by M K Hutchins
Come midday, one of them chopped a carrot into such uneven pieces that the littlest ones boiled to mush before the larger ones became tender. I gritted my teeth and scrubbed harder, despite the protesting ache in my arms.
“I know you’re strong-of-arm and all, but don’t break the crocks,” Osem teased. “Still nervous about the ghost?”
The nearest apprentice glared at Osem. “Don’t say things like that!”
“Like what?” one of the others asked.
The apprentice with a square jaw and thick hands gave the rest of them a hard look. The other apprentices shivered or flinched and skittered back to their work. They didn’t look at each other after that.
“What—” I began, but Osem shook her head and mouthed, later.
We finished scrubbing crocks as the sun faded to a streak of egg-yolk orange on the horizon. The apprentices had long since retired.
“Too bad the baths are closed,” Osem said, drying her hands on her skirt.
By now, dirt coated me like a second skin. At least the kitchen looked lovely—gleaming granite counters, polished redwood cupboards, well-swept hearths. It would be a mess again tomorrow. Or tonight, if we had a visitor. “Once the sun sets... will the ghost...?”
“It’ll rattle the door, but given that all the crocks are clean and there’s not much to smell in here, it’ll give up soon. The Hungry Ghost will glean scraps from the city tonight.”
“It goes into Askan-Wod?” The thought of that monster running past children’s windows turned my stomach.
Osem shrugged. “I watched it go over the palace wall, once. Sometimes, on my half-day off, I’ve heard people complain about upturned slop troughs, but they always blame raccoons. You’re not scared of the ghost, are you?”
With those crinkles around her eyes, I couldn’t tell if she was teasing or not. “Of course I am! It doesn’t belong in our world. It’s dead. It should be exorcised.”
“That’s not happening.”
I sat on one of the granite counters, marrow aching from my ankles to the base of my spine. “You said you’d tell me why the apprentices are all afraid.”
“It’s not because of the ghost. I told you how they asked Hawak to exorcize it?”
I nodded. I hadn’t studied much about Hungry Ghosts with Father—we were too busy tending the living—but exorcisms weren’t supposed to be an easy process. “And then the King told Hawak to stop, because the food got worse.”
Osem sat next to me, feet dangling. Her face looked old in the dying light and the humor faded from her voice. “The apprentices all testified to King Alder about the ghost. This was in winter, when the sun set earlier, so they were around to see it. But His Majesty said the ghost wasn’t real.”
I didn’t understand the heaviness in her words. She stared at me, mournful eyes waiting for a reaction.
“And then what happened?”
“Oh, Dami. The king said there was no ghost. That meant all the apprentices lied to him. The Purple-Blue Council agreed. Don’t you know what happens when you lie to the king?”
My heart stopped, as sure as if a butcher had grabbed it. I was lying to the Royal House right now—I knew the punishment all too well.
“They all hanged from the city wall. The apprentices Hawak has now? They arrived ten weeks ago.”
I didn’t sleep well that night. The apprentices hadn’t lied. They hadn’t tried to deceive. The King could have given them a lesser punishment. A fine. A whipping. A dismissal.
His Majesty apparently did not believe in leniency. A cold, hard fear of being discovered lodged in the back of my throat.
Osem had continued, explaining that all the current apprentices were third or fourth sons—the only people desperate enough to fill the kitchen posts in the wake of the executions. Each of them was perceptive-of-taste-and-smell, but they’d either studied under poor tutors or none at all.
It made me wonder how Dami was doing—Dami, who’d had no training, before joining the army.
It was pure misery after that to watch the apprentices fail. If I were Plum instead of Dami, I could help them. It was too easy to imagine some badly-prepared meal sending all twelve of them over the walls.
But I couldn’t risk it.
Over the next three days, every time we went to the woodpile, I picked up two more logs than Osem. My arms burned. They felt like wet noodles whenever I let them rest for a moment. But I couldn’t be anything less than Dami, strong-of-arm. I told myself to ignore the cooking, but my soul wouldn’t listen.
