Dark Heart

by Tina Daniell

  “Well, you look a little worse for wear, m’lady. Lover’s quarrel was it? I likes ’em sassy, meself, but not too lippy. Now, what can I do for you?”

  The man hadn’t budged from the doorway. His considerable bulk filled the frame, blocking Kit’s view of the interior. The smells wafting out, while no comparison to Otik’s famous fare, were tempting enough to make Kit fight down the immediate revulsion she felt for this oaf and reply civilly.

  “I’m passing through your town and have lost my purse along the road. Is there some work I could do in return for a meal?”

  The man’s attitude toward Kit took on a more calculating edge. “Know your way around a kitchen, do you?”

  Kit, who had been hoping for some more physical chore, got a sinking sensation in her stomach, but hunger impelled her. “Yes, I can wash dishes, and in a pinch I can cook.”

  The man startled Kit by grabbing her arm and yanking her inside the door. “I do the cooking, m’lady, but if you can wait tables and wash dishes you can pitch in. The fellows who work here need all the help they can get. We don’t get many ladies helping out, cuz the ladies in this town don’t waste their time with kitchen work. They’ve turned their talents to more profitable ventures, if you know what I mean.”

  He threw his arm familiarly around Kit’s shoulders and steered her toward one corner of a long table in the middle of the messiest kitchen Kit had ever seen. Dirty dishes, pots, and pans covered every available space. A gigantic black iron cauldron filled with something or other bubbled away over the fireplace, splattering into the flames and onto the hearth. Spilled water, grease, and all manner of foodstuffs glinted on the floorboards under which ran a shallow crawlspace. Gaps between the boards allowed most of the spillage to run off below. And from the rustling she heard beneath her feet, Kit surmised that none of it was going to waste.

  “Piggott’s the name, as in ‘Piggott’s Hospitality.’ Hey, Mita, get the new girl some of that stew you’re burning,” Piggott yelled to a slightly built teenage boy skulking in the corner.

  He turned back to Kit. “Work the dinner shift, and we’ll see how it goes. One bowl now, all you can eat afterward. Them’s my rules. If you work out, we’ll see if I can think up anything else for you to do.” He leered at her meaningfully before heading toward the doorway that led into the public room and tavern.

  “What about my horse?” Kit called out after him. “She’s tied up in the back.”

  Piggott paused to glance over his shoulder at Kit. “If you want me to feed your horse too, then count on staying through breakfast tomorrow. I’m not running a charity. One way or another—” he winked lewdly at her “—you’ll have to pay for what you get.”

  Kit was too tired and hungry to shoot him the insult he deserved. She sank wearily onto a bench at the table. The boy named Mita brought her a bowl of some stew, setting it down in front of her. Kit spooned it up hungrily even though it was so hot it burned her tongue. It was tasty, though.

  Mita hovered at the edge of the table. He had yellow hair that bristled like cornstalks, a pockmarked face, and a pink slab of a tongue.

  “Well,” Kit said after several mouthfuls, “if you’re waiting for me to tell you how good this is, it’s decent enough, but could use more pepperoot. My father always said, when in doubt, add pepperoot. And Piggott is right. You’ve burned it.”

  Seemingly disappointed, the boy’s pink tongue disappeared, and he turned away silently. As he walked toward the hearth, Kit noticed that he limped slightly. For some reason, she was reminded of Raistlin and immediately warmed to the boy. It makes more sense to have him as an ally than an enemy in this place, Kit thought reasonably.

  “My name’s Kitiara,” she called after him, her tone more congenial. “You aren’t that clodhopper’s son are you? I hope not. I’d rather be his slave than his kin.”

  Mita turned and cracked a wan smile. He was almost as grubby as the kitchen surroundings, but his smile was sweet and genuine. “I get paid a little, and my meals. I stay in the barn.”

  “Tonight,” said Kit, returning his smile, “the barn’ll be my home, too.”

  She returned to her stew, and for the next several minutes gulped the rest of it down. Mita went out to tend to Cinnamon for her, and when he returned, Kit was already getting started, dumping dishes into an empty wooden tub.

