Page 28 of The Discount Damsel

The pigeons went wild. Flapping, shitting, pecking, squawking curses in their own native pigeon language—the whole insufferable bit.

From the safety of the workroom below, Millie and Dirk heard the assault, the shouts, the thumping of boots as Bradley beat a hasty retreat to the attic hatch. The apprentice emerged a moment later, basket clutched to his chest.

Dirk flung a gust of wind at the pigeons who sought to dive through the hatch and drove them back. Bradley slid down the ladder as the magical wind shut the hatch behind him. A symphony of little sizzles and pops followed him as the environmental wards incinerated the downy feathers before they could land upon and soil the delicate instruments in the workroom.

Bradley smacked the cobwebs from his hair and scowled at the princess as if his recent trauma was entirely her fault. “Don’t get used to eggs for breakfast, Tula,” he signed.

“Maybe the pigeons just hate you.” Flicking her hair over her shoulder, Millie started for the trapdoor and the kitchen beyond.

Dirk snickered, until Bradley withered him with a look. The sorcerer apprentice still hadn’t forgiven the luck dragon for that stunt with the rice paper, and Dirk was still sour that Bradley didn’t support his dream of becoming a Great Red, or at least something Great Red adjacent. But in the face of hunger, the three-way truce Millie had constructed held.

All hurried for the kitchen where they proceeded to get in each other’s way setting the table, unloading the dish drainer, brewing tea, boiling the eggs, and other preparatory activities.

Millie hovered like a gnat the whole time Bradley cooked, peppering him with questions. “Why did you add baking soda to the beans? How long does one boil an egg to get that jammy yellow center? Why does the pita puff and make a pocket?”

While she would definitely be hiring a cook for her future pirate galleon, it was best to know these things in the interim.

Finally the apprentice caught her shoulders, spun her about, and shoved her towards the breakfast table. “Go over there and sit down. Or fold the napkins into swans. Whatever you princesses do. Just get out of my way.”

Honestly, he’d never met a more inquisitive princess in his entire life, and he couldn’t decide if the personality trait was preferable to aloofness. At least with the latter, she would never deign to speak to him unless it was entirely necessary, and thus leave him alone. Neither breakfast nor brunch had ever been so chatty an affair, and Bradley was already wishing it to be over before he’d even filled his stomach. Maybe when she started eating, she’d finally shut up.

Not soon enough, he thumped three bowls down onto the table: bean pottage seasoned with salt, garlic, spicy peppers, and ham bone served over rice with soft-boiled eggs, slivered spring onions, and pita.

He reached for the coffee pot, thanking every one of Caelus’s stars that Dirk had had the foresight to turn the coffee maker on.

Just as he was about to pour the life-giving brew into the Lip Cutter—the princess had once again claimed his mug for her own—he caught whiff of an imposter in the coffee pot. An indignant flick opened the percolator hatch to reveal a mass of wet weeds and a dried apricot—now plump and revived—clumped upon a filter.

Tea. That Major Inconvenience had made tea in his coffee maker. Hells of the deep, it would take all the cleaning vinegar he had left to get the taste out. And then what would he use to get the scuzz out of his tub after the princess made merry with his bath accessories again?

“Oops! I almost forgot about that.” Millie extracted the coffee pot from his white-knuckled grip and brought it over to the table. “Who’d like some tea? Master Dirk? Mr. Donmarin?”

“No,” he snarled. He thumped down onto the salt barrel that served as his stool. “Eat.”

“Hmm, not scones and marmalade.” Millie sniffed cautiously. “I suppose it might taste better than it looks. Or smells.”

The apprentice glared at her. Where he came from, if someone offered you food, you ate it and were happy about it.

Millie picked up her spoon and held it in both hands as she peered down at the glop of smoky bean pottage on its bed of steaming rice. Peasant fare.

She had grown up her whole life without the different components of her meal touching one another. Each had its own plate, saucer, bowl, or cup. Not because she had such a preference or a disorder, it was just the way things were done in the Amberly court. One-pot meal was a phrase entirely foreign to her, both in definition and in practice.

“Excuse me,” she ventured, “how does one eat this?”

Dirk didn’t look up from his bowl. “With your mouth, silly goose.”

Well, she most certainly wasn’t going to eat like the young dragon: claws clamped on either side of his bowl and distending a throat pouch like a pelican and just horking it down. Gone was the dainty sesame-cracker nibbler of yesterday.

Bradley rolled his eyes. “What? You don’t know how to eat breakfast without three forks and five spoons?”

He leaned over, plucked the spoon from her hands, and stabbed at all the eggs in her bowl until the yolks leaked into the little valleys of pottage. Then he tore off a wedge of pita, created a scoop, and swooped up a collection of yolk-laced beans and rice. Before Millie could stop him, he pinched her chin, opened her mouth, stuffed the morsel inside, and shut her jaw with a tap to the underside of her chin. “Chew.”

Dirk, who had looked up at the sound of Millie’s squeak, choked on a laugh. “Sorry, Millie. It’s good though, right?”

The princess chewed and swallowed her breakfast without looking at either of them. “Since apparently we eat this with our hands, I suppose this spoon will only be getting in the way now, won’t it? Best to remove it, yes?”

Mutineer Millie’s fist slammed down on the end of her spoon, effectively removing it from her bowl and simultaneously hurling a glob of beans right into the side of Bradley’s face.

“Oh dear!” Millie snatched up her napkin and wiped the breakfast from the apprentice’s face, or really smooshed it into his pores, hair, and left ear—it was hard to tell. “I guess I don’t know what to do with my hands if I’m not managing three forks and five spoons.”