Tempest by Cari Z. Page B

remember everyone who is polite to you?” Nichol asked rhetorically as he maneuvered them closer to a street vendor. “I want to be memorable , not polite. They may not overly care for me, but they do know that I’m in the Sea Guard, I take care of the things they give me to use, and I’m determined. That’s better than being thought nice . Here,” he continued before Colm could get a word in edgewise, “you’ve got to try this, it’s delicious.” Nichol passed the girl running the stall a coin, and she handed over four small, oval-shelled creatures. “Sea roaches,” Nichol said with a grin.
    Colm bent and looked closer at them, then jolted back as one of them tried to roll into a ball. “Are they still alive?”
    â€œâ€™Course they are,” the girl running the stall exclaimed. “Been sitting in a lovely bucket of salt water all morning, the very first catch of the day.”
    â€œShouldn’t they be dead before we eat them?” Colm persisted, but his hopes were dashed when both Nichol and the girl shook their heads.
    â€œRuins the flavor,” the girl said.
    â€œRuins the texture,” Nichol said.
    â€œHow could death ruin the texture of food?” Colm asked. “In my mind, it doesn’t become food until it is dead!”
    The girl looked over at Nichol, whose mouth was twitching, and smacked him on the shoulder with her spoon. “I don’t need you givin’ my stall a bad name by bringin’ me country lads who wouldn’t know a delicacy like this if they stepped on it in the street.”
    â€œI’m just breaking him in, Kiara, ow!” Nichol grimaced, rubbing his shoulder pointedly. “And be honest, they do come by the roach bit honestly. Colm’s more likely to have seen somethin’ like this in a dirty outhouse than he is to’ve eaten it.”
    Kiara’s face went red with anger, and Colm decided to intervene before the girl tried to beat Nichol to death with her spoon. “I’ll try one,” he told her, stepping a bit in front of Nichol. “But I haven’t any idea of how to get into it.”
    â€œIt’s simple,” she told him, mollified by Colm’s new willingness. “Here, give me those,” she snapped at Nichol as she grabbed two of the roaches from his palm. “You just pry up the edge of the shell with the flat of your knife, right down here, and then peel back,” she said, and demonstrated with one of them. “And then you slurp them up.” She tossed the one she’d opened back and seemed to swallow it whole. “They squirm a bit on the way down occasionally,” Kiara added with a smile. “But you get used to it. Here.” She handed Colm her knife. “Now you do it.”
    Colm managed to get the bottom of the shell off rather quickly, but once he was faced with the small, pulsing pink body inside the top half of the shell, his courage faltered. It was just momentum that got him to raise it to his lips and let it slide inside, a brief burst of salty succulence on his tongue before it hit the back of his throat and kept going, wriggling just a bit from side to side as it went down.
    â€œWell done!” Nichol congratulated him with a grin, eating the rest of them in quick succession. “Shall we take some for the road?”
    â€œNo thank you,” Colm managed, barely keeping himself from bending over the edge of the wharf and returning that poor creature back to the sea. He followed Nichol in silence for another few minutes until the man finally noticed that his quips weren’t getting any reply.
    â€œColm?” Nichol asked, his brow furrowed as he reached out and touched Colm’s arm. Colm had no idea where they were anymore, he just knew that Nichol was touching him and that he needed to make him understand something.
    â€œPlease don’t ask me to do that again,” Colm said, and something