  “Start filling this with water from the well out back,” she ordered. “Carry two buckets at a time if you can. We’ve got to get organized here.”

  Mita hesitated for a minute, as if deciding whether to challenge Kitiara’s assumed authority. He was about her age, maybe a year or two older, in fact.

  Just then the rumble of voices from the public room grew louder as people began arriving for supper. Mita shrugged his shoulders, picked up two buckets, and went out the door.

  Soon Piggott was yelling numbers through the door, and Kit and Mita were doing their best to keep up. There was only one dish served every night, always some variety of stew, and the numbers signified how many bowls needed to be dished up. It wasn’t long before Mita and Kit were filling up bowls whether they had time to clean one beforehand or not.

  “Don’t worry, nobody expects cleanliness-and-godliness when they eat at Piggott’s,” Mita advised Kit good-humoredly as he hurried in with a dirty bowl, wiped it with a dirtier towel that dangled from his waist, and spooned in a helping for the next customer. “Leastwise they don’t if they live around here. If they do mind, they’re probably just passing through and won’t be back anyway. This is the only place for miles around that serves hot food.”

  Dashing in and out of the kitchen, ferrying empty and filled bowls of stew, Kit hardly had time to look around the public room. A bar and counter stood at one end of the place, near the kitchen door, where Piggott filled drinks and took orders. Along the floorboards stood tight rows of colored bottles—a fixture in lowlife Krynn bars—and at eye level, cheap, framed watercolors of snowy mountain peaks and cascading waterfalls were hinged to the walls.

  The clientele consisted mostly of dwarves, plus a few grime-covered humans. Most were miners or loggers; some were from the road crew, which was obvious by their heavy-stitched clothing, backpacks, and belts of implements. The noise was shrill, and as she passed by the tables, Kitiara could make out only snatches of excitable conversation.

  “It’s a ploy, some kind of damn trick, if you ask me.…”

  “They say Sir Gwathmey’s son was himself killed.…”

  “I still don’t believe it, and I won’t believe it till I spit on the evidence.…”

  “You drink any more of that stuff tonight, and you’ll be asleep and wetting your own pants.…”

  “Are you going back to work …?”

  “What do you take me for, Aghar? I won’t be gulled.…”

  Kitiara pricked her ears as she moved easily among the grumbling customers, for nobody was paying much attention to her. And nobody was looking to tie a young woman into the crime—or hoax, some said—they were all steamed about, the hijacking of the road gang payroll. The road builders among them had already packed and made plans to head home.

  “Somebody made off with a fortune,” Mita said when the dinner rush was over and they had a chance to talk. “The dwarves think it’s all a stunt to deceive ’em into working for free a little longer. Dwarves are shifty and suspicious types,” he added knowingly, “and they don’t like to be made fools of.”

  “Anybody hurt?” asked Kitiara innocently. At least, she hoped the question sounded innocent.

  “Just a nobleman’s son,” shrugged Mita. “The robbers killed him but good. Made it look like a wild animal, though, which is one reason why the dwarves smell something funny. One thing’s for sure, dwarves don’t work on credit, and that road’s never gonna get built now.”

  “Won’t Piggott’s business suffer?” asked Kit.

  “Some,” conceded Mita. “At first. But seems there’s no end to dwarves and travelers. And if you want to get hot food
and strong drink and—” he lowered his voice a little apologetically “—female company in these parts, you’ve got to come to Stumptown.”

  Kit and Mita had served helpings of stew until the black iron cauldron was almost empty, at which point, Piggott had announced that the kitchen was closed. By that time, the crowd in the public room had already thinned out considerably.

  “Don’t get much of a crowd after dinner time,” Mita confided as he limped around the kitchen, stacking empty bowls to be cleaned. “Piggott waters his beer, and the place t’other side of town doesn’t.”

  “What place across town?” Kit asked. “I thought you said this was the only spot to get hot food?”

  “It is that,” said Mita, lowering his voice again. “The other one is, well, you know … what Piggott was talking about before. Women what sells themselves to men. Even dwarves, if they can pay.”

