met witches who used small amounts of the plant for medicine, so he tried to add just enough to make them all sick. Just enough so that they couldn't get to the wedding. But he learned later that there were some strains of the flower that were far more potent than others.
He'd already packed a bag and planned to head into the forest at the first light of dawn, but in the end there was no need for stealth. He took a map and a compass from the leader's pocket where she lay sprawled in the dewy grass, and found his way to the main road over the next couple of days. He heard later that the sheriff was richly rewarded for the abrupt end to the bandit attacks, and that the weather had been very beautiful for his niece's wedding.
The bandits were the victims of the fourth meal, but Taako never let himself feel guilty for that one.
---[]---
A few years later he met Sazed in a restaurant. They were both working as kitchen-hands, hauling crates and scrubbing pots and sometimes waiting tables when it got busy. The head chef was a big-bellied drow with a voice like screeching metal and no patience.
"If I hear him yell about the soup once more I'm going to piss in it," Sazed said to Taako, the first day Taako started, and then with a beaming smile Sazed turned around and called, "On its way, sir!" with a note of total deference.
Taako laughed, and never once took note of how quickly Sazed could change between respectful and disparaging to his employers, because he was so nice to everyone else. He was reliable as an ox behind the scenes, and in front of customers he stammered and tripped over his feet in the most endearingly incompetent way. Taako often took over his tables out of pity, skipping from booth to booth without forgetting an order, confidently reeling off specials and describing the meals to uncertain patrons with such unwavering delight that they always ordered extra sides.
"You're so good at talking," Sazed sighed as Taako pinned up the orders over the bar. "I want to make good food but you make people believe the food is good, even when it's not."
"Little bit of magic, baby," Taako winked. "You don't need fancy schoolin' and gilded floors to give people a plate they'll enjoy. If I had the money I'd get out of his hole and just hit the road with a wagon and a portable grill. Be my own manager, keep my own profits. The only difference between street food and fine dining is the glitter and glitz, and I can give them my own version of glitz."
"Could I come with you?" Sazed asked, trying to flirt, though Taako didn't realise it at the time. "I want to learn that."
"You want me to teach you to cook?" Taako asked.
"Yeah," Sazed smiled dreamily, still flirting.
"If you lend me the money, my man, you can gosh-darn marry me."
Sazed's expression sunk. "My grandmother is always bugging me to get married. She's rich, but she won't loan me anything. She won't even pay for me to train as a chef. She says I should start a business like my cousins and make my own money. I bet if I gave her a wedding she'd be so shocked she'd hand over the keys to the bank vault as soon as the vows were finished."
"Well howdy-doody my man, that sounds like a scam worth pulling," replied Taako.
So they got married in the parlour of Sazed's grandmother's townhouse. A few cousins stood around in much fancier clothes than Sazed, their expressions glazed, but the old woman sat watching every moment from her armchair. Her skin was pale, not delicate like porcelain, but like white marble. Her tiefling blood drew more from the source than Sazed. Her horns were long and thin, turned back against her skull and curling into thin spirals just above her slick hair. Taako did not think they could fool her. He was sure she'd see right through them. But she smiled as they made their vows, and let Taako simper and kiss her hand, and when Sazed told her about their business venture, she gave him the money to buy a wagon.
It was tough going for the first few years. They were constantly travelling to find new customers. There was barely time to sleep, in between planning recipes with whatever Taako could barter at the local markets before showtime, learning the local flavours as quickly as possible to keep the audience in their comfort zone. During shows Sazed was usually backstage, frantically chopping and mixing whatever Taako couldn't prepare on the fly, handing them off with a tired smile. He fell asleep at the reins of the cart more than once, driving through the night so they could reach their next gig before the fishmongers closed. A couple of times he had to write back to his family for more money.
Taako could list Sazed's woes easily from memory, like reciting dinner orders, but he could not list his own because in all honesty, he liked it. He was in charge for the first time in his life, travelling where he thought the money would be instead of obeying some grouchy merchant or dull-witted mercenary. He dyed his hair whenever there were a few coins for henna, and used beet juice or herbs when there wasn't. He loved making and re-making his act, changing his voice, acting sweet, acting bullish, acting snobby, acting the fool - whatever worked on the night. But he could tell that things were going to break bad, not just because they couldn't afford to repaint the logo or because they could only eat whatever free samples the audience left behind. Taako could tell that Sazed was going to leave.
Failure would be easier for Sazed, because he could always return to his family. (Taako's threshold for feeling shame was so much higher than most people's that it never occurred to him that Sazed would not want to face his family without repaying his grandmother's money.) In his own mind, the bottom was so much deeper for Taako; if he was left alone he would be completely alone. Even his name would be worth nothing. And when he thought about it - when he made himself think about it – he couldn't run this operation without Sazed. They were a team through those shitty years, and Sazed was always there when Taako needed him.
Like he always said, even bad food tastes good with a little glitz and glamour.
