A Superlative Product

Defi stood on the pier, watching three boats move downriver carrying thirteen people who have decided to call themselves his students.

Mostly decided, he corrected himself. He saw the uncertainty in many of them.

If half of them returned for a month, it would still be fine.

He retrieved Turq from the house before turning his boat toward Sarel's.

Today was a delivery day. 

Defi would have liked to have the others pick zaziphos for him, but it would be more than impolite to bring thirteen people to the house of a hermit without permission.

He would have to convince the woman that he was fit enough to pick a few baskets. It's not like the work was difficult.

He stretched, feeling muscles hum in contentment. It had been some time since he had done the Guiding Forms himself. 

How nostalgic.

Turq bounced onto the bench beside him, dropping off Defi's shoulder.

He'd been a little disappointed that with fourteen kilogar of hybrid Shyleaf, Turq had not split a new slime. But he felt that Turq was close to the threshold now, when it didn't feel like so before. 

He wondered if he could reliably measure the amount of vitality needed for a slime to split. If he did that, then possibly he could populate the warehouse with split slimes instead of carefully choosing which wild slime would not produce toxic extract.

Then again, wild slimes could bring new things to the equation.

For instance, was it possible to extract wine from a slime?

He didn't know how vinegar in Ascharon was produced as he'd seen varieties in the market like clove vinegar or raspberry vinegar. But the vinegar of Ontrea was made by souring wine, so there should not be too far a leap between the two. 

The idea had been in his mind since listening to Adan.

Wine would make a good product. 

It sold well and from several journals he'd read, wine was the preferred household beverage when serving food. 

He had no illusions about his skill in making wine; he likely could not catch up to families that had been producing wine for centuries, even using the slime method. In keeping with Sarel's admonishments however, adding another average wine into the market would not cause as many ripples as suddenly introducing a top-tier vinegar that had never been seen before.

In addition, unlike the vinegar, the cost of the ingredients was unlikely to exceed the selling price, if it was a good enough wine. He was fairly certain that he had fed the slimes more than what the barrels of vinegar extract were going to fetch on the market.

He was just lucky that he could acquire most of those ingredients for only a bit of labor.

As for the ingredients needed to produce wine, Defi had to think on it more. Grapes were seasonal.

Could not the world bend a little for him and make it so he could produce everything he wanted with just the glorious ever-fruiting zaziphos? He lamented briefly, with some humor.

Life would be dreary if it were so easy.

Defi was used to motion, not standing still. It was one of the reasons he agreed to train Markar and Renne, why he offered in the first place. Why he'd suddenly started discussing war theory with Muriel, why he started to learn glyphmaking – mind or body, he was used to motion.

Motion was not simply hurtling forward, he reminded himself when the urge to simply leave strengthened and bubbled inside him. Motion was also climbing heights while swinging in place. Either way, the tether lengthens. Either way, sooner or later, one would be able to see further than ever before.

Sarel was nowhere to be seen when Defi arrived at her place, though there were already a dozen full baskets in the shade of the house. He shrugged and caught up a picking basket to start work.

If he could finish before she returned, she could do nothing about it.

Though, in turn, he likely could not avoid the scolding.

He was already healed, in any case. And the work was not particularly exhausting.

He'd picked another dozen baskets, was carrying a full load to the rest of the harvest, when he nearly bumped into her.

Sarel scowled half-heartedly at him, then her eyes went past him as if looking for something. Or someones, rather.

"Good afternoon." Defi casually stepped past her to lower the basket with the rest of the zaziphos.

"No tiny followers today?"

Defi shook his head. "I did not think you would appreciate thirteen people coming here without permission, even if they were going to help with the picking."

She walked to the shed to drop off the axe in her hand and a pack of something heavy. "Did you adopt more orphan brats? I didn't think boys your age hoarded kids like a creaky grandmother."

"I'll have you know they gathered around me in awe of my unparalleled person."

She appeared in the doorway to the shed. "I thought you'd have more brains than drawing attention to yourself by teaching otherworldly combat techniques to random overly-emotional loose-lipped hellions."

"With the amount of fantastic gossip flying about the Lowpool and the Indar road, one or two new ones wouldn't be taken seriously. I already told Rocso."

Sarel looked exasperated. "Do you enjoy being talked about so extensively?"

He smirked briefly. "I heard a rumor that Torqo of the Little Treachery, who summons slimes, has red skin, green glowing eyes, stands two and a half mar tall, stews and eats the ears of the bandits he comes across, is a secret bastard son of the emperor himself who is planning to give said son the city of Agamarl to rule. What an interesting individual, don't you agree? Compared to such a paragon, I am merely a single breath in a raging gale."

The children's court of Ontrea played many games. Despite his isolation he'd been somewhat adept at Talking Reeds, which was the subtle control of gossip in the capital city.

