New Decameron Eighty-Four: Molly Tanzer (Patreon)

Just Another Night Shift at Café Pandæmonium

by Molly Tanzer

The Café Pandæmonium was the oldest taranjardín in the city of Pekarek. Nestled as snugly within the Fifth Quarter as a bit of moss in the crack of a stone wall, it was said that the only thing older than the café was the taranja tree at its center. And what a tree it was! The black and gnarled trunk could not be encircled by three people holding hands, and its spreading branches, laden with taranges—the magical black oranges of Pekarek—had ever been the café’s only ceiling. Strung through with shard-lanterns, the boughs illuminated rather than shaded the café’s mats and hassocks and low tables, for of course in Pekarek it was never much brighter than twilight in the city. 

Other establishments came and went over the course of months, or years, or lifetimes, but Pandæmonium stayed put. It was an institution, like the famed Library Garden in the Second Quarter, which hadn’t changed its menu since it first opened in the burned-out ruin of Pekarek University, or Kish’s: Home of the Vibro-Noodle, in the Lantern District of the Fourth Quarter, where the original Kish’s great grand-daughter was now running the show. 

But a Fifth Quarter locale, well, that was a little different. Just because its dangers were exaggerated didn’t mean they weren’t real. The Fifth Quarter was known for its nightlife. Bars full of musicians; cafés where artists and writers would meet to work and talk. Naturally, the cutpurses and the charlatans were there too, practicing their arts. Even so, people came to the Fifth Quarter to hear the music, to eat, and to drink, to see what might be bought in the late-night curio shops, and to Pandæmonium they came for the steaming cups of bitter, stimulating taraxa, and for the little chilled glasses of house-made vermut.

Both drinks were made from the taranja—juice, peel, pith, and seed. Both were bitter as a hard truth, and black, a thick dense black that absorbed light. That was how it ought to be. Taraxa and taranja vermut ought to be black, not charcoal-gray, not brown-black, and especially not a muddy navy, as it might be in the other taranjardíns in the area. But given that Jaggery, the proprietress of the Café Pandæmonium, was also the dryad of the taranja tree, the drinks were always as black, black as ink, black as the scales of the demon-dragon Chernovash, Mouth of the Otherside.

But all that history and pedigree aside, a late-night shift at Pandæmonium could be a real drag sometimes. And that seemed to go double for Yslark whenever she’d been asked to unexpectedly fill in for one of her co-workers.

It was early summer, when the evenings were long but the heat of the season had not yet set in. It really felt like every weirdo in Pekarek seemed to have a desire to descend upon the café and make demands upon not just Yslark’s time, but her patience as well. 

Yslark had never been much for regular employment before coming to Café Pandæmonium, but she really enjoyed making taraxa. She enjoyed climbing up into the knotty branches to pluck the best taranges. She enjoyed the smoothness of the bone-handled knife she used to slice through thick peel and harsh pith. She enjoyed the aroma of the curiously unsweet juice as she heated it in her long-handled copper pot over the stove; the fragrance of the proprietary blend spices she added; the shine of the taranja mermelote, the traditional sweetener that accompanied the drink, as she put a little spoon of it down on the saucer. And she enjoyed serving small, frosty glasses of vermut, after chilling it over the ice made for them daily by an elementalist named Ketrichor.

Customer service, on the other hand, Yslark did not enjoy. Not one bit. 

“Please don’t make me talk to people tonight,” said Yslark, when her co-worker Eench joined her behind the bar.

Eench was dark-haired, short, and about fifteen years younger than Yslark. In fact, except for Jaggery, Yslark was the oldest person who worked at Pandæmonium by about a decade. But that didn’t give her any authority; the reverse, actually. 

“You want to make drinks tonight?” Eench had put her hands to her face in mock surprise. “Why, this request has caught me entirely unprepared! I thought you loved to take orders and deal with the public!”

Eench wearing a crop-top made of bright blue lizard-leather sewn together with hot-pink spidersilk. Yslark coveted it desperately.  

Usually, four people worked together at Pandæmonium: a front-of-house person who took the majority of the orders and brought out drinks and food, a bartender who made drinks, a short-order cook who put together the small plates, and a dishwasher. But unlike the cook and the dishwasher, the people who made drinks and performed host duties were one and the same, which meant there was always some jockeying for who got to do what.

Behind the bar, shielded by the antique brass stove and the even more impressive ice chest fashioned wholly of real wood, Yslark could do her job relatively unnoticed and unremarked-upon. Out front, she had to endure customer behavior… and the understandable surprise of strangers. 