So he gave Sazed some glitz and glamour.
---[]---
The weather was hot in the Western provinces, too hot to eat a big meal. Only a few people had come to the show that evening, and even fewer of them had ordered food afterwards. Taako and Sazed both knew that they were going to have to sell something just to buy ingredients for the next town.
Sazed sat on an upturned crate at the edge of camp, watching the sunset over the forest while he washed up the dishes. Taako stole Sazed's pipe from the bottom of his bag and brought it over to him.
"Look what I found, Handsome," he said, waving the pipe in front of Sazed's nose.
"I haven't got any leaf," said Sazed dourly.
"Lucky I'm looking out for you," Taako winked, folding his ankles and plopping down next to him on the grass.
There was no money for even the cheapest tobacco, but Taako had hopped a fence and stolen a handful of pipeweed from a garden they passed on their way a few stops back. He'd pressed it between the pages of his battered recipe notebook to dry for a few days and now the aroma was delicious. Sazed’s nose twitched and his eyes lit up.
They folded the leaves into the bowl of the pipe. Taako sucked on the stem while Sazed lit it with one of their last matches. It was a good strain, sweet and potent, and he breathed in for a long time and then puffed out his cheeks to hold as much smoke as he could in his mouth.
He looked at Sazed, his face soft and round, his body as thick as the taste of smoke. Then he leaned up, his hand resting on Sazed's forearm for balance, and pressed their mouths together. He opened his lips and let the smoke flow between them, over Sazed’s tongue, leaning into him until he tumbled backwards off the crate and into the grass with Taako on top of him.
---[]---
He'd rolled with plenty of people before, handsome people, and ugly people with great personalities, and people he was trying to get a job from. But never anyone he had to live with afterwards. Now they were partners, in every way. It was easier than he expected. It was fun. And it was warmer at night. The straw mattress in the back of the wagon was more comfortable when he was lying on Sazed’s big arm. Taako realised he liked this – having a partner. Having someone he didn’t have to impress, someone he didn’t have to put on a mask for. Someone who wasn’t just here for the money.
He realised that possibly for the first time in his life he was… relaxed.
It was soon after this that the bad times came to an end. Using a few ‘borrowed’ books, and cobbling together his memories from childhood pilgrimages with wizards, Taako figured out how to draw the crowds with magic. People loved it. At first he was showy and decorative, setting off firework illusions when the soufflé came out of the oven and sending dancing wisps along the aisles, but he soon found that people loved the magic even more when he made it look like nothing at all. He would walk away from a bowl of batter while his spoon kept stirring, or boil a pot with gentle brush of his finger, or fillet a fish using a gruesome spell to turn his enemies inside-out. People loved that one. People had no empathy for fish. They clapped and cheered and screamed with delight as he went through the movements of the magic without even mentioning it, making it look as easy as breathing, and afterwards they piled up to the wagon with their coins outstretched, clamouring for everything on the menu.
Soon Taako and and Sazed were breaking even, and then making enough money for decent screenprint T-shirts and recipe books to sell after their shows with the SIZZLE IT UP WITH TAAKO logo stamped right on the front. And Taako never understood, he would never understand, why things went bad right when they were making money. It had always been about making money. Money was the most important thing. He'd known that since he was four and he'd watch his useless dad mismanage the family business into the ground. Sazed should have been happy, even if he was still the one driving the (new, bigger) cart and still handing Taako the (fresher, more expensive) ingredients from backstage. Sazed, who used to stammer in front of customers and trip up over his own feet, should have understood that you can teach a tiefling to cook but you can't fix a bad charisma bonus. Sazed should have understood that they shouldn't rock the boat. He should have understood that Taako had a good thing going and he was lucky to share in the profits, when Taako had never shared his profits with anyone in his whole life. Taako was happy, so why wasn’t Sazed happy?
Why? What more did he want?
Taako never understood it.
But the fifth terrible meal, Glamour Springs, was definitely the only one that he blamed himself for.
---[]---
After Glamour Springs, after Sazed left, Taako joined the Temple of Oghma. Two straight-backed young wizards in neckties handed him a pamphlet in a busy street, and promised him his spirit would learn the wonders of transmutation if he gave himself to the Temple. "Hell yeah, sign me up!" Taako cried. He had cut his hair and was still using a fake name, afraid that the authorities would find him and bring him to justice for what happened at Glamour Springs. Hiding out in a temple sounded like a crafty way to stay under the radar. The witnesses of Oghma were so surprised they stuttered their way through their conversion pitch and forgot to ask him to confess his vanities.
He stayed with the church for two years while his hair grew out. He never cooked. He swapped all his shifts in the communal kitchens for bathroom duty, claiming to be allergic to cast iron. Finally the acolytes reached the initiation ritual to become first-level wizards. The Pastors told them they had to do a juice cleanse and drink ipecac root until they threw up.
