Tag: The Cook For Any Price

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

THE KEEP’S NAME WAS “CASTLE Cautroffs,” after an ancestor of its then-current occupant. But Prosatio Silban was to remember it as a test of his tact, delicacy, and personal taste.

Castle Cautroffs was perched on a high cliff overlooking the Uulian Commonwell’s southwestern coast, about a week’s galleywagon-journey from cosmopolitan Soharis. The castle anchored the holdings of m’Lord Lakgor Tario, an elderly but still-vital Heir Second overseeing the local sea-frontier, a lightly forested hillscape, and a sprinkling of mostly productive villages.

Prosatio Silban had been hired by the noble to instruct his daughter in the art and craftship of cookery. She was somewhat younger than the beefy cook; tall, poised, and possessed of the classic Heir Second bearing. Her soft brown curls reached almost to her waist, and she had the sort of face and proportions about which Uulian poets enjoy rhapsodizing at length. She fixed piercing grey eyes on her proposed teacher as her father made polite introductions. Continue reading “Love Famine (A Prosatio Silban Tale)”

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

WHETHER IT WAS THROUGH A dream or a vision, Prosatio Silban knew one thing with absolute certitude – his beloved mentor was dead. He arose from his galleywagon bunk, bowed his head and let out a gentle, almost imperceptible moan.

It was unexpected news. The Cook For Any Price had not heard any word from or about Master Trentum Urdoin for quite some time. The last he knew, from some ten years ago, was that the man was still in good health and good spirits.

But he was convinced of the communication’s inherent truth. Continue reading “Chopped Roots (A Prosatio Silban Tale)”

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

SOME MORNINGS, THE FOOD BAZAARS in many-quayed Soharis are a-bustle with moneyed and caffeinated customers; others substitute sustained novelty for their pitiful lack of custom.

Prosatio Silban sighed inwardly. The beefy cook’s galleywagon had been parked for three days near the entrance to the bayside city’s main victual market. While the first two days had been reasonably profitable, he was beginning to despair of the third. It’s still early yet, he reminded himself. And fortune’s wheel has many turns.

He considered his painted menu board, which advertised eighteen modest but effective satisfactions for the appetites of hungry marketgoers, under the three-color declaration “The Cook For Any Price.” Continue reading “Prosatio Silban and the Fellow Seeker”

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

THE LAW IN STONY-HEARTED Tirinbar mandated that all escaped slaves and their liberators were to be killed when located – but that could not deter Prosatio Silban from trying to do the right thing.

The beefy cook, born and raised in the less-pitiless parts of the Uulian Commonwell, acted with decency as a matter of course. But when the slight, copper-skinned young woman appeared late one evening on the figurative doorstep of his buopoth-drawn galleywagon (parked in the only location he could find, which had turned out to be a seldom-visited spot hard by the mountainside city’s main marketplace) his first motivation was profit. Continue reading “An Arrow Escape (A Prosatio Silban Tale)”

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

NIGHT, AND THE CLEAN SMELL of salt. Slap of waves and wind-flapped canvas. Creak of leaping timbers. An urgent overhead call, and a soft but substantial splat.

I just served that, Prosatio Silban thought in mild vexation, and grabbed a nearby mop.

It was not the beefy cook’s first brush with someone else’s seasickness, and in fact he himself had suffered from the Mariner’s Malady for the first three days of his current adventure. For he was aboard the Golden Rose, working his passage around and across the Rimless Sea by helping out in the galley (and environs) as needed. Right now, that meant standing vigilant on the weather deck with seedcakes and a hotpot of yava to ballast the crew’s queasy stomachs – and a ready mop for when he couldn’t. Continue reading “Prosatio Silban and the Mapping Lesson”

(Five-and-a-half printed pages, inspired by our current situation. If you’re new to these tales, here are the preface and introduction. Enjoy!)

THEY SAY, SOMETIMES, THAT THE cure is worse than the disease. But to Prosatio Silban’s way of thinking, that just means it must be the wrong cure.