"People can't own cities," Sarel said dryly. "Some emperor or other thought it was too much power for a single family to have, so all cities in Ascharon are independent."

"I imagine there is a standard definition for 'city' in Ascharon then?"

"Twenty thousand inhabitants, a certain amount of revenue." Sarel turned to enter the house. "Come inside. Your vinegar samples to Bluzand are confirmed."

He followed her into the kitchen after putting Turq down on the grass near the baskets and telling it to behave. "Not the others?"

She took a bowl of soup from the warmer.

Defi grimaced at the sight of it. "I'm already healed, you know. Also, did you have to make it taste like this, aren't you a master chef?"

"How would you learn to take care of yourself if you're being rewarded with delicacies every time you get hurt?"

"Isn't that a question more appropriate to people who have not come here from another world?" He rebutted quickly. "This Ascharonian culture, it is just too difficult to navigate."

Not every world medicated with food, didn't she know?

And he was from a land of warriors. If warriors were so rash with themselves, they wouldn't be warriors for long. He knew how to take care of himself!

Sarel gave him an unimpressed stare.

He held in a sigh. Tell a person your least favorite food and they hold it over your head forever. Damned Ascharonians.

Defi looked at the dread bowl of mystic soup. 

The scents that emanated from it were incredibly appetizing.

But it was a lie.

He took the bowl and gulped the whole of it down as soon as he could. The taste of cooked fruit suffused his mouth and nose. He tried not to gag, putting the bowl down with near tears in his eyes.

Sarel touched his arm, sent a pulse of Shade that felt like the gaze of a mountain, and lifted a brow. "You are healing faster than I thought. I might just forgive you for ignoring that you should not be working right now."

Defi let the Current deal with the excess influx of vitality circling through him from the food in his stomach. "What does Bluzand say."

She sent a pulse of Shade again through his arm, nodded in satisfaction. She let his arm go and leaned back in her chair. "The vinegars have guaranteed buyers, and the quality is good. The lotion is still being shopped around. You'll have to speak to Tennar about your options."

Tennar was the manager of the Bluzand Merchant Company.

She eyed him. "I still cannot believe your luck. Who knew you could make vinegar with slimes?"

"I did some thinking on it too, you know. It wasn't just the slimes." He protested half-heartedly as he poured himself a glass of zaziphos cordial to take the taste of sour-sweet-creamy banana pineapple out of his mouth. It really had been luck. "Do I have enough to build a storehouse?"

An amused smile curled slowly. "You can build another house, if you want."

Defi looked at her, surprised. The question had been said in jest. "I can?"

"I don't think you understand." Sarel tapped a finger on the table surface, frowning out the window. "I already told you there were three that were on the level of the vinegar you produced. From the slime called Jasper, wasn't it?"

Defi nodded, outwardly attentive. 

How complicated could vinegar be, he inwardly sighed. It was just a simple condiment. He subtly slumped in his seat to resignedly listen to the impending deluge of information about food from a grandmaster chef.

It was just cooking, not that he'd ever say that aloud where she could hear. He cooked like everyone else, but he wasn't as burningly passionate about it as an Ascharonian chef.

"Of those three vinegars, two take over a hundred years to properly make, carefully concentrated year after year, the wood of the barrels carefully chosen for the finest flavors to seep into the vinegar. The last is aged for seventy-five years in order to acquire the best iteration of their product."

Defi paused.

What?

A hundred years for vinegar?

Ascharon, your people are mad enough about food to be so patient just for a single condiment?

"And you, with Jasper, made one litr in a day. It doesn't hold up in quality to the least of the three, but it is close enough to be named in the same breath. Apart from that, the colorless clarity of the liquid and the light scent is a novelty, when all the rest are colored dark and robustly scented. Tennar, after the analysis, called several people from the Chef's Union to sample the vinegar as well as auctioning it off. He wanted to determine demand."

Her eyes stayed narrowed on him.

Defi knew his role perfectly, went along with it, asked flatly. "And how much did it sell for?"

"It is, if I may say, a superlative product." Sarel continued to tease. Defi sent her an ugly look. Her tone didn't change. "Each bottle containing a tenth of a litr was auctioned off at one silver crescent a bottle."

Defi twitched. 

Ten crescents a litr. If all the quartel was sold, it would garner 250 crescents.

In Ascharon, one who earned that much in a year would be considered a successful person, possibly even well-off.

Defi shook that tidbit from The Home-maker's Journal from his mind.

Well, at least experimenting on making slime-extracted wine would not be as difficult as he expected. And his concerns about the vinegar, Jar's version at least, costing more to produce were quelled.

"The Chef's Union is buzzing like a hive of bees right now," Sarel's smile sharpened. "The Bluzand official explanation is we acquired a barrel unexpectedly in an expedition."

"Yes?" His brain must have been a bit shocked, as he didn't quite understand why she was telling him that.

"You're accompanying me to Ecthys on the next day of Moons."