"Ah, supper! My savory fowl, so delicately sautйed, spiced with flavors exotic and perhaps narcotic—here at last!"
Deo smiled up at her. He was cross-legged on the canvas floor, sword arranged beside him, tunic undone to the middle of his breastbone, exposing the stitches that held together the precise shallow wound across his nicely molded chest. Radstac had given him those stitches. It was only fair. She'd given him the wound as well.
"And if you don't want that," she said, flourishing the laden plate, "there are these slops instead."
"Now, it doesn't look so bad as all that, does it? Give it here. See, it appears thoroughly edible. By which I mean, of course, that neither of us shall die from eating it. The fowl I was talking about? There's a dining hall in Petgrad that serves it. A very choice bird. Difficult to hunt. Even harder to cook properly. But when it's done right—and oh, it was done so very right there—then it was a meal to rhapsodize over. A culinary joy better than your average buck and cork. In fact, better than your better than average—"
Radstac squatted opposite Deo. "Food and sex. Weaknesses of royalty."
"Of all creatures walking about on two or more legs, I should say."
"Indeed. But it's only the lofty that can so completely confuse the two."
"Nonsense. To compare is not to substitute. Thus..."—Deo picked a sliver of moist meat from the plate, popped it in his mouth, swallowed—"and thus." He leaned and planted his lips smartly and briefly atop hers. "There. Two categorically different experiences. But both of the senses."