The Vampire & Her Witch

Valeri Leufroy looked at the dishes that had just been set on his table the way he’d have eyed a serpent he hadn’t yet determined was venomous. It wasn’t the food’s fault, but it was completely different from anything that would have been served at a feast Bors Lothian had ordered to start the day with.

Gone were the thick, fatty sausages packed with an almost overwhelming amount of expensive spices. In their place, the new Master of Kitchens had shaved cured, aged pork thinly enough to see light through the slices before wrapping them around delicate slices of apple and an almost nutty, hard cheese. That very same ham had also been neatly and carefully folded into small, flower-shaped cups whose petals held small bits of dried cherries and a crumbly cheese that smelled like it was made from sheep’s milk.

The dish was delightfully artistic and clearly belonged on the High Table for the most influential lords of the land to enjoy, yet the dish was here... at the exile end of the table, offered up to the pauper knight from Dunn and his wife!

And the sliced ham wasn’t the only thing that had changed.

Baron Leufroy had always considered most fish to be peasant food, with a few notable exceptions, all of which belonged on a dinner table and not at breakfast. Part of that had to do with the time it took to turn a morning catch into a reasonably well-processed piece of delicate meat that didn’t smell pungent or sour, but mostly it was because Valeri had seen the sort of filth people dumped into the river and anything that swam through that wasn’t fit for a lord’s stomach.

Yet now, in place of the thick rashers of rich, smoky bacon fried to a crisp in their own fat, Master Jean had provided each table with long platters holding fillets of fish as long as a man’s arm, resting on a bed of crispy, golden potatoes mixed with wilted green vegetables and sweet onions so soft they could be seen through.

”Mmmm, Bedwyr, you have to try the fish with the hash,” Esme gushed as she took a large bite that combined the fish with the vegetables underneath it. ”Do it while it’s hot and the potatoes are still crispy, it’s sooo good,” she said as she held out a portion on her fork, looking insufferably cute as she affectionately pampered her husband.

”Hold on, dumpling,” the young knight said as he used a long-handled pair of tongs to retrieve several yellow coin-shaped cakes from a tray slightly further down the table. Each one was roughly twice the size of a gold sovereign, and they looked like they’d been soaked in honey and topped with crushed walnuts that glistened in the warm light of the Great Hall.

”Do you want two of these, or three?” Bedwyr asked as he started piling them on his wife’s plate. ”It looks like there are going to be plenty...”

That was another thing that Valeri noticed as he watched the line of servants bringing dish after dish to the tables. Everything was plentiful, whether it was the thinly sliced ham, the fish with hash, the golden coin-cakes, or the half dozen other dishes that were still making their way to the table.

There were puffed, buttery pastries stuffed with sweet cream that had been whipped with berry preserves, turning the cream soft shades of pink, purple and blue. There was perfectly toasted bread, topped with light, fluffy, golden eggs, smothered in cheese and topped with a sprinkling of fresh kitchen herbs.

”Mmm, it is good,” Tulori said around a mouthful of fish and potatoes as he abandoned some of his refinement to eat the posh-looking peasant food the same way the country knight’s wife had done.

”I mean, it’s different,” he said, wilting slightly under his father’s disapproving gaze. ”The flavors aren’t exactly refined. Mostly the onions, chard, and the fish’s own oils... the potatoes just soak it all up. It’s humble,” he said, hoping his father would approve of his critique. ”But it’s still very good...”

Eventually, Valeri relented, taking a small portion of the fish along with the vegetables and cutting them into even smaller pieces that would fit together on his fork before taking a delicate, reluctant bite... and discovering that his son was right.

It wasn’t just that the flavors were humble, without any of the expensive cinnamon, nutmeg or clove he would have expected in a winter dish served at the high table. It was that the dish didn’t need any of those things to still possess impressive flavors. The only seasoning Valeri’s refined palette could detect was salt and perhaps a trace of black pepper, but the onions added a buttery sweetness while the wilted greens were slightly sharp and just a little bitter, balancing out the richness of the fish itself...

When he thought about it, he quickly realized that this kind of dish was completely beyond the man who had served as the Leufroy Master of Kitchens for the past twenty years. Master Tauvel used the finest ingredients from Keating and beyond, with recipes provided by the kitchens of counts and even the Duke of Keating’s own Master of Kitchens... yet it would never in a dozen years have occurred to the man Valeri placed in charge of his meals to serve something so plain to a table filled with lords.

Yet when Valeri turned his gaze to the Center table, looking for the prized, centerpiece dishes swimming in rich sauces, served on gilded platters and simmered in enough spices to pay a farmer’s expenses for a year just to complete a single dish... He saw none of that. Not even the head of a pig or boar to adorn the center table.

Instead, he saw something utterly unspeakable...

It wasn’t just that all of the dishes at Lady Ashlynn’s were the same as the ones he and his family had been served. It was that his daughter, his lying, traitorous, backstabbing, conniving, impudent daughter, was leaning back in her chair and laughing at something Lady Ashlynn had said, even as Lady Ashlynn, the highest host of the entire dinner, served up a portion of a dish to Adala, acting like she was...was...

Like she was Adala’s big sister, Valeri realized. The Marchioness wasn’t putting any distance between herself and Adala at all. Meanwhile, the Baron of Leufroy had been exiled to the furthest end of a table, as far as he could get from the Marchioness.

And when he realized that, Valeri found his appetite abandoning him completely, and it had nothing to do with the strange food at all.