An intricate network of pipes and ducts populated the ceilings of the servants’ tunnels. Poured stone walls were marred in numerous places with hairline cracks, only some of which had been mortared closed. There was a sense of instability in these reaches, as if the whole subterranean floor could come down at any moment, taking much of the palace above with it, yet he had grown so accustomed to this advancing neglect he barely noticed, even as fresh water trickled down the wall just next to the open entrance to the kitchens, a sure sign a pipe somewhere nearby had sprung a leak. Or several. A weakened pipe was prone to them, and the problem rarely registered as in need of mending until a nobleman was left with a trickle of hot water to fill his basin.

  The kitchens were silent except for the dry whispers of copper wool grinding against metal, the occasional clank of a a new pot being dropped into an empty sink. The relative calm became a chilling omen when set against the usual banter and laughter he was accustomed to witnessing when he arrived in this reach. What professionalism the other, more elite departments were bound by did not exist here, where the rejected goods of the palace came to play.

  He peaked his head through a second door, which led from what passed for a break room into the kitchens proper, and found several men and women entirely too focused on their work, and pointedly avoiding each others’ eyes. Mistress Dina loomed heavy near the back, and just visible behind a metal shelf elevated over a matching counter by thumb-thick posts, he saw that Peter was arms deep in the sink, scrubbing at dishes profusely as a string of soft cusses issued from his mouth.

  He ducked back out again, but too late.

  “Don’t be a coward, kid.” Mistress Dina shouted. “Come on with ya.”

  Slowly, he passed the threshold, and traveled down a narrow lane which was populated on one side with refrigerated drawers, on the other with a variety of ranges and grills. He halted a few feet from the Mistress of the Kitchens, and bowed.

  The Mistress was a stout woman and uncommonly tall. Hard silver eyes, set into a pie plate face, danced with fire. A barely contained fury pulled plump cheeks apart around thin lips pressed tight together, and her nose—hooked and beak-like—was thrust upward, compressing the thick waddle at the base of her chin against her wide neck.

  “Well?” she said.

  “I just wanted to pop in and say hi.” He said, avoiding that blistering gaze. He glanced in Peter’s direction, then shifted his gaze to the floor tiles.

  “He’ll be a while.” She said.

  “O-okay.”

  “I look forward to seeing you for your stage tomorrow. Show up fifteen minutes to the hour. You are to be on the floor at six sharp. Any later and I won’t consider your interest in my department to be serious.”

  It isn’t. “Thank you for the opportunity.” He said. “Is it alright if I wait for him outside.”

  “Again, he will be a while.”

  “I take your point.” He said. “Sorry for inconveniencing you.”

  She sniffed at that. “It’s these assholes who’ve done that tonight. If you’re half as good as my sous, you’ll be better than all of them together.”

  Several heads ducked lower. The scrubbing picked up intensity.

  “You can go.” She said.

  He bowed again, and hurried away from her.

  Peter found him in the hall an hour later. He eased up next to him, slid down the wall and sat. The scowl he’d been wearing earlier was gone now. He looked tired, a little downtrodden, though generally okay.

  A scattering of dark moles and lighter freckles peppered his face and neck, and the cast of his eyes was a dark, deep green. His skin was the color of blood, a common feature among kitunes, and his nose was large and bulbous. Full lips were set wide and slightly upturned at the corners, so that when he was angered he looked quite as if he might kill someone and take joy in it.

  But now…now he had deflated, he was that disarmingly soft spoken boy Ariana had taken such a shine to some two years back now. His chef coat was a sopping wet nonobjective painting, a scattering of smudges and smears of various sauces and powders, and he smelled like mingled sweat and raw fish.

  The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

  “You want to talk about what happened there?” Lance asked.

  He hugged his knees to his chest, and buried his face between them. “Not really.”

  “How bad was it?”

  He hissed. “It started off okay. We were training someone new on the grill. Had him making steaks. Of course, you can’t prick them. Too much juice will leak out, so we test them with our fingers. Pretty simple stuff once you get the hang of it, and he was doing fine. But then we got busy, and he grabbed the wrong tray. Sent six well done orders to Mistress Dina. A courier took one of the plates when she wasn’t looking. I guess he was in a rush.

  “Well, it went to Lord Cree.”

  “Ouch.” Lance said.

  “He sent the courier back with a black eye and a few bruised ribs. Said he’d never tasted something so foul. The courier got an earful from Mistress Dina. So did the cook. Then midway through service, another cook burned the shit out of a demiglace we were supposed to be serving tomorrow. It was just black foam cemented to the bottom of the pot. That’s what set Mistress Dina off.

