24. A dinner party for the dance troupe (above)

Singh pursed his lips and crouched behind me, fixing my hair neatly with a small pair of shears. I was wearing a pair of lantern trousers of some unknown material and a round-necked cardigan with two oddly cuffed sleeves that looked like two trumpet flowers. I looked at myself in the bronze mirror in amazement. My baby face looked like it did when I was a child, but I was not as fat as before and my eyes were still so small, like two black beans.

After the haircut, Singh loosened my hair, praised himself for an imperial slang he didn't understand, and then said to me with satisfaction, "This looks much better, I'm going to change this leather jacket for you, it will be more comfortable with a lining inside!"

Sometimes a woman can become very emotional and lose her temper at the slightest thing, or as in the case at hand, at the slightest thing, and turn her opinion of me to the best, inexplicably not only taking me to the bath, giving me a dress, cutting my hair and then altering my leather jacket. Maybe it's because well-behaved little children elicit more sympathy from women, or maybe it's because Fred and I know each other so well.

"Oh, thank you for the roasted chestnuts the other day, they were delicious." Singh said as he stood up and put the small silver scissors away in the cupboard.

I looked down at the shoes on my feet, the mud-stained sheepskin boots looked even more jarring on them now, and said helplessly, "It's nothing, I'll get them for you sometime."

Singh came over to me with a smile, crouched down in front of me and put a rag on her leg, held my foot naturally so that I could put one foot on her ragged thigh, fished out a brush from a small cupboard and carefully brushed my shoes, which touched me a little for a moment. She moved very quickly and skillfully, and with a faint smile on her lips she said to me, "I'll have a clean pair of shoes for you in a minute, they're beautifully made, but their owner doesn't take much care of them. It has to be cared for with grease once in a while, or it will become very hard when left for a long time."

I blushed as I saw that the round neck lace of her white shirt was no longer clinging to her neck because she had squatted down, the neckline revealing a fine section of her collarbone. Singh struck me as a strong, extremely attractive woman and with a unique life of her own; I felt she earned far more than I had thought and wasn't the kind of half-aged woman I had previously imagined with an air of the sex scene. I wondered for a moment why such a gentle, considerate and generous woman would look at Uncle Fred and just lust after the two dry coins he had on him. Her dresses were embroidered with silver thread, so she didn't look like she was short of money, so I don't think she was after his money.

-beautiful divider-

When I returned to the kitchen, Uncle Fred was crouched in the corner, having almost finished cuffing the meat skewers, and the moment the cumin and chilli powder were ignited by the charcoal, the whole kitchen could smell the strange, strong aroma. Kurtz was crouched over brushing the sauce on the chicken wings when I walked over and gestured with my chin for Kurtz to turn a couple of chicken thighs on the other side of the grill and gesture with my hand to make a few cuts with a knife to cook them more easily. Kurtz smiled nervously and patted his head to show that he had just forgotten. Only when he saw me coming back did Kurtz's expression look relaxed and Uncle Fred looked up at me, his eyes lighting up with a big grin, "Hey! Our Ka is still dressed up like a nobleman."

Singh leaned against the kitchen doorway, leaning against the door frame with one arm around his shoulders watching the busy people in the kitchen, a gentle smile always on his lips, not answering Uncle Fred's teasing words, just watching quietly.

The main course of dinner, which I had prepared, was the barbecue, but that wasn't all. In fact, Kurtz and I had spent most of the evening mulling it over in order to make this dinner more successful, and had gone to some small lengths to try and make it as worthwhile as possible for the bigwigs in the dance troupe. It wasn't just for the precious wolf's tooth, but also because Kurtz wanted to enlist the help of the troupe's tailor to make the guinea pig fur sleeping bags look good, not without first making the right connections.

The long wooden table to one side of the kitchen table was already being set out with small plates of fine white porcelain, and the cook had already portioned out the smoked mackerel we had brought and arranged it neatly, even putting a lily petal next to the plate as I had designed, and the first drop of date sauce on the side of the plate, so perhaps the tart smoked fish would be a good appetiser.

Once again footsteps sounded outside the kitchen and a crisp voice was heard outside asking, "Sister Singh, Seventh Mother asked me to come and see when we could start the meal?"

"Uh, wait a minute!" Singh turned to look at Kuz, she needed Kuz to give her an exact time.

