Love's Escape
As if determined to spoil the pleasant mood, a scream rang out. The boisterous patrons packing the first-floor dining room all startled and whipped their heads toward the sound as one.
Karem, Catherine, and Gordon turned the same way.
"What on earth is going on?"
"If I didn't mishear just now, someone said midwife."
"Yes. Someone definitely said midwife."
The restaurant, which had gone suddenly quiet, had its door explode open.
Behind the elf waitress who had flung it wide enough to tear it off its hinges came a wrinkled dwarf midwife, human women in tow, charging in with a ferocity that looked ready to send even monsters fleeing on presence alone.
"Kid. Mercenary. Looks like we'd better head outside."
"What? The dessert hasn't even come out yet."
"Doesn't seem like we'll get to finish, so hurry."
Karem tilted his head at Catherine's words, but she only hurried the two of them along.
With no choice left, he stuffed the entire remaining smoked herring into his mouth whole. Gordon snatched up a pie as well and rose from his seat.
Meanwhile the dwarf midwife paid the staring crowd no mind whatsoever and barked orders at the dwarf, human, and elf women trailing after her.
"You lot, get inside at once and assist Veronica. The rest of you—empty out an entire room and scrub it clean! Don't forget to sprinkle the Drunken Fire! Now then! Whether you're dining here or lodging here, every last guest listen up!"
The dwarf midwife, her arms still corded with muscle that mocked the years, pounded a nearby table with her bare fist hard enough to nearly shatter it, drawing every eye.
"The innkeeper's wife Veronica has gone into labor—everyone outside!"
"Hey, I just started on my drink—"
The protest was understandable enough. A man had paid good coin and barely begun to enjoy himself only to be thrown out; anyone would bristle.
The dwarf midwife could not have cared less.
"You little brat!"
"Uh—uhhh!?"
"Oh no—Grandma Inge! Please!?"
Hammerson came barreling out too late.
Like a bear yanking a radish from the earth, the midwife hoisted the complaining patron one-handed and flung him as casually as a child skipping a pebble.
Crack! Crash!
The hinges tore free; man and door went tumbling into the street together.
Faced with that crushing display of force and with innkeeper Hammerson's desperate pleas, the guests had little choice. One after another they grumbled their way out of the inn.
Caught in that same tide was Karem, already prodded outside earlier.
"Even so, everyone but that one fellow came out quietly enough."
"A mother's about to give birth. Who has time to dig their heels in?"
"There was also the show of force?"
"The show of force goes without saying."
Gordon nodded as though the point needed no thought at all.
"Well, dessert's a real shame now."
"I know. I was looking forward to it after what Lady Atanitas said."
"I'm leaving this place, so it doesn't matter for me, but you two might get another chance someday—"
Just then a dwarf shoved through the outgoing wave of people.
"Hey! Don't push!"
"Catherine and company! Wait—move, will you!"
"Uh—uh! I'm falling!"
It was Hammerson, the same one who moments earlier had been clinging to the midwife's legs trying to restrain her.
Wiping cold sweat from his brow, he hurried over to Catherine and dipped his head in a sheepish, apologetic tone.
"I hadn't even finished hosting my guests properly. Truly sorry it turned out like this."
"Think nothing of it. Can't be helped. By the way, Hammerson—was Veronica pregnant? Congratulations."
"Yeah. Right after you left she must have finally relaxed; the child came along at once."
The contrite look vanished as if it had never been. Hammerson beamed toward the inn, then started and frantically patted himself down. After a frantic search of his pockets he smacked his forehead and thrust a single key into Catherine's hand.
"Here, Catherine. Take this."
"A key?"
"Looking at you, you don't have lodgings yet, do you?"
"Ha. Sharp eyes."
"It's only been ten years, but I've run an inn in this city that long. I can tell at a glance."
Hammerson clapped Catherine on the shoulder the same way he had at their reunion.
"Wait—hey! That hurts!"
"There, there. While you're in this city, stay there with your party. As long as you don't smash anything, use whatever's inside freely."
"Hmph. I won't refuse. Shouldn't you be getting back inside, though?"
Catherine turned the key over in her fingers and jerked her chin toward the inn.
"Hammerson! Hammerson! Where in blazes are you!!!"
The old dwarf midwife's bellow shook the whole building. Hammerson leapt like a fish stranded on land and half-rolled back through the door.
"Lady Atanitas, just what kind of debt makes a dwarf hand over food and a place to stay?"
"Nothing worth mentioning."
Catherine flipped the key into the air, caught it lightly, and spoke as if it were the simplest thing in the world.
