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A full two hours before the sun rises, the wagons begin to come by the Empress Armeilo Gate. From the farms in the valley outside of Cetho, bearing apples and beets and yams, and from the market towns that ring the city several hours out, with walnuts, chestnuts, eggs, milk, tea, honey and mushrooms that were bought and sold there from all the farmers and foragers and apiarists who don’t bother to come all the way into the city. They meet and part the small seas of chickens, geese, and ducks that are being herded along the very same pre-dawn roads, drawing curses from the (mainly goblin) drovers, en route to the same markets.
The wagons also come from the docks, carrying the grain and more tea and hogs that have been coming down the Istandaartha on barges overnight from the farms and warehouses farther to the north, all to feed the insatiable appetite of the city that grew up around the Imperial Palace.
They all come to the Cetho markets, the wide squares made narrower by rows of wooden stalls and pens, they are shooed or poured or dumped into barrels and bins and cheaply-walled enclosures.
By the time the sun is over the horizon, even if it is not yet quite visible on the streets of Cetho, the customers are there to buy.
Penalo is there on the behalf of Viscount Deleizho’s household, for the day’s eggs and mushrooms and the milk that will become tomorrow’s yogurt, the pork for supper. She crosses the street humming quietly to herself, thinking of how good the egg-and-bacon-and-mushroom pie will taste that evening. The dach’osmerrem likes it particularly, so it gets made often, and the dach’osmer does not, so there are always plenty of leftovers from his dinner for her supper. These sorrels looked particularly good, and there’s a whole rack of bacon waiting in the kitchen to join them.
"Hoi there!”
Her head snaps up at the warning call, just in time for her to jump sideways, out of the way of the wagon loaded high with produce that bears the Drazhadeise crest on the side. The Untheileneise Court must have its yams and beets too, she supposes. Though there’s really no call for them to go through the streets at that speed--fast enough that some of its load spilled out onto the street, even! She nods her gratitude to the shopkeeper across the way who’d yelled the warning to her, and stoops to pick up the discarded chestnuts. No sense in wasting what's free, and they'll be a treat roasted in the back of the oven. Penalo tucks them into her basket and continues homeward.
Raina has been up for nearly an hour by now, and the wagon still isn’t here. He shifts his weight on the smooth cobblestones and rubs his hands briskly along his shirt, warming them slightly. The weather was really beginning to turn, enough that he would need to start pulling on a coat before coming out every morning to unload the day’s produce for the kitchens. He turns and spits onto the cobbles, jamming his hands under his armpits instead. If he’d known they’d be late, he’d have begun the oatmeal on the back firespit instead of just starting the fires and hauling water before coming down to the Archduke Sioneio courtyard to wait.
The dawn has fully turned over by the time the wagon makes it into the courtyard, though Raina’s pleased to see that at least the drover isn’t dawdling, coming in at a fair enough clip. By the time the oxen have been reined in, he’s already stepping forward with the other sculleries to scoop beets and yams and carrots and nuts into their large baskets. The root cellars of the central kitchens are shockingly small, for all the people that they feed—but really, it’s that Cetho provides even throughout the winter, food coming down the Istandaartha and in from goblin caravans, from wintering houses out a day’s journey to the east in the farmlands that feed the city. No one in the Untheileneise Court eats rotten food, because it never sticks around long enough to go bad.
Raina’s worked up an appetite, by the time the wagons have all been unloaded and their offering piled in the root cellars and kitchen baskets. Luckily, there’s breakfast waiting—good hearty soup and pickles and crumpets, plenty for all of them to eat before they begin the rest of the work of the day. Breakfast will be served in the Courier’s Mess by the time the sun was clear over the horizon, and in the Court Refectory an hour later. Most things were prepared in advance, just as their own food had been: the soup waiting, pickles and dried fruit sealed in jars, farmer’s cheese set to ferment overnight. But now would come the daily work of setting oats and water onto the fire for the oatmeal, mixing together the cheese and flour and eggs for the cheese pancakes and then frying them, slicing the ham.
