Chapter 119: A Pinch of Subterfuge (Patreon)

The corridor ran straight for forty paces, its walls grown from pale heartwood and polished by centuries of palms. Seluna kept her shoulder to the left side, where the lamps sat farther apart and the fungus in the sconces gave off less light. Sylrena's apron strings brushed her elbow with each step. The shadow spell lay over them both, thin at the edges, and Seluna fed it a thread of mana every time a sconce came near.

Boots sounded ahead. A guard rounded the far arch with his spear sloped on his shoulder and a half-eaten pear in his other hand.

Seluna stopped. Sylrena stopped a heartbeat later and trod on her heel.

The guard walked toward them, chewing. Ten paces. Six. He slowed, and his head turned. He looked straight at the patch of dark where they stood, so close that Seluna could see a pear seed stuck to his lower lip. She stopped breathing. Her braid had swung forward when she stopped, and one moonstone bead hung outside the shadow's edge, catching the lamplight.

He frowned at the wall. Then he shrugged, took another bite, and walked past. His sleeve missed Sylrena's nose by a finger's width.

They waited until his steps faded around the corner behind them. Seluna tucked the bead back under her collar.

"That was close," she whispered.

"Closer than I'd like." Sylrena tugged at the maid's cap pinned over her copper hair, which kept slipping toward one ear. "Why are we still under this? I thought the dresses were the whole point."

"Most maids aren't allowed in this wing." Seluna started forward again, keeping to the wall. "The guards know which ones are."

"Of course they do." Sylrena sighed through her nose. "How much longer do we have to skulk about?"

"Not much. Just around the bend."

The bend came after a stretch of carved panels showing the first planting of the great tree. Seluna had traced those carvings with her finger as a child, and she touched the third one now without looking. Past it, the corridor opened onto a wider gallery lit by tall windows and the morning light of both suns. She leaned out, checked both ways, then checked the balcony above. Nobody.

She let the spell go. The shadows drained off them and soaked into the floorboards.

"Act natural," she said.

"I have never worn an apron in my life."

"Then act like someone who has."

They walked down the middle of the gallery at a maid's pace, hands folded in front. Seluna counted the guards as they passed. The first stood at the stair and did not turn his head. The second nodded to them, and Sylrena nodded back too deeply. The third was polishing a buckle and ignored them entirely. The dining chamber doors stood at the far end, tall and carved with crescent moons, and two more guards flanked them.

A voice cut across the gallery. "You two."

Seluna's stomach dropped. A tall elf in grey was coming out of a side passage with a ledger under her arm and a ring of keys at her belt. Her hair was pinned back so tight that it pulled at her temples.

Seluna swallowed and fixed her eyes on the floorboards. She leaned toward Sylrena. "That's Maelis. She knows me."

"Knows you how well?"

"She's been head of this household for ninety years."

Maelis stopped in front of them and looked them over, from the slipping cap down to the shoes. Seluna kept her head bowed and her braid tucked in.

"What are you doing in this wing?" Maelis tapped the ledger against her hip. "The kitchen is short three pairs of hands this morning, and I find two of you wandering the gallery."

"Forgive us." Sylrena dropped into a curtsy that wobbled at the bottom. "We've only just started here. We must have taken a wrong turn."

"Just started." Maelis opened the ledger and ran a finger down a column. "This is the first I've heard of anyone being hired." She snapped it shut. "No matter. Follow me to the kitchen. I'll be having words with Caelrin about why he didn't consult me first."

She turned on her heel and set off down the side passage, keys jingling.

Seluna lifted her eyes. Sylrena was already looking at her, eyebrows high. Behind them, the dining chamber doors stood shut at the end of the gallery, guarded and close.

Seluna nodded toward the passage. Sylrena pressed her lips together and straightened her cap.

*

The kitchen was loud before they reached it. Copper clanged, a cleaver hit a board in steady strokes, and the smell of browning butter and bruised thyme came down the passage to meet them.

Maelis walked straight through the steam to a long worktable where a lean elf stood with his sleeves shoved to the elbow. "Rhamsai. I found these two wandering the gallery. They say they're new. I brought them to help." She did not wait for an answer. Her keys jingled out through the door and were gone.

The chef looked up from a bowl of eggs he was whisking. He had pale gold hair tied back under a cloth and a scar across one knuckle, and he pointed his whisk at them, counting.

"Perfect. Mithrin's ill, Sousariel's burnt her hand, and I have a dessert to finish for the Queen, and the breakfast is barely cleared." He wiped his fingers on his apron. "You." The whisk settled on Seluna. "Do you know anything about cooking?"

Seluna kept her chin low and her voice plain. "A bit or two."

"A bit or two." He sniffed. "You call me Chef. Not sir, not master. Chef. We'll see about your bit or two." The whisk swung. "And you?"

"Not really," Sylrena said.

He closed his eyes and breathed out through his teeth. "Dishes. The basin by the back door, and when you finish, carry whatever anyone tells you to carry. Go."

Sylrena went, tugging her cap straight. Seluna was handed a board, a knife and a basket of pears.

"Bruinoth," said the chef. "Small as a grain of barley. Show me."

Seluna blinked at the board. "What is that?"

He sighed through his nose, as though she had asked him what water was. "A cut. Strips first, then across, until you have tiny even cubes. Nothing larger than a grain of barley."

