CHAPTER 5 SOLENE #2
The farmer's market closes at six. I break down my booth in seventeen minutes, a personal record, folding the canvas, stacking the cutting boards, wrapping my knives in their leather roll with the precision of a field surgeon packing instruments.
My hands smell like black garlic and that Orcish spice.
The pink line on my knuckle has faded to nearly nothing.
Boris takes forty-five minutes to break down. I know because I observe from my restaurant's front window while pretending to inventory dried goods.
He carries the smoker on his back. The entire smoker.
On his back. Like a rucksack. The thing weighs three hundred pounds easy, iron and steel and caked-on decades of carbon, and he hauls it across the street with his knees slightly bent, humming that same low melody, and disappears through the tavern's side door.
I write "fennel seeds" on my inventory list three times without noticing.
At eight-fifteen, my phone buzzes.
You owe me a drink. I owe you a smoker. My tavern. After you close. Bring the spoon.
No name. The number isn't saved. But the text radiates the same chaotic energy as a man who flips meat with a pitchfork.
I delete the message. I finish service. I plate forty-two covers, each one immaculate, each one a small defiance against the memory of customers drifting to his line. My sous chef asks why I'm dicing carrots so aggressively. I tell him the carrots deserve it.
At ten-forty, I lock up. I stand on the sidewalk.
My restaurant sits dark and clean behind me, every surface wiped, every station squared.
Across the street, warm light leaks from the tavern's thick wooden door.
Something inside thumps. Bass note, rhythmic.
Music or heartbeat or Boris dropping something heavy.
I cross the street.
The door is unlocked. I push it open and the aroma hits me like a wall. Yeast. Woodsmoke. Caramelized onion. Clove. Something malty and deep that coats the inside of my nose and refuses to leave.
The tavern is empty. Chairs stacked on tables, the massive iron hearth banked to embers, candles guttering in wrought-iron sconces along the stone walls.
The bar dominates the room. A single slab of dark wood, easily twenty feet long, scarred and gouged and polished to a dull gleam by years of elbows and spilled drinks.
It looks like it was carved from one tree. Possibly one very unfortunate tree.
Boris stands behind it. His apron is off. He wears a simple linen shirt, sleeves rolled to the elbow, forearms corded with muscle and crisscrossed with pale burn scars. A row of copper taps lines the wall behind him, each one hand-forged, each labeled in blocky Orcish script.
"You came."
"You have information I need about heritage spice sourcing and I won’t discuss it over text."
"I invited you for a drink, Rostova."
"I don't drink."
"You don't drink poorly." He pulls a heavy stoneware mug from beneath the bar, setting it down with a thud. "Sit."
The stool is built for someone of his magnitude. My feet dangle six inches off the ground. I hook my heels on the crossbar and fold my hands on the scarred wood.
Boris vanishes through a door behind the bar. Something crashes. Something rolls. He reappears hauling a keg under each arm, oak-staved and iron-banded. He sets them with surgical care, the wood barely vibrating under the weight.
"This one." He taps the left keg with a knuckle. "Twelve days cold-fermented with highland barley and a wild yeast culture I brought from the Greymaw Mountains. The culture is six generations old. My grandmother kept it in a clay jar under her sleeping furs."
He pulls the bung with his teeth. Pours. The ale is dark amber, almost copper, with a foam so dense it holds the shape of the pour.
"This one." He taps the right keg. "Same culture. Same barley. But I added roasted chestnuts at the secondary ferment and dry-hopped it with something I'm still identifying. Grows wild in the drainage ditch behind the parking lot."
"You're brewing with ditch weeds."
"I'm brewing with terroir." He grins. Both tusks. Full wattage. "Taste."
He slides the first mug across the bar. I catch it. Heavy. The stoneware is warm from the ale. I lift it, and the aroma blooms, bread and honey and something faintly mineral, like wet stone after rain.
I sip.
The flavor unfolds in layers. Malt first, round and full. Then the yeast, funky and alive, carrying a history I can almost see: cold mountain caves, iron kettles, massive green hands kneading dough. The finish is clean. Bone dry. It lingers on the back of my tongue like a question.
"The chestnut version."
He pours from the second keg. This one is darker. The foam carries flecks of something golden.
I taste it. The chestnuts add a sweetness that borders on dangerous, a richness that rounds every edge. The ditch weed, whatever it is, contributes a bitter green note that cuts through the sweetness like a knife through fondant.
"The wild hop is mugwort," I say.
Boris freezes mid-pour.
"Artemisia vulgaris. It grows in disturbed soil near waterways.
Common in European brewing before the German purity laws killed it off.
" I put the mug down. "It's also technically a medicinal herb with mild psychoactive properties, so you'll need a supplemental license from the county to serve it commercially. "