The pair comes to a stop side-by-side about ten paces away from where we hopefuls crowd just inside the main gate. The one on the left sweeps into a deep bow, the dampened evening light picking up teal highlights in her dark, bound-back hair.

The one on the right plants his feet wide and his hands behind his back. A heavily altered mountain of a man, it couldn't be more clear what he's been redesigned for. His hardened skin is covered in a tracery of stylized glyphics rendered in shades of stormy blue. His eyes are the color of whiskey lit by fire, and slashed through with narrow, cat-like pupils. Even his Vitei is attractive—smoked meat, sea salt, and liquor with subtle undertones of chocolate and wild berries.

What in Lutra's name is a Reshaped Soldier doing as a Trial Director?

But although his ash-brown hair is cut short at the sides, the top's left long—pulled back and bound behind his neck. His soldiering days must be long behind him, to have hair that long, but he looks like he's in his mid-twenties.

The other director flashes a bright smile.

"Welcome to Palace Amoranti, my friends," she says, and in that moment I do feel truly and entirely welcome. Her voice is like lavender honey, soothing and sweet. It seeps into my pores and fills me with a heady sense of ease and elation.

Another Bard. For a minute, I consider reaching for my earplugs, but think better of it. It can't hurt to feel really, really good right before a life-or-death test, can it?

Still, I try to refocus a bit to one of my other senses, studying the Bard's face. Trying to place just what it is that I find so appealing about it. Is it the lovely shape of her warm, narrow eyes, or the playful glint in them? Is it the way her face looks like an inverted heart, or the elegant, gently curved line of her nose? I conclude in the end that it's all of it. That, and her vitei. It's got a kick to it, but a rich sweetness, too. Like chili mango chutney.

This one's a trickster.

"From this moment forward, no matter how fate may spin, this is your home now," she continues, catching my eye for a half a heartbeat. "So again I say, welcome to Palace Amoranti. Welcome home."

The other director rolls his eyes, but there's a tiny smile tugging at the corner of his lip.

"If you look around us, you will notice five tents that are significantly larger than the others, each waving the flag of a Blessing. Please proceed now to the appropriate tent. Your trials will begin shortly."

Having already spotted the Gourmand's tent when first let in, I head off to the right, joining the others of my type as we break away from the dividing crowd. It's not until I'm halfway there that I realize neither Director ever bothered to introduce themselves. The Bard seemed vaguely familiar, somehow, but otherwise I couldn't link their faces to anyone I remember from before my exile. Filing away a reminder to ask someone better informed as I reach the tent, I shove aside the door flap and step inside.

At first, I'm taken aback. I don't know what I was expecting—heaps of ingredients perhaps, or cooking equipment.

But there are only people.

Gaunt people. haggard people. People ravaged by sickness and poverty.

Any of them could be tapping at death's door. Any of them, save one. Dressed in an immaculate ivory vherja robe, the Grand Royal Gourmand looks down his pointed nose at us—appraising each new hopeful in turn as we enter. I flinch a bit as his cold eyes pass over me, hoping he doesn't notice. He wasn't the GRG when I lived here, but he was on his way to it, and well-acquainted with my father.

By the time new Gourmands stop streaming in, there are about fifty of us. The same number of people I'd guess stand behind the GRG, watching with hopeful eyes.

Wasting no time on welcomes or preamble, the GRG glares out at us for a moment before prying his grim-set jaws apart to speak.

"You're all either here because you're extremely skilled, entirely hopeless, or very, very stupid," he begins in a voice like pumice stone, also not bothering to introduce himself. 

This time, though, I'm certain of why. He doesn't see a point in it, as anyone he'd deem capable of passing the trial already knows who he is.

Thesral Brulié. Aijur's most self-important Gourmand.

"Now it's time to find out which is which. You see before you fifty-three lost causes. Each one of them dying. Each one undiagnosable. You are their last resort. None of them would otherwise be able to afford the services of a skilled enough Gourmand to save them. Of a Royal Gourmand. Prove yourself worthy of the title. Save a life, or join one in death. Your choice." He pauses, takes a breath. "Any questions?"

Someone raises his hand. The GRG grunts in his general direction.

"Um, where are we supposed to cook for them? And what ingredients do we have to work with?"

"You may prepare your meal anywhere in the outer grounds, provided you have the camp cooking equipment you were instructed to bring. As for your ingredients, again. Anything you can find or forage here in the outer grounds is yours to work with. You have until midnight."

Six hours.

There's a lot of sputtering at that, and someone off in the back starts quietly sobbing. But no one dares speak a word.

"The lost causes will choose their champion." Brulié's declaration cuts through everything, and we all go silent—save the sobber, who does their best.