I ought to be chopping asparagus, washing crinkly kale, salting slippery duck hearts, and creating art from them. I didn’t know if I was lovesick, or homesick, or mourning twelve dead men I’d never met, but all my meals tasted wrong because bile filled my throat.
My fourth day in the kitchens, Hawak waved us away after a simple lunch of buckwheat branches. “Go. Enjoy your half-day off.”
I needed no further urging. Neither did Osem. We left the newly-dirtied crocks and stepped out into the midday sun. The lawn looked brighter, the rhododendrons pinker, the azaleas whiter.
“Where,” I asked, “are the baths?” Dried sweat clung to me like a glove.
“Half of me wants to tease you and not tell.”
I frowned.
Osem laughed. “But the other half longs to sleep in a fresh-smelling room. Too bad Lady Egal didn’t send you to the baths, then to Hawak.”
We passed a number of gardens on the way. I’d seen the wild one with spruce trees and ferns uncounted times while fetching wood, but most were new to me. Some boasted fountains, others held rambling paths, while more still were nothing but rugs of wildflowers and the butterflies they attracted. My heart wilted. Dami would have loved this—all this nature packed together, ready for exploring.
The bathhouse itself sat in the middle of a hedge garden—Osem said the leftover bath water drained to the plants. I followed her up the steps. Inside, high windows let in light and the perfume of orchids. The flowers had to be over the hedge; I didn’t see them on the way in. Glorious blue tiles lined the floor of the single, large tub. A half-dozen women sat in the water, chatting, hair floating around them. Stools and buckets lined one wall, shelves of baskets the wall opposite.
Osem strolled toward the buckets. “These are for scrubbing up beforehand. Afterwards we can soak.”
I glanced around. I wasn’t used to being naked in front of others. “This... this is exclusively a women’s bath, right?”
Osem laughed. She tossed her clothes to the floor, plunked down on a stool, and scrubbed from the head down with a piece of pumice she grabbed from a bucket.
Well, I couldn’t stay filthy for the rest of my life. I slipped out of my gray dress and folded it on the floor. I grabbed a bucket, found the pumice, and scrubbed with my back to everyone else. I dumped a water-filled bucket over my head to rinse off the dirt, then slid into the clean bath.
Which, of course, was clear. My floating hair did little to cover me.
“You’re from a small town, aren’t you?” Osem asked, joining me. “No baths?”
“Me and my sister used a stretch of the river.” We always hiked far downstream of the village. More than one young man had tried to spy on Dami.
Oddly, Osem’s expression saddened, her laughing eyebrows turning down. “That must be nice. Having a sister. What’s she like?”
I should have kept my mouth shut. “She’s...” Did I describe Dami, or myself? “She’s dedicated. To her profession. She works hard.”
“Ah. No time for you, eh?”
“What? No, I...” Hadn’t I always made time for Dami? Watched out for her?
If we kept at this conversation, I’d trip over my own lies. I changed the subject. “You don’t have any sisters, then?”
Osem shrugged and fell silent. The water rippled softly around us; the other women kept chatting. Something about what birthgift Blue Lady Sulat, the king’s sister, would try for her child. She wasn’t due for a few m
onths.
The silence between Osem and me stretched.
I had failing manners—just like Lady Egal accused me of. I couldn’t keep up a conversation with my only friend in the palace.
A woman entered with a hamper and gathered up the clothes we’d discarded. Was she supposed to do that? I glanced at Osem.
“She’s a servant of the Royal Household, too. Don’t you see the gray dress?”
I’d thought gray dresses were popular, not a uniform.
“We’re servants, but we’re royal servants, Dami. Someone washes our clothes. Someone cares for the gardens. Someone,” she winked at me, “even scrubs our dishes.”
The laundress left, hamper on her hip.
“Lady Egal usually starts new servants off in the drudgery jobs, then moves them up to errand runners or personal servants.”
Usually. I wasn’t quite rude enough to ask Osem how long she’d been here. Long enough to witness the apprentices hanging—or had she learned about it later?