He tips back the bowl to swallow the last of his soup and wipes his mouth on the back of his hand. There’s work to be done, and even as the breakfasts are begun they are also kneading the bread that must rise and be baked before dinner, fetching the puff pastry that has chilled overnight in the maz’d cold rooms and is due to be folded and then chilled again, beginning to prepare the pigs for roasting that will be eaten in the Court Refectory at supper.
“Hoi! What should we do with these shelled ones, Raina?”
He looks over to the younger of the scullery boys, seated with a basket of shelled chestnuts at his feet. Raina gestures over to the scarred table in the corner, already piled with stale bread for the stuffing to go inside the geese, plucked yesterday and waiting overnight in salt. That is the meal that will grace the table of His Serenity, Himself, for luncheon. “Over there, and quickly, lad, thou hast another two baskets.”
There’s work to be done.
“What’s lunch today?”
“Same old slop,” Barizho calls back cheerfully, setting a heaping plate down onto the table. “Looks like stew, today, as makes a nice change from stew, yesterday, and stew, the day before.”
“Now, now, Barizho, thy memory is going--yesterday was pork and yam curry, very different from the day before yesterday’s pork and yam stew, how could you ever mix up the two?”
Barizho cackles and stuffs a spoonful into their mouth.
The stew is edible, though, and hot, and there’s plenty of it. You couldn’t say that the Courier’s Mess stinted them, and honestly for most couriers that was half the reason they had joined. Hot food each day, and a place to sleep, guaranteed so long as you could deliver a message intact and keep your mouth shut.
The other half was the curiosity, of course, which got you into more trouble than out of it, Metis was sure. It had surely gotten him into plenty of trouble, but it had brought him to the Untheleineise Court, instead of being elbow deep in a sow’s birth canal and married to some pigkeeper’s wife. The food there might have been better, if less certain, but that was that, and Metis hadn’t ever been too fussed by fine foods.
It’s nice to have some variety, he supposes, but he’s never seen the need for the sauces that get served at the courtier’s banquets, so heaped with spices and flavors that you could hardly tell what you were eating. Why bother? This stew’s good hearty stuff, but he could tell it was mostly yam and colewart with some duck and bacon in, and that’s no cause for concern, in his books. He could taste some… chestnuts? A bit of fennel? And some of the hot peppers that got imported up from south of Barizhan.
Those were too expensive to waste on courier food—this must be the leftovers of another, richer table, made over for them. For all that it was a great and unwieldy beast, there was little waste in the Untheleiniese Court, simply because it was so great. What one corner of it needed not, another corner would gladly use. Bones from the roasted venison served at the Imperial table would be cracked and their marrow spread onto toast for the Ambassadors, and the carrot tops cut off for the Ambassador’s soups would be boiled and show up on a plate in the Courier’s Mess.
Metis takes another biteful of stew. Still plenty fine, still warm, and there’s another bowlful waiting after if he needs it. What more could anyone really ask?
Therilo is going to starve to death before she’s even gotten a few rungs up the ladder. She’s going to starve and be buried at midmorning without any mourners as a disgrace to the Ath’mazare and have her body sent back to her family. Her hair will be cut and her mother will refuse to have her buried in their catacombs and say no prayers to Ulis for her!
Or maybe she is just. Very hungry. She thinks of the Dormitory Steward sternly telling her that it is beneath the dignity of the mazei to exaggerate and kicks the skirting board resentfully, jumping back when it holds more tension than she’d expected. Oops. She slumps further down on the bench.
“Psst! Therilo!”
She looks up. “Reilan? What art thou doing here?”
“Saving thee, what else?”
“What?”
Reilan gives a quick glance over her shoulder, then darts into the room and presses a bun into Therilo’s hands. “Here. Chestnut buns.” Therilo would thank her, but her mouth is already full. Reilan laughs. “It has only been three hours since lunch, thou knowst that, right?”
