35. The Cook
The Cook
Making the rest of the poison was no easy task. He had watched Darien do it time and again on the road, mixing up soups and poultices and all manner of other things, but he had rarely tried anything that asked for so much care and exactness.
Gathering the rest of the mushrooms took him days. They grew only here and there, and they shriveled within a few hours of the sun coming up.
Darien's notes were plain on the point: the mushrooms had to be picked before they shriveled. Darien hadn't known why, and so neither did Kain, but the instruction had to be followed or the whole batch would be spoiled.
Back at the house he would set them on a cutting board kept for that one purpose and cut them into thin strips. Thick gloves on, he worked as fast as his hands would go, racing the shrivel, and once they were cut he laid them near the hearth to dry.
The rest of the makings came easier, though none of it was easy work. The wolfsbane was a pretty enough flower, with a great knobby snarl of root beneath it.
He had cleaned the roots as best he could and hung them in the sun, and after some days hanging there they had gone brittle and ready.
Day after day he gathered and dried more of the mushrooms. When he had enough, he carried the mortar and pestle out and set them on the bench beside the door, well clear of the house.
He drew his bowie knife and, careful to keep the root off his hands, peeled it, dropping the husk into a bowl. Then he set the brittle root in the mortar and began to grind.
Dust came puffing up off the work, and he tied a cloth across his face to keep it out of his lungs. Wolfsbane on its own was a powerful poison, and he had no intention of killing himself through carelessness. Ghost rose from where it lay and moved off across the yard, well clear of the dust.
He pressed the first root down into a fine powder. It was hard work, and he kept at it, and after a long stretch of grinding the first root was nothing but dust. He tipped it into a small bowl off to the side, took up the next root, and started again.
He worked hours at the wolfsbane, and by the end he had a bowl full of the grey powder. He set a lid across it and carried it out to the barn, where the dried mushrooms already waited.
He worked the two together and set the bowl high and back, well out of reach. He had no wish to find his work ruined by some raccoon or rat that decided to investigate in the night.
The next day he carried the big pot out to the fire pit in the yard. He built a fire and let it burn down to coals, set the pot over them, and added a little water. Then he took a bowl and set to pounding the berries into mush.
The berries crushed easily enough, and straining the seeds, while harder, was far from impossible. He let the paste run down into the pot while the seeds caught in a sieve meant for sifting flour. As the mush settled into the bottom it began to heat, and he stirred it slow and careful.
The mush never quite came to a boil, but it thickened and it changed color, and the color was the part that mattered, at least by Darien's notes. When it turned, Kain took up a large vial of rendered fat and tipped it in.
The fat hadn't been in the list of makings, but the instructions farther down called for it plain enough.
Darien had been the sort who could glance at a recipe and know most of what belonged in it without being told, which let him write down only the particular things.
It made the notes a good deal harder for anybody else to follow.
The fat landed with a heavy splat and began to melt down into the berries as he stirred. The smell of it was foul. He let the sludge cook a good long while, then went to fetch the powders.
This was the delicate part. He poured in the whole bowl of powders and began to stir, and for all his care some of it puffed up into the air, so that he stepped well back until it settled, and then he bent to the work again.
Stirring, folding, it was near enough to kneading. The stuff had gone so thick it might have been bread dough, but it had to stay where it was in the pot. He would stir a while, then walk off a way to pull clean air into his lungs, then come back to it again.
He had to keep it off the bottom of the pot, which meant keeping close, and keeping close meant breathing the fumes no matter how he tried not to. A single whiff turned his stomach and set his head spinning. He could only guess what the stuff would do worked into a man's skin.
「Skill Gained: Brewing F」
「Detail: First-time brewer; high-toxicity preparation, master recipe being followed.」
It was getting on toward evening, the work well into another day, when Sasha came down the road. Matthew was nowhere with her as she climbed down from her little wagon.
"Figured it was best to leave Matthew up in town," she said. "Carol's got him, as it happens."
