“Finally back, Jiffy? Good work out there.”
“Yeah. Not a great haul today. I’m sure there used to be more fish in these parts.”
I grabbed some branches from a nearby stack, threw them in my box, and then joined the circle of men relaxing by the port. We always got together after work to chat, drink, and cook the fish we hadn’t been able to sell.
I dumped the branches beside me, turned my box over, and plopped down onto it. Then, using my trusty knife, I started shaving one of the branches into a skewer.
“Oy,” I said. “Pass me one of them fish, will ya?”
“Catch.” Not just one but three fish soared through the air toward me. “Cook ’em up and you can eat with us. It’s nearly suppertime. There’s some salt over there, if ya need it.”
“Ooh, thanks.”
I rubbed some salt onto the fish, skewered them, and then held them over the fire. They always went nicely with some alcohol. I pulled the cup from my belt and held it out to Torem.
“Fill ’er up.”
We all chipped in to buy the beer, so we could drink as much as we wanted. Right? Torem looked at the bottle in his hand, then at me, and grimaced.
“You sure, Jiffy? Heard you fightin’ with your wife yesterday. Didn’t sound pretty.”
“Aah, don’t mind that. She gave me an earful, sure, but hangin’ out with you lot and sharing news is part of the job! Can’t expect a landswoman to understand.”
“Sounds like hogwash to me.”
I wasn’t the only fisherman whose wife and daughter complained about our little meetups. Anyone who thought the sea was a harsh mistress hadn’t met our women! We cackled to each other and dismissed Torem’s warning until, at last, he poured me a drink.
I drained my cup and belched. Work was so awful these days that a good swig of beer was the only thing keeping me going. My fish was cooking nicely—the skin was brown, the fat crackled, and juice ran down the skewer.
“So, who took the fish to the castle today?”
“Pretty sure it was Segt and Ank. Anything interesting happen?”
Once again, our topic of the day was the castle. Well, the new aub. She’d sent those arrogant foreigners packing and then closed the huge gate out at sea so they wouldn’t come back. She was young enough that her hair was still down, but that didn’t matter to us—she was a hero, through and through. Every time one of us went to the castle, we asked the chefs and servants for any new information about her.
The day after the foreigners were kicked out, a noble had sent us a request for extra fish, since some knights staying at the castle were eating through their entire stock. We’d given them as much as we could as thanks for their big rescue. Someone had told us since then that the aub loved eating fish, so we’d started sending her the best of whatever we caught each morning.
“Oh yeah, we got some big news this time. Straight from the court chef. Turns out the new aub likes ‘shioyaki.’”
“The heck is that? Doesn’t even sound like a real word.”
“Is it some kinda cookin’ method from her old duchy? Doesn’t tell us a thing about what kinda fish she likes. Get us somethin’ more useful next time!”
As rumor had it, the new aub was from another duchy to the north. Maybe that was why she liked fish cooked in strange ways. We all grimaced at the lack of any decent news, but Segt and Ank just looked at each other and cackled.
“Naw, get this—it’s just a fancy name for salted fish.”
“One of the chefs said she wanted some fish with good white meat.”
Everyone fell silent.
“Salted fish? Like, what we’re eatin’ now?” I gestured at my skewer, then turned it around to cook the other side of my fish. We fishermen ate this kinda food all the time—it only required two ingredients, both of which we got from the ocean—but it sounded way too simple for a noble.
“Yep. Didn’t believe the chefs, did we, Segt?”
“Nope. But they triple-checked with the noble who placed the order, and it wasn’t a mistake. Poor lot must’ve been sweatin’ up a storm. Didn’t even give ’em a chance to show the new aub their skills.”
“So she eats her fish like we do? You’ve gotta be pullin’ our legs. I thought nobles always covered their food with strange herbs or made it spicy enough to make their tongues go numb.”
“Maybe she ain’t too fond of spicy foreign food. Since she’s from another duchy and all. Hand me that fish, will ya, Jiffy? That one’s mine.”
“She ignored all the fancy noble dishes and went straight for the salted fish. Feels... kinda nice, really.”
I gave Ank his fish and chewed on what he’d told us while I downed the last of my beer. “She loves the fish we bring her and prefers our style of cookin’ over that Lanzenave junk... I feel closer to her than ever.”
“Same. The last aub had some screws loose, so I didn’t care who took her place, but... I’m glad we got this new girl.”
Couldn’t blame him there. Our previous aub had also been young—barely of age—but she was a real piece of work. “Anything’s better than that other girl. The moment her ol’ man died, all the rules started gettin’ ignored.”
“She showed those foreigners across the gate way too much favoritism and didn’t make ’em leave when they were s’posed to. That’s why the ocean’s gettin’ all cloudy and there ain’t as many fish as there used to be.”
“Eeh... I don’t think that’s the reason, but we’ve definitely had a fish problem since she came into power.”
It was around the time the old archduke died and the foreigners’ black-and-silver ships appeared that the fish started dying and the ocean lost its luster. Some merchants had made a killing from all the extra business with the foreigners, so maybe they’d preferred our previous aub, but we fishermen hated her guts. Our livelihoods were at stake.
“Those big ships blocked the port, and the guards let the foreigners be all sorts of violent. We couldn’t even put ’em in their place without gettin’ yelled at. It was insane.”
“Not to mention those creeps were kidnappers too.”
I remembered the evening we’d seen their wagons and carriages going to and from the port. The boxes they’d carried were huge, and we’d all assumed the foreigners were finally going home. We had watched them from afar and enjoyed some beer, glad to see the back of them.
It wasn’t until the following morning that we realized they were kidnappers.
We were fishing before sunrise when we noticed bound women in the wagons. They wore nice clothes, which told us they were either rich women or nobles, and were being carried into the foreigners’ ships.
“They’re nobles, ain’t they?” one of my mates had asked. “This can’t be good.”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” another had cried. “If we don’t do somethin’, we’re gonna get the blame!”
News spread through the fishermen, and our anger with the foreigners finally exploded.