  Mita’s cheeks were flushed. Kit looked at him scornfully, not the least bit offended or embarrassed.

  Mita busied himself with banking the fire. Piggott, out in the public room, had fallen asleep. Only one or two customers remained, nursing their tankards. Piggott was sprawled on a table, snoring obscenely.

  “Never mind him,” said Mita to Kit, who stood at the door to the big room, observing the fat proprietor. “He has a tendency to wake up just as the last customer leaves, and then he usually locks up. We can go now. We got a dwarf, name of Paulus Trowbridge, who comes in most mornings to clean. He didn’t show up this morning, which is why the place was worse than usual. Come on, I’ll show you where to bed down.”

  Mita led Kit out back where there was a small, sturdy building, less than a barn but more than a shed. Cinnamon was stabled inside, and there was some extra room. The mare whinnied softly when she caught Kitiara’s scent. Clean hay was stacked against the wall, and Kit saw that Cinnamon had plenty of water, too. She was grateful to Mita for his thoughtfulness.

  “This is it. I sleep in that corner. I added some layers to the wall so it keeps the wind out better.” Mita rummaged around in the hay and pulled something out. “I see you have a blanket. Here’s an extra. It’s not much, but you’ll need them both to keep you warm.”

  Numb with fatigue, Kit took the worn blanket and added it to her own gratefully. She was too tired to care much where she lay down. She trudged over to the corner opposite Mita’s, plumped up some straw, and felt herself falling asleep even before her head hit the ground.

  Kitiara had climbed into a tree. From her hiding spot she watched, transfixed, as El-Navar in his panther form ripped open Beck Gwathmey’s body. Suddenly the sleek, black panther paused and looked up, directly at Kit. His gleaming diamond eyes invited her down, to partake.…

  She woke with a start, hay dust in her nose, Mita kneeling down and gently shaking her. “I let you sleep as long as I could, but Piggott’s going to be up soon, and if you’re gonna stay, then we have to get ready to serve breakfast,” he told her.

  Kitiara shook off the dream and, rubbing sleep from her eyes, slowly stretched. Peering through the doorway behind Mita, she saw by the quality of the light that it was barely past sunrise. She rose crankily and brushed the straw off her clothes.

  “Hurry!” Mita insisted, limping off toward the back door.

  Kit resolved to stay through breakfast at least. She had no money and no immediate plans. Piggott’s place seemed like a magnet for all kinds of road flotsam, and she might pick up some valuable information and new companions. She decided to try and work out some deal with the horrid man.

  Kit almost changed her mind when she entered the kitchen and experienced one of Piggott’s foul moods. He was cursing in several dialects, knocking over stacks of dishes, and kicking at the table. A young dwarf—young for a dwarf, that is—was trying to ignore the innkeeper’s temper while methodically stacking pots, pans, and dishes, well out of Piggott’s immediate reach.

  Piggott caught sight of Kit, seemed about to say something, then thought better of it. Instead, he huffed and puffed out into the back courtyard, where he could be heard screaming at the chickens.

  Mita slipped in the back door a moment later with an armful of wood for the fire. Kit went to help him.

  “What was that about?” she asked in a low voice as together they stoked the flames.

  “Road project’s officially shut down,” Mita whispered back. “Most of the dwarves have gone back to Thorbardin. Just like I predicted.”

  “Foreman had a mile-long bar tab, included him and his eight cousins,” the dwarf, who was scrubbing dishes, tossed over his shoulders. “Left in the middle of the night, conveniently neglecting to pay up. Name of Ignius Cinnabar. Real tinpot on the job. Drinks half a barrel in his one night off, and his cousins just as much—each.”

  The dwarf was wearing patched coveralls that absorbed the water and slop splashing onto him. He had long silver hair tied in a pony tail behind his neck. His eyes were light brown. If stubby and arrogant, he was quite handsome for a dwarf.

  “Sooner or later he’ll be back,” the dwarf said. “Ignius is honest; his faults lie elsewhere. He’ll pay his due, but maybe not for months. Meanwhile, Piggott can fume all he wants.”

  Kit looked at the dwarf, and Mita took the cue to introduce them.