Osem got out, wrapped herself in a towel, and walked to the shelves full of baskets on the far wall. “The yellow-ranked width are over here, green over there,” she pointed. “Take a spare. We can’t come back until our next half-day off.”
How would I survive the palace without Osem to instruct me? I pulled on a dress and grabbed an extra.
Osem then showed me the last of the baskets. Each held different-colored skirts. “The patterns and colors on these all indicate different positions... but we’re dish-scrubbers.” She grinned. “So we get plain ones. You’ll be dismissed for dressing outside your place.”
My eyes lingered over the colors—everything from scarlet to green to amber—decorated with a variety of patterns and animals. Osem picked up one the same color as our dresses. “Here, hold your arms up and I’ll tie it on.”
I couldn’t help but think of Dami and our usual morning routine as I did so. When Osem finished, my dress draped neatly over my waistband.
I did the same for her. Osem looked so comfortable in that uniform, so at home.
“Thank you,” I said. “For all your help.” I hoped she knew I meant more than tying my skirt.
Osem wasn’t one to gloat over others’ gratitude. “Now I wish we could throw your mattress out, but we’re not due for new cuttings until late next month. Want a tour of the gardens?”
“I’d love that!”
We strolled through a flower garden first, then past four servants rolling balls down a long, manicured spring-ball court. The red team was losing badly.
“We’re all allowed to use these gardens?” I asked.
Osem nodded. “The King’s garden around his Royal Bear House are walled-in and private, but here, officials send a servant ahead to clear us out if they want to be alone.”
Dami loved spring-ball. She’d always challenge the boys in Clamsriver, then play both the front and back tosses herself. I never understood the satisfaction she got from beating them—repeatedly. If a young man was confident and suave, she laughed all the harder when he trudged home moping.
“Is this a garden for women only? I haven’t seen any men.” It seemed odd—spring-ball at its most traditional played couple against couple.
“The palace servants are mostly women. Guards and soldiers aren’t exactly getting much time off with a war on.”
“Oh.” Of course. I felt stupid for asking. I wished I knew which division Dami ended up in. Was she still training? Had she reached the field? Was she safe? I had no way to know. “I hope the war ends soon.”
“I don’t.”
I stared at Osem.
She shook her head at me. “We’re losing, Dami. If it ends now, well, there won’t be a Rowak anymore. Askan-Wod would become a large city in Shoreed’s realm. Shoreed started this over a simple land dispute, but they’ve already claimed that, and more. They’re not going to stop until we’re gone.”
Despite the birdsong and the pink rhododendrons, I felt chill. I’d thought of our victory in terms of when, not if. My nation, my home, couldn’t simply cease to exist.
“Speaking of men...” Osem nodded down the gravel path.
Nisaat, the gate servant who escorted me to Lady Egal’s that first day, walked toward us along with a tall, broad-shouldered young man in a black military uniform with yellow-ranked sleeves. His hair swept low on his forehead, just above his eyes.
“Ah, Dami!” Nisaat smiled. She wore the same emerald green skirt with the bleached eagle, over a gray dress identical to Osem’s. “I was afraid you’d left the palace for your half-day off.”
The young man looked a little like Nisaat—same straight nose, same strong cheekbones. But his eyes were warmer and darker. Even when he bowed, he didn’t stop staring at me. I couldn’t tell if he was terrified or in awe of me, or how I’d earned such attention. He kept his left arm tucked behind his back—hiding what?
“No. I’m here.” Though my face was growing warm. Who was this? Nisaat should have started with introductions.
“Going for a tour around the palace grounds?” Nisaat asked.
I pulled myself away from the gaze of the young man to glance at her. “Yes. Osem was taking me around.”
“Ah! As it happens, I need Osem for a sudden, important task! Thankfully my cousin Bane here is an expert on the palace layout. Bane, Dami. Dami, Bane. Now you’re introduced!” Nisaat hooked her elbow around Osem’s and hurried down the path with her in tow. Osem flicked a glance at me and Bane, giggled, and let Nisaat pull her away.
