There had to be a way to get word from home. And to home! Her poor father must be frantic. Genevieve, of course, wouldn’t notice unless things started going wrong, but the twins would certainly miss her, if only because they would be missing out on more of the Guild festivals. Surely she could appeal to the better sensibilities of the staff at this point to pull together and —
She stopped, right there. Of course she could. The servants were probably just as upset about this as anyone; she had always treated them decently, and as if they were human beings and not automata without feelings and lives. She needed to get word back to them, not to chide them, but to reassure them.
Genevieve would have it spread all over the city before you could say gossip.
She realized that she had been standing there, lost in thought, while the armband waited.
“Do you have a name?” she asked it.
The armband did not bob. “I assume that means that you don’t,” she said to it. “Then is it all right if I give you one? It won’t be terribly original, I am afraid. I would like you to all wear different colored scarves or ribbons on your arms, and I will call you after the colors of those.”
The armband bobbed enthusiastically. “Very well, then, you are Verte,” she told it. The scarf was a very verdant green indeed. With luck, any other “green” servant would bear a different enough color that she could use Verdigris, Emerald, Lime and so forth.
“So, Verte, would you please take me to the kitchen?”
The scarf — Verte — bobbed slowly. She sensed reluctance. Oh, well, that didn’t change the fact that she couldn’t order menus without knowing what was on hand. The waste that had prevailed at breakfast was not the sort of thing she wanted to see continue, pleasant though it had been.
She took the precaution of taking a candle with her. It was going to be dark soon. She resolutely turned her mind away from what moonrise would bring. She really didn’t much want to think about it.
The trip followed the same path that Verte had followed to get to the cellar, which only made sense, but turned off before they got to the staircase. Whoever had built this place must have decided that the kitchen area could easily be a point of penetration, for they proceeded down yet another murder-corridor.
She wondered if these servants ever thought about that — or if they knew what the corridors were. At some point she was going to have to find a better way to communicate with them. This was very one-sided, and she was beginning to doubt the Duke’s assertion that they were not very bright.
Well, it seemed that the servants might be invisible, but they still needed light. Verte sped ahead to open the door at the end of the corridor, and a flood of light and the scent of baking bread spilled out of it. She walked into a kitchen that was just as commodious and well-ordered as the rest of the Manor had been.
It was also uncannily quiet.
It looked unnervingly as if the kitchen had been abandoned in midpreparations. That was just an illusion, of course; a spoon poised in midair over a bowl proved that the servants were still here. She cleared her throat.
“First, I would like to tell you that I very much enjoyed breakfast,” she said into the silence. “You are all very, very good. However… Oh, dear. I hate to call this a problem but — still, it is. There was far more food prepared than either of us could eat. I am told that the only other person here is the Gamekeeper, and I rather doubt he could have devoured the remainder by himself, not unless he is actually a Fire Elemental in disguise.”
The spoon slowly lowered into the bowl. Otherwise there was no other sign from the servants.
“Verte, are you and your fellows eating what remains when a meal is done?” she asked the servant still at her side.
The armband waved from side to side.
“So you are disposing of it?” Bobbing. “To the poor of the city?” Waving. “Merely throwing it on the midden?” Bobbing. She tried not to show how appalled she was.
She took on a firmer tone of voice. “That sort of waste must stop. Don’t worry. I am going to help you. I shall do what I have done at home — I shall write out menus for you, and you will follow them. Do not concern yourself with the Duke. He is a man, and in my experience, since I’ve fed my father’s workers when he’s given them a dinner as a thank-you, and when I have ordered dinners for my father’s guests, as long as the food is as good as I know you can make it, and there is enough of it, he really will not care what it is. Now…could the lot of you please put on some sort of armband, as Verte has? And stick a sprig of herb into it so I can tell you apart.”
There was a general…flurry and scuttle, was the best way she could describe it; when everything settled out, it appeared that there were a dozen servants here. Rosemary, Basil, Thyme, Mint, Parsley, Sage, Bay, Mustard, Lavender, Fennel, Lovage and Rue.
“Which of you is the chief cook?” she asked. Thyme stepped forward. Well, drifted. “I should like you to come to my room every morning for the menus,” she told it. It bobbed. “And now I should like to see your stores.”
She emerged from the storerooms, the pantries and cupboards with her head reeling. There was enough food here to supply an army under siege for a month. She supposed there was some sort of magic preserving it, otherwise she could not imagine how it all kept from rotting away.
Why would they keep so much on hand? Was it that they were still holding stores for the horde of human servants such a Manor would require? Or was it only that they were so isolated?
It appeared that virtually anything she wanted to order for menus, she could.
“What are you making now?” she asked Thyme, who displayed the lovely little dinner loaves she had smelled being taken out of the oven, and a finished meat pie of some sort. “I shall have a hot loaf, butter, a piece of that pie