"Ah." She turned the pear over in her fingers. "I've got it."

She had never held a kitchen knife in her life, but she had spent decades as a Ranger, and her hands knew a blade. The first pear fell into neat squares. The chef stopped behind her and watched three more.

"Hm. Not terrible." He moved on. Seluna's ears warmed and she bent to the next one.

By the end of the first half hour she had stirred a honey reduction, shelled a bowl of river nuts, and been shouted at twice. "Too thick, girl, it's a syrup, not a mortar!" And later, when she lifted the pan an instant before the sugar caught: "Now that, that is instinct. Do that again." The third time, she tempered a custard from memory of a taste she could not place, and he tasted it from the spoon and said nothing. "Who taught you?"

"Nobody. I just watched."

"Watch more."

She laughed once into her sleeve. Steam stuck her hair to her neck, a cut on her thumb stung, and a line cook slid past with a tray muttering behind. She was having a wonderful time.

Across the room Sylrena was elbow-deep in the basin, sleeves soaked to the shoulder. She had stacked the plates in towers by size, and when a boy shoved a crate of apples at her, she hauled it to the pantry without being told where. A passing cook glanced at the tower and grunted approval.

"Decent," the chef said to no one, passing it. Sylrena looked up with soap on her chin, and frowned at him, waiting for the catch.

The sun crept along the high windows. Small dishes lined up along the pass, and the chef moved down them, tilting plates, flicking a crumb away, swearing at a smear. At the end he stopped and wiped his hands.

"Right. That's the Queen's table." He pointed at a covered silver tray, a basket of warm sweet rolls and a jug of cream. "A third maid is coming with the wine. You two, with her. Do not drop anything. Do not speak unless spoken to. Do not look at anyone."

Seluna's stomach turned over. The doors of the dining chamber stood just beyond the passage.

A round-faced elf girl hurried up with a tray of glasses and nodded to them. "I'm Pellwen. Follow me."

Sylrena lifted the basket and met Seluna's eyes. Seluna took the silver tray in both hands, warm through the cloth, and followed Pellwen toward the gallery.

*

Pellwen walked fast and talked faster. She had the glasses balanced on one palm and gestured with the other, and the glasses never so much as chimed.

"Did Maelis find you at the gate or in the gallery? She found me in the gallery, and I'd only gone for a ribbon. What are your names? Where are you from? You don't have the accent from the lower branches."

"Selene," Seluna said. The name was out before she had weighed it. "Selene Ashgrove. From the, ah, the eastern roots."

"Sylrena," said Sylrena, a step behind. Seluna glanced at her. Sylrena stared at the passage ahead, jaw set. She had not needed to give a name at all, and she had given the real one.

"The eastern roots! I've never been. Is it true they keep goats down there?"

"Dozens," Seluna said. "My uncle bred them. One of them ate a ranger's quiver once, arrows and all, and he had to follow it for three days to get them back."

"Three days!"

"It was a very fast goat."

"It was one arrow," Sylrena said. "And a quiver strap."

"A very important arrow." Seluna shifted the tray against her hip. The silver was warm through the cloth, and the pears she had cut sat under it in their glaze. "Then I worked for a perfumer in the high market. I could name forty flowers by smell."

"That's lovely," Pellwen breathed.

"She worked for a perfumer for one week," Sylrena said, "and was dismissed for sampling the stock."

Pellwen laughed so hard the glasses finally rattled. Seluna bit the inside of her cheek and kept walking. The gallery opened ahead, with the tall dining doors at its end and two guards flanking them.

The doors swung inward before they arrived. Cassius Draconis came through them at a stride, his robes gathered in one fist and his face red as boiled ham. Pellwen stepped aside half a pace too late. His shoulder caught her arm, and the wine bottle on her tray tipped, struck the floor and burst. Red ran down his hem, his sleeve and the front of his silks.

"I'm so sorry, my lord, I didn't—"

"Filthy little bark-gnawer!" He flung the words down at her. "Watch where you plant your feet." He shook a dripping cuff, spat something harsh in his own tongue, and stormed down the gallery with his shoes squelching.

Pellwen stood looking at the glass on the floor.

"Humans," Sylrena said quietly. "They really are unpleasant."

"To be honest," Seluna said, "Lune seemed much more cultured."

"Oh no." Pellwen looked at her tray. Only two glasses had survived, and no bottle. "The bottle. I have to fetch another, the Queen's wine, I'll be right back. Wait here. Please." She was already running, her skirts gathered up, her shoes slapping away down the passage.

Seluna and Sylrena looked at one another. The guards at the door had not moved, but their eyes followed the departing maid and the red puddle.

"Now," Sylrena murmured.

Seluna lifted her chin. Sylrena took the handle of the trolley by the wall, and they rolled it forward past the guards, who glanced at the caps and aprons and the warm bread and looked away. The doors closed behind them without a sound.

Gaearien sat at the head of the long table with her hair unbound over one shoulder. Across from her sat Lune, one elbow on the cloth, speaking low. The Queen's head was inclined, and a line creased between her brows.

Sylrena leaned toward Seluna's ear. "We have to warn the Queen."

"She's right there."

"That's exactly why," Sylrena whispered.

Seluna drew a breath, settled the tray on the trolley, and nodded. Together they pushed it toward the table.