Even in Pekarek, it was unusual to meet someone who was—there was no delicate way to put it—a little less visible than everyone else.  

It was obvious she wasn’t a ghost. It was just that her body was translucent—and only her body, not her gray, lichen-fiber doublet, not her black leather shorts, not the power-bracers Twill had made her that were helping to amplify her magic, to get her back to normal more quickly. 

Yslark had stuck her hands into the pockets of her shorts and looked at the much younger woman in pathetic appeal. “So… does that mean you’ll let me make drinks?”

“You made drinks last time,” said Eench. 

This was true.

Yslark sighed, and accepted her fate. 

“On your own head be it,” she said.

“Hmm?” Eench had already assumed her post behind the stove. She looked up from her slickscript. Her gaze was unfocused. 

Yslark blushed. She was, naturally, quite sensitive about people looking through her.

“Sorry, I was sending a script,” said Eench. “I’m going out after work. I met this girl, she’s so chill and cool. I’ve seen her around and then we were at this party together and I finally asked her out. We’re gonna check out the new raki house by the river. They say the fish is to die for. Anyway, what were you saying?”

“Oh, nothing.” 

It never failed: it was always a weird night at Pandæmonium whenever Yslark worked at the front of the house. Or maybe that’s just the way it seemed to her. 

She couldn’t ask Eench, who was back on her slick.

Yslark had a slick, too—one kind of had to, these days, to stay in touch with people. Clients and employers liked for you to be available. As did friends, it turned out… 

Seeing Eench on her slick made Yslark itch to check hers. A sijil flared under her touch; it was her boyfriend, Twill. Well, was he her boyfriend? They were certainly fucking… or at least, they had been. Ever since the accident he’d avoided her embraces but not her company, so what exactly their relationship was had become unclear. 

No, that was wrong. Its opacity had changed. 

The script from Twill was cryptic—their team had a job for the following night. He did not say whether he’d come by, or want to do something after she got done for the night. Just as Yslark was about to put it away, for two customers had ambled into the café, his sijil flared again.

Oh and sounds good

Yslark put away her slick with a hmph. She had asked him if they were getting together, and if so, when and where and how. What, she wondered, sounded good? The concept of having options? 

Pandæmonium never closed. How could it? It had no doors. But that didn’t mean it was always busy. The bigger places on Thrake Street, the main thoroughfare through the Fifth Quarter—there, one could get lost in the crush. But Café Pandæmonium was off the beaten path. Down a cobblestoned side-street and then off an alley, just as the stucco and plaster buildings seemed to be crushing in on all sides, they opened up—to bare packed earth under-foot, and spreading branches muffling out the sounds of the city, and the hiss of the stove. 

The night was a slow one, but late nights usually were. The majority of the business was done during the morning and evening rushes: people looking for a bit of a boost as they hustled to their work, or when they were on their way home and longing for something to take the edge off the day. At night, it was locals on dates and loners with their nose in a book into the wee hours. Friends laughing together over a few drinks and a bowl of crunchy ippee-appee fresh from the fryer. While the Fifth Quarter might be a haven for criminals, petty or otherwise, Pandæmonium was a safe place to spend a chill evening. 

It was only ever tourists who caused trouble.  

Yslark’s first customers of the day seemed to be looking for some. The young man’s snarl was the perfect accessory for his black leather trousers and leather jerkin. A bandana with a yellow starburst in the center of it kept his dark, too-long bangs pushed up out of his face. The girl he had on his arm was a blonde with a short and jagged cut. She was wearing some sort of cherry-red… overall… shorts… garment… thing. It looked like you’d have to unbutton it and take your tits out every time you wanted to take a piss, but just the same, Yslark judged it cute. Her eyes were done up with a lot of smudgy black stuff. She was sucking on a lollipop the same color as her outfit and it was staining her lips to match. 

They stood a little off to the side while perusing the food menu. That night, Pandæmonium had grilled zardinas on toast points, khachapuri with a lizard egg, pickled shadowbeans with flaked chlorsalt, and then the usual snacks—ippee-appee, pluxa—the sweet lichen pastry that had once been Pekarek’s other claim to fame—and a cheese board with grub crackers, smoked mushroom sausage, and taranja mermelote. 

Yslark’s slick chimed in her pocket. Since the customers were still deep in conversation she took it out, and swore under her breath. The last person she wanted to hear from right now was T.K., so of course that was who was messaging her.

