“Guilt is a natural response to many things. Even so, one must take care not to allow themselves to drown in guilt. That serves no purpose to anyone, not even yourself.” - Saying attributed to the Silver Maiden.
“What’s wrong, Kino? The food not to your taste?” asked Eilonwy when she noticed Kino not eating much.
Two weeks had passed since their departure from Shahadur. The three had swiftly covered the distance and even taken care of their business in the Saran Khanate. They were simply enjoying themselves in the Khanate as they had made up for the extra time spent in Urvan and then some. As usual, sampling local cuisines was one of their favorite activities.
At the moment they were enjoying one of the local specialties, which was composed of a mouthful of tiny, chewy local grains that had been mixed with spices, chopped vegetables, and some minced meat, then stuffed into and rolled up in wide leaves of a local edible plant. The resultant packets – each around as large as a thumb – was then steamed until the grains were cooked just right.
The leaves on the outside imparted a hint of sourness and astringency to the dish, while the contents of the package burst with a mixture of flavor, emphasizing on a strong sweet-savory taste with a hint of meat and a touch of spiciness at the end. The locals served dozens of them piled up high on a serving platter meant for sharing, which was how the three had been enjoying theirs.
For those that liked stronger flavors, the locals also offered a mushy dipping sauce on the side, which had a very strong taste of garlic cut with a hint of sour milk and the refreshing coolness of mint leaves. Aideen herself only used the powerfully flavored dip in moderation, but Eilonwy seemed to love it as she liberally slathered it all over her morsels of food.
“Oh, no, no, the food’s fine,” replied Kino after a moment. She seemed to be a little lost in her thoughts the past few days, though Aideen had let it be under the expectation that Kino would say what bothered her when she was ready. Eilonwy’s question just happened to come at the right time. “I just… kind of feel a little guilty about leaving mister Zayid to deal with the mess back there while we’re enjoying ourselves here…”
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“One thing you’ll need to keep in mind, Kino, is that you cannot be everywhere at once to help out in every situation where you might be needed. You need to learn to take what you can and forgo what you cannot. It’s something I had to learn the hard way myself, to be fair,” said Aideen in a consolatory tone. “Besides, there’s no need to be worried about Zayid. He’s competent and ruthless enough to deal with the situation we left behind. In fact, if he can’t handle things after the gift we left him I’d have questioned his competence.”
Aideen had asked Eilonwy to keep one of her tiny spider-like constructs in the Emir’s older brother’s room after she had done what she came to do, to watch and ensure that things came to pass as she had planned. It turned out that they didn’t need to wait long, as Eilonwy reported that the man had a fatal stroke – as Aideen planned – the very next morning, not long after he woke up.
That information had left Aideen a bit speechless, and as for the dead man, he could only curse his own excessive libido for costing him his life so soon.
The way Aideen had set things up, in which she thinned the walls of the man’s blood vessels while narrowing it further away with a buildup of fat in the vessel, would look like a very natural occurrence, especially in a man who did not look after his health like the Emir’s older brother. As such, she had little doubt that the death would be thought of as natural causes rather than assassination.
Such a death should take the wind off the sails of the man’s faction, and the young Emir – with Zayid’s support – should have minimal trouble taking care of the rest, once they discovered it. She had opted not to let them know ahead of time and allowed the natural course of things to happen, so they probably had yet to hear of the man’s death if his advisors tried to keep it a secret.
Secrets wouldn’t keep for too long, however, so Aideen expected that within a month at the latest, Zayid and the young Emir should have caught wind of the older brother’s untimely demise by “natural” causes.
“See, you heard Great-Aunt. They’ll be fine over there, so stop worrying your pretty head over it,” said Eilonwy cheerfully. “We won’t be here for too much longer, so got to enjoy what we can while we’re still here!”
Almost as if to punctuate Eilonwy’s words, a serving girl walked over to their table with a smile and laid down three plates, each containing a very generous palm-sized helping of a favorite local dessert. The sweet, nutty scent from the dessert quickly stimulated their appetites, and before long, the three of them had finished off the platter of leaf-wrapped parcels as well as most of the dipping sauce.
The dessert itself was made out of thin, crisp, and shattery layers of pastry that was stacked on top of each other to form a multi-layered texture at the top and the bottom, with a filling of minced and crushed nuts in the center. All of that was baked together until the pastry layers attained the crisp consistency and then the whole thing was doused in a very generous amount of diluted honey.
What came out of it was a dessert that was absurdly rich and almost sickly sweet, moderated only by the savoriness of the nuts it contained as well as the light sprinkling of salt added at the end The hint of saltiness was just right to keep the dessert a guilty pleasure rather than overindulgent.