"I merely helped the daughter of a noble house from Berseingeto who had fallen for the youngest son of a rival house elope to the Seophon Kingdom."
"Ah—come to think of it, they said they were from Berseingeto. Still hard to believe."
Gordon looked as if someone had just claimed a beheaded pig had stood up and started walking on two legs.
Karem knew the Ber-something country lay across the sea. That was the sum of his knowledge.
"A Berseingeto noble? In the Seophon Kingdom? I'd sooner believe the dead rose again."
"Gordon. Is it really that unbelievable?"
"Ugh, don't even start. You have no idea how much Berseingeto nobles loathe the Seophon Kingdom. Hate it, even."
Gordon shook his head hard.
Karem still didn't quite grasp it, but he sorted through everything he had heard so far.
Veronica, eldest daughter of a Berseingeto noble house, had fallen for Hammerson, youngest son of a rival family, and they had attempted a lovers' escape.
Fleeing their families' pursuit, the two had crossed into the Seophon Kingdom. Neater than expected, actually.
"So the place those two dwarves finally reached after running is here—Borderster? But is the Seophon Kingdom really that far from the Ber-something kingdom?"
Otherwise they could never have shaken a noble house's trackers, Karem reasoned.
Catherine only snorted.
"Ha. Not a chance. Across the sea, yes, but you'll have a hard time finding another country this close."
"How close exactly?"
"Even on a cloudy day it's only a day's sail by ordinary ship. Clear weather, half a day."
"What? That near and they still don't chase?"
Even with the crude navigation of the medieval era, half a day in less-than-perfect weather. Not pursuing seemed stranger, Karem thought. In good weather you'd leave at dawn and arrive by lunch.
Catherine waved a hand at the thick cloud of questions rising beside her.
"Because Berseingeto nobles—the living embodiment of pride and arrogance—despise this country more than you can imagine."
"Enough to write off their own eldest daughter?"
"Exactly. When I looked into it later, I heard they simply treated her as dead and buried the whole matter. Dig any deeper and you're stuck with history; it's a headache. Just let it go."
Catherine dangled the key in front of Karem's eyes.
"First let's go inspect the temporary house we'll be using in this city."
Even after ten years she still knew the streets cold. Reading the address embossed on the key's bow, Catherine set off at the head of the group.
"Still, if it's Veronica's dessert it would have been cheese custard tart for certain. A real shame."
"Custard tart—you mean the Berseingeto kind?"
"That's right."
"Wow. That is a shame."
Gordon cast a longing glance back toward the now-invisible inn, The Sword Fallen into the Beer Barrel.
Custard tart. The name alone gave little away, yet most people simply called it egg tart.
Catherine's description set Karem's mouth watering on the spot.
Egg tart. His favorite dessert back home had been the egg tarts sold at franchise chicken shops.
A palm-sized pie shell filled with custard blended from honey and cream, then baked. Finished with tart raspberries, honey, and a dusting of costly cinnamon just before serving—the mere thought made the flavor bloom on his tongue.
Unlike ordinary pie shells, this one mixed egg and butter until it was softer than a cookie.
Sweet, silken custard that shattered and melted at the slightest press of the tongue, flooding the mouth.
Sour raspberries that lost their shape with every bite, seeds popping, all wrapped in the warm perfume of cinnamon and thick honey.
Catherine, having rendered Karem and Gordon hungry all over again, seemed almost overwhelmed by her own word-picture and wore a rueful look.
Karem, equally robbed of dessert, felt the same pang.
"Then once we reach the house, I'll just have to make something myself."
The words left him on pure reflex.
Gordon gave him a dubious look.
"Hmm? Kid. You?"
"Uh, yes. Me."
"Dessert?"
Karem wondered why the man was suddenly acting so odd, yet Gordon's skepticism was only natural.
Even granting that cooking skill itself might be debatable, dessert was another realm entirely.
A dessert had to be sweet or it was no dessert at all.
On the Europa continent the common sweeteners were sugar—all but impossible for a serf to taste—and honey, available only by rare luck or on special days.
Of course a fantasy world offered other sweeteners, yet those were as scarce as sugar and honey, or rarer still.
And such things naturally found their way first into the hands of the powerful.
Nobles, great merchants, landlords.
"Ah, Gordon. Anyway, just give me a chance—"
"Trust you, is that it? But this time I'm a little—"
"Well, if he can speak with that much confidence, having him prove his skill outright once wouldn't be so bad."
Besides, look—we've arrived. With those words Catherine halted in front of a building.