“Eggs…” Herzer said, shaking his head. “I have no idea.”
“Fried? Scrambled? Over?”
“Over I guess. Uh… whites cooked.”
“No problem,” she said. “It’ll take just a moment.”
He picked up a piece of the bread. It was baked brown on the outside, not much bigger than his hand, and emitted a rich, buttery aroma. He broke it open and the interior, instead of being white, was a light golden brown. He took a sniff and a nibble, then ripped off a large piece and stuffed it in his mouth, chewing happily.
“Iff ig goob!” he muttered, his mouth full. “Iff ig erly goob!”
The two cooks laughed and the server who was doing his eggs flipped them over and winked at him.
“That’s just about the oldest known recipe for bread in the world,” the girl said. “We’ve just now been able to make enough flour for it.”
“Wug ib it?” Herzer asked, then cleared his mouth. “I mean, ‘what is it?’ ”
“That’s the bread that built the pyramids,” an older woman answered. “Egyptian bread. Heavy, doughy, chock full of vitamins and minerals.”
“Bread and beer,” he said with a nod. “I’d heard of it, but this was not what I expected as the ‘bread.’ This is a meal in itself.”
“That’s what they say,” the server replied cheerily. “They built the pyramids on bread and beer with a little fish and, on a holiday like today, a bit of meat. And look what they did.” She looked somber for a moment as she flipped his eggs out of the pan and onto his slab of a plate.
He leaned forward and laid a hand on hers.
“Someday they’ll look back on us and say the same thing,” he said with a nod.
She smiled back whimsically then leaned sideways and speared one of the link sausages.
“Sausage?” she asked, raising one eyebrow.
So how come it took the end of the world for women to start to notice me? Herzer thought. The term that came to Herzer’s mind was “saucy wench.” She was nicely, and unfashionably, rounded, and had somewhere dredged up a period dress that was just a tad too small for her up top; it showed a more than ample quantity of her limited bosom. Red curls peeked from under her cap but that was all that could be seen of her hair. Another memory floated to the surface and he smiled at her.
“No thanks,” he said with a wink. “Sixteen’s my limit.”
He did grab a bowl of cornmeal mush — he didn’t know what he’d do without a bowl of mush in the morning — another piece of the bread, and butter and jam for the mush. He took his heavily loaded tray over to one of the tables and sat down, looking out the open sides of the mess hall. More people were moving around but like the night before there wasn’t any focus. Groups were gathering along the stream, talking, occasionally arguing. Looking around at all the people, he realized all the people he didn’t know in the town. There must have been at least two or three thousand who had gathered to the town and he probably only knew fifteen or twenty of them. It was strange to feel alone with so many people around him. He also realized how… diverse and yet curiously constrained his life had been before the Fall.
He had never attended the Faires, and the largest gatherings he had ever been at before were parties like Marguerite’s. His illness had tended to make him avoid groups where he didn’t know the people and as it progressed he had become more and more of a loner. Right now he probably had more friends, counting some of the members of the class as friends, than he ever had in his life. And was around more people in one area than he had ever seen.
He thought about trying to run Mike and Courtney down or one of the other members of the class but he didn’t have any idea how. The two of them had wandered off the night before to try to find someplace they could doss together rather than in the segregated dormitories and at this point they could be anywhere in the town. He considered going up to the baths. He could probably strike up a conversation there. But he reconsidered when he thought about his dwindling money supply. It was oddly depressing to realize how limiting it was to have an unavailability of funds. He’d been given two meal chits “over and above” his three squares a day. It was already so late in the day that it would be worth it to skip lunch, thus giving him that much more disposable funds. So that would give him three chits over and above food. He’d used a tenth for the bath and another tenth to have his clothes cleaned. A tenth for the singer and a quarter for the pouch. It seemed a lot for a little piece of sewn leather, but on the other hand he’d talked the vendor down from a half. He wasn’t exactly burning through his money but there was tonight and tomorrow to think about. There was also next week; there was no guarantee that he’d get another bonus. When he got out of the apprenticeship program, whether he joined the guard or found another use for his skills, it would be good to have a little start-up money. So he intended to be very conservative.
While he was contemplating his money situation, his eyes unseeingly scanning the crowd outside the building, the server he had been talking to came over and plopped down on the bench across from him, breaking the view and bringing him back to the present with a jolt.
She fanned her hand theatrically at her face and sighed, smiling at him as she did so.
“Been working hard?” Herzer asked, stirring the last of the mush in his bowl.
“Ah! You missed it, it was a madhouse in here!” she said, waving at her face again although there was no apparent sweat. “But, I’ve got this afternoon and all of tomorrow off for working this morning. Morgen Kirby,” she continued, extending her hand across the table.
“Herzer Herrick,” Herzer replied, taking the hand. It was delightfully warm.
“Herzer Herrick,” she said, rolling the sound on her tongue. “Her-zer Herrick! It’s got a delightfully masculine sound to it!”
“Well you’re the first person who ever said that.” Herzer laughed, shaking his head.
“So what do you do for your meal chits, Herzer Herrick?”
“I’m in the apprenticeship program,” he said, spooning up the last of the meal. The majority of the mob had apparently drifted off and they were close enough to the stream for the sound of chuckling water to reach them along with a pleasantly cool breeze. Herzer was pretty sure he could go on sitting here forever, especially if it meant not having to cut any more trees. And he really didn’t even want to think about going back to work.
“Maybe I should go over there,” she replied. “I am not going to stay working in a kitchen for the rest of my life. Will you look at these hands,” she added, holding up the appendages in question.
Herzer’s first thought was that they were quite shapely and altogether pleasant. But he was pretty sure she was referring to the fact that they were somewhat red and chapped. So saying “they look pretty good to me” was probably out.
“If I never wash another bowl in my life it will be too soon,” she said, shaking her head.
Something, something… Herzer wracked his brains for a moment. Which plant was it? Bast had said something on their walk… It had broad leaves… and a purple flowerhead if he remembered correctly.
“I might know something that would help with that,” he said, turning one of her hands over and running a finger across the palm, at which Morgen gave a delightful twitch.
“Really,” she asked huskily then cleared her throat. “We had some oil that I rubbed on them, but it didn’t help much.”
“Well, I don’t think it will cure anything permanently,” Herzer pointed out thoughtfully. “But it should help some. It’s a plant… and it will take some searching to find it…”