From the Editor:

Sesame Seed’s Bakehouse is what you get when you mix equal parts of culinary genius, the finest milled white flour, and an unbeatable location.

His baked/steamed/fried goods are somewhere between morish and all-out addictive. Sometimes when I am back home (compiling notes in my little study, for example) I get a hankering for a savory cruller, or five.  And then I simply yearn to return to that mysterial, complexical land – which here goes by the name of the Western Paradise – for a good carbohydrate load, and a visit with my friends. But I digress…

The bakehouse is close enough to where the City Guard is bunked along the southwest wall of Pearl City that Sesame Seed gets a steady stream of bored, self-important customers to keep the product moving.

But not all the customers walk in the front door. Come with me for a quick imaginary stroll through the hustle and bustle of the bakehouse, and I will show you what I mean.

First (just for fun) stand in front of the generous front doors and take in the aroma – if you’ve got a nose like mine you can pick out the roasted goodness of a newly-baked loaf, crushed rosemary or chopped fire peppers, the mellow tang of the ancient wooden floor, the spicy sweat of a small army of workers.

Then walk in, past the service counter. Be careful to skirt the towers of cast iron pans, walk around the yawning ovens, the charcoal-fired stoves piled high with green bamboo steamers. (Don’t breathe too deeply – there is enough steam and flour in the air to make a large dumpling.)

Ah, now there is the back door. You can see it opens onto a narrow cobblestone alley. But that is not the significant part. The significant part is – if you look down you will see a square hole cut into the cobblestone street, covered with a fine metal grating. And if you are clever enough to remove that grating, and gutsy enough to walk down the little flight of stone stairs, you will be in the Underground City. So you see what I mean by location.

That square hatch (plus a precision-tooled screwdriver) is how Sesame Seed’s best clients pick up their daily order.

This is another of Battle Axe’s story specials. But as you will see, in this story (unlike the previous) she is one of the principal actors.

//Oriole Burdee

————————————————

The Story Begins:

Battle Axe had a stuffy nose on the day that Fire Fade was struck down. And if that wasn’t bad enough, she also had a scritchy throat, watery eyes, and a throbbing head.

They were crouching behind a heavy oak worktable for kneading out breads. Just a few yards in back of them an open door. And beyond the open door…a gaping hatch in the alleyway floor, its fine metal grating removed.

Which normally would have been fine. But today just a few yards in front of them a small group of customers. In helmets.

It was an awkward place, and an awkward time to draw official attention.

“Ah-choo!”

Four helmeted heads swiveled around. Now normally they wouldn’t have swiveled, they would have kept right on doing what they were doing. (Which was picking up a double order of corn cake, no poppy seeds please.)

But six months earlier those helmets and all their fellow helmets had been put on a diet of weak vinegar and fish jerky. They were told to either get used to smelling like sour herring or shape up. Somebody up in the Imperial Palace was tightening the screws. Nobody needed to ask why.

And lo and behold, the why was right there, crouching behind a bread kneading table. Like gift from the gods, a pair of grubby subversives.

Battle Axe thought it best to run for it. They’ve seen the grating, they’ve seen us, and we haven’t bathed in weeks. Can’t get any worse. She sprinted for the door, sack of bread over one shoulder and her sister’s skinny arm over the other.

“Rats!” Quick as anything, one of them shot off an arrow. It whistled through the bakehouse, lodged in a stack of sticky rice cakes.

“I hate scaly fish scales!” Another helmet shouted. Whiz, whiz, whiz. A delicate tower of bamboo steamers exploded, hurling 144 steamed pork buns like bullets across the bakehouse room.

Battle Axe was first out the door. She tossed the baked booty down the hatch and swung a leg in.

“Down with vinegar!” Hollered another, letting fly with the biggest turkey fletched projectile in his quiver. That was the one that pinned Fire Fade to the back bakehouse door, pinned her by the shoulder. “Sister!!!!!”

The sound brought Battle Axe to a screeching halt mid-flight. She looked up. Fire Fade was slumped against the door, knotty red hair tangled up in the arrow’s shaft.  She screamed like a horse with a broken leg.