“Nisaat!” Bane called after her, horrified. “You said—”
But the two of them were gone, with no signs of coming back.
How could Osem abandon me? The air was too thick and hot to breathe, with just the two of us staring at each other on an otherwise empty gravel path.
“I’m... I’m sorry,” Bane fumbled. Even embarrassed, his baritone voice resonated. “Nisaat suggested we join you and Osem. I had no idea she’d...”
He glanced over his shoulder at them. As he did, I saw his left arm properly for the first time. It was amputated—empty from the elbow down. No wonder he wasn’t on the front lines.
Recipes ran through my head—for swelling, for scabbing, for the injured soul. How recently had he lost his arm? The scars seemed well-healed, no longer pink, but I couldn’t see them well at this angle.
“I won’t hold you accountable for Nisaat’s behavior.”
“That’s a relief.” He managed a lopsided smile. “If you’d rather head back to the kitchens, I can direct you.”
Into a kitchen where I wouldn’t be able to make anything to ease his pain.
“Or... “ He hesitated. “Would you like to continue with a tour?”
A pang ran through my chest. I didn’t want his kindness. I wanted to make him a stew. Bane couldn’t be older than twenty—so young to lose a limb.
He caught me staring at his arm. I flushed and glanced away down the path.
Despite my rudeness, he spoke gently. “I assure you, a missing hand won’t compromise my ability to show you the palace grounds.”
He wasn’t asking for my pity. But that couldn’t stop my soul from feeling it. “I was thinking about parsnips,” I mumbled at the gravel.
“Parsnips?”
“The top half is good for treating amputations.” The entire parsnip targeted the whole arm. Full-grown kale would work almost as well, but mature kale was hard to come by this early in spring, outside the palace greenhouses. “I’d caramelize them to bring out their sweetness and give you endurance.”
He tilted his head to the side and peered at me. “You’ve learned a lot, scrubbing crocks. You must be very observant.”
I bit my lip. Idiot, idiot! Of course I shouldn’t know about cooking. “It’s... well... Hawak is always lecturing his apprentices, and he’s quite loud.”
“In truth, I’ve eaten so many parsnips, I’m sick of them.” He gave me a sad smile. “Here. The kitchens are this way.”
“Oh, I...
” I tucked a stray hair behind my ears. “I really would like a tour today. If, that is, you’re still willing. I didn’t mean to... give offense.”
To stare and make an idiot of myself, I meant. I was used to analyzing injuries, not being polite about them.
He frowned. “Are you sure?”
“I’d be delighted if you’d do me the honor,” I gushed.
Bane still seemed uncertain, but he gave me a handsome bow. “In that case, I’m at your disposal.”
Bane walked a respectful two feet away from me, adjusting his longer gait to my stride. He brought me to a plum orchard first—a dozen trees with sculpted benches under them. The wind picked up and the tiny, white blossoms swirled through the air like snow.
Panic twisted deep in my throat. Was he mocking me? Did he know my real name?
But Bane’s face remained calm. “Come autumn, the blue- and green-ranked officials like to sit on the benches here and enjoy plums. Servants and soldiers are forbidden to eat them, of course, but I like plum trees best in spring, anyway.”
“They’re lovely.” Tiny flowers, destined to become sweet, purple jewels. “Every year, as a girl, I used to dance through plum blossoms.”
Nana took me. She’d hold my hands and twirl through the petals with me. She was my guardian, friend, and playmate while Mother and Father worked.
Nana, I hope you’re safe. Safe and fed.
I could picture all too clearly what Nana might look like, transformed into a Hungry Ghost.
“You sound sad,” Bane said. “Is it not a good memory?”
I hesitated, but he smelled like juniper and smoke, a scent with brightness and depth, and somehow the words tumbled out of my mouth. “It’s a memory of my nana. She passed, during the winter.”
Dami would come with us, too, though she’d rather climb trees than spin under them and gaze up through the branches. Nana always chased her, muttering words I wasn’t supposed to repeat.
“Oh. I’m... sorry,” he fumbled.