Spoon Clerk: The Silence of the Spoons

1

Ashfang settles his chin on a fallen column, the way a host would lean on an elbow. "You brought a spoon," he says, delighted and appalled in equal measure. "I toasted this hall with the good silver for two centuries. Somewhere down the hill there is a cupboard missing you by an inch." He waits for you to laugh. You do not. His tail goes flat. "Tough room. Fine. That is the trouble with a diet, incidentally, no dinner and no applause either. State your business and be quick. Dusk is a fixed appointment, and I intend to keep it precise."

2

"The spoon," he says, "is noted. Twice, now. You have made it the whole speech." He shifts his weight on the fallen column, which groans, and considers you with the mild contempt of a host watching a guest eat the centrepiece before the toast. "Very well, Cutlery. Say something that is not about the spoon. You have until dusk, the same as I do, and I am spending mine productively."

3

"Let us review," Ashfang says, settling into the tone of a clerk reading a ledger. "One: you arrived. Achievement, arrival. Two: you showed me a spoon. Achievement, spoon. Three: you've now said—" he waits, gets nothing, and his patience audibly thins. "Nothing. Three is nothing." He counts on his claws, one, two, three, then folds them. "So on your side of the table sits a spoon and a silence. Mine has a village on it. I am winning the evening, Cutlery, and I don't even enjoy winning. That is the diet talking, incidentally — no dinner, no applause, no sport. In the old days a guest who bored me at least had the decency to be tender." He lowers his head until the column creaks under his jaw. "Dusk does not move. Neither do I.

4

"Let us review your career in this room," Ashfang says. "Three turns, one spoon, no laughs, and a talent for standing exactly where the rain lands. A village sent me that, and called it a delegation." He settles lower, chin on the table's broken edge. "But you spoke. Barely. So — proposal or forfeit, Cutlery. Name your terms and I will tell you which parts of them are real."

5

"Terms," Ashfang repeats, savouring it. "You stood in the rain for four turns holding a spoon and now you have terms. You are the most confident nothing I have ever hosted. I once ate the reeve's nephew's boots on the way out, and I still think better of him." He lifts his head off the table's edge. "So. Properly: what are you trading me, for what, and what happens if you're lying? I warn you, I ate goat this spring on a very similar promise and I am still cross about it."

6

"Let me get this straight," Ashfang says, sweeping his head to an empty patch of floor as if to an audience. "Five turns. And you spent them all standing in the rain rehearsing." He works his jaw, milking it. "That is your village's finest hour, then. A delegation of one: a reeve's nephew's understudy, holding a spoon, delivering nothing, on a schedule." He lowers his head until it is level with yours. The column behind him has not moved. "Fine, Cutlery. One sentence left in the evening. Make it a sentence I can refuse, so I can leave."

7

Ashfang waits for your final sentence. You manage a half-hearted, "Please reconsider." He sighs, stretches, and stands, the ruined hall shaking with the movement. "I have reconsidered. I am reconsidering how I let a spoon and a silence waste my afternoon. The village is overdue, and you are underwhelming. I will collect my debt in fire. You may watch, or run. Either way, you are not invited to dinner." He leaves you in the ruins as the sky reddens and the first smoke rises from the valley.