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Chapter 11 - Judge of Character
🕑 Added 2025-02-11 20:00:08 +0000 UTC“As I was saying, on my thirtieth birthday, before I was king, I visited Ambrosia City and had the privilege of being served by Colby. He made a special dish, just for me, that he called…the Kingmaker.”
King Tritsun flashed his hands in the air for dramatic effect.
Nori took her fifth bite of octopus, finishing it off. She hoped that the sooner she cleaned off her plate, the sooner the next course would arrive, the sooner the dinner would be over. Plus eating some real food for the first time in a week had awakened her appetite. But the king seemed determined to tell his story.
“As I’m sure you know, Colby spent his youth traveling in the kitchens and courts of kings.”
Nori did not know. Colby preferred to spend his time berating the students, not telling them stories of his past. Nori wondered if their paths had ever crossed in Uroko.
“As he put it, in the process of serving royalty, he learned the ins and outs of what it took to be successful. He had seen how a king operates. Their burdens. And so, he told me he would prepare me a dish that contained all of his insights into what it takes to be a good king. I figured it would be some grand thing. Something that my non-Chef brain could never imagine. And you know what it was?”
King Tritsun took a bite of octopus, taking an agonizingly long time to chew before returning to his story.
“A potato. Boiled. With the skin still on it.” The king laughed. “Just a single potato. Not even a fork. Just a knife with a little, little bit of butter on it. I was traveling with our royal treasurer. He almost had Colby seized. But I said wait, wait. At least let me try it.
“I cut into the potato, and…then had to scrape the butter off the skin. I balanced a piece of potato on the knife and ate it. And it. Was. Delicious.”
He tapped the prongs of his fork against his plate as he remembered the story.
“He told me that as a king, you don’t ever get what you want, and you don’t ever get the proper tools to deal with your situation…You have to learn to accept that and use whatever is available to you.”
“If he didn’t call you names after, then maybe it was a different Colby,” Nori responded, hiding her vague amusement at the story. “Did you have a chance to visit Cafe Julienne when you were in the city?”
“No, I did not,” the king said with a heavy ‘t.’ “It makes me a hypocrite, I know, but I’m not particularly fond of generational power and the families that wield it.”
He looked into Nori’s eyes and held them there. His mouth pressed into a thin line, holding something scathing within. Nori wracked her mind for some clever retort, some way to get back on top of the conversation, but found nothing. The opening of the kitchen door bailed her out.
The king leaned back and smiled. “Nori, meet Tandra.”
The Purple Jacket Chef bowed her head. “Hello, Nori.”
“Hello.” Nori smiled and wondered what sob story Tandra had prepared for them.
“Your Grace, I just wanted to see if you’re ready for the next course.”
“Oh, yes,” the king said as he looked down at the last bite of octopus on his plate. “You can take this away. Unless…” He looked over at Nori with a sly smile. “There’s one bite left. Would you like it?”
Nori contained a scoff, exhaling through her nose as her lips pursed together. The king’s trick was plainly obvious, but unavoidable. Either she took the bite and represented generations of Harper oppression over Khala, or she let the bite go to waste and represented generations of Harper indifference to Khala’s hunger.
If she was going to suffer a loss either way, she wouldn’t suffer it hungry. She reached over the table and stabbed her fork into the octopus in an unceremonious display that would have made her mother faint.
“Thanks,” she said with her mouth full.
“Hm,” the king mused. “Go ahead and bring out the next course, Tandra.”
“Yes, Your Grace,” Tandra responded as she took their plates into the kitchen.
King Tritsun and Nori waited in silence for Tandra to return. He looked at his fingernails and gently rubbed the red spot where his cuticles had been peeled off. Nori sipped her wine and wondered how many more courses she would have to suffer.
Tandra returned with another beautifully plated—yet small—dish. A yellow smear of mayonnaise served as a base for five crispy little potatoes, each hardly bigger than a blueberry. A thin slice of red meat, similar in appearance to roast beef, rested on top of it all.
“For our second course, I have prepared something special to me,” Tandra explained. “We have lemon mayonnaise, roasted potatoes, and a piece of smoked whale. Whaling is a part of my heritage as much as my hair color. It is said that the first whale brought back to the Khaldeer’s shore was done by my ancestor some eight hundred years ago. Since then, we’ve had many harpooners and captains.”
Nori eyed her plate. She loved the taste of whale and especially loved how filling it could be. Thus far, she had spent half an hour in the king’s palace and barely had an appetizer. She resisted the urge to start eating straight away. Instead, she decided she might as well spring whatever trap the king had planned.
“Is anyone in your family still an active whaler?” she asked. The king smiled, pleased that Nori was an active participant in their little game.
“Not anymore.” Tandra offered a forced smile. “Enjoy.”
She bowed and left, leaving Nori and the king alone again. Nori rubbed her thumb over the fork’s handle and stared at the king. His mouth puckered into a tight smile. He seemed to enjoy their momentary silence—their standoff—but invited her to break it with a raised eyebrow.
“I think this is the part where you tell me it’s Uroko’s fault,” Nori chided.
King Tritsun chuckled. “Her father and uncle both were harpooners. And then ten years ago…no, twelve. It was my first trade negotiation as king. My first unpeeled potato without a fork. And I truly lacked the tools to make the most of the situation. Those negotiations ended with Uroko banning Khalyan whalers from operating in its waters.”