  “I cut the poor guy.”

  “You cut him?”

  He lifted his head, set an impatient look on Lance. “What was I supposed to do? He fucked up.”

  “So you stabbed him?” Lance said flatly.

  Peter guffawed. “Oh, no.” He made a warding gesture in front of him. “No, no. Nothing like that. I sent him back to the…do you really think I’d take a knife to someone over something like that?”

  “I’d hope not.”

  “Hell, I don’t have the balls to stab someone over much of anything. I’m useless in a fight.”

  He was smiling now, gaze distant as he pondered the absurdity of it. “No, if I did that I’d have half a dozen knives pointed at me before I got the tip in.” He laughed, a rich, warm sound.

  “Is she always like that?”

  “Just when someone fucks up. Even then, it takes a lot with her. Ariana is way more aggressive.”

  “Really now. I never would have guessed.”

  “So what about you?” Peter said, changing the subject. “You didn’t come all the way down here for nothing.”

  “I had my first stage today. In the Treasury. Got frisked by a Wraith twice.”

  “Yeah, they do that up there.”

  “You know some of those noblemen aren’t as wealthy as you’d think. Some of them aren’t wealthy at all.”

  “Oh?”

  “Lady Bethel’s currently delinquent on her account. Lady Jain’s got her shit together, but she isn’t pulling in much new revenue. And don’t get me started on Lady Therien.”

  “What’s Lady Therien got going on?”

  “Well, she’d be flat broke if not for her husband. He has a secret account that’s pretty flush. At least, if she knew about it, I suspect she would have drained it a long time ago.”

  “She’s cheating on him, anyway.”

  “How did you find that out?”

  Peter rolled his eyes. “You think the couriers don’t talk? We get a lot of them down here. They gossip worse than anyone.”

  Lance nodded. “She’s the head of their department. Of course.”

  “Yep.” He agreed. “So you liked it up there?”

  “Nope.”

  “They liked you?”

  “Not sure. I think so.”

  “Then you’re not going to take the offer even if they do make one.”

  “Nope.”

  Peter clapped him hard on the back. “I knew you weren’t a sellout. But hey! We’ve always got a place for you down here.”

  “Maybe.” Lance said. “We’ll see.”

  “What you’ve got your heart set on something else?”

  “Not exactly.” He said. “To be honest, I’m not sure any of the departments I’m supposed to stage in are a good fit for me. Accounting wasn’t, but who knows. Maybe its the kitchens. Maybe it’s the furnaces.”

  “Maybe the couriers?” he furrowed his brow.

  Lance chuckled. “What if it is?”

  Peter shrugged. “You know they run interference, right? When she wants some strange. She makes them.”

  Lance snorted. “Really?”

  “Really.”

  “Like…they distract her husband?”

  “That’s the rumor.”

  “You feeling any better?”

  Peter nodded. “Thanks for that. Now do you want to get out of this shit hole?”

  Lance rose, and helped him to his feet. “Where to?”

  “Well, I’m meeting up with Ariana soon. But if you want to come?”

  “No, you two have fun doing whatever you’re doing. I think I’m going to call it for today.”

  “Alright. Fair enough.”

  He walked him to the stairs, said his goodbyes.

  Lance watched him head off in the other direction. It didn’t take much figuring to conclude he was on his way to the Teacher’s Tower. Once the center for noble education, the tower had been abandoned with the end of Queen Tania’s reign, and was now primarily used for storage. But the servants had taken to using it for all kinds of other shenanigans over the intervening years. Before curfew, it was most often populated with couples who wanted a private moment. At night, when the nobility slept and the Wraiths were on the prowl, it was said there were lecherous parties up there. That the servants who could shadow walk came together with pilfered spoils from their various departments, and rebelled.

  He wondered how they managed to pull it off. If they did. The Wraiths commanded the shadows. They did not need to reveal themselves to see what transpired in any room in the palace. Everyone was under constant surveillance, so it followed that they knew about these alleged parties. They might even condone them.

  He marched up the stairs, made his way to the third floor of the Servant’s Tower and his bunk. It was time to unwind in truth, do some light reading perhaps. He was allowed few books, and none of them anything consequential. No histories, no grimoires, nothing a servant might use to learn anything worthwhile. But there were those books they were given for the study of literacy, so that they could read well enough to execute their duties, and those could be stimulating.

  The Legends of the Five was his favorite, and it was this tome that called to him now. He could think of nothing he wanted more than to spend his evening immersed in it.