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Aymeric heard the door to his office creak open and someone slip inside before closing the heavy oak behind themself with a barely perceptible thunk. Sure footsteps quietly padded on the thick carpeting—his parliamentary office was more richly furnished than his office at the Congregation, though it was a third of the size—before whomever it was that his gauntlet of aides had let by sat in one of the plush chairs on the opposite side of his desk.
There were only three individuals in the whole of Ishgard allowed into the Lord Speaker’s office without even a warning knock, and two of them were supposed to be busy with new Temple Knight recruits today.
He smiled, still primarily focused on the proposed trade bill in front of him even with such a beloved distraction now in reach. “I will be with you in just a moment, Synnove,” he said.
His ladylove hummed in amused acknowledgment, and he heard the creak of leather as she crossed her legs and settled back into her chair.
After a few more notations made on the document to pass along to his aides, Aymeric set his pen aside and sat up straight from the ungainly slouch into which he had fallen while working, rolling his neck and shoulders to stretch out his stiff muscles. He rubbed his forehead, then drew his hand down his face; he had been at this since before dawn, with only short breaks for midmorning coffee and lunch. Setting his gaze on Synnove, however, he felt his weariness melt away and a familiar, fondly besotted smile grow upon his lips.
Synnove returned the look with a wide, delighted grin of her own, her emerald eyes gleaming with adoration and a not inconsiderable amount of mischief. Her dark brown hair was done up in the crown braids she favored whenever she did some sort of manual labor, from baking to repairing the roof, and the heavy leather vest over a white work shirt with the sleeves rolled up was a familiar sight whenever his lady was assisting in the Firmament. No carbuncles accompanied her at the moment, but she had a jar of some dark substance—syrup?—held balanced atop her knee, the pads of her fingers soundlessly tapping against the glass.
“To what do I owe the pleasure, my love?” said Aymeric, balancing his chin in his palm. “You look like the coeurl who’s gotten the cream.”
“I didn’t want to wait for you to get home tonight,” said Synnove, batting her eyelashes, and held up the jar. Her expression turned fully mischievous, her lips curving in a manner he most often saw on Galette’s face, and the twins’ when they emulated their elder sister. His lady continued, her tone taking a turn for the gleefully smug: “A student of mine completed her first lesson in cooking, and with flying colors. I’m rather keen to show off her success.”
He laughed softly, curious despite knowing that look of catlike satisfaction meant she had something up her sleeve. “Well, far be it from me to turn down the opportunity to taste test. Birch syrup, I presume?”
“How else to best test the patience and attention to detail of a would-be culinarian in the Ishgardian tradition?” Synnove drawled, leaning forward to perch on the edge of her seat, and set the jar down—on the edge of his desk closest to herself.
Aymeric smirked, raising his eyebrows at her. Synnove’s smug grin deepened.
He rose out of his own chair just enough to lean forward, reaching for the jar, when, almost faster than he could see, Synnove lunged towards him. She attacked him with fast, pecking kisses, the first on the apple of his cheek below his left eye, then the bridge of his nose, then the tip, his forehead, his right cheek, the corner of his mouth—
He returned her assault with his own, raining down a barrage of kisses, some hard and smacking, others the barest brush of lips against skin before it was on to the next target. At some point they both gave into deep, raucous laughter, the depths of their mirth forcing them to cease their kisses. Their skirmish finally ended with the pair of them leaning into one another, bent over the middle of the desk: Synnove’s arms around his shoulders, her face in his hair, and Aymeric’s face in her neck and his arms wrapped about her waist. The pair of them snickered and cackled like misbehaving schoolchildren as they attempted to catch their breaths.
Three loud, banging knocks came on his door, and the unamused voice of his chief of staff, Norlaise, rang through the wood: “You have a meeting with the Commons’ Speaker about the trade bill in twenty minutes! Behave!”
Aymeric raised his head and called out over Synnove’s shoulder, “I know, Norlaise!”
One final, crashing knock for emphasis, and stillness settled on the office.
“I wasn’t going to start anything,” Synnove finally muttered into his hair after a short pause. “We aren’t that bad.”
“Yes, Synnove, we are,” Aymeric said with a ruefully unrepentant grin, and kissed the hinge of her jaw while running a hand up and down her spine in luxurious strokes. “Now, share that birch syrup with me and whatever nefarious scheme is rattling around that magnificent mind of yours related to it.”
Synnove let out a grumbling sigh and nuzzled the crown of his head, before they both pulled away—his back twinged only a little as he straightened his spine—and exchanged a final chaste kiss. They retook their seats, with Aymeric picking up the syrup jar as he did, while Synnove pulled her chair closer so that she was able to rest her crossed arms on the desk. She propped her chin on her arms, watching him with a sharp gaze as he in turn held the jar up, examining its contents with a critical eye.
Birch syrup was a much more laborious process than producing its maple cousin, requiring roughly double the sap, a lower cooking temperature, and a longer evaporation time. Aymeric’s mother had been raised in the Eastern Highlands and a tradition of her family and that of the villages on their land had been producing birch syrup during the spring thaw. Lady Gwenaëlle had kept to the tradition even after coming to Ishgard to marry the Viscount de Borel, and Aymeric had been her attentive assistant as a small boy and adolescent when sugaring season was nigh, faithfully absorbing all that she had taught.
Which meant just as Synnove was a snob about the traditional foods she had learned to prepare from her Aunt Angharad, so, too, was Aymeric a snob about those culinary staples he had learned from his mama. Especially birch syrup.
