The Eccentric Entomologist is Now a Queen's Consort

Butchery first. The Scurabons opened the carcass along cartilage seams with the backs of sickles, wrists loose, elbows tight. No saw. No scrape. The sound was soft, like cloth sliding across a table. They moved in a rhythm that felt older than language—press, lift, press—never letting the edge sing. Rodion traced thin approval lines in the air, little threads of pale guidance that only Mikhailis pretended not to need.

<Maintain angle. Depth tolerance: low. If you score the bile lattice I will file a complaint with gravity.>

Mikhailis breathed once, slow. Be boring. Be necessary. He slid his knife where the pale lines kissed the skin, not cutting so much as suggesting. His grip was not a fencer's grip; it was a clerk's. Fingers steady, thumb high, blade as unimpressive as a spoon and twice as faithful.

"There are two sacs," he said, keeping his voice level so it didn't bounce around the crack. "They make everything taste like old coins if you nick them."

"You say that like you learned it once."

He winced with all the dignity a man can have while elbow-deep in meat. "I learned it… twice."

Her head tipped, just a little. Approval? Pity? No. A note taken for later.

The sacs came free whole, dull mother-of-pearl under the lantern rind. He held them like eggs a grandmother would slap his hands for mishandling, then lowered them into a slime cup already waiting. The cup accepted them with a soft, wet sigh and turned a cloudy color that meant: problem handled, don't touch. Slimeweave pushed a new bead of base gel to its surface with a polite cough.

Mikhailis smeared the base across exposed muscle in steady strokes, always from center to edge, never dragging bitterness toward the sweet. "Blot, don't wash," he muttered, almost to the knife. "Keeps the good flavors where they belong."

"A cook," she said. Her skepticism lined up like soldiers at inspection.

"A librarian who hates bad soup," he answered.

It did not sound like a joke in his mouth. It sounded like a decision he had made once and kept.

He mixed ash-salt by dragging a chilled stone through clean ash and catching the drip as Frost's breath melted the tiniest edge. The smell rose—the faint sweetness of chimney mornings and a market not yet busy. He rubbed the salt in with fingertips that had turned pages, counted coins, lifted friends, and buried a few. The motion was precise, patient, like he was teaching the meat to understand something and wanted to be kind about it.

"Rest one count cycle," he said. "Like us."

"Like us," she echoed, not agreeing, only letting the word live in the slot with them.

Ember heated a ring of stones until they held heat without flame. No smoke lifted; nothing for the eels to hear. Coals tamped low made a quiet bed, the color of old plums. Mikhailis opened a small roll of packets and tins. Everything inside was tidy in a way that made Thalatha suspicious: a fold of mint-paper powder; two glowcap gills dried flat; a twist of resin-seed; a thumb-grater. It looked like a doctor's kit for flavor.

He measured like a man reading a secret letter—no waste, no show. Mint-paper went in first, a pinch that smelled like clean breath and libraries. Then glowcap gills, thumb-crushed until they gave out a gentle wood note and a patient not-light. Resin-seed last, fragility between fingernails, a sweetness that didn't try to win.

He oiled spear-haft rims with neutral slime glaze till they shone in a way light didn't want. He skewered strips and held the first over the ring to listen. Not to see—listen. The Anchor breathed. He matched that.

"Turn on the strip," he said without looking at her. "Hold, hold, bite, slide. No flare."

She watched his hands the way she watched rookies climb a wall—ready to be angry and ready to be impressed. They were not showy hands. No wasted angles. The knife never talked. It just did its work. Her irritation at his quiet competence softened into respect against her will.

Silk made three small cones, thin and strong. Set over the ring, they gathered steam like shepherds gather lambs. Ember tapped each crown twice, the habit so automatic it had its own breath. Warmth spread through the cones with a hush that made the crack feel civilized.

Offal and bones went into a lidded stone with a Silk gasket. Hypnoveil lowered itself like a soft thought. Smell folded back in, and the night did not learn their dinner by the nose.

He bowled with little cups, wood rubbed smooth by many winters. First bowl to a lich whose crown hadn't flickered once all day—a quiet honoring of endurance. Second to her. Last to himself. The spoons were carved bone gone shiny at the lip. She told herself she did not care for small courtesies. Her fingers cared anyway.

