The Taste of Having Lived
When a person's most basic needs gave way, impulse could take them at any moment. She had to see to it that he could at least sleep properly. And for that……
She could hardly chase him all the way to his bedchamber and offer to help him sleep.
Then she would have to come at it another way. His meals—those, at least, she had to look after. Sleep and food were woven too tightly to treat as separate things.
Odelli recalled a conversation she had overheard a few days earlier, passing near the kitchens: Ludville's personal servants, speaking with grave faces. Of late, they said, he would not so much as touch his meals, and only emptied his cup. A man twice the size of anyone else, picking at his food like that, would have no strength left in him—and without strength, how was he meant to sleep?
The moment Leona finished dressing her for the morning, Odelli rose without further delay and went straight to the kitchen.
The instant she stepped inside, the rich smell of meat broth struck her, braided with spice. Early as the hour was, the kitchen hands moved without pause between pots and cutting boards, never stilling their hands.
Not wishing to interrupt their work, Odelli stood off in a corner and waited. Then the head chef, busy trimming ingredients, caught sight of her and stopped short, startled.
“……My lady?”
They set the knife down, hastily straightened their apron, and bowed low.
“What brings you at such an early hour? If there is something you would particularly like to eat……”
The bow was all proper deference, but wariness showed in their eyes. Lady of Cardel or not, she was plainly an outsider, and an outsider coming and going through the kitchens was no matter to take lightly. Should the lady slip poison into the food…… the blame would fall, entire, upon the one who ran this kitchen.
“Forgive me, but no one may enter the kitchen without leave. If you need anything at all, only say so. We will prepare it.”
Fear that the gently raised lady might turn spiteful blotched the head chef's face with tension and unease. What left Odelli's mouth, however, ran clean contrary to that expectation.
“Ah. Yes. I was out of line.”
She owned the fault at once and took a step back. Only after she had set a careful distance between herself and the food—as if to show she had no intention of touching any of it—did she come to the point.
“What is going up to His Highness for breakfast today?”
The head chef could not hide their surprise. Already the wariness that had filled those eyes had eased by a layer. They hesitated a moment, then spoke.
“We are preparing a broth and a porridge, veal tenderloin simmered long in stock. His portions have fallen off so sharply that we chose something light, to rest the stomach. The vegetables will be blanched and sent up alongside.”
Odelli looked toward the worktable, thinking. Oats, lentils, mashed peas, a little honey and milk—the sort of dish people called grain porridge. Sound enough as a health food, perhaps, but she doubted it would do Ludville any good just now.
Waking his appetite has to come first.
She searched through Ludville's memories.
The time he had flung himself onto the battlefield with nothing but a sword, reckless in his hunger for power. Dying, and dying, and dying again. After regressions beyond counting, the day he came back alive for the first time.
He had not returned whole. A rib was cracked, an arrow lodged in his arm, and he could not properly walk. But he was alive. Breath still clung to him.
The officer handing out rations that day had, as a special favor, laid a few pieces of smoked meat over a bowl of hot barley porridge. A taste permitted only to the soldiers who had survived. It was thick and sticky, yet savory; salty, and still full of flavor.
Only then did Ludville truly feel it—that he had slipped free of that loathsome chain of death.
Alive.
That taste, that memory, set the desire to live back into his hands. In a corner of the barracks he rubbed the ring set with the Jewel of Regression and murmured to himself.
“……They say the platoon leader has his eye on me, my wife. Thanks to that, I may endure a little longer in this life.”
“I will survive the next battle as well. Until you have safely passed thirty, I will not permit myself any death.”
“Ah. In this life you are not yet my wife, are you. ……What does it matter. Even if we never trouble with the formalities, you have always been my wife.”
The next day he hurled himself into death's path again, repeating death and regression without end.
Odelli closed her eyes, as if she could force the memories that followed back down by sheer will.
The memory itself will not have stayed with him. But that taste might wake his appetite again.
At last she spoke.
“You did well, preparing something easy to digest. But just now, stirring his appetite matters more than nourishment.”
“That is…… true. Only, even the dishes he used to enjoy, he leaves them all untouched these days……”
The head chef bowed their head, abashed. As the one responsible for the archduke's table, merely saying as much seemed to sit ill with them.
“It isn't the head chef's fault.”
Odelli cut the self-reproach short, firm.
“I'd rather the porridge were barley.”
At her words, the head chef blinked.
“……Barley porridge?”
Barley porridge was commonly thought of as food for poor farmers, and hesitation lay plain across their face. They said nothing, yet it was obvious what they were thinking. Surely His Highness the Archduke would never care for such a thing.
Odelli went on, unbothered.
“Slice the smoked meat thin and lay it lightly over the porridge. Don't let the body of it go too heavy—soak the grain a long while, then simmer it thoroughly over a low flame. The surface may soften, but it mustn't fall apart.”
Odelli carried the memory of having been Ludville's wife in a former life. Not a life she had lived in her own flesh. Still, the days she had looked in on through his memories held meal after meal they had shared, table after table. She knew his palate more exactly than anyone.
She went on, unhurried.
“A few wild fruits alongside, if you would. Wild raspberries, blackberries—something of that kind.”
Judging by the dishes the Odelli of those memories had set upon the table, Ludville ate well of food that was salty and quietly sweet, with pieces of meat steeped in their own juices. Perhaps it was because the ingredients she named felt not merely plain, but almost shabby. The head chef's expression soured.
“Wild raspberries? Not ordinary strawberries?”
“Yes. Wild fruit isn't as sweet, so a touch of honey might be wise.”
“……I cannot imagine His Highness would eat such a thing.”
Careful doubt colored the voice. Lady's word or not, the fear was plain: serve that at the archduke's table, and the reprimand might come back later.
“He isn't eating anything as it is, is he?”
She meant there was nothing to lose. She looked at the head chef with a faint, steady smile, as if to set them at ease.
“Let us do it this way. When it is time to eat, send up what you prepared first, as usual. But if he means to drink again without touching a bite, bring him this porridge then.”
“……”
“If it goes wrong, the blame is mine.”