Kuz stood up a little nervously, still holding a brush dipped in the sauce, and glanced at me out of the corner of his eye a little slightly nervously, and I gave him a very subtle OK gesture, a gesture that only the two of us understood, before exhaling often and saying very loudly to Singh in orcish, "It's ready to serve! "

It was time for me to make my appearance, and hey, I straightened my clothes and followed Singh out of the kitchen, whispering to Kurtz not to make the chicken wings too salty before I left, as I saw him brushing the sauce a little too often, and Kurtz showed that he understood, giving my hand a firm squeeze of encouragement before I left.

Finally, with Singh leading the way, I made my way up to the first floor of the magical caravan.

The three metre long indigo wood dining table was filled with women on either side, it was made from a whole section of indigo wood that had been shaved down to flatten the table top and then hollowed out underneath, leaving only the four sturdy legs. The moment I entered the dining room, my eyes were drawn to the woman in the master's seat at the table, a woman whose beauty was so glorious that her starry eyes ejected demons, women who were as beautiful as goblins.

When I looked at her, even my eyes could only be drawn to her eyes and I could not turn to look at anything else. At this moment, when I stood in front of her, I could not even see her face, only those eyes intimidated me deeply. It was as if a century had passed, and when beads of sweat broke out at the tip of my nose, her eyes finally changed, as if the ice had melted and the flowers had blossomed, and the whole world had come to life.

The whole restaurant became extraordinarily quiet at this moment, and Qiniang herself, sitting in the main seat, froze for a moment. No one spoke at this time, only the sound of everyone's breathing and heartbeat swirled in the air. At that moment, a woman's voice rang out in the hall, very clear and pure with a faintly seductive flavour: "Come over here a little, child."

She snapped me out of my daze, making me feel a little ashamed that I had made such a fool of myself before the food had even been served. She was sitting on a chair carved out of a single piece of indigo wood, wearing a courtly, low-cut dress that revealed a large, ivory-white chest and this exquisite collarbone and rounded shoulders, with a long, swan-like neck set with a fiery red jewel, and I wondered why it didn't have any chains. . Her face was exquisite, her long burgundy hair casually coiled on her head, those seductive turquoise blue eyes staring at me with slight curiosity, her luscious red lips full like tempting cherries, opening and closing lightly as she spoke to reveal white shell-like teeth, just in between smiles.

I walked a little closer to her, trying to keep my wits about me, thinking I was embarrassing myself.

She looked at me expectantly, and I had to bring up the first course of smoked mackerel and began to stammer in Imperial: "This is made from the large mackerel that comes from the lakes of the Star Lake grassland, marinated for a day in a secret seasoning and then smoked in pine wood smoke.

I waved my hand to signal that it was ready to be served, and the cooks began to place the trays of smoked fish in order.

"Wow! I can't believe it's one serving per person, but unfortunately there's only a little bit."

"What a unique way to serve food."

"I'm so excited! I'm excited to see what it tastes like."

The women around the table were once again talking about it, the noise coming in like a tidal wave.

I'm very much squeezing as much out of my memories as I can, and maybe one day those things will be like photographs in golden seawater, the longer they soak up the more blurred they become, and in the end there will just be muddy colours mixed together, never to be distinguished from what they are. I don't know much about how the nobility of the Grimm Empire dine, but I do know how to time the food more appropriately, just so that the meat and vegetables don't feel too greasy to the diners.

Like this time I had to use smoked fish, smoked fish with a sour date sauce, when I had to blast everyone's taste buds at the table.

Everyone ate carefully because the portions on each plate were small and each piece of fish was delicately made.

The Seventh Maiden looked at the smoked fish on her plate for a while, then moved her head over to smell it a little, and it was clear that she was a very fussy person who needed to judge whether it was good or bad before deciding whether to continue.

It was almost impossible for everyone to get enough of it, and the girls on either side of the table began to raise their hands to signal the cooks standing by, and at the same time handed over empty plates and shouted, "Can I have another piece?"

The tone of voice was no longer a matter of yes or no, but a polite request for another piece of smoked fish. It was as if they usually had to have a cook on standby for their meals, waiting to add food. The first person to ask would be followed by a second, but the cook standing behind me looked back at Singh with a scowl on her face, who was sitting at the table, also with a plate of the distinctive smoked fish, which she hadn't finished yet because she was late in eating. When someone called out for more smoked fish, she didn't really care, but when the cook looked at her with some hesitation, she knew something was wrong.

Singh was probably second only to the Seventh Mistress at the table, she was her personal maid and had a higher status than the other dancers at the table, and the Seventh Mistress obviously had no intention of speaking up, she just sat at the head of the table and savoured the fish in her mouth, absorbed in it. So Singh straightened up, struggled to swallow the last of what was in his mouth and took a sip of white water before asking the cook steadily, "What's going on?"

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