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The kitchen is at the front of the ship, directly opposite our cabins and one deck lower. There’s an undercurrent of smoked fish and sour ale in the air as we approach, but above all that is the sweet warm scent of something baking. When we step through the doorway, I discover the “kitchen” to be not much more than a set of ovens built into one wall, and a wide stove set into the other. No windows, so the space is overly warm, and sweat finds my brow almost immediately. Pots and pans and utensils are hung everywhere there’s room, including over the tables and benches bolted to the floor.
A middle-aged woman is pulling a pan full of tiny loaves out of one of the ovens, a stern expression on her face. A young girl sits nearby, chopping root vegetables at one of the tables. She can’t be more than seven years old, but she wields the knife with the precision of a surgeon. When her eyes fall on me and my guard, the knife goes still for a moment, but then she returns to her task without saying a word. A tiny line forms between her eyebrows, the shadow of a frown on her lips.
Splendid. I don’t know what I’ve done to aggravate achild, but somehow I’ve accomplished it.
The woman sets the pan on a flour-speckled counter in front of her, then bobs a half-hearted curtsy. “Your Highness.” She swipes at a sweat-damp forehead and barely glances at me. “Looking for some breakfast, I assume?”
She sounds annoyed, too, and I frown.
No one talks to me like this in Kandala. I’m not offended, not really, but it rattles my foundation. I don’t know how to move forward. They can’tallbe angry that I’m not fawning all over their captain. We might need Moonflower, but he’s the one who came touslooking for steel.
“Yes, in fact.” I pause, wondering how soon Rocco will be awake and ready to eat. “For my guards as well.”
“I cleaned up from breakfast two hours ago. I’m on to lunch now.”
“Lunch, then.”
“It’ll be ready in an hour.” She pulls eggs from a cabinet and begins cracking them into a bowl. The little girl scowls at me and chops her vegetables with renewed vigor.
“Are you truly angry that I did not arrive on time for breakfast?”
“Angry?” She laughs, but there’s no humor to it. More like she can’t imagine my audacity. “I have six extra people to feed. I’mbusy.” She starts whisking the eggs briskly.
I try to imagine Harristan being treated this way. I can’t even fathom it.
Then again, I can’t see my brother downing shots of brandy at three in the morning because he’d been spurned by a girl. Harristan would have been on time for breakfast.
I could seek the captain and complain, and he’d probably makeher prepare me breakfast, but that wouldn’t endear me to anyone on the crew. It doesn’t seem like a good idea to alienate the cook. I’m also certain he’d have a quip that would make me feel inadequate. No, thank you.
“What’s your name?” I ask the woman.
“Dabriel,” she says. She nods at the girl. “This here is Anya. She doesn’t like strangers.”
She saysstrangersas if we boarded the ship like pirates. The girl glances at me with shadowed eyes but says nothing. Her hands are swiftly slicing through the vegetables, but I see a dozen scars lining her tiny forearms. Straight, clean lines that had to come from a blade.
“Your daughter?” I say.
“Not mine. Gwyn’s.”
Gwyn’s.So this girl is Lieutenant Tagas’s daughter, the one Rocco said we could use as leverage. For a moment, I’m struck by the brutal practicality of his suggestion. I thought he meant a younger member of the crew. I hadn’t realized he meant achild.
As King’s Justice, I’ve been forced to do a lot of terrible things, but I’ve never harmed a child. I’m sure there are rumors of me boiling children alive, but truly, I don’t have much interaction with children in any way at all. Some of it is due to my vicious reputation, and some is due to my brother’s cool aloofness, but either way, children rarely grace our halls.
It was very different in the Wilds, when I could lose myself in the persona of Weston Lark. I knew dozens of families. Easily a hundred children.
I helped dig graves for some of them, when the medicine wasn’t enough.
Maybe Anya can sense my sudden disquiet, because the girllooks up, her dark eyes evaluating me. I shouldn’t be kind, in case Rocco’s warnings come to pass, but regret has already started eating at my gut.
“Are those for lunch?” I say to her.
She hesitates, then shakes her head.
Then the vegetables she’s chopping are obviously for dinner, but I say, “Ah, so you must be preparing a meal for the fish, then. You throw them overboard? Get the fish nice and fat?”
She looks at me like she can’t decide if I’m crazy or stupid. Dabriel glances over, and it’s clear she probably thinks I’m both.
Anya shakes her head again.
