Saul and Mia attempt a Nice Thing

[guardiansverse]

"He isn't going to want it," Saul said, and made a face when Mia nonetheless batted his hand away from the bowl.

It was, in his unsought-for opinion, a great deal of effort to go to for something he was certain would end up spurned as a shameful luxury. He'd been saying as much to Mia from the start, all the way home from market while she forced him to lug the heavy pail of ice. The day was mercilessly hot, a heat that would have made Ilyigan summer proud: the Hyemi sweltered in their stiff shirts, and Saul sweltered in his, and his only idea of what to do with a bucketful of ice Mia had obtained by some marketplace sorcery was upend it over his own head. He had tried to fish out a handful of chunks to slide them down the back of Mia's dress, but she had caught him before he could, smacked his hand with her iron spatula, and set about a great fuss with berries and eggs and cream.

"He might want it," she said now, as she had said a dozen times before. Her tone told Saul that she knew she was being evasive.

"Has he ever wanted it before?"

"He might change his mind."

"Fro Detrich, change his mind?" He watched her pour in a great cascade of sugar, probably more, he thought, than the Land's Own Guardian of Hyem ate in a full season, perhaps a year. "He's going to say it's too sweet for him to stomach, and that you're wasting his money."

"He'd still punish you for not helping me," Mia said archly. And, Saul thought with hunger-tinted consternation, she was right.

It would have been easier if her concoction wasn't such a mouth-watering golden-red colour, the sugar so white, the cream so smooth. The sides of the pail glistened with merry diamonds of condensation. Sweet sunlight sparked from them across the kitchen table, and Mia hummed confident contentment in her work as she packed the lovely mixture away into a metal tube and sealed it. Into the pail with its ice it went, away from any hope of Saul's quick fingers and tongue, and then Mia imperiously nodded him at the contraption, braids bobbing.

"Now you churn it."

"Why me?"

"Your arms are stronger, and I've done all the other work."

All the other work had been mixing some eggs, berries, and cream, and she had gotten to taste-test her labour. "He isn't going to want it," Saul grunted, and got to work.

"Not like this," Mia said after ten seconds. "No, slower - you're not giving it a chance to - you'll splash the ice all out - oh, you're useless!" She finally put her hand over his, clamped down her fingers while he was busy settling his instinct to recoil and strike out, and forced him to whatever passed for an appropriate churning rhythm. Her hand was wet and sticky. "I wish we could have a steam engine for this."

"Steam engines are for trains and mills, not kitchens." He felt mildly affronted at the suggestion of all that power yoked to churn cream.

"Why shouldn't they be? Fro Detrich would like it, I'm sure. He knows the worth of women's work." Mia pulled her hand away, lips pursed stubbornly.

Then something glittered in her eyes. She raised that hand, put fore- and middle fingers together, and stabbed them Saul's way, the imitation of Detrich's habitual gesture so precise that Saul nearly choked mid-churn. "I'm not done until every woman in this country knows the gift of steam and steel. The souls of Hyem demand nourishment! Justice in every kitchen!"

Her voice shouldn't have even evoked the thundering resonance of Detrich's bass, and Saul should not have let out a wheeze. But both shoulds failed him utterly. "He sounds nothing like that - "

"He sounds exactly like that." She scowled mightily. "Now put your damned back into it, lad, you call this work?!"

Saul coughed once and was undone. "And mind every drop - ice costs! Sugar costs!"

"When I was a student we'd scrape our own ice! Off our blankets, we'd scrape it - " she threw a furious fist up. Saul was laughing too hard to keep anything like a churning rhythm. Mia sputtered, giggling, then abruptly stopped.

Something hushed and tender was in her expression as she looked at hi Quietly, she said, "You know he's like that because he..."

Saul's laughter died between heartbeats. Something else rose thickly in his throat.

He met her eyes, nodded once. "I know."

Mia exhaled, a touch shakily, answered his nod, and then at once was grabbing his hand to guide it to the tube again, the witch. "Good. So do put your back into it. I'll make this every summer until he wants it, and if he doesn't, we can -"

"Is it me you two are gossping over?" Detrich's voice, ringing from the doorway, made them both jump. The Land's Own stuck his head into the kitchen, sweating but in good spirits - in summer he seemed to soak up the sunlight through the very earth of his country, as content as a lizard on its favourite rock. "Sun's sake, Fro Weber - this again?"

Mia smiled sweetly at him. "Someone in the market owed me a favour." Someone in the market always did. "So the ice was free."

"And the sugar? White sugar costs - " he trailed off with a baffled scowl as Saul failed to swallow a snicker. "What's your part in this nonsense, brat?"

It was time for Mia to taste her own medicine. "You'd have punished me for not helping her, sir."

"Fro Detrich - " Mia spoke up over Detrich's grunt of reluctant assent. "I promise you we can afford this. Just once a year - "

"Can isn't should."

"Only a little..."

"You know I can't - "

"I could," Saul spoke up.

He returned their looks of confusion with a challenging one. "It's already made. I'm not giving it away before I've had a taste of it. I don't even know what it is."

He was not expecting that last statement to give them both as much pause as it did. Mia was blinking and blinking in confusion. Detrich looked - for a very brief moment, Saul thought with his own upsurge of confusion, he had looked stricken.

"No, lad," the Land's Own muttered after a moment. "Of course you don't."

He heaved a great sigh, raked back his hair and came into the kitchen. Mia got from him the gimlet eye, Saul noticed, but bowed her head only for a perfunctory moment before looking up again with was what too clearly was barely concealed delight. "It's called iced cream. The ice is the trouble. Hard to store - easier now we know to mix salt in, that's a clever invention - and harder to transport, though the trains - "

He trailed off, staring at Saul; Saul tried boldly to once more focus his eyes, glazed over with hungry anticipation.

A corner of Detrich's mouth curled up.

"Get three spoons," he said, "and I can tell you while we eat."