"Hold on," Taako said. "Hold on, my dudes, hold on. This is a gods-damn cult."
He left two days later, with a platinum candlestick under his shirt and a hymn stuck in his head. He counted this as one of the seven terrible meals in his life, even though technically no one died this time, except perhaps his faith in religion. Seriously, a juice cleanse? He'd rather die.
This was right before he went back to Neverwinter and took the last job he'd ever have to take.
---[]---
And now he was in Skuld and he’d found Sazed again, but lost Magnus and Merle.
The tour group had long moved on, and Taako couldn't see them after a cursory glance down the nearest few alleyways. He walked down to the docks and wandered up and down with the umbra staff keeping the sun off his shoulders, watching burly men load crates into creaking ships covered in barnacles. Eventually he went back to the inn where they were staying, took out a book and sat with his ankles crossed, trying to read. Merle and Magnus came back a few hours later, with shopping bags over their shoulders. Magnus was wearing a new scarf. It wasn't his colour.
"Are you alright?" Merle rumbled. "You disappeared."
"I had a funny turn," Taako answered, without looking up from the pages of his book even though the words were blurred and slipping sideways. "Heart palpitations, you know. Came back for a nap."
"We brought you some lunch from this great place up on the hill," Magnus was holding out a greasy paper bag that smelled of fried tomatoes.
"I'm not hungry," Taako snapped. He didn't think he'd ever eat anything, ever again.
Magnus looked sour. Merle took the bag and went to get a plate from the kitchenette in the corner of their room.
Taako rebuffed all conversation for the rest of the day, though he was actually pretty hungry by the time dinner came around, so he trailed behind the other boys to the bistro down the road. They played cards in the inn's lounge until half-ten that night, by which time Taako knew what he was going to do. He dressed in a navy turtle-neck sweater and beige slacks, and headed out of the inn with the staff hooked over his elbow.
"Where are you going?" Magnus called after him.
"To get a drink," Taako yelled back.
---[]---
There was something he couldn't get out of his head. This incident, back on the road with SIZZLE IT UP. He'd thought about it after Refuge, convincing himself it meant nothing, but now in Skuld he was obsessed trying to remember the details.
He and Sazed had ridden into town late for a gig on a wet and rainy Friday. The town was a sprawling mass of suburbs centred around a wealthy textiles industry, and they knew they were going to be busy the next day. But it had been a long trip and Taako couldn't be bothered cooking, so they ate at a pub around the corner of the wagon-park. It was a horrible meal. Taako's chicken was still oozing pink and all the lettuce in Sazed's salad was wilted.
The next day, he felt a little off, but he put it down to exhaustion. He went on stage as usual. The rain had broken and it was the biggest crowd they'd had in months: two or three hundred people sitting on rugs and upturned buckets, with kids on their laps and dogs stretching on their leads to sniff other dogs. Beads of sweat broke out on Taako's forehead, and his stomach made a horrible gurgle. His heart was pounding. But he smiled and began the show.
Twenty minutes in, with the garlic barely chopped and the oil just starting to heat up, he realised he was going to be sick.
In a split-second, he understood the danger. SIZZLE IT UP WITH TAAKO relied on its good name, from word of mouth and reviews in local rags. If he vomited all over his chopping board, right there in front of the crowd, they would be ruined. No one would ever come to another show. Taako had to leave the stage right now, and he had to make it look not suspicious. So without thinking twice, he leaned against the side of the stove and let the sleeve of his gossamer, blue shirt – his favourite shirt – drape over the gas element.
In only two or three seconds, he was on fire.
There was a low murmur as a handful of people saw the smoke first, and then the crowd gave a huge, collective gasp. Someone yelped shrilly as Taako leapt back from the stove. He let his eyes go wide, his mouth drop open, and then he held out his flaming arm and with a grin cast a gentle ray of frost on the flames that were merrily creeping up towards his elbow.
"Well, fuck me sideways folks, let that be a lesson to all of you - roll up your sleeves in the kitchen!" he cried. A few people tittered and covered their children's ears, but most of them broke into raucous laughter. A few still had their hands over their mouths, glancing at each other, perhaps trying to figure out if it had all been part of the show. Taako's stomach was now spasming uncontrollably.
"Luckily, I—" he gagged and cradled his arm to his stomach, pretending to wince in pain instead of nausea, "—keep some healing potions in the back for just this sort of incident. "Excuse me, folks, the show will continue in a moment—"
He cast a quick prestidigitation to play tracks of elevator music and bolted off stage. Around the back of the wagon, Sazed stood up at the rear benchtop where he'd been slicing up vegetables for later in the show.
"Oh my god, Taako!" he stared at the charred remains of Taako's sleeve. "What happened? I'll get the med-kit."
"No time. Get out there," Taako grabbed the slops bucket where they put the potato peelings and knelt over it, emptying the contents of his stomach with such violence that his abdominal muscles would ache for days. He tried to be as quiet as he could and hope the music would cover the rest.