Gradually, the patients work their way through the crowd, making their choices. Whenever a pair of eyes darts my way, it fixes on my patch and quickly diverts. The one I end up with doesn't really choose me at all—she was just one of the slowest. Though gaunt and almost two handspans taller than me, her face is one of someone just a few years past childhood.

"I guess it's you and me," she says, and although she sounds as weak as she looks, there's humor to her tone. "I have a request. If you can't make me better, at least make my last meal delicious."

I grin at her. "I don't make anything that isn't." My fingers flow into the "well-met" signal. "I'm Juniper, but you can call me Jun. What may I call you?" It's my first time introducing myself by the new name, and an odd thrill runs down the nape of my neck at the sound of it.

"I'm Tasslyn Thyr. Tass." This time, her smile lights up her pallid face. "What do you need to know?"

"Once you're paired, you're free and encouraged to leave the tent." Brulié's voice drowns out my initial answer, projecting a good deal more than necessary.

"Let's find somewhere more comfortable to talk about it," I suggest.

Abandoning the tent, we make our gradual way through the labyrinth, finding an unoccupied pagoda filled with cushions and the scent of creepervine roses.

There, she tells me all about her life as a rice farmer's daughter. Of how her father, insisting they needed it more, gave every scrap of meat they came by to her six older brothers. Tass, however, was allowed only rice—and punished when caught trying to roast a paddy carp she'd caught. Her father had snatched it away and made her watch the youngest son eat it. Then he'd beaten her.

She'd never been particularly healthy, but it got worse when she turned twelve and her growth spurt hit. Now, she keeps getting taller and taller—but she's wasting away, and every day she weakens. Even her senses have gone fuzzy.

"Everything's blurry, and it's like there's cotton in my ears. Nothing comes through clear," she says, and I can tell she's trying hard to sound like it doesn't bother her.

She's been under the care of her aunt for over a year now, and her home life's improved. But she has trouble keeping anything down other than rice, and what little she does manage seems to leave her with nothing.

I have to fight back tears throughout the whole story. I don't want to appear weak before this girl whose entire hope in this world is me.

"Thank you for being so thorough," I say once she's finished answering all my follow-up questions.

"Do you think you can help me?"

Don't give her false hope, don't promise anything you ca—

"I'm sure of it."

The words are out of my lips before I know it, defying my inner voice.

The look she gives me—like I'm Lutra herself come down from the sky—is heartbreaking. And if that isn't motivation to follow through, I don't know what is. I have to do this. For both our lives.

And for revenge. Sweet, sweet revenge.

Leaving Tass in the care of palace attendants, I head back to the gatehouse, where, as instructed, I'd left my trunk. Looking up my name, the gatekeeper then sends me marching off to Bunk Tent Six, where I find my things waiting for me at the end of a narrow cot.

Once I've gotten my gatorhide book, I find a bench tucked away behind some rosebush walls and start furiously scribbling notes. Everything relevant from Tass's past. Everything I was able to glean about her personality. Everything I've been able to guess about her condition. And, most importantly, every flavor note I picked up from her vitei in the moments she smiled most brightly.

Many make the mistake of thinking only sensari are supernaturally affected by their senses. This isn't true. Magic resides where consciousness lies, with or without a Blessing to enhance it. Anything that impacts the mind can spark magic—even if it's of a more subtle kind than that which we sensari experience and facilitate.

When someone listens to a Bard's song, or tastes a Gourmand's food, or wears an Artisan's creation, it's their own magic that changes them. Our job, as sensari, is to craft the exact sensory experience needed to trigger the desired effect on their mind and body. To pass some small part of our Blessing into that song or dish or dress to give their latent magic a boost.

But, although everyone possesses vitei, only sensari can directly perceive it. For the Bards, it's a song heard inside their mind. For the Masseurs, it's a feeling. The Artisans see it as color, patterns, or imagery. The Perfumiers can smell it. And we Gourmands, of course, can taste it. More often than not, the most vital castings incorporate qualities that mirror the client's own vitie—the colors, songs and scents of their souls. People tend to respond powerfully to their own inner essence materialized.

But with Tass, I have to choose carefully. There are flavors to her energy that have been forced into it, beaten into it. Flavors that don't belong there, that aren't truly her. What's more, some of the flavors and foods she most needs are those she's been trained to reject. To feel unworthy of.

Finishing up my notes, I sit for a time in total stillness as the chaotic tangle of thoughts and ideas in my mind begins, gradually, to evolve into a plan. A recipe.

Snapping the book shut, I tuck it under my arm and set out into the labyrinth.