You don’t work tonight, right? 

T.K. and Yslark went way back, but whether they were old friends or not really depended on Yslark’s mood. And whether T.K. was trying to conduct some business at Pandæmonium, just like Yslark—and Jaggery, for that matter—had asked her not to do at least half a dozen times…

Yslark traced her response with her finger. Why do you ask? The pink glow of her slick was faint; its response, sluggish. It needed a charge of magical energy. She probably had enough, but she decided to wait. Ever since the accident she was perpetually low on magic, and using up what she had on charging her slick felt like a bad idea, especially at the start of a shift. 

 “We’re ready to order.”

Yslark tucked her slick into the back pocket of her shorts.

“What can I get for you?”

The kid smirked at her. The girl on his arm tittered.

“We’ll do the beans, and the fish. And we’d like some extra bread.”

“The beans come with bread.”

The kid leaned forward. He had a black toothpick clenched in his teeth. It didn’t look nearly as cool as he thought it did. He couldn’t have been twenty-five, and the affectation made him look younger, not older.

“We want more than that,” he said, softly, like the information was a threat. 

Pandæmonium got a little quieter. The girl giggled again, nervously this time.

“You got it,” said Yslark, refusing to rise to the bait. “Anything to drink?”

“A glass of vermut for the lady,” he said. The girl winked at him as she sucked on the lollipop. “And I’ll have taraxa over ice.”

Yslark shook her head. “We don’t serve it over ice.”

“What?”

“The owner likes to keep it traditional.” Personally, Yslark liked taraxa iced, but Jaggery wouldn’t hear of serving it. She called it a “modern conceit,” though it had been “a thing” in Pekarek for over a hundred years. 

The young man stared at her in astonishment. “Well is the owner here?” he asked.

“Nope.” Actually, Yslark didn’t know. She just wasn’t going to try to find Jaggery for this conversation.

“Well, can’t you just… do it for me?”

“And violate an oath? Of course not. If you want something cold, the vermut is very nice.” The girl’s glass was waiting in frosty glory down at the end of the bar. She twitched—she wanted it. 

“We’re not here for iced taraxa,” she said under her breath.

The young man hesitated, then nodded. “A vermut will do.”

After the couple had sat down with their drinks, Yslark looked at her slick. Another script from T.K. awaited her.

Oh good! I’m meeting a friend there. But I’m running late—keep him there if you can, will you? Stall him. He’s a kid, black hair, black everything. A lot of attitude.  

Yslark rolled her eyes. Friend, indeed. Surely they’d spent hours telling one another the secrets of their hearts. 

T.K. would call herself an entrepreneur; everyone else would call her a fence. She dealt in information, and more corporeal curiosities. 

Selling something illegal in my taranjardín again? 

Of course not! You told me to stop doing that. Tonight, I’m buying. 

“So what happened?”

Yslark was distracted from this infuriating exchange by a man—a soft man who seemed to be unhappy about entering his middle years. He looked like an aging nobleman’s son, with his lemon-colored periwig glowing with phosphorescent powder, his fine doublet of what looked like real wool, and his brand-new rapier, crackling with energy from the shard set into the hilt. Yslark would have bet a night’s tips that he’d never drawn it in need. 

She hadn’t served him—he and his friends have come in before her shift began. The yellow of his glowing wig gave his rouged lips and cheeks a sickly, almost corpse-like cast as he grinned at her. Yslark looked past him for a moment; he had been sitting with a merry company of other Second Quarter types. They were, like Yslark, all on the wrong side of thirty, but not ready to give up their youth. They seemed evenly split between digging the vibe of Pandæmonium and looking around frequently to check for any lurking criminal element. 

Their eyes were on her, too. 

“I beg your pardon?” asked Yslark.

“What happened. Why are you a bit…” He looked her up and down. “You know?”

Yslark didn’t reach for where her hammer would be, had she been wearing it. That would be unprofessional.

Her shoulder did twitch, however. 

What this toff didn’t know—an ignorance shared by the kid in the bandana—was that café work wasn’t Yslark’s only gig. It was just her most regular one. Her more lucrative but also more infrequent income came from being a member of the Benevolents, the Fifth Quarter’s community-owned sellsword collective. 

“Why are you asking?” asked Yslark.

The man’s smile faltered. In the distance, Yslark saw T.K. turn the corner into Pandæmonium’s circumference. She waved at Yslark and then pulled the deep hood of her minidress further up to obscure her face as she cut around the edge of the taranjardín. She headed straight for where the kid and his girl were sipping their vermut and lounging on reed kilims in the shadows

The silence was becoming uncomfortable. Yslark waited.

