Today's Protagonist Is the Sword Master (1)
Between an apology so deep it looked ready to snap his waist and the credit for everything he had done so far, Karem managed to have his sins forgiven.
But there was no time for the boy to rest.
He sprinted for the kitchens to hand over the plans and recipes. There was no leisure for a stroll. The banquet that would double as both a conferment ceremony and an investiture was already right on their doorstep. He had to get everything across as fast as humanly possible.
Cursing the vast scale of Winterhome that normally only ever drew gasps of admiration, Karem ran like a starving ogre that had just spotted prey and finally burst into a kitchen that might as well have been a war zone.
Naturally the cooks were not pleased to see him.
Even Jigmeser, who usually fussed over Karem like a doting mother, was no exception.
The menu had long since been locked in and everyone was deep in the prep work. And now he wanted them to add more dishes? That meant piling work on top of work. Nobody liked their workload growing—except for the rare outliers like house spirits.
Yet once Karem carefully relayed the conversation that had taken place between the Felwinter duke and duchess in the office, even they had no choice but to accept it.
They were cooks. And cooking only had meaning when the people eating it were happy.
Who, after all, had been preparing the diet Elizabeth had drawn up for Godwin? They too had watched Godwin thrash in misery under that restricted menu, all under the banner of a “diet,” and none of them had ever liked being party to that suffering. If it hadn’t been an order from above they never would have done it. What fun or pride was there in cooking for someone who took no joy in the food at all—especially for Jigmeser, who had been preparing it with his own hands?
So the cooks, following their head chef’s will and their own pride, grumbled with their mouths even as they took the recipes Karem had written down—and immediately let out howls of despair.
“We’re already drowning in work as it is!”
“What? Tomatoes? A new ingredient? An improved strain of the Red Witch’s Finger?”
“And what the hell is this soy sauce supposed to be!? Have you lost your mind—wait, is it something spicy? Then maybe a little—no, even if it is!”
“Damn it, we really can’t just not do this, can we.”
A new ingredient! A new ingredient!
But the lord’s command had already been issued, and they had no choice but to carry it out.
There was one silver lining, at least. Unlike the dishes they had already been prepping, Karem’s recipes weren’t especially complicated. That was cold comfort, though. They still required a mountain of simple, repetitive handwork, and most of them were recipes no one had ever heard of, so the consolation didn’t go very far.
In the meantime Karem had Mary help him haul the tomatoes, the tomato paste, and the finished soy sauce into the kitchen.
“You absolute lunatic! Don’t try to scam me, you slime-brained idiot! How is this supposed to be Red Witch’s Finger!? What? Tomato? What kind of rootless name is that?”
“Karem! What kind of insanity did you pull to get this kind of flavor out of beans—”
“Fermentation! Yes—this funky depth is the taste of fermentation!”
The kitchen, of course, erupted. Jigmeser and his subordinates shouted that Karem had gone and done it again. Cheers and screams took turns while the cooks tasted both agony and rapture at the growing pile of work. The sun set, but the kitchen fires never went out.
If you asked any person of influence in Iceland to sum up the past year in a single short phrase, every last one of them would give the same answer: the Year of Gourmet.
Trends, as a rule, climb from the bottom up—and also trickle down from the top. The latter simply moves faster.
From last winter through this summer a flood of new dishes had poured out the way a dwarf might dump a failed batch of beer onto the floor, drowning the powerful in a sea of fine dining they had never expected. Even people of some means found the zeros at the end of their food bills multiplying in dizzying fashion. And yet they could not bring themselves to give it up.
People can never truly go back to what they once were—especially not the nobles, merchants, wealthy men, and chieftains who had gone so far as to invite chefs from the continent just so they could enjoy the finer things.
Anyone with even a scrap of power knew exactly who stood at the center of that change.
In Iceland, where social mobility was relatively free, it was not unheard of for a serf to rise overnight. But add the conditions of chef, great mage’s personal cook, and still a minor? The list narrowed to a single name across the entire region.
The personal chef of the Sage, the Great Spirit of the Cold Wave, the Archmage, and current supreme magic advisor to the Felwinter family—Catherine Marigold Atanitas.
Karem.
Anyone who had looked down on him at first because of his age and still clung to that attitude now was simply a noble lacking in judgment.
“Hmm. Failed to make contact again, did we?”
“At this point one has to wonder if the supreme magic advisor herself is blocking everything.”
“Seems that way.”
“Tsk. If the boy would just go out and about a little at his age, there might be some chance to arrange an introduction.”
The nobles who had arrived at Winterhome early for the conferment and investiture and were now chatting over tea felt the same. At first they had only casually tried to open a line to a man of power, but every approach under every possible pretext had been blocked without fail.
“Isn’t she a little too protective of him, even if he is her cherished chef?”
“Perhaps she’s simply wary of a young boy picking up bad habits.”
“Who on earth would try to poach the supreme magic advisor’s subordinate?”
“Isn’t the answer already obvious?”
“What—the part about bad habits?”
“There are people trying to bring him into their houses as an adopted son-in-law, aren’t there? Or rather, several someones.”
At that, a few of the guests clicked their tongues inwardly. Some had indeed looked down on him as nothing more than a chef of serf origin. But they were still nobles; they understood. Creating delicious food that was also new was hard. Leading a trend with it was harder still.
Yet as Winterhome kept unveiling new recipes without end, even the dismissive ones slowly changed their minds. Their tongues were happy and the dishes were fashionable—of course they would jump on board.
The decisive blow, however, had come from elsewhere.
“If even those haughty Dark Elves of Adobis and the Sain were reduced to begging, then his skill is anything but lacking.”
The Seophon Kingdom was already an island cut off from the continent—sitting, no less, on the outermost edge of Europa. Its harsher environment had quietly planted an inferiority complex in everyone who lived there, and that feeling was even stronger in Iceland, which lay farther still from the center.