"The show," Taako croaked, still heaving into the bucket. Sazed hunched over him, pulling his hair back from his face. Taako shoved weakly at him. "Finish the gig. Throw out the white sauce and the marinated onions I ate just now, to be sure," he coughed into the bucket. "You can use fresh cream, cheese and shallots instead."
"Let me help you first!" Sazed begged.
"Get. Out. There," Taako shuddered. "The show is more important."
Sazed left him. Taako listened to him stammer at the crowd that Taako would need time to conjure himself a couple of healing spells, and then he slipped into the routine that they had performed a hundred times, quoting Taako's script as he went along. The crowd, primed to emotion by the unexpected turn of events, were hanging on his every word. Towards the end, Sazed was beginning to gain confidence, poking fun at himself whenever he couldn't find one of the ingredients Taako had prepared earlier and even inserting his own suggestions into the recipe.
Everybody loves when a live show goes wrong. The gig was a hit, and Sazed could barely keep up with the orders afterwards.
Taako was sick for three days. He lay in the dark of the wagon with a bucket beside his bed while Sazed nursed him, bandaging his arm and making him drink all the broth he could manage. His skin was blistered but not seriously burned, and later he cut off the undamaged sleeve of his favourite shirt so it was still wearable.
He was back on stage a week later. This was six months before Glamour Springs, and until Refuge, Taako never thought twice about what had gone wrong that night. He'd eaten undercooked chicken, and he'd been feeling sick for hours before the show. That’s how he remembered it.
But maybe it had been nerves that made him feel sick, stage fright in front of a crowd that big. Maybe the chicken hadn't been that bad, maybe he just hadn't liked the pub's atmosphere and had been over-critical of the meal. He hadn't thought he was that sick when he walked on stage or he'd have prepared a shorter set. He'd only really gone downhill after he taste-tested the white sauce. So maybe it wasn't the chicken. Maybe the milk in the sauce was off. Or maybe it had been laced deliberately.
Could that night have been Sazed's dry-run for Glamour Springs? Taako racked his brains trying to remember if the white sauce had tasted strange, or if Sazed had seemed to be hiding anything. All he remembered was how happy Sazed had been after he'd finished the show. How gentle and protective he seemed with Taako laid up in bed, Sazed bringing him cool cloths for his forehead and stroking his back while he was sick into the bucket. Had that really just been an act, to maintain Taako’s trust after a failed poisoning? Or had it been the whole point from the beginning?
Even if it was just undercooked chicken, maybe that show had given Sazed an idea. Or maybe it had all been a coincidence.
'Maybe' was driving Taako crazy.
---[]---
Taako reached the diner at quarter-past the hour. The lights were on inside, and he could see Sazed wiping down the empty tables and stacking chairs. A 'closed' sign hung on the inside of the door. It was unlocked when Taako turned the handle, and that damn bell rung to announce him.
There was a small coatroom on the other side, open to the main room but angled so that he couldn't see anything but a dim-lit corridor to the kitchen. Taako took a breath and stepped forward, and the diner came into view.
It was inlaid with reddish wood covering the floors and the bar. There was a crackling hearth in the corner, with a cluster of armchairs encircling it. The walls were crowded with homely woodcuts of animals and forests, and the glass lampshades gave it a retro feel. Shelves of liquor of every size and colour were stacked behind the bar, interspaced with statues of legendary heroes. Right in the centre, second row from the top, was a colour portrait of Sazed's grandmother in an oval frame. It wasn't how Taako would have done the place up, but it felt more hip than most of Skuld's eateries. He focused on the decor for as long as possible before he looked at Sazed, who stood in the centre of the dining area, tucking a rag into the pocket of his apron.
"It's good to see you," said Sazed.
Taako snarled at him, "Oh, fuck you."
Sazed winced. There was one table with the chairs still set, close to the bar. He motioned at it. "Do you want to sit down? Can I make you a coffee?"
"I want this over with as fast as possible," said Taako, but he took a chair and sat. One of his knees was bouncing and he put his hand on it, flexing his fist open and closed.
"Alright. Mind if I make myself one? It's been a long day."
Taako sat in silence until Sazed came back to the table with a bowl-sized cup of black coffee, and a brown folder full of a papers under his arm. He put the folder down on the table to one side, and took a sip of the coffee. Taako wondered how he planned to sleep after that much caffeine. He wondered how Sazed slept at all.
Apparently deciding that Taako wasn't going to initiate anything, Sazed spoke first. "You look good. Where are you working these days?"
"None of your business."
"Alright, I'm just asking," there was a flicker of something unreadable in his eyes. "I want to say, I'm sorry how it ended."
"I'm not interested in an apology. You can fucking live with it."
Sazed shakes his head. "It was really stupid of me. I should have just talked to you."
"Yeah! You think?" Taako laughed shrilly.
