The Vampire & Her Witch

Jean led her along the stone counter with the easy authority of a man who knew these stalls and their keepers well. He paused to exchange words with one of the fishmongers, a heavyset woman with arms like knotted rope who handed him a wrapped bundle with a wink and a murmured comment about the quality of the morning’s eels.

Jean thanked her by name and tucked the bundle into his satchel, and the brief exchange told Jocelynn that whatever else this man might be, his mastery of the kitchen was no performance. He was also, she realized, an utterly shameless flirt, even though both he and the fishmonger clearly knew nothing would come of it, his smiling charm never wavered.

Devlin kept pace a few steps behind them, his eyes never resting on any one place for long, while his hand never strayed more than a few inches from the hilt of his long, curved knife.

”For the feast tomorrow,” Jean said, gesturing along the counter where fishmongers had laid out the best of the morning’s haul. There were steelhead trout with silvery flanks, river perch strung in bundles, and a few fat crappie still glistening with river water. ”Lord Owain has requested a whole roasted steelhead for the high table, dressed with saffron and presented with the head on.”

”The knights and other guests will expect something equally impressive that honors the bride’s heritage,” Jean added, giving Jocelynn a brief nod to acknowledge that these dishes were meant to honor her. ”So I’ll need at least two hundred pounds of fish or more for the lower tables.”

”Two hundred pounds is quite a bit for a winter market,” Jocelynn said. She might never have gutted a fish in her life, but she’d grown up watching the Blackwell fleet unload at dawn, and she knew what a thin catch looked like.

The stalls here were well stocked for the season, but not abundant. Worse, Owain’s orders to close the city had driven some of the smaller fishing boats from nearby hamlets off the water entirely since the villagers who weren’t wealthy enough to live within the city walls were afraid they’d be arrested just for trying to bring their catch to market. And, from what Jocelynn had already seen, they weren’t wrong to be afraid.

”You’ll clean out a good portion of the best fish in the market,” Jocelynn said as she eyed the tables, trying to consider how many of the fish she saw on display would meet the standard to be served at a nobleman’s feast. The answer, unfortunately, was not many.

”Very likely,” Jean agreed, though he didn’t sound particularly bothered about it. ”Which is why I wanted your advice. In Blackwell, when the catch is this thin, how does your father’s kitchen stretch a lean haul into a feast worthy of the table?”

It was a reasonable question from a cook preparing for an enormous dinner, and Jocelynn’s lips curled into a nostalgic grin as an answer came to mind.

”Fish stew for the lower tables,” she said. ”You take the heads, tails, spines, and whatever the butcher trims away, and you build a stock with onions and root vegetables. Strain it out and then thicken it with cream if you have it, stale bread if you don’t. You can use smaller chunks of fish that wouldn’t be worth serving as a fillet with plenty of onions, potatoes, and carrots to bulk it out.”

”At home, we’d make it from the heat, tails and fins of a giant swordfish or yellowfin, whatever father caught when he sailed out with the Linemen,” Jocelynn said wistfully as she remembered her father’s smiling face when he came home with a fish that was longer than he was tall. ”We’d add other shellfish too, oysters, mussels, whatever was fresh and in season to make it hearty. One ship, one crew, one giant pot of Low Tide Stew,” she said wistfully.

”At home, it was even served at the high table,” Jocelynn added quietly. ”Everyone eats the same stew. But Owain would never allow something meant for the lower tables to be served at his high table, no matter how tasty it was. It’s good even with humble fish, but it was always better when Father caught something special,” she said, blinking back the moisture that threatened to spill from her eyes.

”That sounds perfect,” Jean said, nodding his approval and deliberately pretending he didn’t notice her tears as he selected a steelhead and turned it in his hands, pressing the flesh near the spine the way a good cook tested for freshness.

”Though I’ve found that the preparation matters as much as the ingredients,” he said, as though it were an idle thought. ”A fish that’s been slow-smoked over green wood all night has twice the flavor of one that’s been rushed over hot coals. It’s the same with making a good stock. Patience is the key. Patience can turn even a meager catch into something worth savoring.”

