Book Two Chapter 9: The Challenge

Book Two Chapter 9

The Challenge

The man came in at the height of the lunch rush, which told Roen something about him before he’d said a word. A man who wanted to judge a kitchen came when it was busy, and a person who wanted to enjoy a meal came when it wasn’t.

He took a table in the centre of the inn without speaking to anyone, sat with his back straight, and ordered one of everything that was on the menu that day. He ate as if he were there to grade the food, a small bite, a pause, a look into the middle distance while the verdict assembled itself. The common room went a little quiet as it watched the new, particular man.

“You’re the cook,” the man said, when Roen passed with plates for another table.

“I’m the innkeeper. I also cook.”

“Mm.” He set his fork down and delivered his diagnosis. “It’s competent…the stew’s honest. The bread’s better than it has any right to be out here.” He dabbed his mouth. “But it’s safe. It’s the food of a man who found a few things he does well and decided that was enough. There’s no ambition in it.” He looked up, and his smile had a great deal of teeth in it. “Gordon. I’m opening an eatery across the square at the end of the month. I thought I’d come and see what I was up against.” The grin grew. “I’m relieved.”

Bess made a low warning sound from the kitchen doorway, akint to the sound a kettle makes just before the lid begins to shift.

Roen set the plates down at the next table, straightened, and measured the man without heat or anger. Gordon had good hands. He noticed the calluses in the right places, a burn scar along one forearm that came from a real kitchen and not a story about one. He arrived at the conclusion that he could probably cook. That was the irritating part, or would have been, if Roen had any intention of being irritated.

“Then I wish you well with it,” Roen said. “Customers are good this side of the square. There’s room for two.”

It was the wrong answer, or the right one, depending on whether you wanted a quiet lunch. Gordon had come for a fight and been handed a welcome, and there is a particular sort of man who finds nothing in the world more insulting. He was definitely that sort of man.

“Room for two,” Gordon repeated, with a mocking tone. “You are right, there’s always room for the best and the second-best.” He stood, dropped a coin on the table, more than the meal cost, which was its own little flag planted. “Tell me, mister innkeeper. Have you ever actually been tested or just praised by people who’ve never eaten anything better?”

From her table in the corner, without looking up from the ledger, Sera said: “He’s been tested.”

“By whom?”

“By me. Every morning, lunch and dinner. He passes with flying colours.” She turned a page. “Your stew’s getting cold, Gordon, and you’ve already insulted it, so you may as well finish it before you go.”

• • •

It should have ended there. It would have, if the town had any sense, which the town did not, and to top it all off, this was the most entertaining thing that had happened in the last week of autumn cold.

By the time dinner began, the thing had a life story of its own. Hilde carried it out the door before Gordon’s coin had stopped rattling on the table. After that, Torben repeated it to the smith, who repeated it to half the square, and by the time Garren came in for his ale, the story had taken the shape of a proper grievance against the town: an outsider in their square calling their inn second-best. That was unacceptable to the townspeople, and they wanted satisfaction, or, to be honest, a more fitting word would be spectacle, they wanted a spectacle.

“A cook-off,” Garren announced as he sat down, almost pleased, looking like a man with good news to deliver. “This Saturday. You and the loud one, a pot each, the town judges, the guild will make sure the vote is fair. It’s already half arranged and Hilde’s doing the criers.”

“I haven’t agreed to anything,” Roen muttered.

“No,” Garren agreed. “That’s why I said half.”

“Garren…”

“You don’t have to win. You just have to show up so the rest of us can enjoy ourselves.” He took his ale. “We’ve had a hard autumn, a hard year even. Let us have this.”

That was an argument Roen could not topple – The Tower had been under their roof, a glassed field, a year of hardships. The town didn’t know half of it, but it still felt its weight. If a pot in the square would give them a bright afternoon, the cost to Roen was an afternoon of cooking, which he knew was no cost at all.

“…Fine,” he agreed.

The cheer that went up was disproportionate. Milo’s was the loudest, and Brick, startled, headbutted the gatepost in solidarity.

“This is a mistake,” Roen told Sera later, drying the last of the glasses.

“It’s excellent,” Sera said. “Half the region will be in that square. I’ve already taken three deposits on trade introductions and sold the smith’s wife on a spice order.” She closed the ledger. “Lose if you like. I’ll still come out ahead.” A pause, dry. “But I’d like you to win. Also, he cares too much about being the best, and you don’t care at all, which is the only way anyone ever is.”

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• • •

Saturday came as if in a blink, and the square was fuller than Roen had ever seen it.

Two trestle tables, two braziers, two pots. A monstrous crowd and a judges’ bench of Hilde, Garren, and a wool merchant from Aldham who’d had the bad luck to arrive that morning and the good sense to look honoured when conscripted. Gordon had brought equipment, an actual array of it: knives rolled in oiled leather, copper pans that shimmered in the light, a boy assistant in a clean apron. Roen had brought a pot, a knife, and the vegetables from his own garden in a basket Milo insisted on carrying as though it were an heirloom.

“What’s he making?” Milo whispered.

“Something complicated,” Roen said, watching Gordon lay out his mise en place for the benefit of the crowd. “Look at the plating dishes. He’s building something tall.”

“What are you making?”