The Cook For Any Price was slowly driving his galleywagon along the dusty main street of an apparently deserted village. He had been there before, though long enough ago that he had forgotten its name. However, he did remember the laughter of its children, the music of its minstrels, and the burble of its creek. It had then been a small but bustling hamlet of some two hundred lively souls – but now, all that greeted him were the deep croaking of creekside bullfrogs and the dismal drone of hidden watch-crickets. A pennant of smoke hung in the distance, the view of its source blocked by tumbledown shacks.
Continue reading “Prosatio Silban and the Sovereign Cure”

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

MUCH HAS BEEN WRITTEN ABOUT the quaint and lumbering buopoths native to the Exilic Lands and other curious places – but to this day, little remains known (and less understood) about the shy beasts. Read on, o seeker after mythic mysteries, and much more shall be revealed about the origin of one particular buopoth…

* * *

With an angry grumble, Prosatio Silban cast a final spadeful of earth on the makeshift grave and sighed.

Be more respectful, he reproached himself. After all, this was what might be termed a close acquaintance. But — what will become of my galleywagon?
Continue reading “Road Bound (A Prosatio Silban Tale)”

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

NOT FOR NOTHING HAD PROSATIO Silban parked his galleywagon outside cosmopolitan Soharis’ main military barracks. Soldiers are a notoriously hungry lot, and use any excuse to spend their extra pay on the sort of food they aren’t able to obtain in their daily mess.

His location was perfect – not so far from the bayside city’s bustling fish market as to discourage the attentions of peckish shoppers, not so close to the barracks as to be thought a security risk. The wind rising from the bay was also cooperative, keeping the market’s fabled aroma at a discreet distance. Continue reading “Prosatio Silban and the Anxious Drummer”

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

THE FIRST CLUE PROSATIO SILBAN had to the midnight intruder was the sound of someone rifling through his galleywagon pantry. The second was the paring-knife at his throat – his own paring-knife.

“Wake up, stranger,” came a frightening – or was it frightened? – whisper in his right ear. “I need your silver.”

“I don’t have any,” the cook whispered back. “It’s been a bad week. But if you let me live, I’ll cook you a meal more than worth your time.”

“A meal!” scoffed the would-be thief. “What do I want with a meal? I can make my own meals. What I need is your money. Fetch it now.” Continue reading “Cook’s Honor (A Prosatio Silban Tale)”

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

ASIDE FROM BUOPOTHS, NO ONE knows exactly what a fatberry-cake tastes like. But measuring by how many the quaint lumbering beasts eat, the greasy maroon lumps (smelling faintly of lavender) must be a delightful treat.

Prosatio Silban pondered this mystery as he fed his own buopoth, Onward, a sixth cake of the day and wiped his hands on his faded green apron. It’s a good thing fatberries are ubiquitous, he thought, or I’d be out a useful dray-beast – and a beloved traveling companion.

He scratched Onward behind one ear, told him what a good buopoth he was, and stashed the fatberry-cake bag under his galleywagon’s driver’s bench. Continue reading “Prosatio Silban and the Last Meal”

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

THE BROKEN TIRE SOFTENED AND then hardened again under Prosatio Silban’s kneading fingers, but he soon realized that his repairs were little stronger than the god which powered them.

O Tersten, Dispenser of Temporary Redemptions, many thanks for Your assistance, the beefy cook prayed, trying not to wish for a different supplicatee. May a Cold Wall rubber-wright be happy to improve my repair for a pot of something delicious.

He was midway up the Long Path: ten miles of straight pitted road slashed like an old dueling scar up the face of a mile-high sandstone cliff. Mountains pierced the clouds to the northeast and south. On the western horizon, the green hills of the Uulian Commonwell undulated toward him; below him the Hidden River flowed its marshy way to the Rimless Sea. Between the two, the green faded into a tumbled black – wounds of a war which had finished when Prosatio Silban was too young to understand it. Continue reading “War Prints (A Prosatio Silban Tale)”