He set the steelhead down and moved on to a stall selling smoked eel, where strings of dark, glossy fillets hung from hooks above a barrel of salt-packed herring. The smell hit Jocelynn’s battered stomach like a fist, and she pressed the back of her wrist to her lips, breathing carefully until the wave passed. Jean shifted his position without comment, angling his body to block the breeze that carried the worst of the stall’s pungent aromas while continuing to speak.

”The trouble with rushing the fire,” he continued, selecting an eel and testing its firmness between his fingers. ”Is that you end up with something tough and bitter. Overcooked. Ruined beyond saving, no matter what you do with it after the fact. But if you keep the heat low and give it time, even the toughest fish comes out tender enough to flake apart in your hands, just the way you want it to.”

Jocelynn studied his profile while he spoke. There was a precision to the way he handled the eel that went beyond a cook’s trained hands. Each movement was measured and economical, without wasted or careless movements. Even the way he stood was deliberate, his body angled so that he could see the nearest pair of guards in his peripheral vision while appearing to give his full attention to the stall.

”And if you don’t have time?” she asked, raising her eyebrow and keeping her voice light, as if they were truly just discussing fish. ”What do you do if the fire’s already lit and the fish is already on the coals, and you have to serve what’s in front of you before it burns?”

Jean was quiet for a moment, turning the eel over in his hands as if the answer might be found in the grain of its flesh.

”Then you serve it,” he said simply. ”But a wise cook always has a second course prepared. Something that’s been slow-poaching in the background while everyone’s attention was on the main dish.”

He set the eel aside and wiped his hands on his apron, then turned to face her directly. The market noise pressed in around them, the shouting of fishmongers, the scrape of crates across wet stone, the cries of gulls wheeling overhead or fighting over scraps, and in the middle of all of it, Jean’s dark eyes were steady and clear.

”I’ve heard,” he said, lowering his voice enough that only Jocelynn and Devlin could hear, ”that a certain noble lady from the eastern edge of the march has been preparing something of a second course. Of course, she always was one to make the most of even a meager morsel,” he added, searching Jocelynn’s eyes to ensure that she understood.

”She has so many mouths to feed, after all,” Jean added gently. ”And I hear that she’s always taking care of strays.”

Jocelynn’s hands went still at her sides as she realized not only who he was talking about, but how much he knew.

Charlotte Otker was her secret, the one card she’d been holding so close that even Devlin didn’t yet know the full shape of the arrangement she’d started to propose during yesterday’s memorial.

Perhaps it had been too much to expect Charlotte to stay quiet about the ’carriage service’ that Jocelynn had proposed during the memorial, but for Master Jean to have not only heard about it within a day of Jocelynn having mentioned it to Charlotte, but to have deduced the reason for her interest in transit through Otker Canyon...

”You seem to know a great deal about matters beyond the kitchen, Master Jean,” Jocelynn said, and for the first time this morning, she allowed a hint of steel to creep into her voice as her pale, seafoam eyes hardened.

”My uncle raised me to understand every link in the chain between the market and the table,” Jean said. ”He believes that a man who only knows his own kitchen will never cook anything worth eating.” He met her eyes. ”I have something for you, my lady. From a mutual friend who shares your concern for the welfare of certain people in this city.”

He reached into the leather satchel beneath his apron and produced a sealed roll of parchment marked with a crest that couldn’t have been more familiar to her than her own family’s coat of arms. The Illustrious Company of Engineers of Blackwell County.

Isablell.

”Not here,” Devlin said, stepping forward. His hand hadn’t moved to his knife, but his weight had shifted, and his voice had dropped to the tone he used when he smelled a squall coming.

”Of course not,” Jean agreed easily, nodding toward a gap between two stalls where stacked crates formed an alcove screened from the main thoroughfare. ”Shall we?”