Tag: The Cook For Any Price

TO SOME, DEATH IS AN unwelcome interloper; to others, a faithful ally. And to even others, its palpable presence can bring a type of hope.

Prosatio Silban swallowed the last of the blue duliac in his glass and sighed. He had been curled up in the Gold Piece Inn for what seemed like aeons, waiting on repairs to his galleywagon. One tavern, one wheelwright, and one ostler – that was all of the hamlet of Vetch’s Misery, a mostly abandoned village surrounded by fallow fields and muddy swampland.

For all that, the beefy cook was surprised that the inn was as crowded as it was. Continue reading “Prosatio Silban and the Annual Doom”

THERE ARE ONLY SO MANY variations dictated by a food’s texture and flavor, but Prosatio Silban was determined to find a new one.

It was sultry in the beefy cook’s galleywagon, but not from the season. In point of fact, he had going all six of his fatberry-oil cookstove’s burners, as well as the oven. He was poaching, pan-frying, simmering, toasting, sautéing, boiling, and confiting his simultaneous way through experimental iterations of an in-common culinary theme. And he was doing it on a deadline set by Sir Rando Stefh, a wealthy arts patron who had hired him to create a new and unique gastronomic triumph by that evening. Continue reading “Prosatio Silban and the Refectional Research”

SOMETIMES, EVEN THE IDEA OF rolling out of bed is too painful for words.

Prosatio Silban was sick. He wasn’t quite sure with what, but the symptoms were plain: congested head and chest, sore throat, joint- and head-ache, cough, chills, and fever. There was something going around the Commonwell – but then, there was always something going around – and while he had taken all the expected precautions against infection, still, there he was. Sick.

O Angrim, Lord of Time, All-Limiter; please – extend Your stark fist in my direction, he prayed. And soon. Continue reading “Prosatio Silban and the Sick Call”

IT WAS A GREAT HONOR to speak before a throng of one’s peers at epicurean Pormaris’ Archive of Gastronomic Artifice – but it was also not without its terrors.

Prosatio Silban made a point of perusing the Archive at least once a year to research new recipes or rediscover old ones. The grand museum of, and showcase for, the cuisines and foodways of the Uulian Commonwell and surrounding Exilic Lands was also an occasional venue for “TED” (Taste-Engaged Discourse) presentations. Thus, you may imagine the beefy cook’s surprise, delight and anxiety over being asked to address his colleagues on the topic: “Cultural Competency and Eclectic Refection.”

A matter close to my heart, he thought, reading the gilt-edged invitation. Continue reading “Prosatio Silban and the TED Talk”

AS A COOK-ERRANT, PROSATIO SILBAN perhaps knew better than anyone the importance of first impressions.

“What a charming turn of phrase!” exclaimed the elegant middle-aged woman sitting down at the beefy cook’s table-and-chairs in the afternoon shade of his galleywagon. She was commenting on his signature greeting, “With what may I please you?”

“Thank you,” he said with a slight bow, and waited for her order.

“How did you come by it?” she asked. Continue reading “Prosatio Silban and the Affable Invitation”

THERE IS A MOMENT IN AN out-of-control situation when its utter wrongness becomes agonizingly apparent – and it’s the same moment that the experiencer realizes there’s not a damn thing to be done about it.

Such were Prosatio Silban’s thoughts as his galleywagon slid sideways off the ridge-girdling road and down the steep cliff he had been so carefully avoiding.

He barely had time to realize what was happening as he was thrown from the driver’s bench hard against a cliffside boulder. He bounced onto his back, head downward, near the cliff’s base. The sharp pain in his ribs made him want to cry out, but he couldn’t get his breath. All he could do was watch and listen to his portable home-cum-livelihood roll over twice and come to rest upright at the cliff’s bottom. Continue reading “Child’s Play (A Prosatio Silban Tale)”

(Two-and-a-half printed pages. If you’re new to these tales, here are the preface and introduction.)

ONE OF THE NICER THINGS about traveling in a buopoth-drawn galleywagon down a smooth dirt road is the slow pleasure of the unfolding scenery.

Prosatio Silban, as was his wont on such journeys, took it all in with wide eyes and a wider heart. The gentle hills just west of epicurean Pormaris were thick with rosemary, juniper and other fragrant underbrush. Olive and bay trees spread their branches over ubiquitous fatberry bushes rich with maroon fruit, with here and there a tumbled limestone shrine or bluerock outcropping accenting the landscape like three-dimensional punctuation marks. Now and then he could spy a furtive voonith near the undulating horizon, and musical birds in profusion cast their nets of song over the steady thump-thump-thump of his quaint lumbering dray-beast’s footsteps. Continue reading “Prosatio Silban and the Twice-Cooked Eggs”

(Two printed pages. If you’re new to these tales, here are the preface and introduction.)

FROM HIS GALLEYWAGON AT THE edge of epicurean Pormaris’ busy South Market, Prosatio Silban could see the dockside funeral pyres at their greedy task.

It wasn’t the best location, but the result of being last through the gate of the City of Gourmands that morning with all the good spots already taken. And it wasn’t so much the spectacle which bothered Prosatio Silban as the lack of custom; mourners were a notoriously unhungry lot. Here it was approaching dinner, and he had not sold so much as a bowl of beans. Such is life, he thought, opening the galleywagon door to a light salt breeze. Life’s only constancies are death and hunger, and like most extremes they make a poor mix. Continue reading “Prosatio Silban and the Elegiac Escort”

(Six printed pages. If you’re new to these tales, here are the preface and introduction.)

PARTLY, IT HAD TO DO with the eyebrows.

In order to pass as a mercenary cook within the Three Cities and Thousand Villages of the Uulian Commonwell, and without the need for too many probing questions, Prosatio Silban employed artificial eyebrows made from grey mouse-fur. They were tedious to affix each morning and challenging to remove each night, but in their absence, his customers might ask something like:

“Why don’t you have any eyebrows?”

“Were you injured in some culinary mishap?”

“I thought only Sacreants were hairless…?” Continue reading “Face Value (A Prosatio Silban Tale)”

(Four printed pages. If you’re new to these tales, here are the preface and introduction. Enjoy.)

IT WAS A COMMON ENOUGH skillet: two-thirds of a cubit across, three finger-breadths deep, of simple cast iron with a carved maplewood handle. The dreams, however, were anything but common; mad reels of dissolute frivolity, the raw taste of cheap spirits, a seething anger, an unfulfilled lust.

Prosatio Silban had bought the skillet in stony-hearted Tirinbar, the northernmost of the Three Cities of the Uulian Commonwell, situated at a mountain’s foot on the northern shore of the Inland Deep, and one of the beefy cook’s least favorite locations due to the unfriendly materialism of its population and their policy of enslaving the Exilic Lands’ indigenes. Continue reading “Caveat Bibitor (A Prosatio Silban Tale)”