Once Broken Faith (October Daye #10)(125)

“Wow,” said Cassandra, voice pitched low. “Is it always like that?”

“Oh, this was mild,” I said. “They’re kitchen staff. They don’t expect to have to deal with me on a daily basis, and so they don’t really have a script to follow. Watch me try to talk to the guards if you want a laugh. They’re so busy bowing that they don’t hear half of what I say.”

“Putting the fun back in feudalism.”

“Something like that.” I looked at the rest of the kitchen. The shelves were well-stocked; preservation spells meant pastries and pies could be baked days before they were needed. Roast meat could be frozen at the perfect level of doneness and kept that way indefinitely. “What did you want to eat?”

“I don’t know,” said Cassandra. “I really would be happy with a sandwich.”

“Got it,” I said. “Be right back.”

My childhood raids on the kitchen had been hasty things, Nolan giggling at my side while Marianne watched tolerantly from the door, ready to sound the alarm if it looked like we were going to be caught. Mostly they’d been focused on cookies and cakes, the sort of easily-snatched sweets that defined a child’s world. That had still necessitated a certain understanding of where things were kept. Since the knowe had been sealed for a century, it wasn’t like the place had been remodeled.

I found a dish of sliced beef and carried it back to the table, dropping it in front of her. “Hang on,” I said, while she was still blinking in bewilderment at the massive amount of meat. My second pass garnered bread, cheese, mustard, and something purple and spicy-smelling that I suspected of being beetroot ketchup. Fae cooking can get odd sometimes.

I spread the rest of my pilfered wares in front of her with a deadpan, “Ta-da.”

“I’m not going to eat all this,” said Cassandra.

“I wouldn’t expect you to.” I settled across from her. The thought of eating made me feel sick. The slowly-growing ache in my temples told me I didn’t actually have a choice. Food is one of the only things that helps combat magic-burn. Food, and rest, and if Walther needed me, I was going to be there for him. Rest wasn’t going to be an option for me until my brother was awake.

Slowly, I began assembling a sandwich, starting with a healthy smear of the beetroot ketchup. Fortune favors the bold.

“I am coming here for lunch from now on,” said Cassandra, shaking off her shock and starting to put her own sandwich together. She was a healthy eater, judging by the amount of meat she piled on her bread. “If this is how your pantry is always stocked, I may move in.”

“We’d be happy to have you, as long as you didn’t mind being put to work,” I said. Cheese went onto the beetroot; meat went onto the cheese. It was an automatic process, but it made me feel better. Human or fae, queen or commoner, a sandwich went together in the same order. “I’m so understaffed that I keep wishing there were a temp agency that served noble households.”

“I don’t know that there’s anything I could do here.”

“You might be surprised. Most of these jobs, no one actually knows how they’re done. They just sort of happen. Half the households around here have conflated their Seneschal and their Chamberlain, which is great if you can get away with it, but when you’re talking about a knowe as big as this one . . . it’s not gonna work forever.”

Cassandra raised an eyebrow. “Because the difference is . . . ?”

“Seneschal runs the non-household side of the knowe. My schedule, organizing balls, keeping our records accurate, updating the local Library whenever we have a chance so the record never falls out of true, all that fun bullshit. The Chamberlain runs the household. Kitchen, cleaning staff, laundry. The positions are frequently combined at the County level and below. Ducal houses can go either way. Royal houses? You need both. There’s too much for one person to do.”

“So if I ever need a job, you’ll have a place for me.”

“Exactly.” I took a bite of my sandwich. The beetroot wasn’t bad. Strange, but not bad. Swallowing, I asked, “How did you and Walther meet?”

Cassandra raised her eyebrow again. “Small talk now?”

“I’m trying to distract myself. Humor me. It’s this or I pace back and forth in front of my brother’s room until I wear a hole in the carpet, and I don’t think that would be good for anyone.”

“Right,” she said. “Well, we met on campus. I’m not in any of his classes, but we tend to be in the same buildings. We’re both disguised as humans, of course, so it’s possible I would have missed him entirely if not for his grad student, Jack.”

“What did the grad student do?”

“He’s a friend of one of the girls from my study group. Apparently, Aunt Birdie came by while Jack was on campus, and Jack thought she was dating Walther—as if. I mean, he’s sweet and funny and cute and everything, but he’s not her type.”

“Too academic?”

“Insufficiently Tybalt.” Cassandra smirked. “She’s had a thing for kitty since she came back from the pond. Maybe not instantly, but I’d say within six months of her return. She’d come over on Friday night to have a drink with my folks and spend half the time complaining about what Tybalt had been doing during the week. I’m pretty sure Mom and Dad had a bet going about when she’d finally give in and start dating him.”