James stepped out of the guest room and almost walked into a wall of silk and authority. The silk belonged to Rennalinda. The authority belonged to her uncle.

  “Queen?” Villen blinked once, slow and amused. “I thought you had already gone.”

  Rennalinda did not startle. She lifted her chin as if she had been planning this exact collision. “Uncle. I am going. You can see my feet moving, can you not?”

  He glanced down at the way she was not, in fact, moving. “For an ordinary day, you walk very slowly.”

  Her eyes narrowed a fraction. “And where are you going?”

  Something pleased flickered at the corner of Villen’s mouth, a hint of the dragon James knew he hid. “James is going to prepare something for us. He has finally agreed to do something with the sea plants cluttering my stores.”

  Silence settled into the hallway like an extra person.

  Rennalinda’s gaze slid from Villen to James, then back again. She did not say anything. She did not have to. The way she looked at him said enough: You invited him to cook again and did not tell me.

  The quiet stretched. James could feel it pressing behind his eyes.

  Villen lasted another three breaths.

  “Would you care to join us?” he asked at last. “For the tasting.”

  Rennalinda sniffed. “On what grounds?”

  “On the grounds that you enjoy food,” Villen said. “And I enjoy not being accused of excluding the Queen from her own palace.”

  Her mouth curved, just barely. “What an odd way to phrase ‘please come.’”

  “Queen,” he said with exaggerated patience.

  She looked at James again. “I was on my way out. But it would be rude to refuse an invitation that has been extended in front of witnesses.” She turned as if already bored with the concession. “Very well. I will… supervise.”

  Nyindnir, who had been standing at Villen’s shoulder with the resigned air of a man used to royal arguments, inclined his head. “Then it is decided. Her Majesty will supervise, His Highness will sample, and I will pray no one sets anything on fire.”

  “I never set anything on fire by accident,” James said.

  Nyindnir’s eyes flicked to him. “That is not as comforting as you think it is.”

  Rennalinda’s attention sharpened. “What are you making?”

  James straightened. The answer felt good on his tongue. “Sushi.”

  Her brow creased. “That is not a word in our kitchens.”

  “Then it will be, by the end of the day,” he said. “But it will take time. If you want something worth eating, I need at least a couple of hours.”

  “Hours,” she repeated, like the word had personally offended her schedule.

  “Yes,” he said. “Raw fish that does not kill anyone is the sort of thing you rush only once.”

  Nyindnir exhaled a very small laugh.

  Villen’s teeth flashed. “We can wait. The world can endure an afternoon without us.”

  Rennalinda’s look suggested she had doubts about that, but she did not argue.

  “Then you should go ahead,” James said. “Find somewhere you actually like to sit. I will send for you when it is ready.”

  “I will stay with him,” Nyindnir said. “Someone must make sure he receives what he needs.”

  “That is unusually generous, Nyindnir,” Villen said.

  “I like being alive,” Nyindnir replied. “If he underseasons something, I will not be the one to tell you.”

  Villen seemed satisfied with that. He turned and began to stroll down the corridor, Rennalinda falling into step beside him. Their voices dropped into low, sharp threads as they spoke, the sort of conversation where every word was technically polite and every pause was a blade.

  James watched them go for a heartbeat.

  Then he shook it off. “Come on,” he told Nyindnir. “We have a lot of seaweed to bully.”

  They set off in the opposite direction. Stone underfoot, painted walls to either side, servants pressing themselves discreetly out of the way as a dragon’s advisor and a foreign chef walked past.

  “What do you require?” Nyindnir asked. “Aside from the sea plants.”

  “Short list?” James said. “Good rice. Not porridge rice. Whole grains that hold together. Vinegar. Sugar. Salt. The freshest fish you have that has not been abused by a cook with something to prove. Shrimp. Lots of shrimp. Shells and heads included.”

  Nyindnir nodded as if mentally arranging columns. “I can send a runner to the royal storerooms.”

  “Perfect,” James said. “I will use my own knives. I know how they sulk, and I am not in the mood to argue with anyone else’s. Oh, and if anyone here owns a clean bamboo mat for rolling, I will faint from happiness, but I am prepared to improvise.”

  “A mat,” Nyindnir repeated.

  “A flat surface that bends,” James said. “If not bamboo, something woven and clean. I will show you.”

  Nyindnir raised a hand and caught the attention of a passing servant with nothing but a look. He began to rattle off instructions, voice calm, pace precise. Rice from this storeroom, fish from that one, vinegar from a third. Another servant was dispatched toward Villen’s hoard for sacks and barrels of dried seaweed that had been sent up from the Sea Harvest Floor and then forgotten in the dark.

  They walked in companionable silence for a few steps. James could feel the faint echo of mana drain in his bones, like he had slept wrong on an invisible bruise, but his hands itched to cook. That was a good sign. If he was too tired to be annoyed, then he would worry.

  “You mentioned something,” Nyindnir said. “When you were listing your problems, after you tore a doorway through the world and then collapsed.”

  “That is a dramatic way to describe a spell with a very boring name,” James said. “But yes. Which problem?”

  “The traveling kitchen,” Nyindnir said. “You called it that like it already existed.”