Her sister, her twin sister, her only family still alive. Battle Axe was half-way to a dead faint when she was interrupted by a courteous voice. A voice that sounded like a carefully-crafted inkstone.

“Excuse me,” it was strangely accented, and coming from the front of the bakehouse. “I would like two green onion pancakes, and a red bean-paste bun.”

Only a foreigner could be idiot enough to interrupt a fracas with the City Guard. And for a 3-copper meal??

The helmets swiveled away from their stuck prey. “Get out, now, or you’ll get an arrow for lunch!”

“That’s not very imaginative.” It was also an annoying voice. “And anyway, I just want the pancakes and the bun, and I’ll be on my way. You can go back to your shooting after that.”

Well, annoying or not, she saw an opportunity. More specifically, one of the 108 Celestial Opportunities For Getting Out of Scrapes. She drew in a full breath, pushing the dizziness back. Now, go now! Two tremendous leaps and she was back at the door; she yanked a small fruit knife from her pocket and began sawing away mightily.

“What are you…just pull it out.” Fire Fade’s head was lolling to one side.

“No, you little ninny! You’ll bleed out before I can get you home.”

The arrow snapped in half. So did the knife blade. Hah! She was going to have a talk with Broken Talon about proper weaponry for his troops. Most especially the ones entrusted with the daily bread run.

A deafening crash erupted at the front of the bakehouse. The foreigner had stumbled over a large basket of rolling pins, which were performing the service they were created for and rolling merrily under the feet of the City Guard. Two down.

Next he was pinging around the room like an arrow looking for a mark. Smash, a tower of cast-iron pans hurtled to the floor. That helmet will never be peaky again. Three.

Now there he was bumping into a pot of boiling dumplings…ah the fourth and final City Guard down, clutching his right foot. The foreigner, he was rather clumsy for such a…a neat sounding young man.

Then somebody kicked a bag of flour and it all went white, and very quiet except for the retreating clank of the City Guard.

“W-what about me?” Sesame Seed spoke into the silence, his voice thin and shaky. “What do I say when they come back?”

The air was clearing, snowing a fine layer of flour on the bakehouse tables, floors, and scattered debris. Battle Axe could just make out the foreigner, facing off with the baker at the front of the shop. It wasn’t a fair match. The foreigner casually stretched out a fist and made contact with Sesame Seed’s generous chin with a squashy “smack”. He slumped to floor like a sack of cornmeal.

“You’ll be fine,” he said. He looked towards the rear of the bakehouse where the sisters stood still frozen, silhouetted against the open door. “Now. Let’s get down that hole, wherever it goes.”

“Hah! Not with us you’re not.” Presumptuous foreign devil. Battle Axe hauled with determination on her limp sister and staggered out the door. She sure weighed a lot for such a spindly thing. Another step, knees wobbly. Almost there.

“The fat baker won’t have any real trouble,” somehow the foreign devil was there first – straddling the square hatch, arms crossed. “But the boys with bows will be back for me. So I think I will go with you, if you see my point. Besides, I’m not sure you can handle that by yourself –”

“That???” Battle Axe scowled a violent red. “You mean her? You mean my sister, who is bleeding to death because you are blocking the exit?”

He didn’t answer, just blinked at her with inky-black eyes. She held out for as long as she could, then her sister gurgled and Battle Axe made her choice.

“FINE. But my guess is you won’t make it through the front door.”

He nodded. “Don’t forget the bread, I haven’t had my lunch.” He plucked Fire Fade easily out of her arms, slung her over his back and stepped down into the darkness of the Underground City.

Insouciant coldheart. She wanted to see him flung out on his smug behind. But not before she saw Fire Fade back to the grottoes, safe in the bosom of the rebels.

For a second time that morning, she swung a leg into the hatch.

Just below her and already swathed in the dim of the Underground City the foreigner’s voice floated up, courteous, strangely accented. “Uh, I think she’s dead.”

Battle Axe saw the stone steps to the Underground City rise to meet her as she fell into a dead faint.

————————————————

Next week, Dear Reader, we will continue the story Draught of the Gods. Prepare yourself for drama, grief, and maybe something else!

//Oriole Burdee