Роберт Асприн - Forever After

Gordo and Spido hefted the bowls and started to drink, so Gar followed suit instead of waiting for a spoon. The aroma hit his nose like a punch — not painful, but powerful — and the first taste sent a thrill through him. The thick, spicy broth tasted delicious and the little vegetable lumps exploded on his tongue like surprise packages of flavor. Bits of ham melted in his mouth and morsels of a slightly tough meat — which tasted a lot like chicken — brought an exotic difference to the dish. Before he knew it he had drained his bowl, as did Spido across from him, and extended it toward Goodwife Blott. “More, please.”

With a broad smile on her face, Goodwife Blott split the remainder between Gar and Spido, freezing Gordo out. That appeared to affront Gordo, but he quickly realized that if he couldn’t fill his mouth with food, he could fill the air with words, and he resumed his story about the nuns.

The soup was good enough that Gar felt the story had improved incredibly since the start of the meal, and he even found himself disinclined to provide for Spido the sort of service Udan Kann had done for him.

The second course came in the form of three little oval puff pastries placed on a plate in a shamrock pattern, drizzled with an egg-yolk-yellow sauce and garnished with a sprig of fresh peppermint. For this Gar got a fork, though with his first bite he considered it a probable violation of Tian-shi-sheqi to use the fork on the light, fluffy bits of dough. The sauce proved both sweet and tangy, and complemented the heavily spiced meat mixture at the heart of each pastry.

Gar and Spido each requested another serving, which Goodwife Blott supplied, but she clearly did not like the fact that the skinny Gar was matching her son bite for bite.

Gordo noticed her discomfort immediately. “Oh, Fannie, your boy has met his match. I’ll just let the two of them fight it out.”

“Youll do that because you won’t be getting no more, you behemouth!” She smiled sweetly at Gar and Spido. “Does me heart good to see you eat, boys. We’ll put some meat on your ribs, we will indeed.”

She returned to her stove, turning her back on the table, but still remaining in the conversation as Gordo prattled on. “Oh, you should have seen it, boys, there I was in the Tower, eating what I could to keep my strength up, you see, because them nuns were in a powerful fit of need. And a lot of them were Northerners, and you know what that means, eh? No one quite so passionate as Northerners, you know.”

“Pish and tosh, Gordo Gourdo.” Goodwife Blott wheeled around brandishing a meat-ax. “Nothing wrong with a good Faltane girl. You want exotic, but you can’t get no pleasure from that, can you, Mallo?”

“Well, Ma, how would I know?”

She looked at him sidelong, then gave him the hint of a smile. “You’d not be trying to convince your mum that you’ve not become more worldly-wise since you’ve been gone.”

Spido blushed and stammered a bit. “Well, perhaps I have sought, on the eve of a battle when I didn’t know if I’d live or die the next day, some companionship.”

“I knew it! I knew it! Catting about in the capital. Probably sleeping with that Fancy Jane, the brothel keeper.”

“She’s Jancy Gaine, Ma, and was a guard at a brothel.”

“If you work at a brothel, you work at a brothel.” The meat ax ka-choonked through a piece of pink meat on the cutting board. “Ladies of breeding are not found in brothels.”

“Ma, Princess Rissa was in the brothel that Jancy Gaine guarded.”

“Oh, and you’ll be telling me this Northern floozy of yours, Fancy What’s-her-name, rescued Rissa and took her away from there.”

“Well, yes.”

“And you believe it?” Goodwife Blott groaned and diced meat. “You Blott men. A wink, a smile, a whistle and you’d believe anything. Weakness it is for the blond hair. I hope that Fancy Jain was worth breaking your mother’s heart.”

“Ma!”

“Goodwife Blott, I can assure you that your son is of fine, upstanding moral character.” Gar smiled disarmingly at her. “Prince Rango personally chose him to accompany me on a mission of incredible danger, that only the most virtuous and valiant of men could hope to survive.”

Spido’s mother turned around. “Really?”

“Quite so, goodwife. In fact, your son was selected specifically because, in addition to being a moral stalwart, he so loves you and reveres you, that his feelings for you more than compensate for the lack of feeling I have for my mother, because I did not have the opportunity to get to know her.” Gar frowned, realizing he had begun to string sentences together as Spido had, but recognizing that doing that was the only way to compete in the Blott household.

“He’s a good boy, my son. Wouldn’t see anything in a Northern girl.”

“No, Mum, never.”

“Good, ‘cuz there’s no Northern girl good enough for you.”

“Speaking of which, where is Squashblossom?”

Gar caught the scowl as it flashed over Goodwife Blott’s face, but she turned from her son and Gar knew Spido had missed it. “More time to talk about that later, Mallo. Third course coming up.”

Had Spido not been used to his uncle’s prattling, he might have caught news of Squashblossom in the way a particularly frisky nun was described as bestowing a blessing on everyone in the company that had somehow appeared to join Gordo’s adventure. As it was, Goodwife Blott’s return to the table with the next dish precluded anything beyond understanding how mouth-hunger can convince the belly that it’s not nearly as full as it thought it was.

A curtain of aromatic steam parted before Gar as he looked down at his plate. The plate itself had been covered with a bed of brown rice that had been raked with a fork into concentric circles emanating out from around three broccoli tips that had been arrayed symmetrically on the plate. Strips of sorian meat, cut long and thin and glazed with a spicy but sweet sauce, trifurcated the rice ocean and isolated each of the green broccoli islands. Little slivers of red and green pepper braved the brown ocean between the meaty continent and the lush islands, rising on the crest of a rice-wave or plunging into the trough between them.

The half course, consisting of a heavy potato bread slathered with butter followed, then Goodwife Blott delivered breaded and deep-fried sorian steaks awash in brown gravy. Mountains of whipped potatoes surrounded them, with melted butter pouring down the sides like lava from a volcano. Peas and pearl onions provided color for the dish and the potatoes slowed the peas down enough that Gar could deftly scoop them up on his fork.

Both Spido and Gar went for seconds on the bread and the fried sorian, then asked for bread again to sop up the gravy. The two of them smiled at each other, enjoying the contest and the look of consternation on Goodwife Blott’s face. For Gar, who had never had a family and never knew what a family was like, found the good-natured competition enjoyable. At Armbruss, internecine squabbling proved lethal and though Spido’s family might hammer each other verbally, woe be to any outsider who tried to get away with the sort of abuse they heaped on each other as a matter of course.

Goodwife Blott fed both of them apple tarts and custard, then went back to work at the stove when she saw the contest, which stood at even after four and a half courses and some and some more, would not be decided over dessert. As she worked she asked Spido about his time away from Torfay, and kept Gar involved in the conversation by asking him to confirm or deny something Spido had said.

Gar answered in accord with the facial expressions Spido wore and the subtle tones woven through Good-wife Blott’s questions. Clearly she had been given some impressions of Spido’s time in Caltus that did not correspond with any reality Gar knew, but he figured any one part brag by Spido had been blown into one hundred parts truth in her imagination. Still, he could feel her shifting the conversation around like a spider in a web, angling toward some information about her son.