  “Oh.” James felt his mouth twitch. “It does.”

  Nyindnir’s brows rose. “Then I find myself wishing you had brought it here.”

  “I did,” James said, enjoying the confusion for a second. “I just cannot unpack it in your hallway. It would block half the corridor and I would never hear the end of it.”

  This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  Nyindnir stared at him. “Explain.”

  “Fine.” James scratched at his jaw, searching for a way to turn the idea into their words. “Imagine two wagons. One long one, one stubborn one. The long one has high walls, a roof, fold-down sides. Inside are stoves, benches, hooks, rails. It is a kitchen that moves when the wheels move. The smaller one is mostly for sleeping, for storage, for not freezing to death when the road decides to hate you. Together, they are… home that does not stay put.”

  Nyindnir’s expression shifted from skepticism to interest. “You have built this already.”

  “Yes.”

  “And you can store it… somewhere.”

  “That is the part I cannot explain without giving you a headache,” James said. “But yes. I can hide them. Take them out when I need them. Pack them away again.”

  Nyindnir hummed. “A moving kitchen. With folding walls and fitted stoves.” His fingers twitched at his side, as if already sketching. “If you had brought it into the palace properly, I might have been able to suggest improvements.”

  James grinned. “Who says I did not bring it?”

  Nyindnir stopped walking for half a heartbeat, then resumed as if nothing had happened. “You cannot show it in the palace,” he said. “The Queen would have opinions.”

  “She already has more than enough of those,” James said. “We will eat first. Then, if everyone is still speaking to me, I might show you where I keep my toys.”

  Nyindnir’s mouth curved. “I would like that.”

  They turned down another corridor and the familiar smell of heat and fat and metal drifted toward them. The palace kitchen loomed ahead, doors open to release the worst of the steam.

  Inside, the usual controlled chaos had been interrupted. A wide section of counter had been cleared. Bowls and knives waited. Several anxious-looking cooks hovered at the edges, not quite sure if they were supposed to help or get out of the way.

  Barrels and bundles sat on the nearest table, still damp from the journey up from the larders and the Sea Harvest Floor. Seaweed, in colors that the palace probably filed under "nuisance" rather than "ingredient."

  “This is all from the Sea Harvest pools?” James asked.

  “From the pools and the stores,” Nyindnir said. “For a long while now the hunters have brought back anything strange they find along the coasts. The keepers below test what will live in the ninety-seventh floor’s waters. What thrives, they cultivate. What grows too quickly or in awkward shapes, they dry and send up here. It seemed a shame to throw it away before we knew what it wanted to be.”

  James stepped closer. Long, flat, dark green fronds, almost black at the edges. Thinner, lighter strips like tangled ribbons. Sheets that had dried into stiff crackling fans.

  He reached out and lifted a frond of the darkest weed. It was cool and slick and smelled like the sea trying to apologize.

  “Oh, you are going to be useful,” he told it.

  One of the palace cooks swallowed audibly.

  James dropped the weed back into the barrel and rolled his shoulders. “Alright. Rice first. Has the vinegar arrived?”

  A clay jug was presented. He uncorked it, sniffed, and nodded. Not bad. Sharp, but not angry.

  “Good. We are going to season the rice, not pickle it. Pot, water, rice. I want it rinsed until the water runs almost clear. Not quite. Just enough that it does not sulk when I talk to it.”

  Blank stares met him, but this time he could tell it was the talking-to-rice part, not the rinsing, that lost them.

  He sighed. “Fine. Watch,” he said, taking a bowl and tipping rice into it. “This is rice. This is water. You already know how to wash it for porridge. I am going to show you how I like it when it has to stand up on its own.”

  He set one of the cooks to the task and guided their movements, nudging the rhythm of wash, swirl, pour, repeat until it matched the texture he wanted in his head. They knew their craft; he was only arguing for a different finish. When they had three pots’ worth of rice rinsed and resting, he moved on.

  “Seaweed stock,” he said. “I want a deep, gentle broth, not a punch in the teeth.”

  He selected the thickest dark fronds, sliced them into wide strips, and dropped them into a pot of cold water. “Low heat,” he told a cook. “If this boils, I will cry and then so will you. We coax the flavor out. We do not mug it in an alley.”

  While the seaweed steeped, he asked for a stone mortar. The kitchen produced a heavy one used for grinding spices. Another servant brought a basket of shrimp, still twitching, fresh from the Sea Harvest pools, their shells translucent and perfect.

  “Beautiful,” James murmured, taking one up. “You are going to suffer, but you will be delicious. That is as good an epitaph as any.”

  He had the heads and shells separated into one bowl, the bodies in another. The shells went into a pan with a slick of oil over medium heat until they turned vivid pink and filled the air with a smell somewhere between ocean and roasted nuts.

  Nyindnir watched from the side, arms folded loosely. “You torture ingredients the way courtiers torture a rumor,” he observed. “Slowly, with intent.”

  “I prefer my ingredients honest,” James said. “If they lie, people die.”

  The shells crackled. He added a ladle of water, scraping up the browned bits, then poured the whole mix into a smaller pot to reduce. Shrimp stock, thick and bright, base for something more.