"Best for it. He'd crawl right up to the coals, or get a noseful of this stuff." Kain kept his eyes on the pot. "I'd not have it anywhere near him. You keep back too."
"With pleasure. I can smell it on you from here." Sasha wrinkled her nose. "And don't go washing it off in the creek, or you'll kill everything downstream of you."
"Probably would," Kain said.
Sasha lifted a basket out of the wagon bed, and Kain held up a finger.
"One moment."
He went back to the pot, gave it a few turns, then crossed to the pump and washed his hands three times over with soap. When he came back he sat, and she handed him a sandwich cut from a long crusty loaf.
"I've not seen you make bread like this before," Kain said around a mouthful.
"It's Carol's. I can't take the credit." She nodded back at the wagon. "There's a good bit more besides. Rolls, a couple of pies, some jars of fruit. Plenty of folks wanting to do what they can for the gryphon-slayer."
"Tell me they're not calling me that." Kain got up and looked into the wagon. Cheese, more bread, a few other odds and ends. Off to one side his eye caught on a bundle of arrows, and he came around the wagon and lifted them. "What are these?"
"A gift from Sam. He said to tell you they're not a gift to you. They're a gift to the gryphon. And whatever the gryphon doesn't care to keep, you're welcome to."
Kain whistled as he turned them in his hand. Light, and stronger than light had any right to be. "These are bamboo."
"I'm not sure I know what that is," Sasha said.
"A plant. Grows away out east. I've never been to the country it comes from, though the company went up to that border once." He bounced the arrows lightly on his palm. "Fine stuff. Light, and strong with it. Pound for pound there's nothing in our part of the world that comes near it."
"They'll help, then?" Sasha asked.
"A bamboo shaft flies faster than a common arrow, and reaches farther. It doesn't bite as deep when it lands, but everything's a trade." He looked them over. "Easier to put one into a moving thing, and that's what I'll be doing. They're worth a small fortune."
"So I'll tell Sam you think these win you the fight?"
"Tell him thank you for the arrows," Kain said.
"Anything else I can do for you?"
"I wish there were. But I don't want you anywhere near this, and I have to get back to the pot. It needs finishing tonight, so I'll be at it late." He tipped his head at the wagon. "If you'd carry that lot inside and leave it on the kitchen table, that'd be a help."
"I'll see to it."
"One more thing." Kain turned to her. "When the time comes I'll have to go out and set some traps for it. I could use somebody along who knows the ground better than I do. You'd be willing?"
"I'll be there," Sasha said.
Sasha soon had the whole load carried inside while Kain went back to the pot. She waved as she drove off, and he lifted a hand to her without leaving the pot. The sun came down to touch the hills, and about the same time the paste finally came right.
He drew the pot off the coals and let it begin to cool. The arrows came first. He dipped each point into the paste while it was still thick, because for the arrows he wanted it at full strength, then stood them carefully aside to dry.
For bait the poison wanted thinning, so he worked in a little water, hardly enough to see, until it ran a touch looser. He ladled the poison into clay jars and sealed them as well as he could.
「Brewing: F → C- (↑)」
「Source: Wolfsbane concentrate, master recipe (D. Reever) executed correctly」
「Yield: full-strength paste, arrow points coated; thinned poison sealed into clay jars」
The pot he carried off into the trees and rinsed there, tipping the wash water out onto the ground and trusting Ghost to have the sense to keep away from the spot for a good while.
Back at the house he filled a bucket with soapy water and set to the washing. The berry bowls came clean in no time.
The wolfsbane bowls were another matter, and he emptied and refilled the bucket more than once to keep from poisoning himself. In time he had the mortar and pestle scrubbed clean, and after them the cutting board he had used for the mushrooms.
He'd never put food on it again, but he had no mind to leave it lying about either.
By the time the last of it was clean it was late into the night. Ghost lay stretched beside the fireplace. Kain dropped onto his bed without troubling to change out of his clothes, and was asleep almost before he landed.
The hardest part was done.