53.

The Thing Rurik Wouldn’t Put in the Soup

Ice Fields, Year 200 AGH (month 10)

The smallest pieces of bread were turning brown before the larger ones had finished. Rurik Nist drew the pan off the heat and sorted them with the edge of his spoon. There was a moment when their little dry knocks against the pan told him more than their color. He listened, turned the last pale side downward, and waited.

Veta Lampkin came past with a stack of bowls.

“Now?” she asked.

“Nearly.”

She put the bowls beside the stove, where they would warm, and went back for the spoons. The kitchen had become pleasantly crowded. Rurik, an ursine cook, had worked his apron crooked while moving between the root soup and the bread; Veta passed close enough that her cinnamon-brown fur brushed his apron, then turned her broad body neatly clear of the table corner. She had paid him to make this supper. His own place was laid at the end nearest the stove, and he meant to reach it while the bread still crackled.

He tipped the finished pieces into a dry dish. One remained in the pan. He ate it, then lifted a piece of root from the soup and pressed it against the side of the pot. Its edge held for a moment before giving. The broth was light enough that he could see the other pieces below it.

Maks set a small jar on the clear corner beside him.

“This is what I meant,” he said. “The herb paste.”

Rurik took off the lid. He could smell it before he brought the jar any closer.

“You wouldn’t need much,” Maks said. “That little jar could do several meals. Carry it with you, find something to put in the pot, and you could make much the same thing again.”

“In this?”

“Would it work?”

Rurik took a clean spoon and tasted a little from its tip. Salt first, then the herbs, strong and close together. He waited for the taste to loosen. It did not loosen much.

“Not in the whole pot. It would be a soup of this.”

Maks considered the jar.

“I’d like some in mine.”

“Yes. We can put it out.”

Veta found a little bowl. Rurik put some paste in it, gave it its own spoon and set it beside the dish of bread. Maks replaced the lid on the jar.

“It does travel well,” he said.

“I can believe that.”

Rurik wiped the edge of the soup pot. At the table, Lida Bunce had pulled out a chair but had not yet sat. Her dark-brown coat was lighter around the muzzle; she was looking from the bowls by the stove to the places on the table as though the mere distribution of them might hurry supper along.

“I’ve got a riddle,” she said.

“You’ve only just finished your game,” Veta said.

“That was throwing. This is sitting down.”

Lida sat, demonstrating the difference. Her chair gave a short scrape that made Rurik glance at the nearest bowl. It was well clear.

Irena came to the table and began counting the settings.

“Five. Is there another spoon? I can get one.”

“Here.” Veta put it at the place opposite Lida. “That’s yours.”

Irena looked at the place, then at the spoons Veta was still carrying. At Store A she counted portions for a living. Rurik had already seen her start again from the other end of the table.

Veta drew the chair out a little farther and went back to the stove. Irena sat.

“Am I in the riddle?” she asked Lida.

“If you want. First correct answer wins.”

“What does it win?”

“You choose one of the losers to make up a story. Someone who’ll tell it.”

Rurik began to fill the warmed bowls. The first ladlefuls gave off a smell he wanted to sit beside instead of stand over.

“A story about what?” Maks asked.

Irena thought for a moment.

“A traveler buys a pot with no bottom. And they’re pleased with it.”

“Why would they buy that?” Rurik asked.

“That’s what I want to hear.”

Maks looked at the pot on the stove. “I’d tell that.”

“So would I,” said Rurik. “If I lose.”

“No magic,” Lida said. “And it has to stay without a bottom.”

“Still pleased at the end,” Irena added. “You can’t have them throw it away.”

“You might be telling it yourself,” Maks said.

“I might.” She moved her spoon to make room as Veta set down her soup. “I’ll do it.”

Rurik carried his own bowl to the table. Veta set the other filled bowls on the table, then brought the bread and paste. She put the serving ladle on a plate beside the stove and sat down. Lida leaned forward.

“Ready?”

“Let me put this on first.” Rurik scattered bread over his soup. A few pieces floated; one sank, came up at an angle and stayed there. He tasted a spoonful. The root was tender, the broth hot, the bread crisp against the roof of his mouth.

Lida waited until he had swallowed.

“Two mothers and two daughters arrived together for supper. All sat and ate at the same time. Each person had exactly one bowl, nobody shared, and only three bowls were used. How?”

Rurik saw the table at once. Two mothers, their daughters opposite them. He put a bowl before each and had four bowls. He tried again, placing the people closer together, which was no help at all.

Maks took some paste. He mixed it into one side of his soup and tasted it while Lida looked around the table.

Rurik could not see what had happened to the fourth bowl. If one person ate from a cup, that would be an answer to a different question. Lida had said each person had exactly one bowl. He had heard her.

