Page 19 of Orc'd & Loaded
I am losing.
Boris catches my eye across the gap. He holds up a rib, dripping, obscene, a victory flag made of rendered collagen and hickory smoke. He grins around his tusks.
I pick up my wooden spoon.
I walk the four steps. Boris is mid-sentence with a customer, laughing, gesturing with the rib like a conductor's baton. I plant myself directly in front of his cutting block and press the tip of the wooden spoon into him. The leather apron dents under the pressure. His laughter cuts off.
"Cleaver."
He looks down at the spoon. Looks at me. The grin doesn't fade, but it changes. Sharpens. His amber eyes lock onto minewith an intensity that has no business being on someone holding a pork rib at a farmer's market.
"Rostova."
"Don't mistake what just happened."
"What happened?"
"I didn't save your smoker."
He tilts his massive head. A strand of dark hair falls across his scarred brow. "You physically wrestled an enchanted measuring tape off my chimney while reciting municipal code from memory. What would you call that?"
"Self-interest."
The spoon presses harder. He doesn't give. Granite wrapped in leather and russet skin, a wall of warmth radiating through the utensil into my hand.
"If she shuts you down, you forfeit the festival. And if you forfeit, I win by default. I win a catering contract nobody will respect because the only other serious competitor got disqualified over a paperwork technicality."
His grin fades by degrees. Something else surfaces in its place. Attention. Real, focused, undivided attention, the kind you give a dish that surprises you.
"I want to beat you," I say. "I want to beat you so thoroughly that the judges forget they ever enjoyed the taste of meat. I want your customers to line up at my counter and order my food and understand, in their bones, that what I do is not lesser. That it is not a compromise. That it isbetter."
The spoon trembles. Not from weakness. From the force of the words pushing through me.
"I can't do that if you're disqualified."
Boris is quiet. The crowd noise fills the silence between us, laughter and sizzling fat and the distant brass bell still hanging in the town square from the mayor's announcement.
He wraps one enormous hand around the bowl of my wooden spoon. His fingers engulf it completely, rough-knuckled, scarred, nails trimmed short and stained dark with smoke. He doesn't push it away. He holds it there, pinning my hand between the wood and his heartbeat.
"Then crush me, Rostova."
"I would be honored."
I yank the spoon free. The wood is warm where his hand was. I turn on my heel and walk back to my booth.
My line now has four people.
I pick up my knife and start slicing.
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.