The color on this batch was excellent: the deep, dark mahogany of a proper, long simmer. He tilted the jar back and forth slowly, catching the light from the windows, and raised his eyebrows as he did. It was important to filter the syrup to remove any fine particles or bits of crystallized sugar, and this jar was beautifully clear and free of anything discernible to the naked eye. Most first-time syrup makers could become impatient at this stage, with the end in sight; certainly, his first attempt had not been as wonderfully pure and smooth as what normally graced the Borel table.
But far more important than the appearance was the taste.
Aymeric unscrewed the lid with a deft twist of his wrist and set it aside. Next, he retrieved a clean spoon from the tea service tray haphazardly pushed to the side of his desk, and, conscious of Synnove green-eyed gaze upon him, dipped the utensil into the syrup to lightly coat it. He pulled it from the jar, and popped the bowl into his mouth.
Aymeric groaned softly, eyes falling shut.
Having grown up on birch syrup, he found maple to be cloyingly sweet. Maple’s unique flavor was still lovely, but he had to consume it in very small amounts, else the sugar would make his teeth ache and it would take three rounds of brushing before he was satisfied that he had cleaned it all away. Birch syrup was less overtly sweet, and more complex besides in a way that was difficult to describe: like caramel, or molasses, and almost spicy. His da had always called it ‘minerally,’ or even bittersweet, depending on the batch; Lucia had once said her first taste had reminded her of a balsamic.
This jar was just as good as anything Mama had made; the same depth of flavor exploding and then lingering on his tongue, the same smoothness of a syrup that had been exceptionally well cared for as it simmered and evaporated. No taste of scorching or feel of crystallization at all. And…was that a hint of wintergreen? He knew freshly snapped black birch twigs smelled strongly of wintergreen, but if the sap retained that property even after cooking down…
Aymeric slowly opened his eyes. “That,” he said, breathless, “is wonderful.”
Synnove’s grin was sly and devious as he dipped his spoon back into the jar for another taste. (It was his syrup now, thank you, he was allowed to ‘double dip,’ as Rereha would put it.) “I thought so, too,” she said. “So did Arvide and Hautdilong.”
He paused, spoon still in his mouth and mind going blank for a heartbeat. He blinked once, and stared at his lady.
His lady grinned wider.
Aymeric pulled the spoon free, rolling around the dollop of syrup in mouth on his tongue to savor it even as every warning flag he could think of went up in his mind about Synnove’s intentions. He swallowed at last and said, tone even through sheer force of will, “Ehll Tou made this batch?”
“She did indeed,” said Synnove, pride suffusing her as she sat upright. “We originally acquired the sap from Anna, but Ehll Tou took one sniff and decided she wanted to gather her own. She even knew of a copse of mixed birches not far from Anyx Trine she told us had always smelled delicious when she and her cousins played outside the tower. She near vibrated out of her scales waiting to gather enough sap after Arvide and I showed her how to tap the trees.”
“How long did that take?” said Aymeric, honestly curious, dipping his spoon once more for a third taste of dragon-made syrup.
Synnove tilted her head as she thought. “About…two days, give or take. It was a larger copse than we thought, and we tapped fifteen trees. Ehll Tou was so excited to begin that we had to convince her having access to a proper kitchen in Ishgard would make evaporating the sap less of a hassle than doing so in Tailfeather or over a campfire in Anyx Trine.”
He didn’t bother to hide his grin at that. The dragonet had endeared herself to many of his open-minded countrymen and women with her enthusiasm for learning and throwing herself headlong into every task she undertook. Still, that a Dravanian would be so enamored with the concept of cooking was an idea that would take getting used to, even as enchanting as it was.
“She insisted on doing everything herself,” his lady continued, leaning back in her chair and lacing her fingers across her stomach, “from building the fire in the stove to pouring the sap into the various pots we found for her. She kept the heat steady, she brushed down the sides of the pots regularly to keep any lingering syrup from burning, she transferred the reductions into various smaller pots, and she filtered the syrup three times before she was satisfied it was fit for sharing.”
Aymeric shook his head, fascinated and astonished and awed all at once. “Sewing her own scarf and hat, and making her own syrup, as perfect as anything produced by the finest chefs in Ishgard,” he said. “She’s truly a remarkable individual, and that persistence will serve her well in bridging the divide between man and dragon.”
There was a very peculiar, familiar gleam in Synnove’s eyes as she sat up, vibrating with excitement. She opened her mouth—
Aymeric pointed his spoon at her and said, in the strict tones of the Lord Commander, “We are still not adopting her.”
“Aymeric!” His ladylove’s voice was pure affronted whining.
“No.”
“But—”
He would not yield to the affectation of her huge, sad eyes (oh, Galette had inherited that expression honestly!), and if he let her make the argument at all, she would take the bit between her teeth and charge off with the idea so that he was caught up in her whirlwind. “She is her own person and clearly considered of age enough to travel on her own into the lands of men at her leisure and without censure from her elders, despite their apparent displeasure at her sharing men’s culture with her peers. Never mind Gullinbursti would likely take umbrage with someone, even a Warrior of Light, attempting to lay claim to one of his hatchlings!”
Synnove crossed her arms and slid down in her seat in a full-body sulk, a sullen pout on her face. “How dare you be logical,” she grumbled.
“On this matter, someone has to be,” said Aymeric, wry but fond.
Synnove sulked harder.