“I was just curious…”

Yslark tilted her head to make it obvious she was aware his friends were watching, then returned her gaze to his.

“It’s a bet,” he said at last. “We just want to see who’s right.”

“You were taking bets on why my body looks a certain way?”

The fellow froze. His companions had abandoned him—they had swiftly gone back to talking amongst themselves as this interaction proved less hilarious than they’d surely imagined it’d be. 

Yslark looked at him expectantly. 

“I’m gonna go,” he said, shamefaced and defeated. “Back to my table, I mean.”

“Don’t need anything while you’re up here? Anybody need anyoher drink?”

“Actually we’ll just take the check,” he said.

Yslark rummaged around. “Here it is. Do you need me to split it up?”

He looked nothing short of dejected. “No. Probably they’ll just make me pay.” He counted out a few large coins and handed them over. Yslark raised her eye at the amount. 

“Gonna need change?” 

He winced and then quickly shook his head no. Yslark smiled to herself as she put the remainder in the tip jar. 

He left. Yslark looked at her slick and then put it away. Nothing—not from Twill, and not from T.K. either, but then again, she was deep in some sort of conversation with the kid. 

His girl looked bored.

Yslark knew how she felt. 

Eench was still on her slick. Yslark sighed and hopped up on the counter to sit for a moment. She thought about tomorrow night—Twill had said they had a job, which probably meant violence, but it also meant she and Twill and Hubert Sauvage would get to hang out, and they’d probably have some laughs beforehand, out of nerves, and hopefully after, too, out of relief. 

“Hey what’s going on?”

Yslark looked up. The kid in the bandana gotten even Eench’s attention. There was an edge to his words, sharp as a knife.

It was easy to see why. The girl in the red all-in-one had moseyed over to where the group of Second Quarter fops were gathering themselves up to make an exit. She was talking to one of the younger members of the party, a fancy stripling in a smart blue cloth tailcoat and breeches studded with luminescent white buttons; it must have cost a fortune. His wig was also powdered a glittering white, and someone had painted a delicate pattern in pale, lambent paint over his forehead and cheekbones which had the appearance of spiderwebs, or perhaps lace. He and the girl were standing very close.

Yslark looked to the unfortunate fellow who’d earlier offended her and glared at him when she caught his eye. He looked absolutely mortified, actually—pathetic, with his new sword on his hip but his hands hovering at chest height as he anxiously picked at his own nails.

“Get away from my girl,” said the kid, advancing on the fop.

“She’s her own girl,” said the fop. 

Yslark rolled her eyes. She knew what she had to do. 

She took an apron from under the counter and tied it on. 

“Go for it,” said Eench, with a knowing nod.

Before heading over, Yslark grabbed one of the rags for wiping down the taraxa stove. She needed her full arsenal for this one.

“It’s okay,” the girl said. Her hands were raised. “We were just talking. Really.”

“Standing pretty close for just talking.”

“Good sir, it was so loud in here…” said the fop. 

The kid in the leather doublet hiked an eyebrow at him. The fop’s case was not helped when a man with a balalaika strolled up. 

“Here at last, to sing for my supper,” he said to Yslark, before the noticing the tension in the room. “Oh.” He quickly walked to where a chair had been set up for him, giving the young man in the headband a wide berth.

The silence and stillness that followed was fairly profound. Fop and ruffian stared at one another, each daring the other to act first. The girl was also holding very still. 

“Hey everybody.”

Yslark was no stranger to combat. She’d taken her share of lumps and bumps and cuts, and she’d even killed a few people when there was no other way to end things. But while at Pandæmonium, her rag was her weapon; her apron her armor. And whatever reason, in that space they carried with them the necessary authority to stop almost any conflict dead in its tracks.

“I’m going to need you all to take this outside or let it go,” she said, pretending to dry her hands. “I’m sure you understand, right? The balalaika player works for tips, and I don’t want scaring off his customers.”

It worked on the fop. He nodded before slinking slunk from the girl and toward the door. His friends started filing out after. Yislark shot one final dirty look at the fellow from before, which sent him scurrying like a vole. 

The kid wasn’t so impressed. As his girl crept back to his side he stood his ground, towering over Yslark, for hhe was tall, and she was not. She looked up at him coolly.

“What if I don’t let it go,” he said. 

“What if you did, though,” said his girl, but she shut her cherry-red lips when he raised his hand for silence.

