Chapter 4: Please

On the ninth day it snowed on the high peaks, so Riko decided to make pork soup.

She cut boar belly into thin slices, and she cut radish, burdock and carrot into thick rounds.

Daigo sat beside her on a stool, sorting dried mushrooms and looking sad.

"He ate the rice balls again this morning," he said. "Three."

"He sat on that stool for a quarter of an hour after, with the plate empty."

"Good," said Riko.

"You do not understand. He never sat."

"Then I'm doing something right."

"You are," Daigo said. "You are doing a great deal right. I only worry that you will run, like the others."

Riko put down her knife.

"Why would I run?"

"The speech," said the steward.

"It frightens everyone. The village sent four cooks after Teruko's knees gave out."

"They heard it once and never came back."

"The dinner speech?"

"Yes." Daigo sighed.

"He practices it in the mirror, you know. He hates saying it."

"And he has never so much as bitten a rabbit, so I do not know why he insists."

He heard what he had said a moment too late.

His good eye went round.

"Ah," said Daigo.

Riko wiped her hands on her apron very slowly.

"Say that again."

"I should be sweeping."

"Daigo."

"He has never eaten anyone," the steward said miserably.

"Not once in three hundred years. He cannot even finish a rabbit stew without looking ill."

Riko did not say anything.

She walked out of the kitchen with the soup half made.

She climbed three flights of cold stone stairs, and she did not knock.

Kagiro was standing at a tall window in a bare room at the top of the keep, looking at the snow.

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