Pride's Spell by Matt Wallace & Matt Wallace

Author:Matt Wallace & Matt Wallace
Language: eng
Format: epub

HORSE SHIT

After hours in Sin du Jour’s main kitchen, Dorsky fills six shot glasses with Wild Turkey for him and his line.

Rollo, Chevet, and Tenryu all gather around the station where Dorsky is serving.

James, having spent the evening bailing sea-salt-and-vinegar-speckled hay onto minotaurs’ plates the size of manhole covers, finishes wiping down a pair of newly cleansed and sterilized pitchforks, and hangs them both on a rack filled with likewise unusual implements for a fine-dining kitchen.

“James, let’s do this thing!” Dorsky barks at him in his usual gruff line boss way.

“You got it, Chef,” James says, unperturbed, and jogs quickly over to the station where the shots are waiting.

“I poured an extra one for you there, My Horse Has the Trots-skys,” Dorsky tells Rollo.

The rotund, bearded Russian is the only one of them who has already showered and changed out of his serving whites.

Chevet, Tenryu, and James laugh, not because it’s a particularly good pun (it’s not), but because the memory of a drunken centaur lifting his tail and expelling the remains of the dinner Rollo so diligently helped prepare all over him will never not be funny to them.

“Goddamn half-and-half abominations, all of them,” Rollo grumbles in his thick accent, downing the first shot immediately and picking up the other one to toast.

Dorsky, suppressing his own laughter, raises a shot to them.

“To a job well done, and to not having to serve a wine-soaked barnyard for another year,” he toasts.

They all touch shot glasses and throw back their contents.

James coughs several times after, unaccustomed to hard liquor on anything resembling a regular basis.

Rollo holds his empty shot glass up to the light, examining it ruefully. “What you think newbies are doing right now? Eh? Rubbing asses with movie stars who do not accidentally shit on you?”

Dorsky shrugs. “Bronko wants ’em under his wing until they’re ready to fly on they’re own, that’s all. He did the same thing with your big, dumb Cossack ass. He did it with all of us. It’s his way.”

Rollo grunts, but he can’t argue with the truth of that statement, any of it.

“Y’all did good tonight,” Dorsky tells them, sounding very much like Bronko in that moment. “Any asshole can fork hay and cut up apples, it takes a real goddamn chef to cook the hell out of it so it’s real people food. And that’s what we do. Turn bullshit into real damn food.”

“You mean horse shit, oui?” Chevet asks.

That sets them all off laughing again.

Except for Rollo, naturally.

He pours himself another shot and downs it.

Dorsky looks up, his laughter fading as he stares across the kitchen at Boosha, occupying the entrance arch with a severe look on her ancient, slightly inhuman face.

He’s never seen Sin du Jour’s resident ancient foods and culture expert outside of her ramshackle apothecary, let alone in his kitchen.

“What’s up, Boosh?” he asks neutrally.

“Something comes,” she says with a heavy, if vague, finality.

Rollo looks to Dorsky with a derisive laugh and questioning eyes. “What she says?”

Dorsky just shakes his head, his attention on Boosha.

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