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“No,” you muttered out the side of your mouth as you leaned back in your chair, “You’re right. We’re doing the same thing, wouldn’t be fair if we weren’t.” You watched the waiter disappear into the back. “How long d’ they usually take for this?”
“Not long at all. Such is the benefit of raw fish, Miss Nowicki,” Karel said, “You don’t have to wait for the iron to get hot.”
He was right, and you barely had time to ask about the fish that were silently observing you, with their gormless gazes staring blankly in the same way merc recruits looked whenever they were told to clean their gear or do laundry, or that they smelled and had to take a shower. Soon enough, your attention was called back by the sound of swinging doors and approaching galoshes, the waiter approaching swiftly with two dishes on a tray balanced on one arm.
Mano set a saucer on a plate in front of each of you, a wooden deep-scooped spoon tucked onto the white lower dish. The dishware wasn’t as fancy as you might have thought- it wouldn’t have been out of place at the Von Tracht house. The stuff was laid in a pile in the saucer, a hill of slightly pinkish white lumps barely coming up to the edge, limp as overdone porridge. The only color was a pair of citrus slices placed on one peak of mush.
“This guts?” You asked, “Or boogers?”
“I’ll tell you once you try it,” Van Halm gestured at you with his spoon, “It isn’t poison, I’ll say that much.” He gave you a coy glance with a tilt of his head as he tapped his utensil on his saucer. “<span class="mu-i">Bon Appetit, Chatte Errant</span>?”
Emrean talk garnered nothing but a glance upwards, then straight back down to the milt, which you toyed with, poked with a finger- damp and chilled. You put some of the soggy lumps on a spoon and sniffed it. Smelled just slightly like fish, which told you nothing about it you didn’t already know. It didn’t <span class="mu-i">seem</span> that gross compared to organ meat, that you weren’t put off by. What was there left to do but pop it in your mouth?
So you did. It was soft, subtly salty slightly sweet, and perplexing, and then it was gooey and slimy, invading every cranny of your mouth with a rush of what felt like raw egg running about.
“You know caviar, I presume. Roe.” Van Halm explained to you as you wrinkled your nose, more put off by the texture than the taste, which wasn’t <span class="mu-i">bad</span> at all. You actually had dipped the spoon down for another bite without thinking about it. “Milt is the mirror of that. Being blunt, it is the sperm sacks of a fish.”
…
“There’s an old wives’ tale from Valsten about crescent cod milt,” Karel spoke with a whimsical air, “If you don’t cook them before eating, they say, you’ll become pregnant with a mermaid.”
>Spit it out. Fucking gross.
>Swallow. It’s food, isn’t it?
>Spit it in Van Halm’s face.
>Other?