"I know. I should have supported you. It wasn't your fault, but I just freaked out and ran for it. It was selfish of me."
Taako stared at him. Of course, it had occurred to him that the vision the chalice had shown him could have been the lie. Now the pressure of that fear was growing and pressing against the back of his brain. His throat had closed up too much to speak for a moment, and when he found his voice it was very thin. "What are you talking about?"
Sazed rubbed one arm as if trying to get warm. "Taako, we had been married for ten years when I disappeared. You made one big mistake, but it wasn't my place to punish you for it. I should have stayed."
"No. No," Taako shook his head. "You can drop this. Stop it right now. I know what you did, Sazed," it the first time he'd said the name since he was alone in the Chalice's dream-space, and it was horrible how ordinary it felt on his tongue. It offered him no power, as a spell would. It actually seemed to steal something from him. "I only came here so you can give me an explanation."
Sazed's mouth went thin, but his round, gentle eyes were full of pity. After a moment he reached for the folder and pulled it closer, flicking it open. A thick wad of legal documents sat inside. He pulled a well-chewed pen out of his apron and put it on the table. "This finalises the divorce and forfeits our right to each other's property and wealth. I want you to sign it. This diner is everything I've got and I can't afford to pay you off if you decide to take half of it."
Taako looked between his eyes and the waiting papers. “This is about alimony? I thought for sure you had some new squeeze who wanted to make you an honest man.”
“No. There’s no one else. I’m all on my own.”
Taako was already doing calculations in his head about how much the diner was worth, and whether there was any way for the courts to audit his assets when most of them were stored on the moon. Just as quickly, he concluded that there was something Sazed wasn't telling him. Why had he only been looking for Taako 'for the last few months'? That picture of his grandmother above the bar – maybe the old woman had finally died and left her wayward grandson a solid inheritance. Maybe Sazed was a lot richer than he claimed and wanted to make absolutely sure Taako couldn't get a cent.
But if he was going to get his hands on half of Sazed's inheritance, he'd probably have to drag him in front of the courts, and Taako was surprised to find that he couldn't imagine an alimony large enough to make him want to see Sazed again after tonight. Well, maybe he could, but he didn't think even Sazed's grandmother was that rich.
He tossed his head back, "I'm not signing anything until you tell me the truth."
Sazed scrubbed his hand down one side of his face. "The truth about what?"
"About why you ruined my life!"
Sazed growled and got up from the table. He leaned on the bar. "Taako, it was one bad break-up and it was years ago. I don't know what else you want to hear.”
He could keep playing this game, but Taako was not fucking around any longer. He turned sideways on the chair and draped one arm over the back of it. "Near as I can see, boy-o, you had one of three goals," he raised three fingers and began to tick them off. "Number one – you just wanted me out of the picture so you could take over the brand and live the show-biz dream, and you thought I'd be on the floor long before anyone else touched that chicken. Number two – you wanted those people to die, because you were petty and angry enough to frame me for reckless homicide. Which seems pretty penny-fucking extreme even for you. I always said you put too much salt in the food, but I have to admit I can't imagine you'd tip in the whole shaker," he waved the last finger. "Or three, you had the antidote ready and you were going to jump in as soon as I went down. You wanted – Pan help me, I don't know – you wanted to scare me, or you wanted to play the hero in front of all those people, or you wanted to make me doubt myself, or you just wanted me to appreciate you more. I don't fucking understand it, Sazed! So just tell me what you were thinking, and I'll sign your stupid papers."
Sazed turned around slowly and looked at Taako. "I'll tell you what you want to know. But you sign first. You're not leaving here until I’m done with this ugly business."
"Alright! Alright!" Taako snatched the papers close and scribbled his name onto every marked page. There was a copy of their wedding certificate pinned to the back. It was a shock to see it. His signature had changed a lot since that day in the old woman's parlour, reciting vows he didn't believe, already planning the SIZZLE IT UP grand opening in his head. He threw the folder back across the table and it slid to a stop right on the edge. "It's done. We're over. If I had a wedding ring, I guess I'd throw it at you, but I sold that tin band years ago."
That wasn't true. He did sell it, but he wouldn't give it back if he still had it. It had been worth a couple of copper pieces.
Sazed's shoulders slumped. One hand gripped the edge of the bar and relaxed slowly. He said, "Thank you for being honest for once in your life, Taako."
This was so unfair that Taako barely noticed that it didn't make a lot of sense.
He sat back in the chair, arms folded, while Sazed collected the papers, straightened the edges and put them on the bar. "I'm going to make myself a cocktail, to celebrate," he said heavily. "Do you want one?"
Cocktails were the one thing he used to let Sazed make unsupervised, while he was handing around free samples. After a long pause Taako said, "Yeah. Hit me up, my man."
