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The oil dripped from the jar, brown and fusty. Nikys wouldn’t have used it for lamps, let alone food, but it was the only oil in the market. Had the oil presser used fallen olives for this?
“The harvest was terrible this year,” the oil merchant explained. “All the good oil sold weeks ago. Only pomace oil is left.”
“I see.” Nikys had heard talk of pestilence in the olive groves this summer, and the price of oil had been higher than she had expected, but she had put that down to Orbas being south of most of Cedonia, and therefore cooler. The abundant harvests of home would not be forthcoming in a cooler land, but not to have oil at all?
What would they cook with?
“Butter,” Penric said.
“Butter?”
“We didn’t have olives in the cantons, so we cooked with butter. Famous for our cheese, but there was a lot of butter, as well.”
Nikys enjoyed cooking, though she was glad for the maid of all work who kept the townhouse to order. She had no idea how to cook like Penric’s countrymen… well, countrywomen, more likely. Men might be cooks for noble houses, but women cooked for all the rest, in her experience.
Dear Adelis,
The poor olive harvest has finally struck Orbas itself. There is only pomace oil left in the market, which Mother and I both agree is only useful for lamp oil.
Penric suggested I use butter as his countrymen in the cantons do. It burns very easily, and makes everything taste faintly of cheese. Penric actually likes the changes to my cooking, and says the court cooks could learn from me. They seem to have better than pomace oil when I am at court, but of course the duke’s household would be the last to be offered such poor oil -- though that may happen yet. Winter is still coming, and the earliest harvest would be well after Mother’s Day.
I hope you in the field have tolerable food, though I know an army on the march takes what it can.
Your sister,
Nikys kin Jurald
The second grey coat was finally finished, with its dearly bought velvet collar and the ram’s horn border of grey and white silk Nikys had woven on cards. It would look splendid when Penric wore it to the Father’s Day vigil, and later it would fit with his white robes, even his best court ones, on the cold days of winter.
A woman should provide for her household, after all. Penric might buy most of his workday clothes from tailors who specialized in supplying Temple folk, but Nikys was his wife. She should be responsible for the warm embrace of a coat against the chill winter winds.
Dear Adelis,
Enclosed is a coat for the winter. You probably don’t need it where you are, but Mother and I worry. I wove it, along with a coat for Penric. You have the black trim and he the white. I hope this awful winter campaign finishes soon, and we see you before the Daughter’s Day.
Your sister,
Nikys kin Jurald
Penric was gleefully unpacking the chest. It seemed to be full of books, which explained why it had taken two stout men to heave it up into the front room.
“Oh my! Nikys, I think you’ll like this!” Penric waved a book at her, carefully held in both hands. It had an embossed cover, and the pages were gauffered with flowers. Someone must have spent a lot of coin, to have the book bound so handsomely, and to have the designs burnt into the gilded edges of the page.
“Poems and Tales of the World, in Cedonian and Wealdean,” she read the gilded letters. The other letters, in the language and alphabet she could not read yet, must say the same only in Wealdean. When opened, the left page was in Cedonian, and the right was in Wealdean, with the space between printed with an edging of flowers, and occasionally an illustrative woodcut.
“It’s from Yvaina -- Baroness kin Pikepool, that is.”
One of Penric’s friends from the Weald. “The noblewoman with the book-making workshop.”
“Printing house, yes.” Penric looked fondly down at the trove of books before him. “They etch the pages in reverse on metal plates, and print them like woodcuts. So much faster than my chaos-made wooden plates, and much more durable. It’s amazing, what a clever woman can do with a good idea.”
"And this is so much less boring,” he added, in Desdemona’s distinct tones.
“Oh,” Nikys said, having become used to Desdemona’s little asides. “Do tell.”
“Des didn’t like that I had to copy an entire page out before she could destroy the wood to make a wooden printing plate -- faster than hand carving it, especially since I’m no woodcarver, but still not entertaining enough for her. I could make ten plates a day, that way. They’d last less than a hundred printings, but it did make for many more books in a much shorter time than trying to have a scriptorium write them.”
“And Baroness Pikepool has them done on metal.”
“Baroness kin Pikepool, and yes. She’s not employing a sorceror to make the plates, obviously, but skilled finesmiths. Wegae is over the moon about it, not that he doesn’t think everything she does is amazing.”
Wegae, Nikys knew, was Baron kin Pikepool, who corresponded with Pen about any number of things, most of them to do with numbers, and occasionally about glass. He and his wife had sent her a cloak edged with the softest, whitest feathers after the wedding. Nikys had worn it once, realized she’d need to take up the hem immediately -- how tall were Wealdean women, generally? -- and also realized she’d only be able to wear it in the depths of winter, as it was made for the Weald, and not Orbas, much more northernly and thus milder of climate.
Dear Adelis,
Enclosed is an Adrian treaty on supply train logistics; a Wealdean friend of Penric’s had copies of it printed. You may read it, denounce it, or use it for kindling as it pleases you, but I am thinking of you.
Your sister,
Nikys kin Jurald
There would be a sortition at the Temple, to choose the young father (or step-father) to represent the Father tomorrow, and to choose the grandfather that would represent the Father on the Daughter’s Day.
Thus, Penric left for the temple dressed as an ordinary man of the city, no divine’s robes, though he did have his braids pinned on the fine grey coat, to exclude him from the lottery. The Father’s Day midnight vigil was for men newly married that year, newly fathers, newly grandfathers, newly step-fathers, and any others who might have need of special attention from the Father of Winter.
Nikys watched him go, and wondered if he were two of those things, instead of just one.
Dear Adelis,
I’m pregnant. All things going well, the baby should arrive around the Mother’s Day, though if it arrives on the Bastard’s Day Penric says we will never hear the end of it from his colleagues at the seminary or Desdemona. I do hope you are home in time to serve as a witness and sponsor for the naming.
Your sister,
Nikys kin Jurald