Chapter14
MAGS knew that if he hesitated, if he said or did anything, if he even gave a hint of what he was about to do, someone would try and stop him. Stupid, but there was always someone who thought that the unsalvageable could be saved. Right now he didn’t want the temptation to change his mind or the effort it would take to fight the well-meaning. So he shielded himself completely. Dallen was in no condition to pick his thoughts up, but others might.
Not that the Companions were likely to do anything about him. They would probably be only too happy to see the last of him.
He wasn’t going to leave more of a mess than he had already created, however. He would make it easy for the rest to erase him, his presence, his life from this place. So he set to work, putting all of his books and class supplies on the table, packing his personal possessions in a basket, then carefully folding all of the clothing he had been given and laying it on the bed until the only things left were the clothes he had arrived in. He didn’t feel bad about taking those; after all, they had been cast-offs in the first place.
He dressed in the ill-fitting, un-matching shirt and trews, pulled on the much-patched boots, and peeked around the door to ensure that the Companions were still drowsing. His preparations hadn’t taken long at all, the stable was dark, lit only by the two night-lanterns at either end. Making no noise, he slipped out of the stable before anyone, even the grooms that served this stable, was awake. He crept across the grounds as he had learned to creep and hide back at the mine when he was sneaking about looking for food. The sun wasn’t even up yet. He scuttled from bit of cover to bit of cover, and not even the dawn-rising gardeners saw him leave.
The Guards had a bad habit; they watched and challenged people trying to get into the Palace or the Collegia, but not the ones leaving. So once he reached the gates where the lowest of the servants came and went, he stopped skulking; he went through the gates and just walked off the property in the wake of a delivery cart, and they didn’t give him a second glance.
But now, dressed as shabbily as he was, he quickly had to move to the “back” of all those fancy manors and near-palaces that were up here. He needed to get off the main road where he would be conspicuous, and into the alleys and lanes behind them, where people like he was “belonged.”
The first thing was, he needed a job. If he was going to stay alive, at least until Dallen decided to repudiate him and find someone else, he needed to keep himself fed and sheltered. And... that wasn’t as hard at he had made it out to be when he and Bear and Lena talked about running off. If you didn’t care how well you lived, only that you stayed alive, there were plenty of things he could do. None of it was interesting or rewarding, but why would that matter now? All he cared about, really, was that it be hard enough work to keep him from thinking and let him fall into the same exhausted stupor he had when work at the mine was finished.
And certainly, there was plenty of potential for being abused and mistreated, but that didn’t matter in the least to him. Right now, he didn’t really care how well or badly treated he was. It came to him after a moment that he’d actually welcome being punished, since he certainly deserved it.
The way to find a job like that was to ask for it. While there were places down in Haven where those looking for work could be hired, more often than not, the sort of thing he was looking for came to a person that presented himself at the right time, and in the right manner. He was clean and neat, which argued for being reliable, and he was dressed perfectly for the sort of person that would be in the lowest ranks of the unskilled servants; exactly the right sort of “shabby.” No one would trust him with horses, for instance, not even in mucking out the stalls, but they’d be happy to offload all the dirtiest, nastiest kitchen jobs on someone like him. Scullery jobs, that was the thing, jobs that went, even at the Pieters’ mine, to people who were paid in little more than food and a place to sleep on the floor.
One by one he went down the line of manor houses. At each, he presented himself at the kitchen door, looking for work. In late afternoon, he found a place, as one of the pot-scrubbers. There was no one lower. Potscrubbers—who also scrubbed the kitchen floor when the day’s work was done, and hauled out the garbage— frequently deserted their posts, so someone was always looking for replacements. He didn’t have to look as if he was eager; stupidity was an asset in such a job. No one cared if his eyes were swollen and red with weeping; all they cared about was a sturdy body and just barely enough intelligence to do the work.
He tapped on the door—he didn’t even know whose house this was, only that it was moderately sized, and wasn’t Master Soren’s. A frazzled kitchen-maid answered it. Her apron was splashed and stained with whatever she had just been working on, and there was flour in her hair.
“Got work?” he asked, dully.
“Mebbe. Stay here,” she replied, and scuttled off. She came back with a broad man in a white shirt and enveloping apron.
The red-faced, balding cook eyed him, frowning. “One of our boys ran off. You gonna run off?”
“Nossir,” he mumbled, not looking at the cook, since that would be insolence.
“I ’spect hard work outa you. You don’t work, you get beat. You understand?”
“Yessir.” He looked at his feet.
“You get eats, and a bed at the fire. Twice a year, get a suit of clothes and three pennies. Understood?”
“Yessir.” He bobbed his head. “Thenkee sir.”
The cook shoved him inside the door, then to a place at a sink already full of hot water, soap, and pots. “Get to work.”
Evidently the staff here was considered large enough to keep two potboys busy; the other one was younger than Mags, but they were about the same size. And the size of the stack they were to clean was daunting. So, the household—or the cook—was frugal when it came to staffing. There was too much work for just two small boys, unless one of them was Mags, who threw himself into the job in a way that made the cook grunt with surprise and satisfaction.
This, at least, was one thing he could do right. With pumice stone and harsh soap, he attacked each pot as if it was his life. Unlike his life, he could clean this mess up. The cook was not stingy about hot water and soap, ordering them to change it whenever it got merely warm and not when it was as foul and cold as a sewer.
He did two pots for every one of the other boy’s, which made the other boy glower at him when the cook shouted abuse at him for not keeping up. Mags didn’t care. It wasn’t as if he was going to try and make friends ever again. So he kept his head down and his shoulders hunched over, and eventually the boy stopped bothering even to glare at him.
The other boy reminded him of the mine-kiddies, with his sullen looks and grunts instead of speaking— shoulders hunched much like Mags, and hair falling down over his face and into his eyes. But he didn’t look ill-fed, and there weren’t a lot of bruises on him. Maybe the cook beat him for assumed shirking, but it didn’t look as if people in this kitchen were beaten for no reason other than that the cook wanted to beat someone.
All afternoon they scrubbed the luncheon pots, which were snatched out of their hands as soon as they finished and pressed into service for dinner. Mags concentrated every bit of his mind on getting the pots so clean they were slick under his fingers. When the last of the pile was clean, he turned to look for more.
There weren’t any, and the other boy scuttled across the kitchen, a rapid sort of slinking walk that, again, was much as the mine-kiddies used to do. He sidled over to a table in an alcove, where the remains of the kitchen staff luncheon was. After a moment, Mags trudged over there too.
It appeared that the kitchen staff was fed on what the masters of the house left over, and right now, after everyone else had picked the remains over, what was left for him and the other boy looked like the aftermath of a plague of insects. Mostly what remained were odds and ends of bread, the crusts from pies, and some bits of vegetable. Some pickles. A little fruit. In terms of bulk, they wouldn’t go hungry. The other boy pounced on anything that looked like it had gravy or sauce on it, hunted for scraps of cheese or shreds of meat. He gathered his finds greedily to him, glaring at Mags.
Mags didn’t even bother picking things over, he just shoved whatever was nearest into his mouth, not even tasting it, just mechanically chewing and swallowing until his stomach told him he was full. Dully, he noted the other kitchen staff looked all right—not starved, and they didn’t cringe much. It looked as if he’d fallen into a situation where he was going to survive all right.
They weren’t given a moment of rest though, and no time for the sort of banter and gossip he’d seen in the Collegium kitchen—and others. They were working every moment, the head cook looming over them and lashing
