Mitchell Smith - Kingdom River

Also, his first day working, he'd responded in an unpleasant way to the teasing any new kitchener was bound to expect. He'd stared at them, and was so oddly silent – while the gutting knife worked on, worked faster, its greasy blade flashing through flesh – that the teasing stopped.

Lunchtime on his third day, Sewell had strolled past the serving trays for a suite of Tower rooms. Strolled so near that the meat cook, Mr. Harris – in conversation with a fat servant belonging to those rooms – had cursed him and waved him back to his work.

Hours later, after filleting a deep basketfull of fishes to rest in ice as dinner preparation, Sewell ambled by the trays again. One held sliced carrots, turnip crisps, and pickled mussels. Sewell hesitated there, saw the idiot scrubber watching him, and walked away. He went through the second kitchen and down the cellar corridor to the turning for barrel preserves, and the jakes.

The storage there, shadowy and damp, extended from the corridor on either side down long, narrow aisles, walled by high stacks of barrels with more barrels packed behind them. All smelling sour with tons of brined cabbage – Warm-times' 'sour kraut' – some of it five, six years old. Sewell had never had a taste for it.

Down each dark aisle, hacked cabbages and huge open barrels – some half-filled, some crusted with salt shipped up from the Gulf Entire – stood beside long, knife-scored work tables.

Sewell had come to the end of storage, had the door to the jakes in sight, when something very heavy draped itself across his back and shoulders. It staggered him, with surprise as much as anything, but Sewell was quick, had always been very quick and strong. He would have had his gutting knife out, except that two fat legs had wrapped themselves around him, so his arms were pinned to his sides.

The knotted cord that whipped around his neck was inevitable, though Sewell did everything that could and should be done. He tried to scream – just too late – so made only a soft croaking sound. He bent, and bucked into a somersault to smash the strangler to the stone floor. Then he got to his feet – a difficult thing to do – and drove backward with great strength into a side aisle and a work table's heavy, seasoned edge.

With luck, the oak might have broken the strangler's spine, but hadn't. Whoever, he was a sturdy man, and he'd shifted a little just in time. Even so, given only one good breath – only one – Sewell felt anything might be possible.

But no breath was given, and Sewell thrashed and staggered this way and that down the narrow aisle, kicked and arched his back, writhed to work his arms, his hands, free of those fat legs locked around him. It was difficult to do with no breathing… Soon it became impossible, and he knelt on the stone – that great weight still clinging, bearing on him. The cord buried deep in Sewell's neck seemed now made of diamonds, it sparkled so in his mind. He felt little things breaking in the back of his eyes from brightness.

He was lying down, face pressed to cool stone, and had no idea how that had happened, where the time had gone. He could feel a thing in his chest trembling. He was warm in the seat of his pants…

Ansel Carey, whistling a song his father had taught him, went up the aisle to the corridor, looked left and right, then came back to haul the corpse onto the work table, and go through its pockets. He found a gutting knife, another little blade hiding strapped to the right ankle, twenty-seven coins – copper, silver, and gold – and a tiny blown-glass bottle with a string-wound stopper. There was a thimbleful of ashy powder in it, that smelled like toasted almonds.

He tossed everything but the money into a brine barrel at the end of the work table, then slid the corpse that way. With grunts of effort, he doubled it over, lifted it… and stuffed it down into the big barrel butt first, so the feet and black, swollen face came together at the top, awash in pickling.

"Unappetizing," Master Carey said, fitted the oak lid down tight, then used a mallet to set the top hoop… While he labored – rolling the barrel to the back of the narrow aisle, then, with the aid of a plank as lever, hoisting it level by level, deep into the storage stacks – he decided the matter had been, after all, too slight to have mentioned beforehand, orders or not. And too squalid to report now, to a young Captain-General with more important matters on his mind.

"Sir, what is the matter with these fools? As you suggested, whenever I'm out of these damned rooms, I've been having 'casual' conversations with a number of civilians and middle-rank officials – and those older officers who'll speak to a woman soldier without smirking – and none seem very interested in the Kipchaks."

Sam saw a tired Margaret Mosten sitting across from him at their suite's great table – as she undoubtedly saw a weary Sam Monroe. "The matter, Margaret, is they simply don't believe the threat is great. This afternoon, Chamberlain Brady dismissed the Khan with a wave of his hand. These people are not convinced this war requires that they let some war-lord from nowhere – "

"A no-dot war-lord, sir." Lieutenant Darry, still eating at supper's end, paused in forking up a baked apple.

"That's right, Pedro. A no-dot war-lord."

The long table supported the remains of food brought up under covered silver salvers by four servants in the Queen's blood-red livery. Servants accompanied from the kitchens by an untrusting Master Carey… who'd then uncovered platters of salt ham, broccoli and fresh onions, a roasted duck, potatoes creamed to pudding in spotted-cattle milk, and spiced baked apples – tasting them at random while the food cooled, the meats congealed.

Now, supper over, Carey – who remained mysteriously fat, since he never sat to eat – was collecting Island's silverware. The Chief of Kitchens, a tyrant laired deep in Island's cellar warren, counted all returned silverware, even from the Queen's table.

"… But, do they think Toghrul Khan is just going to go away?"

"Margaret, except for some of the officers the Queen has just brought to Island, the Boxcars think he's basically only a more formidable tribesman. And they've dealt with tribesmen and tooth-filers many times."

"But they lost Map-Jefferson City!"

" 'A fluke,' is how the chamberlain described that. I got the impression he thought the Queen was making too much of it."

"The court tends to agree, sir." Darry poured himself more berry brandy. The lieutenant, though slender, seemed to have an extraordinary capacity – was always hungry, and never seemed drunk. "People I speak to, some of them officers of the better regiments, regard this war as… well, a career opportunity. Except for those like Stilwell or Brainard, who have estates to inherit."

"Fucking overdecorated roosters." Margaret made a face. It seemed to Sam she hadn't yet forgiven him for her boots, leathers, and mail, in a court where the women – and men – dressed like furred and velveted song-birds.

"Well, Captain, they're frivolous… and they aren't." Pedro twirled his silver goblet; those were counted in the kitchens, too. "Most of them have fought tribesmen. And if not, fought each other in duels. I feel… really, I feel quite at home. Though, of course, they are a little rough."

"A little rough?" Sam considered some brandy, then decided not.

"Well, sir, Jerry Brainard has killed a man who questioned his family recipe. A question of palms."

"Palms?" Margaret said.

"Yes, Captain. Palms. Girl's palms – of course hardly done at all, now. But the question was whether to cattle-butter them before broiling, or after."

"Lady Weather…"

"And which," Sam said, "did the Brainards favor?"