Foundation

Meanwhile, Mags was listening.

Most of the gossip was ordinary kitchen chatter. A maid sent to fetch food and drink had got a glimpse of someone being in a gentleman’s chamber who shouldn’t have been there, since she had a husband of her own. The kitchen knew who was quarreling with whom in the Court, and how the alliances were shifting. They knew who was going to have a child, often before the lady herself did. They knew what young men the daughters were seeing, often when the parents were unaware.

And within the kitchen there was plenty of gossip, too. There was always someone romancing someone else in the kitchen staff, and plenty of jibes about that.

Most of it was harmless. Wasn’t so-and-so the handsomest young lord you ever had seen? And Lady thus- and-such was angling to marry off her daughter to the highest bidder, so to speak, and the poor thing only had eyes for that nice young fellow up from the country with whom she would never be allowed to keep company.

Mags let all the gossip flow around him, although he very quickly realized that this was going to be very useful stuff to the King’s Own. That made him feel rather cheerful.

Finally a serving maid came rushing in, all a-flutter, and not in the sort of way that anyone would connect with “being interfered with,” which was kitchen code for a maid who’d been taken advantage of. “Oh!” she exclaimed, as her entrance caused a stir. “If you had just seen what I’ve seen!”

One of the cooks looked at her indulgently. “Na, missy, if ye’d seen as many things as we hev, ye’d think twice afore ye said that.”

But when Mags angled himself so that he could get a good look at the girl he saw that she was white as paper—and so, at that moment, did the cook. “Mercy!” the woman exclaimed. “Girl, ye look fear-struck!”

“And I should be!” The cook pushed a stool toward her and she sat right down on it, groping after a mug of water that was shoved into her hands. “’Tis them terrible furriners, the bodyguards! They’re haunted!”

Mags started, almost dropping the pot he was scrubbing.

“Haunted! Never!” By this time the head cook, an enormous man, had taken notice, and reacted to the statement with scorn. “There’s never been a spirit in this Palace, and there never will be! The Companions and Heralds keep us safe from such unholy things, and even if they didn’t, the Bards could sing it away!”

“I tell you, I seen it! With me own two eyes!” Normally a girl like this maid would have been overawed by the big man, but whatever she had seen had frightened her too much for her to be in awe of anyone. She stared at him with passionate, if terrified, defiance. “I did! And they seen it, too! They’re as scared as I was! I swear it! That’s why they been looking so seedy!”

“Start from the beginning, girl,” the undercook urged.

Hands shaking, clutching the mug, the girl ducked her head. “It begun like this. You know. They never eat with staff—get us to bring them their dinner special, so they eat before their masters, an’ then go and stand guard behind the chairs during Court dinner.”

“Aye, we know that,” the first cook agreed, as the head cook sniffed his contempt.

“Think they’re too good for the likes of us,” growled the pastry cook. “Think they’re highborn themselves.”

:Actually they are probably testing their food for poison before they eat it, and they would need to eat before their masters do.: Dallen sounded as if his excuse for their behavior made him embarrassed. Mags didn’t have the heart to be as rude about it as he would have liked. Dallen always did see both sides of a situation. And, more and more, so did Mags.

“So I brought ’em their dinner on the cart, like I always do,” the girl continued. “But yesterday and the day before they’ve been—different—when I came. Nervous, I would have said, except I’ve never seen them nervous. And today they were even jumpier. Every time there was a squeak or a rattle, they jumped and looked for what might have caused it. I pushed the cart into the room, just like always. And that was when it happened!”

Her hands were shaking so much that the water sloshed out of her mug and all down the front of her gown.

“What happened?” the cook asked, dabbing at her uniform gown with a napkin. The girl was so shaken she didn’t even notice.

“The ax! There was an ax in the room, on the wall in the room! And all of a sudden it just leaped off the wall, and flipped over three times, and split that dress-helm the tallest one likes to wear because he’s going bald!” She shuddered. “It didn’t just fall! It just about flew! Like someone was throwing it!”

Some of the kitchen staff looked apprehensive, and there was some murmuring back and forth. The maid spoke right over the top of them.

“I saw it and they saw it and they just went white! And the sly one pushed me out of the room and shut the door, which was a good thing, because I couldn’t possibly have moved otherwise! And I ran here.” She wasn’t as close to hysteria as she had been, but Mags had no doubt that she was very near some sort of breakdown.

So did the head cook, who snorted again. He, at least, was not at all impressed. Then again, he must have been serving here for—

:Almost thirty years that I know of.:

“I’ve seen things move around here many a time, girl. A Herald with the Fetching Gift can move things just by thinking about it.” The head cook shook his head. “You’ve got no call to go bringing ghosts into it, when there’s a perfectly reasonable explanation. Like as not, it’s one of the Trainees, pulling pranks. They aren’t supposed to do that sort of thing, but boys will be boys, and those mercenaries are a hateful lot. I couldn’t fault the boys for making ’em sweat.”

“But a Herald has to see what he’s moving, right?” the maid demanded. “He can’t just decide to move things without knowing what they are and where they are, right?”

“Ah ...” She had caught him off guard, it seemed. He would like to pretend he was an expert in such matters.