To Iceland, Adobis was an object of envy, jealousy, and awe. Most of the older people of influence had lived through the endless famines of Iceland’s past as children. Having tasted the sudden abundance that drove those famines away, it was only natural that a shadow had settled somewhere in their hearts.
The people of Adobis had always been arrogant in Iceland. It was irritating, yet there was nothing one could say. Objectively—and as benefactors—they had every right to be arrogant.
And those same insufferably proud Adobis chefs… even the new king’s treasurer, a man who had tasted every delicacy there was, had grabbed a mere chef by the hem of his trousers and begged?
The words struck the Icelandic nobles right in the heart. In common parlance, that was called getting high on “the good stuff.”
“The problem is the whole ‘adopted daughter’ angle. It’s not even a blood daughter.”
“Damn it, why are all my children such scatterbrains?!”
“…You’re a woman and you’re saying that?”
“Even so, I can’t exactly shove a scatterbrain at him, can I?”
Among Iceland’s nobility, ability outranked bloodline or gender. A capable woman was preferred over an incompetent man. Even so, when it came to heirs they still leaned toward sons when they could; a woman’s body simply came with more constraints. Of course if a daughter was clearly more capable, that was another matter. So it was “preferably,” not “absolutely.”
That was why anyone of any standing had sent letters requesting meetings, laying groundwork without hesitation even if it meant offering their own daughters. Even nobles and great chieftains a step below the duke’s level did the same, ready to take the boy as an adopted son-in-law if necessary.
Of course none of those letters ever reached Karem. Catherine blocked every black hand that tried to touch the chef she had claimed first, and Mary, who wholeheartedly agreed with the policy, began each morning by burning a mountain of luxurious stationery. Unless something extraordinary happened, every one of their attempts would come to nothing.
As the fateful hour drew near, Godwin swallowed hard while looking out over the noisy crowd filling the grand hall. The day had finally arrived.
He glanced sideways at the seat next to him. Karem, who had joined him while wandering around to soothe his restless nerves, was yawning with a faintly exhausted look.
“Karem. You handled everything properly, right?”
“Of course, Young Master Godwin.”
Karem twisted his body this way and that, trying to shake off fatigue that refused to leave no matter how much time passed.
“At the very least you won’t have to eat undressed vegetables and boiled meat with nothing but salt.”
“Couldn’t we have started the new menu a little sooner, though?”
“You mean the diet that’s about to change?”
“Yes. Trying to force down those plain, unfamiliar dishes is just… ugh—”
Godwin’s face crumpled. Even imagining it brought the smell of something green and dry to his nose.
“The duchess really did go a bit far, didn’t she.”
Karem sympathized, recalling the kind of hardcore training diets that only the most extreme coaches from his previous life would have inflicted on people. Bread baked without butter or sugar and a scrap of fruit. An undressed salad and a mountain of boiled meat. Technically edible, yet utterly devoid of pleasure or stimulation—a bland, joyless regimen if ever there was one. The thought that the duchess herself had personally chosen that nightmare of a menu made Karem shudder.
“Anyway, for tonight’s banquet the only things Young Master Godwin is allowed to eat are—”
“Yes, yes, you’ve said it a dozen times. Only the dishes placed in front of me, and absolutely no overeating.”
“You forgot one. Desserts are completely forbidden as well.”
“Karem. Let me ask just one thing.”
“Ask anything you like.”
“Is even a single dessert really off-limits?”
Godwin poured every ounce of desperation into the question. Karem met his eyes and repeated himself once more.
“No. If you have even one, your appetite will wake up and you’ll go for two, then three—I can already see it. Can you resist that temptation?”
“Well… if it comes out during the meal I don’t think I could hold back either.”
Besides, he hadn’t touched a dessert in ages—how was he supposed to endure that? Still, the disappointment was real, and the strength drained from Godwin’s shoulders.
He could not stay that way forever, though. As they drew closer to the grand hall more and more guests came forward to greet him. As the duke’s heir who had invited everyone for the conferment and investiture, Godwin forced the dejection from his face and began receiving them properly.
Karem slipped nimbly away from Godwin’s side and arrived at the grand hall first. Because of the guests there were far more tables than usual. The walls and ceiling were decked out in lavish decorations that almost recalled last winter’s Winter-Ascend festival.
With a glittering spectacle before his eyes and a racket filling his ears, Karem was standing there wondering how on earth he was supposed to find Catherine when someone waved from the edge of his vision.
In the high seats, where empty places still dotted the table, Catherine sat with Mary in attendance and was beckoning him over.
Hugging the wall to avoid the human tide, Karem made a long circuit around the hall and finally reached the high seats, wiping sweat from his brow.
“A servant who arrives later than his master.”
“I’m sorry. I was helping in the kitchen right up to the end. And there are just so many people.”
“Tsk. That’s why I’m not scolding you further.”
“By the way, I don’t see the star of tonight’s banquet.”
“Precisely because he is the star of tonight’s banquet. He’s probably being swarmed and tormented by people right now.”
“Ah.”
When he thought about it, it was obvious. The sudden appearance of a Sword Master who had practically popped into existence out of thin air was like a beacon that drew every eye. He was surely having almost as rough a time as the ducal heir.
“Speak of the ogre and he appears.”
“Sorry? Ogre?”
“Look over there.”
Catherine pointed with her chin toward the entrance of the grand hall.
“Come now, make way! Let tonight’s guest of honor through.”
“Whew, thank you, Your Grace. People were crowding in so thickly…”
“Once you receive your title and the invitations start pouring in, you’ll get used to it soon enough. Gordon. Or rather—Sir Stark.”
Alfred was leading Gordon in through the crowd.