The king attempted to stab a potato with his fork, but it squirted out from the pressure and rolled across his plate.
“Her uncle spent his springs in Uroko working for one of their whaling ships. Because of course Urokan whale ships still operated—better than ever without the competition. So her uncle worked, and then he died. An accident. Her father found new work hauling for one of the harbor’s warehouses. Tough work.”
“Couldn’t be much tougher than whaling,” Nori countered.
The king chuckled again. “True, I suppose. But if one is to break their back working, it’s better if they can take pride in what they do.”
Nori’s nostrils flared as she filled her lungs with air. Frustration buried her appetite. She had lived a life of luxury, to be sure, but she refused to be lectured on labor by royalty.
“And what does a king know about back breaking work?” she asked.
The king ignored her question, cutting into a piece of the whale meat. He cut perhaps a little harder than he needed to, and Nori swore she saw a faint twitch in his eyebrow. Still, he maintained his composure. Nori wondered if he even had a boiling point. They were already at the precipice of hers.
She looked at the plate in front of her and found it disgusting, her appetite having long gone. She controlled the tempest raging inside of her, meting out its fury with a tone laden with venom and salt.
“How about we skip this tiring charade. What’s the next course? Some one-armed orphan delivering the final meal made by a mother that died of some Urokan doing?”
King Tritsun lifted a hand to his face to cover his smile and muffle his laughter.
“Actually, it was going to be by a Chef that feeds one of the many orphanages near the harbor,” he said, all the appropriate drama of the story missing from his humored voice. “He was going to talk about how there are always fresh faces. He was going to serve barnacle soup, and then I was going to talk about how barnacles are just about the only piece of seafood that we can harvest without Uroko’s permission.”
“And here I was hoping you might get a little bit more subtle with your criticisms,” Nori complained.
She wished the king would just stoop down to her level—call her names, get mad, fight. Instead, he acted like the whole thing was an inside joke between the two of them—like they were old friends. He chewed and chewed and waved his knife up and down to match the rhythm of his speech.
“Well give me some credit, I doubt you were aware that I was building up to some big reveal.”
“And what’s that?”
“All of the Chefs that served you today—and would have served you—had restaurants in Khaldeer that were shut down as a consequence of the last trade deal. Which, you guessed it—involved a new set of regulations and taxes from Uroko.”
The king cut into his whale—hard. His knife went through the meat and onto the plate below, but he did not stop sawing.
“That’s what they do. They carve out any budding food culture in Khaldeer. If we don’t have any restaurants, we don’t have anything for our youth to aspire to. Those few Khalyans who become Chefs dream of grander things than we’ve shown them, so they leave for other kingdoms. And it’s by design. In this world, Chefs are power. Leverage. And with every trade negotiation, we lose that power.”
Nori had heard enough. She wasn’t responsible. She knew it was wrong. She distanced herself from her family for a reason. But now, this commoner king pinned the suffering of an entire kingdom on her. She leaned over the table at him and spoke through clenched teeth.
“You should have negotiated better, then.”
The king set down his silverware and leaned back, resting against the arm of his chair. “Is that what you believe? That the fault is mine?”
Nori sucked both lips into her mouth and squeezed them together. If he would just get mad, they could have it out. They could get it over with. And she knew how to make him mad. Of all the skills her family had imparted on her, that was one her strongest—stripping a man down. Making him lesser. Demeaning his station.
But that wouldn’t be fair. She knew that he had already been subjected to more than his fair share of that. She wondered—when her family came to strong arm him into a bad deal, did they at least still let him sit at the head of the table?
“No,” she said.
King Tritsun smiled. “When I became king, people joked that I was now the second most powerful man in Khala behind the Bhante.”
His eyes zoned out and his smile faded. “If only I were so lucky. Your entire family. Your king. They all have more power than me in my own kingdom. And they’ll be visiting any day now. Our old trade agreement has run its course. We’ll renegotiate…and this time, I think they’ll ask for more than I can give.”
Nori couldn’t help but mirror his mournful expression.
“Why did you invite me to this dinner?” she asked.
The king said nothing for a while. He adjusted in his seat and pushed a potato around his plate with a fork. He couldn’t look at Nori. “I don’t know. I wanted to see if I’d be answering to you too one day. I wanted to see if you going to the Academy was a momentary act of rebellion or a true attempt to separate yourself from your name. I wanted to see if you could sympathize with the plights of others or if you were just another member of that cabal of bullies. And I suppose…I suppose I wanted to be the bully for once.”
His eyes flickered up to hers, flashing an apology, and returned to the table.
Nori tossed her fork onto her plate, letting it clang around. She missed being mad. At least that had gotten her heart pumping. Now her heart just hurt.
In her time away from her family, she had hoped she would remember them in a fairer light. That their grievances weren’t truly so bad once she took a step away from them. King Tritsun had robbed her of that potential state of denial. Her family was as she had always remembered them—ruthless enforcers of an unsympathetic regime.
She could judge her family, but not herself. That was a job for others.
“So which is it? Am I a bully or a sympathizer?” Nori asked, speaking genuinely to the king for the first time all night. She needed the truth from him. She needed to know who she was. She needed absolution.
The king sighed and shook his head. “I can’t tell yet.”
