No Matter How Salty The Food, The Talk May Be Sour
That was all of them until Luas Taikko Hinmi came in and, later, Eksu Pui Hikku, not counting the servants. Some of their names were mentioned too when Hewwikke ordered them around, but without formal introductions, how could the Adabans remember them? It would have been wrong even to try.
Once they had arrived, Hewwikke at last considered the foundation laid to brag about his house. “I believe in modesty as much as anyone, but my Ink House here isn't me. No, I built it though, and I finally got everything just the way I want it. It's been years. I want you all to know you're the first guests in the last edition of the place, as it were. Until I change my mind about something. Knock out a few walls maybe. Uh oh. Start talking! Distract me!”
The guests obliged their host with conversation that kept to general topics such cultural influences on popularity as revealed by the differing popularity of various novels, poets, and essayists. The quartermaster continued to insist it all had to do with the attitude of Adabans toward fun, that being confused hostility, while Taikko suggested that the more elegant the prose, the harder it was to break through into other countries while the blunter stuff made an impact. Pui suggested she make a speech on that topic to provide consolation to unsuccessful authors.
Talk in that vein lasted up to dinner, at which point Hewwikke showed his guests into his dining room. The single long table reminded Dirant of the company cafeteria, except that the people sitting down at it had expressions of anticipation instead of dread. There was also the fact that the seats had cushions and failed to sag under his unexceptional weight. Perhaps he was simply feeling homesick.
When foreigners thought about the cuisine of Pavvu Omme Os, it was only when reading some travelogue in which the writer mentioned how salty everything was. Assorted reports disagreed as to the desirability of the situation, but not about its existence. When the pile of salt which had some goat meat buried in it as a special treat came out, they knew the true Omme experience was upon them. Both complimented it of course, but Dirant hid his opinion that it was a little much as he drank cider in such amounts that the broad and sluggish Ontoffemmiror River back home would have feared his frightful thirst.
The next course defied their culinary expectations. A tray came out covered by a lid that, when removed, revealed food for the mind rather than the body in the form of a sheaf of papers.
“A mystery!” The Battler, Takki, shouted that first in Usse as she grabbed the papers and again in Adaban for the convenience of the southern visitors while she read. “Does anyone want to know how the debate will turn out? It's all written out here neatly in true professional fashion. 'Published by Kekket Ittame,' it says at the bottom.”
“How did that get in here? That's probably secret information.” Hewwikke requested and was given the document while the others looked on, Taikko and Pui with raised eyebrows which demanded an explanation without words, Timga with a furrowed brow that demanded the same thing but more insistently, Silapobenk with a small smile that, also without words, said something about the tricks of publishers being laid bare by chance, and Dirant not at all. He was watching the employee, Puvva. Bafflement? Fear? Concern? There seemed to be quite the assortment going on over there, like a hopeful actor testing out his best expressions before the audition.
“Strange.” Hewwikke looked at the top sheet without much interest at first but began to frown as he went on. The writing betrayed his expectations; a common feeling among audiences. “Excess strange, and by that I mean savage odd. I don't grasp the point of this.” He looked back up in a contemplative way that he dropped when he saw the attitudes of certain guests. “We're very advanced, we publishers. We've been through a lot and developed practical techniques. One is the template. A bunch of sure information can be put down, the date of an event say, and the rest filled in later, like the weather. Another is the double. We could prepare two versions and chuck one depending on how the thing goes. That's what I thought this would be, but it isn't. We'd have to erase all these details. Improbable details. Taikko, do you plan to unveil a model of a star? Then ask it whether it can predict the future?”
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“Certainly not. Or, I didn't before now.”
“I figured. This thing is unusable.” Hewwikke crumpled the papers up, but then uncrumpled them when the two debaters and the quartermaster asked to see them since the fake report sounded fun. Takki meanwhile had been translating all that for the Adabans, though the effort revealed she struggled more than Timga did with statements more complicated than a rote greeting. Still, despite leaving the audience to decode “template” from “set-formula-thing,” she did well enough, and she was able to catch up when Hewwikke absented himself to question his servants on the matter.
“They don't know a thing. About this. They know a lot about other stuff. Don't underestimate the man in the kitchen.” Hewwikke sat back down with an assertion delivered with too little evidence to satisfy anyone. Perhaps some might see it as rude to question their host. People who had not watched a fake news article be served to them on a platter, for instance. As it was, several voices competed in asking him how he could be that sure, that fast.
Just as fast, he answered. “Unerring character judgment. That's something that comes to you in my business. Has to. The ones who don't get it drop out.”
Nobody believed that, not without even a single class ability for him to offer as justification. Still, pressing a man about the honesty of his own servants seemed liable to cross over into unforgivable rudeness, and so the civic quartermaster drew back from such dangerous ground to the comfortable safety of officialdom. “You may wish to send one of those servants to request intervention from the captain-inspector before the hour advances too far. My opposite number on the martial side maintains the most important factor in solving a crime is involving him immediately, while the trail is followable.”
While the southern guests questioned their volunteer translator closely on the point of whether Timga really talked like that in Usse, Hewwikke decided on his response. “That's just what they want. Attention. No, I don't know who they are. They want me to know, and that's why I refuse to find out.”
An understandable stance, but not one every guest could accept. Before she even translated the host's conclusion, Millim Takki Atsa leapt up to reopen the case. With one arm stretched over the table, her fingers spread wide and ready to grasp the truth, she declared, “This isn't some trivial incident we can overlook, as much as the culprit would like. This is a mystery.” She spoiled the effect of her own declaration by leaning back to redo it in Adaban, but it remained in the air and required a response.
Or support. Ukkip Timga Onsalkamto again urged Hewwikke to alert the relevant official. When the possible victim of the suspected defamation attempt again refused, that was that as far as a governmental investigation. “That's your choice,” Timga said. “I'll cooperate with your intention of minimizing the publicity attached to this incident. Still, I have to think we should take some measure or other.”
Takki stood up and stretched her arm over the table, but with her palm up as if she held all the answers, professorially. “If it's too much to demand that everyone subject himself to constant surveillance, we can at least warn one another that when the next incident happens, an unobserved person will necessarily be a suspect. Oh, and we should set up a watch on the Adabans. Imlakke, if I stick to Mr. Dirant, will you shadow Mr. Silapobenk?”
“Like a lessi mie,” he assured her.
The lessi mie, Takki explained to the southerners who needed shadowing, was a subject of a great many folk tales. It lived in people's shadows and either helped or hurt them according to the story. Her audience evinced a greater interest in the earlier portion of the translation than the later part, but the portion relevant to them ended up without elucidation when further conversation became impractical owing to the introduction of the delicious yam-based cake that finished off the dining affair. Dirant wiped his mouth with the utmost satisfaction as he remembered revoking the Preservation Ritual on those very yams that very morning. Silapobenk Rikelta, a more dogged Stadeskosken promoter, made a point of asking where their host had purchased yams in that season and part of the world.
Hewwikke waved with his knife, and if he scattered crumbs around, he owned the table. “I didn't want to give away free advertising. Everyone, these were Adaban produce once. I'm a professional at turning southern into northern.”
The end of the cake indicated the end of the meal. According to company-commissioned educational materials, attendees of a private dinner function in Pavvu Omme Os customarily clustered together before and during the dinner proper. Afterward, they were encouraged to divide themselves into smaller groups and spread about the house in unspoken flattery of the host's vast and well-appointed property. Apparently the Ommes had read the pamphlet too, since they split up just as described.