He watched Sazed walk around to the far side of the bar. As Sazed reached for a bottle of white rum, Taako gave a twitch of his finger and cast two spells. The first was arcane eye, which he placed on the shelf just above the picture of Sazed's grandmother. The second was the most powerful version of cloudkill that he could manage, restraining the poisonous vapour into a tiny, highly-concentrated whiff, which he blew with a tiny puff of wind onto the bunch of fresh cilantro that sat on the back of the bar in a rack.
"I really did miss you," Sazed said, obliviously laying out two cocktail mixers.
"I missed cooking," Taako answered. "I couldn’t do it anymore after you left."
He watched through the arcane eye as Sazed squeezed a lime into each of the mixers, dropped in a scoop of ice, and then took a handful of mint and one of the poisoned cilantro and laid them next to each other. His knife made quick work of chopping each pile into shreds. Mint went into the left mixer, and cilantro went into the right. It had been Sazed's favourite drink, when they could afford decent rum and there were herbs left over from the night's show; rum and line mixers, with cilantro instead of mint. Taako hated cilantro unless a recipe absolutely called for it, so he always had his traditional.
Sazed added a shake of sugar. And then Taako watched Sazed uncap a metal tin from underneath the bar and with quick, practiced hands, he scooped up exactly a quarter-teaspoon of white powder and tipped it into the cocktail on the left, the one with the mint. The shock hit Taako like a blow to his stomach. Surely this meant the chalice hadn't lied. Or maybe Sazed just remembered that Taako liked his cocktails sweet. That could have been castor sugar – maybe, maybe.
"It wasn't your fault," Sazed said as he did it, glancing between Taako and the drinks. "You just made mistakes. We all do. I should have stayed."
"I'm glad you didn't," said Taako. "If we'd still been fucking I might not have been so relieved to find out you tried to kill me."
"I still don't know what you're talking about," Sazed shook both cocktails at once, his fingers big enough to hold the glasses in place with one hand. It was strange that a fellow as big and strong as Sazed, an experienced bodyguard, would choose such a hands-off method for murder.
"I'll give you the view from my side of the stage," said Taako as Sazed tipped each cocktail into a clean tumbler. He carried them to the table, his eyes locked on Taako's face as Taako leaned forward and folded his hands. "I've always been a cook. It's the one thing I thought I was good at. But every now and then, when I cooked, people died. Never on purpose – well, once on purpose, but they had to coming. I justified everything to myself. It's so hard to give up the one thing you've got, the one thing you're good at, the one thing you can use to survive. So I tried to forget about all the terrible meals that killed people. Even Glamour Springs, I felt bad about, but I might have got over it. But then you walked out, and that was when it hit me that it was my fault. I was a bad cook. I was a terrible cook who also happened to make really good food."
Sazed put the cocktails down between them, the mint in front of Taako, the cilantro in front himself. "You were more than the food," he said. "I always loved you for more than your cooking."
"I'm not finished," said Taako. He didn't need to hear any more of Sazed's horseshit. "You know what, I feel like rum with cilantro for once." He reached across the table, took hold of both glasses and swapped them around, just to see how Sazed would react.
Before he could even let go of the glasses, Sazed's hands shot out and swapped them back. Their fingers brushed for a split second, and Sazed's were cool and sweaty. "If you don't trust me, you can just leave. I'm not going to make you drink."
Taako held his gaze, and put his hand around the mint glass. "It was the best feeling in the world, finding out that you screwed me over," he said. "Because sure, that meant the people I love are traitorous scumbags who only care about their own interests, but whoo-boy did it restore my confidence in myself. What a relief. What a thrill. I'm not a bad cook. People just die sometimes, for lots of reasons."
"Taako," said Sazed. "I didn't try and kill you."
"I still want that to be true," Taako laughed, bitter and high in the back of his throat. "I still want them both, the cooking and you. I still want to believe you were just being romantic. That attempted murder was your idea of spicing up the relationship. Isn't that the most fucked-up thing you've ever heard? Tell me that's what you were doing. Tell me it was a fetish gone wrong. Tell me you wouldn’t really have let me get hurt."
Sazed was raising his glass. Taako could still stop him drinking the cloudkill poison. He could knock the cocktail out of his hand, or cast a minor illusion to distract him into spilling it.
And if that really hadn’t been castor sugar, Sazed could still grab the mint and hurl it onto the floor.
They both stayed sitting, holding each other’s gaze.
"I would never hurt you," said Sazed, putting his cocktail to his lips.
"Prove it," said Taako, and took a long swig of the mint glass, tipping it back further and further as he watched Sazed drink.
---[]---
He woke to the smell of vomit, his throat stinging, his fingers and toes numb. There was something warm wrapped around his body, and he could hear Merle chanting the spell 'protection from poison' over and over. Taako couldn't orient himself, his head spinning and his vision blurred, as if he was floating at the bottom of a flooded river. But slowly the light grew sharper and he found he was looking up at Magnus' face, with the ceiling of Sazed's diner and its retro lampshades hanging behind Magnus' head. He was warm because he was lying in Magnus's lap, wrapped up in his thick arms. He could smell the familiar, sweaty odour of the big man's shirt, through the sharp stench of his own stomach acid, and a whiff of undigested mint.
