PDCOO Chapter 3

He held her gaze a moment. Said nothing.

"I'm sorry if that was rude. But our village has people who were injured in the war too. One man laughs when he's sad now—can't help it. Another can't speak anymore, though his mouth is perfectly fine. I wondered if you might be something like that."

"It's not rude." A pause. "Though this may be—may I ask? Were you also harmed during the war, Miss Anna?"

"I got hit in the face when I tried to resist the village conscription. Right here."

She touched her nose. A small, neat nose—round as a garlic clove placed there. But look closely and you'd see the fine white line across the bridge.

"After it broke, I lost most of my sense of smell. My cooking has probably gotten worse since then—I can't judge it properly anymore. I shouldn't be admitting that as a restaurant owner, but you've been so very honest about not enjoying my food, so I thought I'd say it first."

"Then from now on, I will say it's delicious."

"You don't need to lie on my account."

"I cannot taste food," Bertram said. "That is why I have answered honestly until now. But my inability to feel is no reason to wound another person. I apologize. Belatedly."

He gave a small, precise bow and returned to sweeping.

Anna stood without words.

Emotionless. Tasteless. No tact whatsoever.

She'd met all kinds of people. This particular variety of exasperation was new.

But someone who apologized that quickly and immediately changed course—that was new too.

And the words he chose. Subtly, unmistakably different from the way people talked around here.

'Could he be a nobleman ruined by the war?'

She was in the middle of entertaining this reasonably pointless theory when—

The restaurant door burst open. Bang.

A familiar voice cut across the room.

"Anna, you! I hear you've already gone and picked up a beggar!"

Anna's mother. Karlah.

Straight from the market—both hands still loaded with parcels. Somehow, one length of cloth had been seized from the parcels and now hung from her grip like a club.

"I told you not to go falling for some noble boy—not to bring home a damn beggar bastard! Can't you pick up strays in moderation?"

"Mama, stop—"

"You stop! At your age, the things you get up to—"

"He's right here."

Karlah registered, belatedly, the large man standing with a broom.

White skin, black hair, dark clothing—the word grim arrived before anything more specific could. A very large, very quiet man.

In the silence, Bertram inclined his head toward Karlah with unhurried composure.

"Good day to you. I am absolutely, absolutely not a nobleman." A pause. "I am, as you put it, the damn beggar bastard."

Bertram Hertz Wächter. Twenty-five years old.

His uncle's ascension had somewhat tangled the order of succession, but he had been a prince his entire life, in one way or another.

Today, in a village in the middle of nowhere, he heard "damn beggar bastard" for the first time.

He decided he was in the presence of a kind person.

"Ha ha ha—ha, ha. Good, isn't it? Our girl's cooking has always been—well. I finally got to show what I can do for once."

Across the table, Anna—reassigned to peeling potatoes in the corner—made a face.

He could taste nothing. This was known. But he understood what Karlah's personally pulled chicken meant—the potato soaked through with broth until it dissolved in the mouth, effortlessly, completely; the separate small dish of salt she slid toward him. This was a commoner's wholehearted hospitality. He recognized the gesture even without being able to receive it fully.

"I'm grateful for your kindness."

Karlah ignored her daughter's grumbling and settled in across from Bertram, studying him the way she might study a horse she was thinking of purchasing.

He hadn't flinched at beggar bastard. Hadn't even seemed bothered. That meant either no pride to wound, or so much of it he had no need to defend it. Either way—not straightforward.

She deployed her warmest business smile. "I'm Karlah. Anna's mother. You say you came to repay a debt to my husband?"

"Yes. During the war, I received three bulbs of a particular variety as goods in kind. I never learned the lender's name, and I cannot locate the same item to return, so I came to ask what form of repayment would be acceptable."

He placed a drawing on the table.

A circle. Two horns jabbed into it. Karlah nearly laughed out loud. What on earth was this—a baby troll?

"...Is it an onion?"

"It is not an onion. He said he intended to use them for farming."