“One inside another?” Maks said.

Lida turned toward him.

“A bowl could sit inside a larger one,” he went on. “You’d lift it out and then…”

He stopped. Rurik had begun to picture the smaller bowl being removed. It still left someone without one.

“No,” Maks said. “That doesn’t get rid of a person. Never mind.”

He ate another spoonful. The paste had made his broth darker than Rurik’s.

Irena said, “Tell me who came again.”

“Two mothers and two daughters.”

She rested her spoon in her bowl.

“A grandmother, her daughter and her granddaughter.”

Lida’s broad hands came down flat on the table.

“Yes.”

Rurik took the two pairs apart in his head. The daughter sitting beside her mother had a daughter of her own. He had put her at the table twice. Three places, three bowls. It worked whichever end he began from.

“I would have fed four of them,” he said.

“They could have taken some home,” Irena said.

He laughed with his spoon still halfway to his mouth and had to lower it. Lida was grinning. She had sat back now, pleased enough with the answer to take up her supper.

“That was good,” Rurik told Irena.

“Maks,” she said. “I choose Maks.”

Maks finished what he was eating. Irena waited for him, then took a spoonful of her own soup, looking over the bowl at her chosen teller.

“A very fine pot,” he began.

“No bottom,” she said.

“I remember.”

He paused again, this time looking past Rurik toward the stove.

“The traveler was tired of carrying a heavy pot. They came to a stall, and the seller had just what they needed. Less pot to carry. The top was there, and all the sides were there. A great deal of pot for the money.”

“Except where you put the soup,” Rurik said.

“They bought it for the saving in weight.”

“Was it cheap?” Lida asked.

“Very cheap. And there was no bottom to scrub afterward. Think of the time saved.”

Veta took a piece of bread from the serving dish. “I like that part.”

“So did the traveler. They put it with their other things and went on, feeling very pleased with the purchase.”

Rurik ate. The bread in his bowl had softened at the edges, though a few dry corners remained above the broth. Maks had hardly touched his own soup since he began. When he stopped to take a mouthful, Irena let him. She had left her spoon still and was looking at Maks with an attention the actual soup pot had not received.

“Then it rained,” Maks said.

“Ah,” said Lida.

“The traveler had a pot. They put it on their head.”

Rurik looked up.

“It’s got no bottom.”

“They turned it over.”

“That doesn’t help.”

He put his spoon down and curved his hands together, making a circle. He looked through it at Maks.

“The hole comes with it.”

Maks regarded him through the opening. There was a small delay, long enough for Rurik to become aware that he was sitting at supper looking through his own hands.

“A window,” Maks said.

Rurik kept the circle there.

“They’d bought a window. Much cheaper than a window usually is.”

“There’s no glass,” Lida said.

“An opening window.”

Veta laughed. Rurik dropped his hands, but Maks was still looking through the space where the circle had been.

“A portable window. You could take it wherever the view was best. You wouldn’t have to go on looking at the same thing every day.”

“Still raining,” Irena said.

“They went indoors.”

“With the window?”

“Naturally. It was theirs.”

Irena made a small approving sound and went back to her soup. Rurik scraped the last piece of root from the curve of his bowl. He was beginning to want a little more. Veta had left the pot where the heat was low, and he could hear a bubble break now and then against its side.

“Where did they go?” Lida asked.

Maks looked at Rurik.

“To a cook. ‘I’ve bought a window,’ they said. ‘Give me a view of supper.’”

Veta stood to take her empty bowl to the stove. She held out a broad hand for Rurik’s, and he passed it to her.

“That costs extra,” Rurik said.

“They’ve already paid for the window.”

“Not to me.”

Lida laughed suddenly, then tried to turn it into a cough because she was eating. Veta glanced back from the stove. Lida waved her on and took a drink. Rurik waited until she had set down the cup.

“Twenty dinners,” he said. “In advance. For one view of my soup.”

Maks considered this with an expression Rurik liked very much. It was the same grave attention he had given the jar of paste.

“For that,” Maks said, “they would expect to see a great deal of soup.”

“They may look as hard as they like.”

Veta returned Rurik’s bowl, newly filled. She put a smaller portion in her own and sat, then reached for the dish of bread. Rurik moved it nearer her before she had to stretch. There were still enough pieces to make a dry little heap on each serving.

“Irena, would you like some more?” Veta asked.

“Yes, please. About that much.” Irena indicated Veta’s bowl and stayed where she was. “Maks, have they paid him?”

“They’re discussing the price.”

“They’re still pleased?”

“Certainly. Look at the quality of the view.”

Rurik had warmed his hands around the bowl. He lifted it, bringing the smell of the roots close, while Maks continued to describe the excellent soup that could be seen through a pot with no bottom.