"Oh, thank Istus," Magnus sighed, and squeezed Taako's head against his chest. Damn, Taako thought, I gotta buy the big boy some deodorant. Or maybe get him to eat less meat. Merle was still chanting, though he must have been out of spell-slots, as it just sounded like a thank-you to Pan.
"What-r-you-doin'," Taako mumbled into Magnus' pectorals. "How're-you-here."
Magnus eased up his embrace so that Taako could breathe properly, though he was still holding him like he was cradling a small child. He pulled off the ugly, new scarf and dabbed some of the vomit off Taako's chin, until Taako managed to push him off with one shaking hand. "Ge-off!"
Merle cleared his throat, "We, uh, we followed you," he confessed. "We were watching through the window and saw you and that poor fella collapse."
He twitched one twiggy finger at the floor in front of the bar. Sazed lay on his back, head turned to look at where the three of them were huddled, his arm outstretched in Taako's direction. His face was grey, and blue around the lips. Blood-tinged saliva dripped from the corner of his mouth. An empty glass lay beside him, with a few ice cubes scattered around it.
"I'm sorry. We were too late for him," Merle was saying, though the words weren't reaching Taako's brain for several seconds.
"Who did this?" Magnus asked. "Who poisoned you?"
"He did. He got me," Taako croaked. “But he didn’t know I’d poisoned him too.” He dragged his gaze away from Sazed's face to look at Merle. "What was in my drink? Would it have been fatal? Or was it just to make me sick?"
Merle glanced at Magnus. "I don't know. Does it matter?"
"Yes, it matters!" Taako struggled to sit up, but Magnus had to grab him as a dizzy spell overcame him. "That was the whole point of coming here, you dingbat! I needed to know whether he was trying to kill me. Now I'll never figure him out. You... bloody, nosy boys, messing with my dinner party."
"Taako, Taako, just chill for a minute," Magnus put his hand on his chest, too heavy for him to raise his body again. "We weren't just gonna let you die."
"That's what revivify is for, isn't it?" Taako snapped at Merle. He closed his eyes. "Ugh. I feel like I have the worst hangover since Avi took us on a moon crawl. Let me get up."
Magnus stood up, setting Taako on his feet but holding his arms before he toppled right onto his face. He'd ruined his sweater, which was a pity. He shook Magnus off. "I'm fine. Sheesh. Leave me alone."
He tried to step away and, predictably, fell over, but managed to catch himself in a chair and make it look sort of deliberate. He put his face in his hands, mumbling, “Now I don’t know who to trust.”
“Maybe the two guys who just saved your damn life?” Merle muttered, going over to squat beside Sazed. “If you killed him, I guess we better hide the body before anyone finds it.”
Magnus was watching Taako. "Did you know that cocktail was poisoned before you drunk it?”
Taako didn’t answer. He felt shivery all over and his stomach was heaving again. Merle whistled at Magnus. “Come over here. Let’s just focus on the problem at hand.”
“No, I’m just saying,” Magnus’ voice was getting louder, piercing the fog between Taako’s ears and his brain. “That’s not like you, Taako. Why did you do that?”
Taako folded his arms on the table and put his forehead against them, making a dark cave for his aching eyes. His breath gathered in the cavity, still smelling of acid and mint. He felt his torso shudder and spasm, but he couldn’t tell if it was a sob or just the after-effects of the poison. He heard Merle and Magnus thumping and scraping around the bar, grunting as they lifted something heavy between them (Sazed; Sazed’s body; Sazed’s corpse). There was a curse and some retreating clatter into the back room.
A few minutes later, Taako raised his head. His eyes had adjusted to the dim cave and the light was too bright, but his head didn’t ache so much. He blinked, pressing his fists into his eye-sockets for a moment. The nausea pulsed and then faded a little.
Merle was wiping something – melted ice, mixed with sick – off the hardwood floor, grumbling to himself. He looked over as Taako sat up again.
“We put the body in the freezer out back,” Merle told him. “And stacked some crates all over it so it looks like it’s not in use.”
Magnus stood against the bar, going through the papers in the brown folder. “You came here to sign this?”
“Yeah,” said Taako heavily. “He said he wanted me to waive my right to alimony.”
Magnus frowned. “But if you gave him what he wanted, why did he try to kill you?”
Taako’s shoulders shuddered as he began to laugh. He hiccoughed, giggled, cackled and had to grip the back of the chair to keep himself upright. He wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. “I guess I’ll never know,” he croaked at last.
Magnus closed the folder, his big hand resting on it as if trying to warm it. He said, “Maybe he didn’t really want you to sign. Was he kind of clingy? Maybe it was a test, to see if you’d get back together with him.”