"I haven't the faintest idea what that might be." She pushed the drawing back. "Regardless, it's nothing we need. There is nothing owed."

"Then how would you like me to settle this? Name the form and I'll do my best to accommodate."

A blank check from a stranger. Worth everything or nothing, depending entirely on who was handing it.

Karlah looked him over again. Lean face despite the frame and the muscle. Scars everywhere—the kind earned up close, at the front. So: either still active military, or a deserter with something on his conscience. And the reason he'd tracked down a debt over a strange-looking bulb—

'He obviously came using the onion as an excuse to get a meal.'

Feed him. Send him off.

She smiled pleasantly. "Bertram. I don't know what Anna may have told you, but we don't need a worker. The farm uses the village young men, and the restaurant runs fine with just Anna."

"The restaurant is as wide as the Third Hall of the Royal Palace. She runs it alone?"

Karlah went very still.

"What a charming comparison," she said, in the carefully neutral tone of someone noting an unusual specimen. "Have you worked in a restaurant before, Bertram?"

"No."

"Then you'd be no use to us. Finish your food and be on your way."

"On my way...?"

"Yes. I inherited all my husband's assets and debts when he died, so I'll say this clearly: there is nothing owed. Please go home."

Firm. No gaps in it.

But Bertram did not retreat. "I'm grateful for the gesture. However, I would ask that you reconsider. The debt is larger than you may realize."

"Larger! We have plenty of onions!"

"You have fewer onions than you did. I spent some time chopping them."

"...I don't know what that means. Regardless. There is nothing to repay."

"Please reconsider. Your husband valued those bulbs greatly."

"My husband is dead, and we are perfectly fine—"

"Fine," Karlah said.

The restaurant went quiet. Several customers looked up. Karlah caught their eyes and made the small gesture that meant would someone please.

They got up.

"Hey, young man." One of the regulars, an older man, stepped forward. "You've finished eating. How about getting up now?"

"Yes," Bertram said. He stood. "I have gotten up."

"...That wasn't quite what I meant."

The regular stood looking up at Bertram—a head taller and considerably more militarily constructed—and made the rapid private calculation of someone reassessing their position entirely.

Another man tried from behind, placing a hand on Bertram's back and applying what he intended as a companionable redirect. His hand arrived at something that did not move.

Bertram looked down at the hand. Then at the hands. Then he understood.

'These people showed the same anxiety as when facing an enemy.'

He could read that much.

The second man tried a different angle: "We can all see your heart's in the right place. It's just—a house with no men, and you being a stranger—you can understand how the ladies might feel, can't you?"

"You're right," Bertram said.

The men blinked.

"If my presence here drives away customers," he said slowly, "then I must—"

He stopped.

Something had landed.

"...If I remain, customers will not come to the restaurant."

"Exactly right."

He was quiet for a moment. "I had not considered that."

Karlah, who had already retrieved the coin purse, pressed it into his hands. "Here. More than enough."

"But—"

"No more debt talk! If it still weighs on you, I'll ask my husband about it once I reach the afterlife. Until then, don't give it another thought. Yes?"

She turned her back without waiting for an answer.

The customers drifted back to their meals, settling on the edges of their chairs—in the posture of people who intend to remain until a thing is resolved.

Bertram read the situation. This was not the moment for debts.

He pocketed the coin purse.

"Thank you. I hope we'll have the opportunity to meet again."

Karlah did not respond.

Anna had something she wanted to say, but Karlah's hand hit her back and pushed her into the kitchen, and by the time the door swung open again, the moment was gone.

When the noise of eating filled the restaurant once more, Karlah turned on her daughter.

"Have you lost your mind? You brought that home?"

"What's wrong with him?"

"What's wrong—he's enormous, he's covered in scars, he hasn't gone home all this time, which means he did something to deserve it. He might have killed his own commanding officer for all we know."

"That's just guessing. And the note he showed me from the war definitely had Papa's name on it—"