The first bite surprised her. Not a lie of spice hiding rot. Sweet, clean, river-bright. The mint sat the wildness down without scolding it. Glowcap gave earth without mud. The resin's small sweetness lifted it all and then vanished before pride could arrive. Warmth ran down her fingers and up her forearms to a place just under her collarbones where cold likes to live.

"It is good," she said. Simple. A door held open for a man with a pot in his hands.

"Field austerity with manners," he said, mock-solemn because solemnity is embarrassing when you are him. "If I ever write a terrible book, it will be the subtitle."

She ate slow to make warmth take longer. Shoulders unlatched one notch at a time. The line—bone, beetle, veil, shadow—straightened and then settled, not soft, just ready again. Gratitude came with a taste she didn't like admitting she knew. She put that shame next to the many other jars she would open later.

She did not tell him he was dangerously attractive when he was competent. She told herself, and that was already too generous.

They ate. The crack held the quiet like a bowl holds soup.

The quiet after a good meal is where mistakes happen. She could hear her first commander say that in a voice like boots on ice. She sanded the edges with little talk. Not much. Enough to make the silence sit.

"The seasoning is pretentious," she said, spoon held like a judge's pen.

He put a hand to his chest. "Madam, these are the last proud pages of an old cookbook."

"Burn it after this."

"Never. I'll donate it to the court."

A corner of her mouth shifted. "Your court will pretend to read it."

He tilted his head, amused at the vagueness. "They will read the margins and scold my commas."

She let that picture exist. Not because she knew who "they" were. She didn't. She imagined some tidy person in a room that had never known mud, red pencil in neat fingers. It made the knife-slot feel a fraction wider.

He turned the skewers again on the count. The meat wore a gloss that wasn't grease; it was the right answer to a careful heat. He flicked his eyes at the alarm hairs without moving anything else. They lay, obedient and unbitten.

Boundaries again, because repeating them makes them sturdy. "No heroics," she said. She needed to hear herself say it. She needed him to hear it.

"Ask permission before every cut," he answered, gaze on the pot, not on her mouth. Correct. Say it and mean it. Don't be a problem that arrives disguised as help.

She leaned back against the chair edge, bowl cupped in both hands, and let the broth steam her eyelashes. It softened the grit there, the dust that never fully left since the fall. Around them, small gestures proved the camp alive: a Scurabon checked the back of its sickle again, tap-tap; a Hypnoveil mended the shimmer at the crack's mouth with a little ripple; Slime rotated itself to keep the base gel from settling wrong. Everyone found a tiny job and made the world less stupid with it.

She watched him wipe his blade. Cloth, waterless. Three careful draws, spine to tip. He set it down like an instrument. It told her more than most speeches.

"Who taught you," she asked, not looking, voice neutral. The question could be about knives or kindness.

"A bored aunt, a stingy innkeeper, an angry librarian, and no money," he said. Neutral returned. And the kind of loneliness that makes dinner matter more than it should. He didn't give that to her. Not now.

He offered a second bowl with a small tilt. She shook her head. He took it back without comment, sipped, and let his whole face agree with his earlier boasting in the privacy of his own mouth.

She let out a breath that wasn't a sigh. "You plan for gratitude," she said.

"I plan for people to have less reason to make bad choices." He lifted a shoulder. "Gratitude is a side effect."

That sounded like something he believed even when it did not help him. She respected beliefs that cost the carrier something.

A tiny clink came from the mouth of the slot—too even to be natural. Everyone stilled. Silk's veil-door breathed once, the shimmer bending to accept a weight on the other side.

<Minimal pressure event. Patrol. Maintain quiet. Do not think in capital letters.>

They listened. The sound slid past, like a hand on glass that did not decide to knock. The shimmer settled, re-wove itself. The slot let out the breath it had been holding.

He played with the idea of a joke and let it die. Good. She didn't have room for laughter that wasn't mean.

He began packing what he could while leaving the warmth. Spice packets nested back in their roll, pockets leveled like books on a shelf. He left the mint-paper open just a finger's width so its scent could politely fight any stranger smell. He adjusted one of the cones a hair and it breathed better. She hated that she noticed.

"Do you always do it this… carefully?" she asked.