Although they knew the shape of the cooking show, Magnus and Merle didn’t know about Glamour Springs. Nor did they know about Sazed, and they definitely didn’t know about what Sazed did at Glamour Springs. Taako had told Angus a little of it all, back when he still thought he was responsible and had come to terms with his guilt. He’d felt less in control of the bad things in the world after what happened to Fandolin, and less control meant less responsibility, which he liked. He had half-hoped that the boy detective would go gossiping to the rest of the bureau about his past, because at least then he’d never have the horrible task of revealing it to his team-mates. But Angus was tragically sensible and had said nothing.
And now Magnus was trying to explain Taako’s life to him? Without any context, without so much as a pinch of insight? The worst part was, it was a good guess. Sazed never said what he meant. Maybe he'd brought Taako here hoping Taako would want to get back together. It was almost impossible to believe, but so was everything else.
“You don’t know anything about him,” Taako said, because he didn’t have an answer for Magnus. “And you know, come of think of it, you don’t know anything about me. Maybe I poisoned him so I could inherit his diner and quit the bureau. Run the place all on my own, no one interfering in my private business. Wouldn’t that be a dream. And I would have gotten away with it, if you two dunces hadn't caught me in the act.”
“Sheesh. Last time I burn all my second-level spells saving your ungrateful ass!” Merle growled. “Boy, I really could use a good calm emotions right now, but I’m out of those slots!”
Taako rounded on, twisting in the chair and dragging his lips from his teeth, “You know, you can use slots equal or higher to the spell, Merle!” he yelled, even though his head was pounding, his voice cracking because his throat was still sore from the acid, “Gods, I’ve told you that a hundred times! I really love how you make me look so good at magic, you leaden troll, because you’re so fucking bad at it!”
He had to drag for air as his final words petered out, hanging off the back of the chair to keep himself upright. Merle and Magnus stared at him. Merle had two crimson spots in the middle of his cheeks, and his soul-wood arm seemed to be pulsing, the cracks in the bark opening and closing like the ribs of an animal breathing. In the silence, a log popped and collapsed in the hearth.
“Well,” said Magnus. “If you burn these papers you’ll still inherit the diner. You can go back to cooking for a living if you want.”
Taako looked at him. Magnus walked over and put the folder on the table in front of him. “We’ll make sure Lucretia doesn’t send the enforcers after you.”
He walked across the red-wood floor and out through the doorway. Merle had looked away while Taako was distracted, and followed with his shoulders hunched and his feet stomping.
Taako propped his forehead up on his hands and sat at the empty table in the cozy diner, looking down at his divorce papers.
Good riddance. He couldn't trust them. He couldn't trust anyone. Making money was the only thing that had ever mattered. Everything else was an illusion. If he'd just stuck to making money, then forty people (forty-one, now) wouldn't have died and he wouldn't have wasted years of his life letting someone else take half his profits just because they loved him.
He realised he hadn't heard that stupid bell ring above the door.
“Magnus?” he said weakly.
For two seconds there was nothing but the crackling embers in the fire, and then—
“Yeah?”
“Are you two just hiding in the cloakroom?”
Another pause, and then (lower), “Yeah.”
Taako sniffed. With the sleeve of his ruined jumper he wiped a bit of minty snot from his nose. “Can you… would you come give me an arm, big boy? I don’t think I can walk straight right now.”
Magnus peered back through the doorway. “Yeah, sure, Taako.”
He came over to the table and put an arm around Taako’s waist, lifting him onto his feet and taking so much of his weight that Taako was pretty sure he could have just raised his legs and let Magnus carry him out. But he walked anyway, putting one stumbling foot in front of the other.
“I’m taking these,” Taako said, stuffing the divorce papers into the back of his slacks. “Just in case I change my mind."
“Okay, but don't blame me if I get much more involved in your next wedding."
"No fear of that, my dude," Taako laughed. "You going to warn my husband I killed his predecessor?"
"No, dipshit, I'm going to make sure your taste in men has improved from this guy!" Magnus said with an offended whine. "You got something to say?” he asked Taako, as they entered the cloakroom where Merle stood glowering.
“Sorry, Merle,” Taako mumbled. “You're not the worst person at magic I've ever met.”
“I guess that’s the best I’m going to get,” Merle grunted. “Now let’s get out of here before someone calls the city watch on us.”
"Let me tell you," said Taako, head aching, leaning on Magnus's arm and wondering if Mags kept bags of flour in his sleeves and then wondering if he should go watch Mags work out and then remembering he was still angry at Magnus for no good reason. He tried to decide whether throwing up on Magnus' good shirt was worth losing any more fluids and decided it wasn’t. "A lot of people died. A lot of people, my man. And I thought it was because of my cooking for a long time. A long time! But I'm starting to think that maybe people just die."
"Do you wanna tell me about it?" Magnus asks.
"You know what. You know what. I think for once I do."
---[]---
And he tells them: there were seven terrible meals, of which Sazed was the victim of the last.