She comforted herself with the possibility that the Woman Upstairs wouldn’t ask her again. Since Xulai hadn’t been able to do it in two tries, maybe the woman wouldn’t ask her again. She really hoped, really did, that the woman would forget about it. Head down, she trudged through the apple orchard toward the guardhouse at the stable gate. Once inside the walls, she turned right, past the stables, full of the sound and smell of horses, harness oil, and hay, then to the lower wall that enclosed the kitchen garden and across it to the wing of the castle that held kitchen and storerooms and laundry and stillroom and smokehouse and servants’ quarters and all suchlike inferior offices, which is what Crampocket Cullen, the steward of Woldsgard, called them. The cistern and two of the wells were at the far side of the kitchen garden beside the low wall that separated the garden from the poppleberry trees, and beyond the trees was the tall castle wall. Everything would be locked and guarded from sundown on, but just now the place was empty as a beer keg after the footmen had been at it. Everyone had had supper, and all the dinnertime mess had been cleaned up and everything put away. In Wold, days started and ended early.
She kicked dried leaves aside, following the cabbage path to the kitchen well and cistern. The little kitchen door she always used was well hidden behind a fat buttress that went halfway up the tower wall. Almost nobody knew about it, and nobody else ever used it. It was narrow and inconvenient and the door swelled shut whenever it rained and it was Xulai’s secret.
It had been dry lately, so the door opened easily. Inside, on the right, was the back of a cupboard. If one knew the trick, one could get into the cupboard and from there into the big kitchen. On the left, a narrow slit between the stones had a panel that slid sideways, letting her onto what she called the “sneaky staircase.” The stonemasons had built it into the wall when the castle was erected. The steps were narrow as the door, every one was a different height and shape, they were hard to climb and easy to trip over, and they went off in all directions: up and down, over and under, sometimes branching off to make side trips into unexpected places like the dungeons or the bird lofts or across the top of the armory. The staircase often provided Xulai a shorter though more difficult route to wherever she was going, and she rehearsed her excuses as she climbed: how frightened she was, how black the night, how terrible the darkness! All too quickly she was at the first landing, where a panel hidden behind a tapestry opened into the great hallway.
She pushed the panel soundlessly, just far enough to peep through the crack at the edge of the tapestry. One of the footmen, the mean one who always called her “dwarf” or “midget” or asked her if she’d been “shrunk in the wash,” was snuffing the dozen or so candles that had dripped themselves into stumps on the heavy, curly iron stand beside the door into the room occupied by the Woman Upstairs. He muttered as he worked, his remarks obviously directed at the other footman, the fatter, greasier, lazier one lolling in a gilded chair he had already worn half the gold off of. Rabbity little snores fluttered between his moist pink lips and his pleated neckpiece was all slobbery.
“Useless,” said the mean footman, dropping the last candle stub into his basket and replacing the dozen with a single thick candle that would burn all through the night. “If the duke saw you here, sleeping, he’d roast your fat haunches and feed you to the dogs!”
The sleeper showed no sign of having heard. The worker made no attempt to wake him. The one always talked; the other always slept. Behind them the door to the lady’s room stood slightly ajar as it always did, in case she spoke, or murmured, or moaned—much good would it do her—though she had made no sound at all for a very long time. The candle gatherer took his time at his job, using his dagger to pry the wax drippings from the intricate windings of the candle stand, catching them in the basket. The candle maker could use the unburned wax over and over again, and it was not right to waste the bee’s labor; so said the beekeeper.
The job took a while, and it was some time before the talker’s footsteps dwindled away down the hallway, allowing Xulai to slip out into the silent hallway and through the open door of the bedroom. The castle was built of gray stone: iron gray, ash gray, silver gray, variously mottled, flecked and striped, laid with no attempt at pattern but with a fine discrimination as to fit. The mortar joints were so thin as to be almost invisible, so that