“The house recommends letting it go,” said Yslark. “Really, you should try it.”

“I can’t,” said the kid. “I’m allergic.”

It happened very fast. He had drawn a knife before Yslark could see from where. He lunged for her, but she sidestepped him easily. As he staggered past her, Yslark snapped her fingers. Her hand ignited with pale blue-white lightning. As he gawped in comic surprise she cocked back cocked back her arm and slapped him across the face with a sound like clap of thunder. His eyes lit up as her palm made contact, and bolts of electricity shot out his mouth and nose. 

He dropped the knife.

“Get out,” said Yslark, when he’d recovered enough that he could blink, and she’d recovered enough that she could speak. She was out of breath, and she had a headache, too, from the effort. That stunt of hers had taken all the magic she had. “Don’t come back.”

He nodded. His hair was smoking gently.

“Sorry,” said the girl, as she led him away and out into the night streets of Pekarek.

Yslark picked up the kid’s knife from where he’d dropped it. It was pretty cool actually. She put it in her pocket. 

The cook stuck out his head. “Their food is ready,” he said.

“I’ll take it,” said T.K., who was still lounging over in the shadows.

“You better not stiff me for their bill,” said Yslark, as she brought it over.

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” said T.K., but before digging into the beans, she gave Yslark the once-over. “You look like hell. What happened?”

“Accident,” muttered Yslark. 

“What’s that?”

“An accident,” she repeated, raising her voice a bit.

“Well I didn’t think you did it on purpose,” said T.K. sardonically. 

“I had to heal… someone. Or they would have died.”

“They huh,” said T.K., and Yslark knew from her tone she’d intuited it had been Twill. “Is it… permanent?”

“We don’t know yet.” Yslark couldn’t say it very loudly, but this time T.K. seemed to hear her just fine. “Twill thinks maybe I just need to build up my reserves. He’s hoping the bracers will help me regenerate a bit faster.”

T.K. looked appraisingly at the mix of wires, shards, and more organic materials. “Interesting,” she said, after a moment. “I’ve never seen anything like this before. You should come by my plae, let me take a look at them.” Her pale eyes met Yslark’s dark ones. “At them, and at you. I’d like to help if I can.”

A lot of people had offered to help. But T.K., she might actually be able to…

“Thanks,” said Yslark. “I will. By the way, did you at least get what you came for?”

T.K.’s hand flashed and she produced a blue artificial crystal. Something glowed at the center of it. Her hand fluttered again, and just as quickly it was gone.

“It’s a map,” she said. “Don’t ask to what.”

“I wasn’t going to. Enjoy the beans.”

“Here.” T.K. handed her the plate with the extra bread on it. “This is just, like, a lot of bread? I mean, the beans already come with some.”

Yslark took the bread without a word and returned to her proper place behind the bar. She grabbed a piece of bread before handing the plate to Eench. 

“Boy, what a night!” she said.

“Yeah, and we’re not even an hour into the shift,” Eench said, through a mouthful of bread.

Yslark sighed.

*******************************************************

"That's the most interesting food we've ever had," he says. "Beans? Bread? Fried ippee-appee?"

"What even is ippee-appee?" Maya asks.

"I think it's a kind of fish," he says. From the way the cat is rubbing against his ankles, it seems that he agrees. 

Maya takes the plate he's holding out. There's also some black jam. "Mermelote, made with the taranjas!" she says, delighted. She dips the bread in and tries it. "Bitter!"

"Great story, too," he says, crunching the fish, and slipping one to the cat. They are battered, and about the size of whitebait. "Could lead anywhere, could follow anything, but also stands completely alone. That's the best kind. The characters could go anywhere and do anything."

"I hope Yslark gets to be substantial again," Maya says. "Is that in one of Molly Tanzer's established worlds?"

"I don't know, I've never read anything of hers before. I will be now, though," he says. 

"Me too," Maya agrees. "This mermelote really is bitter. Worse than grapefruit."

"Well, I wouldn't expect it to suit a child's palette," he says. "But you're growing up, aren't you? You're definitely not as young as you were when you came in here."

Maya feels uncomfortable at that thought. She crunches the little fish in her teeth. How old is she? She can't remember. Does it matter? She decides it doesn't and pushes it away.

The cat finishes off the fish, purring happily. They go to wash their hands, and come back. He picks the next book off the stack. "Here, new Premee Mohammed," he says. "Beginning of a novella called The Siege of Smoking Grass."

"Oh lovely," she says. And they read.