Tag: Fictions

IF YOU’RE GOING TO STAKE your reputation on a single product, it had better be a good one.

The large, one-eyed woman behind the food-stall counter was brusque but not unfriendly. “We have stew,” she told Prosatio Silban. “That’s all we have. That’s all you need.” Continue reading “Prosatio Silban and the Centuried Stew”

DESPITE A FERVENT BELIEF IN those of the Flickering Gods he felt had not been sanitized into irrelevance, it had been long since Prosatio Silban had thought of Them as answering Their adherents’ every prayer.

Not that this stopped him from asking, mind you. As the pithyism went: “Sometimes the answer to a prayer is ‘no’ – assuming there be any answer at all.” And though the beefy cook could perhaps rely over-much on the dicey art of divine intervention, even he had to admit that some prayers were more effective than others. Continue reading “Prosatio Silban and the Awesome Spectacle”

“WHY DO YOU DO WHAT you do?” asked the young woman sitting at one of Prosatio Silban’s tables-and-chairs. “Aside from earning a wage, I mean.”

“Why does a painter paint, or a musician compose, or a sculptor bring to life the figures hidden in wood and stone?” the cook-errant responded, as he grated yak-cheese over her order of hot wheat-threads. “It is an Art, and Art is by its nature compelling to the artist. The secret, you see, is to take a sheer and sincere delight in the forms and sensations one produces. The medium is secondary.”

(If you’re new to these tales, here are the preface and introduction. And if you want another 85 of them (so far) in one easy-to-read package, here’s the e-book!)

THE “PURE CITY,” SO SAY the Sacreants, is the eternal home reserved for the souls of pious Uulians, where their earned rewards are consonant with their earthly deeds.

Capital criminals, on the other hand, are a different matter. Continue reading “Prosatio Silban and the Final Refection”

GIVEN SOMETHING AS ESSENTIAL AND ubiquitous as fatberry-oil, it was perhaps unsurprising how little thought people gave to its source and acquisition.

Anyone in need of stove- and/or lamp-fuel could obtain it for themselves with little effort by mashing the abundant purple berries and collecting their unctuous fluid, leaving over fatberry-cakes – fragrant maroon lumps suitable for two purposes: 1) igniting funeral pyres, contract-sealing altars, and other important flames, and 2) feeding hungry buopoths.

Prosatio Silban had little use for the first of these applications and quite a lot for the second (as well as for the oil, of course). Continue reading “Prosatio Silban and the Harnessless Dray-Beast”

(A sequel to the preceding story.)

SOMETIMES, NOTHING CAN MAKE ONE feel younger than a good quest.

“It is called the Wellspring of Lost Years,” said the Siddis with a characteristic smirk. “And one sip from its dancing waters will restore your own.”

The Siddis, dressed in sand-colored burnoose, robe, and veil, was sitting with Prosatio Silban in the ale-garden of the village inn at Hightower. They were not far from the Azure Void’s northeastern edge, and although that enigmatic wasteland was hidden behind a line of low hills, its proximity filled the now-aged cook’s heart with pounding unease. Continue reading “Prosatio Silban and the Sobering Desolation”

(First of two parts.)

SKIRTING THE AZURE VOID IS not for the timid, and while Prosatio Silban did not possess that trait in great measure he did on occasion come close to experiencing it.

“Easy, Onward,” he clucked to his buopoth, as the quaint dray-beast lumbered its way along the vast crater’s narrow rim-road. Not for the first time, the cook wondered how the hulking animal could plod with such careful agility between extreme height and utter depth. He murmured a grateful prayer to Piedrolo, God of Surefooted Ambling, as his galleywagon bounced over rocks and across potholes. Continue reading “Prosatio Silban and the Sentinel’s Game”

(The first of so-far-more-than-twenty new stories for a planned sequel anthology, beginning thus …)

PROSATIO SILBAN LEANED FORWARD IN his folding chair, placed his elbows on the drop-down dining counter, put his head in his hands, closed his eyes, and sighed.

What a time it’s been, he thought. Continue reading “Unfinished Business (Introduction to The Cook For Any Price Volume II: More Commonwell Tales)”

(With gratitude to Ann Clark.)

THERE ARE FEW THINGS WORSE for dedicated professionals than enduring their own uselessness. Well, perhaps one or two …

Prosatio Silban looked out through his galleywagon’s open doors and contemplated the heavy rain falling on Pormaris’ near-empty marketplace. Every summer tells the same story, he thought. The Season of Huddling drives away from the Commonwell’s markets everyone other than storm-braving scurriers – meaning anyone who would or even could take the time to patronize my portable business. Why do I bother to set out my menu-board? I need steady work, not dashed expectations. Continue reading “Prosatio Silban and the Fine Print”

ONE MAN’S FRIEND IS ANOTHER man’s meal – or so Prosatio Silban discovered on an ill-starred expedition to nowhere.

The cook had made enough recent coin catering to Pormaris’ wealthy that he could let his dray-beast, Onward, choose their course for a time. They had begun with keen anticipation as they trekked northwest from the City of Gourmands to Hole-in-the-Air, a village marking the border between the Uulian Commonwell and its adjacent part of the Exilic Lands. I have always been curious as to what lay in this direction, Prosatio Silban thought as he surveyed an undulant line of distant hills. Does anyone live here? We’ll have to find out! Continue reading “Dining Companion (A Prosatio Silban Tale)”

SOME SAY THAT IT IS not necessarily impossible to unite divided factions. But when the parties involved base their very identities on the division, matters can become a bit sticky.

With a silent prayer of gratitude to Ayeklet, Goddess of Brief but Eventful Travel, Prosatio Silban stepped ashore on Nearling Isle, a misty and almost uninhabited jungle just off the Uulian Commonwell’s southwest Rimless Sea coast. The beefy cook had traded his skills for passage on a crowded grain-barge direct from many-harbored Soharis, and while that brief but eventful voyage would itself be worth a tale, it is not the one now being told. Continue reading “Prosatio Silban and the Ambiguous Twins”