  “Now for the fun part,” he said quietly.

  He had a servant bring him some of the dried seaweed, a brittle tangle he could crush between his fingers. He crumbled a handful into the mortar. “This one is going to give us structure,” he said. “It is full of things that like to turn water into something that is not quite solid and not quite liquid. We are going to trick it into behaving.”

  “Trick… the plant,” Nyindnir repeated.

  “You would be amazed how gullible food is,” James said.

  He asked for shells from any small sea creatures Villen’s people had raised or hauled up from the Sea Harvest Floor. A servant reappeared with a bucket of empty shells, everything from tiny crabs to spiral fragments of some unlucky mollusk.

  “Perfect.” James chose a few, rinsed them, and dropped them into the mortar with the crushed seaweed. Then he began to grind, stone against stone, until the mix turned into a fine, dusty powder that smelled faintly of salt and limestone.

  “Why the shells?” Nyindnir asked.

  “They carry a whisper of the ocean and a little bite,” James said. “We need the seaweed to let go of its grip on itself so it can grab onto the shrimp instead. Think of it as changing the company it keeps.”

  He strained the reducing shrimp stock until it ran clear and bright, then let it bubble down further until it coated the back of a spoon. He tasted it, hissed softly at the intensity, and nodded.

  “Alright,” he said. “Everyone else, do not do this at home.”

  He poured a splash of cool water into the mortar with the seaweed and shell powder, working it into a paste. Then he slowly folded in the shrimp reduction, stirring until it turned into a glossy, thick liquid with the color of coral and the sheen of oil.

  He set a wide bowl of cold, lightly salted water in front of him. Then he took a spoonful of the shrimp-seaweed mixture and let it drip in droplet by droplet.

  As each drop hit the brine, it firmed. Not hard, but enough to hold its shape, curling into tiny spheres that sank slowly.

  One of the cooks made a noise that might have been awe.

  James fished a few out with a slotted spoon. They clung together like a cluster of tiny pearls, each bead translucent, catching the light.

  Nyindnir leaned in. “Shrimp… eggs?”

  “Something like that,” James said. “The seaweed gives the shape. The shrimp gives the flavor. Together they become something better.”

  He tasted one, letting it pop against his tongue. The burst of intense shrimp and the faint mineral whisper from the shells made his eyes close for half a second.

  “Yes,” he murmured. “You will do.”

  He handed one to Nyindnir.

  The dragon’s advisor studied the sphere as if it were a particularly interesting political problem, then let it rest on his tongue. His eyes widened a fraction.

  “You taught the sea to pretend to be itself,” he said softly. “Concentrated.”

  “Now we are going to teach it to behave on top of rice,” James said. “Speaking of which…”

  The rice had finished steaming. He tipped it into a wide wooden bowl, fanned it gently while he folded in warm vinegar sweetened with a little sugar and salt. The grains turned glossy, each one separate but clinging, the way good sushi rice should.

  He divided his attention. Thin sheets of dried seaweed went briefly over low heat until they crisped and darkened, ready to become rolls. The thick seaweed broth in the pot had turned a rich, clear green; he tasted it and smiled. That could be a soup base, a bed for small pieces of grilled fish, or a warm dip for leftover rice.

  Fish arrived on a tray: slices of salmon marbled with fat, firm white fish, a small cut of beef that looked too good to ignore, all from the careful herds and pools far below.

  “Of course you sent beef,” he muttered. “You people cannot help yourselves.”

  He salted the beef lightly, seared it just long enough on each side to kiss the surface with heat, then set it aside to rest. When it had cooled, he sliced it thin, like rich red fish pretending to be polite.

  He laid out four stations on the cleared counter.

  For Villen, he shaped small blocks of rice, topped them with salmon, then crowned each piece with a spoonful of the shrimp roe so the pearls spilled over the edges.

  For Rennalinda, he chose balance: simple maki rolls with cucumber and seasoned rice, seaweed crisp on the outside, and a few pieces of white fish nigiri with only the faintest brush of shrimp roe, not enough to look showy, just enough to glisten.

  For Nyindnir, he built a small row of rolls with seaweed salad tucked inside, letting the textures speak: soft rice, crisp greens, slick marinade.

  For himself, he made what he called a compromise with his worse ideas: a strip of seared beef over rice, a line of shrimp roe on top, the ocean and the pasture in one bite. It should not have worked. He had a feeling it would anyway.

  By the time he finished, the counter looked less like a battlefield and more like an altar. Neat lines of color. Green, white, pink, red. Tiny beads of shrimp roe catching the light like stolen suns.

  He wiped his hands on a cloth and looked over the plates.

  “Alright,” he said quietly. “Let us see what a dragon and a queen think of the sea pretending to be delicate.”

  He glanced at Nyindnir. “Would you call them back up here?”

  Nyindnir nodded once. “With pleasure.”

  As the advisor stepped away to fetch his rulers, James looked down at his own piece of beef and shrimp roe and smiled despite himself.

  Some quests were about glory. Some were about survival.

  This one was about convincing two very dangerous people that seaweed and shrimp could taste like a promise instead of a punishment.

  He could live with that.