The Vampire & Her Witch

”Kuusik is hardly the sort of place that people can live comfortably or easily without help,” Diarmuid said, nodding as he savored the taste of beef so well marbled that the fat melted on his tongue, leaving behind a richness that paired well with the bruised herbs Georg had topped the carpaccio with. ”Even in summer, the ground is frozen solid if you dig down more than a finger’s breadth or two.”

Of all the places he’d gone at the behest of the Inquisition, Kuusik March was the one he wanted to return to the least. The nights seemed to last forever in winter, and even in summer, the famed Temple of the Eternal Sun failed to feel warm and welcoming. The entire March was inhospitable, and the people who lived there possessed dispositions every bit as frosty as their environment.

”So why would anyone as thin-skinned as humans want to live there?” Erkembalt said, frowning as he imagined a place every bit as cold and inhospitable as the High Pass. ”I understand if Hauke’s people enjoy living in snow and ice all year, and the Tuscans too.... But you humans don’t have the fur or the blubber to be making a life in lands that cold.”

”Pfft!” Liam snorted, shaking his head at the artificer and pointing a fork accusingly at him, as if the man had told some great joke. ”Fur and blubber is why we go there,” Liam explained with a laugh. ”Hugo would know the sums better than I do, but I’d wager a third of the oil burned in the lamps of noblemen and merchants comes from the whales in the frozen northern seas,” he said confidently.

”Closer to half, or maybe two-thirds,” Hugo acknowledged as he sipped at the smooth, creamy chestnut soup. The browned butter added a richness that complemented the creaminess of the soup, but despite his best efforts, he couldn’t identify the more subtle differences in flavor from the soup he enjoyed so often during this time of year.

”Master Georg,” Hugo said, turning in his chair to face the bearish cook. ”The soup is good. It’s probably the best I’ve ever had, and it takes extraordinary skill to best Master Baden, the Master of Kitchens in Lothian Manor...”

”Master Baden obsessed over this soup,” Ollie agreed with a light laugh as he savored Georg’s creamier, richer version of the dish. ”I’m told there was a competition of sorts between lords who hosted winter feasts to produce the finest roast chestnut soup, and Master Baden would flay the hide off any kitchen boy caught slacking or failing to crush the chestnuts into a fine enough paste to use in his soup.”

”You’re acquainted with Master Baden?” Loman said, perking his head up from pondering his plate as he heard the familiar name. He was still trying to decide whether he felt insulted by the sight of half a dozen miniature servings of carpaccio that adorned his plate alone, or if he was grateful to the bearish cook for sparing him from the need to juggle a knife and fork after the loss of his arm.

The reminder of how even ordinary actions like enjoying dinner had become more difficult was a bitter one, made harder to swallow by the way he’d been chastised by Ashlynn and the others at the table, but at the same time, each piece had been carefully folded into the shape of a delicate flower in a way that made it clear that Master Georg had invested several times the effort in preparing Loman’s dish than he had in anyone else’s.

”I grew up in Lothian Manor, Lord Loman,” Ollie said with a light laugh. ”I don’t blame you for not recognizing me. There were a few knights who would prowl through the kitchens late at night when they wanted a small meal and didn’t want to disturb the house staff, but I never saw you in the kitchens after you came home from the Holy City.”

”I spent most of my time at the temple,” he said awkwardly when he realized that Ollie wasn’t one of the townsfolk who entered service with his family, but a bondsman who had literally been born into service in Lothian Manor, spending his entire life in the shadow of Loman and his family without ever being truly seen by the people he served.

”I’m sorry for being rude to Master Georg, though,” Ollie said, turning in his chair to face Georg. ”I didn’t mean to distract so much from Hugo’s question about why your soup is different from the one I learned to make in Master Baden’s kitchen,” Ollie said with a warm smile for his closest friend in the Vale outside of Old Nan’s family in the village.

”It’s the stock,” Georg said with a wide, toothy grin. ”Sir Ollie’s recipe uses stock made from fowl, chickens, or ducks, but I wanted to serve the soup with crisped boar belly, so I used boar bone broth in place of the chicken stock.”

”It’s more than that, though,” Hugo insisted with a slight frown as he took another sip of the comforting soup, allowing the complex medley of flavors to play out over his tongue. Even setting aside the crispy boar belly, the earthy wild mushrooms, and the nutty browned butter, there was something indefinable about the soup that made it both comfortingly familiar and extraordinary at the same time.

”It’s perfect,” Diarmuid said, looking at the bottom of the small cup of soup in disappointment as he realized that, much like the salad, there was only enough to enjoy several spoonfuls before he reached the bottom of the cup.

”There’s not a single bit of coarseness or uncrushed nut anywhere to be seen or tasted,” the Inquisitor continued. ”I’ve spent the winter in every march at least once, and half the duchies besides, and very few cooks can create a soup this free of lumps, especially one that contains crushed nuts. How did you do it?” Diarmuid asked in genuine curiosity. ”I don’t believe for a moment that you passed it through cheesecloth the way they do for the Saint’s table,” he added after a moment of thought.

”I’ve seen what it takes to make a soup that tastes this richly of chestnuts when you filter out any bit of nut larger than a flake of salt. Days of boiling the thin soup down in order to achieve this kind of richness,” he explained, recalling the cooks who claimed that it took the Holy Lord of Light’s own Eternal Flame in order to make the best soups for the Saint and the Exemplars.

”Cheese cloth?” Georg said with a frown. ”But that would just make the soup too thin,” he said as his brows furrowed together. ”I just do it the way Ollie explained it. With a mortar and pestle to smash the nuts into a paste after steaming and peeling them. It’s nothing special.”

”Georg,” Ollie said with a hearty chuckle. ”It may not be anything special to you,” he said warmly. ”But Georg’s pestle is the size of a small mace,” Ollie explained to the outsiders at the table. ”And the strength in his arms isn’t something that anyone in the Lothian kitchens could match. It would take an ordinary man an hour, pounding one nut at a time, to do what Georg does in a few minutes with that stone club of his.”

”So it’s human recipes with Eldritch cooking techniques,” Diarmuid mused. ”Or, Eldritch strengths at least,” he corrected himself when he saw the movement of Georg’s bushy brows. ”The boar is from the forest of the Vale, isn’t it? Along with the mushrooms?”

”I told you he’d notice,” Heila said brightly as she watched the Inquisitor putting things together.

”I wasn’t trying to be subtle when I asked Georg to prepare tonight’s dinner,” Ashlynn said with a light, musical laugh. It might not be subtle, but she was glad to see that the message she wanted to deliver was landing.

”Maybe the Church would call it ’Heresy on a Plate’,” Ashlynn said as she finished the last of the rich, creamy soup in her cup. ”But I like to think of it as proof that we’re capable of surprising and wonderful delights when we work together instead of fighting each other.”

”If the same dish can delight Isabell and Hauke, and Master Georg can produce something wonderful using Master Baden’s recipe,” Ashlynn said with a wide smile. ”How many other delights can we discover once we put an end to fighting each other?”