She extended the little bundle of silk, a sachet inexpertly embroidered with lavender, calendula, and roses on the outside.
“For me?” Wen dangled the object between his fingers, scowling. “It smells.”
“It’s meant to smell nice,” she explained. He didn’t seem to like it very much. “It has lavender and ginger and other things. I thought…it all just smells like medicine here. But you don’t have to keep it if you don’t like it.”
“It’s fine. It’s mine,” he grunted, closing his fingers over it as she moved to take it back.
“You look terrible,” she said sympathetically. “Does it hurt very much?”
“Bit.” Even with his eyes half-closed, one corner of his mouth twitched. “You come about…His Grace?”
“Yes.” Ophele was too worried to lie. “He keeps skipping breakfast and coming home after supper and he won’t touch any of the food I save for him.”
“Aye.” Wen gave a huge sigh and winced. “Got my keys?”
“What keys?”
“Storehouse.”
“Oh.” Ophele glanced back at Leonin, who nodded.
“Auber has them.”
“Good. Room inside the storehouse,” he began, and explained his methods for protecting Remin’s food in slow, slurred sentence fragments, sometimes falling silent for so long that Ophele wondered whether he had fallen asleep or just passed out. It was dauntingly complicated. Wen was meticulous about every single stage of food preparation, from cleaning and sterilizing every surface and implement to cleaning and sterilizing the cook.
“Hair tied up. In a cap,” he said, with a snort that somehow indicated his own bald head. “Turn out all pockets, cuffs, sleeves. Make ’em wash their hands. And make ’em drink,” he said, glowering with his one visible eye. “Case they spit.”
“They…spit?” Ophele repeated, with dawning realization and then swift fury. “Spit…poison?Into Remin’s food?”
“Aye. Don’t take your eyes off ’em for one minute,” he said, and had to suck in a pained breath. “Not for…one second.”
“I won’t.” She had been angrier more often in the last few days than she had been the rest of her life, and she didn’t really know how to handle it, but it wasn’t Wen’s fault.Hehad done everything he could, and more. “I didn’t know how hard it was,” she said, reaching to squeeze his fingers firmly, though he had already sunk back into unconsciousness. “Thank you.”
Being angry didn’t help. And the slap of cold air as they went outside again cooled her a little, but she was still so furious she could hear a high-pitched singing in her ears, like the distantwhistle of a teakettle. Wen had done nothing to deserve this, and neither had Remin, and it was her rotten father who was doing this to them when all they wanted was to build Tresingale and take care of their people. How could she make himstop?
That problem was too big for her to tackle in an afternoon. Remin had been looking for silver linings for days, so she would try to make the best of this. If thishadto happen, then at least it was a chance to get him to try Azelma’s cooking.
On reaching the kitchen, however, Azelma was dubious about the prospect.
“I don’t know, my lady,” she said, as she chopped rapidly through a pile of carrots. “I expect His Grace will be even pickier now.”
Azelma had neatly moved into Wen’s position, but if the long-suffering kitchen boys had hoped for an improvement in their lot, they were swiftly disappointed. Azelma had been tyrannizing over kitchen staff for forty years. A snap of her fingers instantly produced one boy, who disappeared with the carrots.
“Well, I spoke with Wen,” Ophele began, laying out Wen’s measures for securing Remin’s food. “Auber said he has kept Wen’s keys all this time, so no one can have gotten into the storeroom. If we test all the food, and clean everything like he said…”
“I suppose it can’t hurt to try,” Azelma said doubtfully.
“When we bring it up to the house, we can test it with silver in front of him, and then everyone will taste it, that’s what he said they do in Segoile.” Ophele had memorized every word of the precautions. “Then he can be sure it’s safe. He promised he would come home for supper tonight.”
“Then we’ll see there’s a supper on the table,” the old lady promised. “But it won’t hurt my feelings if he doesn’t touch it, child. I can hardly blame him.”
“We will all watch, so we can be sure it’s safe,” Ophele replied, filled with determination as she headed to the storehouse, where every single ingredient would be tested before it went to the kitchen.
It was more nerve-wracking than she expected. Leonin and Davi insisted on doing the testing themselves, and even though sheknewthe room had been locked and they used the silver poison tester on the food, her stomach still gave an uncomfortable lurch as Davi dipped a finger into the flour, licked it, and made a face.
“Tastes like flour,” he shrugged.
But he didn’t drop dead over the course of the day, and three pairs of eyes watched Azelma through every moment of the preparations for a simple supper: mutton stew, parsnips, greens, and fresh white bread. Ophele even watched the sheep being slaughtered, which was just dreadful.