  “This is Paulus Trowbridge. He’s been here longer than me, off and on, and I’ve been here for going on five years.”

  Kit heartily shook the dwarf’s hand. His grasp was more powerful than she expected and matched the strength that shone in his face.

  “I was over at Silverhole when they broke camp,” said Paulus by way of explanation. “They had been shorted, so they couldn’t pay any bills even if they cared to. But try telling that to Piggott. He thinks the whole world is out to cheat him. Especially—” he spat on the floor for emphasis “—dwarves.”

  He went back to cleaning and stacking dishes, but talked to Kitiara and Mita over his shoulder as he worked.

  “Did they catch the ones who did it?” asked Kitiara, as nonchalantly as she could manage, her heart beating fast.

  “Nah,” said Paulus, “and they won’t. They’re long gone from hereabout. And even the ones who know, who saw them and maybe can recognize them again, they’re gone too. The guards and the estatemen, they scattered but fast. They got to answer for their own failure, and the daughter what was gonna marry the young nobleman once the road was finished, she’s posted a big reward for all accomplices, dead or alive. They say she’s holed up in a tower somewhere, stark crazy with grief.”

  “Enough small talk!” snapped Piggott, who had come in the back door without them realizing it. He glared at Paulus. “You, get those dishes done and stop your dwarven chatter. Mita and Kitiara—if you’re planning on dining off my generosity this morning, get to your chores. The customers are already arriving.”

  Sure enough, there was the sound of clomping from the dining room, signifying the arrival of customers. Paulus showed an indifferent mask to Piggott’s hostility and turned to his work. Mita and Kit began to run around the room, preparing food and readying servings.

  Within minutes, things were better organized, in part because Kit was not shy about giving orders. “Paulus, don’t stack dishes so far away from the tub,” she told the dwarf. “Move them closer. And see if you can find a different tub for the pots and pans.”

  The young ponytailed dwarf did as he was told, eyeing her with faint amusement.

  “Mita, this is how you should beat biscuits.” Kit took the bowl away from the kitchen helper and gave an expert demonstration. “And make sure the oven is hot enough before you put them in, or it won’t matter if you mixed them right, they still won’t turn out.”

  This was the type of work that Kit detested, but her years of virtually running the Majere household had left her with more than a few organizational and culinary skills. Anyway, if she got things running right, there would be less actual work for her to do.

  Just then Piggott bustled into the kitchen, somewhat mollified by a goo
d turn-out of breakfast customers, but ready from habit to explode. His eyes showed his surprise. Kit pulled the fat proprietor aside.

  “After the rush, I’d like to talk to you about staying on here for a while and for a price.”

  Piggott, surveying the improved organization in his kitchen, nodded.

  Mita, overhearing the request, smiled to himself.

  Piggott agreed to pay Kit a small amount every week, in addition to room and board for herself and Cinnamon.

  Bringing some order to the chaotic kitchen proved well within Kit’s capabilities. Mita showed himself to be a willing and able apprentice cook. And Paulus Trowbridge, stoic about his chores, was a good worker. With a smile and a joke at Piggott’s expense, Kit could keep both kitchen helpers in good humor while prodding them to move faster.

  The money did not add up to much, but if Kit was going to be forced to return to Solace, at least she wouldn’t have to slink back, penniless. Laying in the barn at night after a tiring day, Kit often found herself thinking about her home, and more particularly, her twin brothers. She wondered how Raist was doing in the mage school and whether Caramon was watching over him well. She savored these weeks away, but she had almost made up her mind to go back.

  If Kit had had any idea where her father was, she would have gone there, or at least in that direction. During her first days at the inn, Kit found many excuses to go out into the dining room where she always looked over the crowd carefully, watching for a familiar face—Gregor’s, or even Ursa’s. There was never anyone she had seen nor met before. Now and then a grizzled warrior or roving Knight of Solamnia wandered into the place. Kitiara always contrived to wait on their tables. And if she could get a word in edgewise, she asked them if they had ever heard of a particular someone, the legendary mercenary, Gregor Uth Matar.