By the time I squeezed through the half-blocked doorway, the odd-looking man was pulling a long-handled plank, bearing two perfectly shaped loaves, from his oven. With one elbow he shoved aside enough of the clutter on one of his tables to make a space before tipping the bread off the heat-darkened plank. The bread teetered precariously on the edge of the table before settling down beside the green frosted bottle. Book still firmly in hand, the man snatched a small, chipped crock of butter and set it down beside the hot bread and the bottle of sallevichia.
He pulled two wooden stools up to the table, dislodging the disgruntled feline occupants. "Hurry," he said. Though he had not yet looked at me, I assumed he was speaking to me. I sat on one stool while he plopped himself onto the other.
Whatever he was reading must be fascinating, I thought, for he laid the book on the table and kept his head bent over it closely while he grabbed a knife from the table. He sawed one loaf into great hunks, slapped a thick layer of butter on one of them, and dribbled a few drops from my little green bottle on top. Instantly the butter sizzled and gave off a small puff of greenish smoke, and a dark green film formed over the entire chunk of bread. When Garvй crammed this somewhat unappetizing artifact into his mouth and tore off a large bite, his eyes fell shut and his shoulders sagged in pleasure. In only a moment, he picked up his book again and read furiously as he ate the rest of his green-filmed bread.
Only when he had demolished the entire piece did the man afford me a scrap of attention. For one instant, he peered over the top of his book. My stomach lurched inexplicably and I felt a bit wobbly as I glimpsed his face, which made no sense at all. He could have been anywhere from twenty-five to eighty-five, his skin smooth and unmarked except for a web of fine lines at the corners of piercingly intelligent gray eyes. I guessed him close to my own age, mid-forties, and not only did his appearance belie the dry knot of apprehension in my throat, but also he displayed a smile of sublime cheerfulness.
"Well, you must have some! Before the bread cools or you won't get the full effect."
"But I didn't—"
Before my protest had even taken shape, he had already snatched another hunk of bread, slathered it with butter, topped it with the green nastiness, and shoved it into my hand. "Quickly!" All this while his gaze darted back and forth across the pages of the book he'd set on the table.
I looked askance at his offering. All the warnings about the dangers of the Arcanist clamored in my memory. Was it riskier to eat something of his making or to offend his hospitality? Holding the impression of his pleasant face, rather than the unsettling jolt I'd felt at his glance, I took a small bite.
"Sword of Annadis!" I thought the inside of my mouth was dissolving. I blew out a quick breath, terrified to inhale, lest I blister my lungs. Sweat popped out on my forehead. My skin felt as if it were on fire. Sometimes politeness must yield to survival. Yet just as I made ready to spit it out, the taste of the warm bread and melted butter mellowed the fire and blended the spice into the most remarkable combination I have ever encountered: pepper and lemon, sunlight and frostbite, wood smoke and green leaves, seared with the very essence of flame, and everywhere the richness of the butter and the nutty flavor of the chewy bread.
Once I had swallowed and inhaled enough to assure myself that my throat and lungs were not scorched away, I looked doubtfully at the remaining green-glazed bread in my hand. Before I could decide what to do with it, Garvй exploded into laughter, holding his stomach until I thought he was going to fall off his stool. His laughter thrummed in the walls and ceiling. How could so much hilarity come from one so thin?
"Should have known. Should have known." Tears streamed from his eyes. Blotting them with his sleeve, he prepared another small piece of bread. "What a constitution you must have, madam! Should have guessed when you didn't know."
He popped the bite into his mouth, and then shoved a cup of dubious cleanliness and a carafe filled with something dark and foaming across the table, while wiping more tears from his cheeks with the hand that held the book. My head resonated with his booming laughter.
"How could I know V'Rendal would send me one who was not Dar'Nethi?" he said, once he had swallowed his next bite and calmed his laughter enough to put a whole sentence together. "Are you quite well? Uninjured?"
My tongue throbbed, my voice croaked, and my mouth watered excessively. "I've never had anything quite like it."
While I poured the liquid from his carafe and took a grateful drink—beer, it seemed, with a touch of fruit in it—he laid his book on the table again. Still reading, he hacked at the second loaf with his knife, wrapping each piece in brown cloth and throwing it in a basket he had pulled out from under two pots and a skillet.
"Well, of course you haven't! And no Dar'Nethi since the first one who tried to eat sallevichia has either. To ingest it without protection . . . Birds and beasts, I'm surprised you have a tongue left!"
"Protection?" The cool, strong beer was slowly soothing my throat.
"Here. Try this." Without looking, Garvй reached over and passed his bony hand across the green-filmed bread that still sat in my other hand. "Go ahead. I promise it won't hurt."
Tentatively, I raised the piece to my lips and felt a frosty kiss as if I'd just inhaled a huge breath of wintertime. I took a bite of the bread and, though I still tasted the potent fire and marvelous mix of flavors, my tissues remained intact.
"Better, yes?" He didn't look at me for the answer, but busily prepared and ate another piece himself, all the while studying the pages of his book and running the fingers of his left hand over the faint script as if committing the letters to memory.
"Better. But I don't think I'll trade it for strawberries or cheese."
"Not many people savor it as I do. And it is dreadfully expensive, so you're quite well served not to acquire the taste." He popped the cork back into the sallevichia bottle, blew on it, which immediately coated it with frost again, and set it carefully on a high shelf. Settling onto his stool, he quickly became entirely engrossed in his reading, abandoning me like another piece of his furniture.
At first I had thought the sallevichia was making me dizzy as we conversed, and causing my head to throb so sorely. But when Garvй's attention was diverted, I realized the sensations had more to do with the man himself. Every word he had spoken was like a blast of wind, each sentence the force of a gale. His movements and his speech were immensely larger than his person, so that I didn't like to think what his anger might be like. But I didn't like being ignored.
"Excuse me, Master Garvй, should I come back another time?"
"You're welcome here any time, with or without the sallevichia. I have few . . . very few visitors. Messages arrive at my door, but few bodies. Almost two months I think since the last. Age seems to be making me less capable of civilized behavior rather than more. I'm surprised you weren't warned off."
He turned a page and continued his reading. I would have sworn that the brick floor vibrated when he spoke. I couldn't decide whether to be frightened or angry or insulted at his inattention. I was certainly perplexed, so I decided to try once more. "Sir, I've come to ask you some questions about the Lady D'Sanya. Would you mind very much answering?"