Therilo swallows. “They’ve been a hard three hours.”
“And thou’rt a growing novice?”
“It’s not fun, going up three inches in less than a year!” And she has, too. She’d had shooting pains in her legs at night, and she has stretch marks on her knees, now. When you add that to the energy needed for all of the maz work she does in tutorials, it’s a wonder she ever feels full.
“I know, I know. Thou’rt lucky that the Ath’mazare is used to it.” Reilan hands over another two buns, and they vanish as quickly as the first. “I need to get back, before they notice. We’ve another four chapters of Deomaris for tomorrow, and all six variations of Wioenet’s Cantrip.”
All six? Therilo winces. “Go, go.”
The Ath’mazare is indeed used to hungry novices, burning fuel for their maz and taken onto the ladder just at the peak of most of their growth, and feeds them, for the most part, heartily and well. Unfortunately, Therilo and the Stewards of the Novices are equally used to her being hauled in front of them and missing meals, and being given punishment duties. The Novitiate Records have never been so well organized, and the novice robes so thoroughly washed. She’s not sure what it will be this time—scrubbing down courtyards, or hauling wood for the Athmaz’are Kitchens. If it’s that, then perhaps they’ll take pity on her, and feed her some of the scones they keep prepared for between-meal hunger pangs, or leftover chestnut soup from luncheon.
She tips her head back against the wooden paneling and sighs. She’s happy to be here—she really is, since if she’d not shown maz talent she’d be back at home—and she will learn to master her impulses, she really will. Csetheio Caireizhasan, Queen of Stars, help me to know my own heart. Help me to master my own heart. Please. I promise I’ll do better.
Her stomach growls, but Therilo Athmaza isn’t thinking about it any more.
His Imperial Serenity Edrehasivar the Seventh, may his reign be long and fruitful, is a somewhat delicate eater. Beinar has figured that out the hard way, over nearly a year of cooking for a new palate. Where his father had wanted rich meats and gravies, complicated sauces made with goose fat and wine, six courses at a minimum and salted duck eggs in the soup every morning, His Serenity wants tea from the southeast, brewed hot and left to steep in the samovar until it was dark and strong, and eel casserole just like Beinar’s nan had made when he was a lad. He likes his cucumber salad with a little more vinegar, especially in the summer when the dust and heat and stench of the city cling to the air even in the Alcethmeret, and sour beet soup, and pears in yogurt or those fussy little iced cakes in the goblin style.
But he also doesn’t like to say what he likes, and clears his plate with the speed of any teenaged boy, goblin or elf, stablehand or Emperor. Beinar’s had to be careful, and ask Isheian about what gets eaten first, what makes him smile slightly to himself. He’s had to catch tight to his pride and go ask Petha, that insufferable blowhard, what His Serenity drifts toward first, when he attends those outlandish meals at Ambassador Gormened’s apartments, where they don’t hardly sit down and feed anyone in a filling way, just wander about and nibble for a whole afternoon. What he comes back to for seconds.
And that is why Beinar’s fixing up a nice bit of monkfish with a fennel and chestnut sauce. He knows that His Serenity would eat whatever was put onto his plate, and do it cheerfully. He knows that when Edhrehasivar the Seventh dines formally (or even informally) with his Court, or with Ambassadors or members of the Corazhas, as he did today, he eats whatever is served.
But Beinar is an artisan, and he has his pride. His Serenity will have meals that he likes, dammit, when he eats what is prepared by the Alcethmeret’s kitchen, and by the cook of his own household. And so will the zhasan, when she dines here, and eventually the little Archdukes and Archduchesses. Beinar had made special portions of casseroles without cheese, for little Archduke Ciris, may Ulis dream gently of him, when he was just a boy and cheese gave him stomach pains. He had left the sour cherry sauce off of Pazhiro Zhasan’s cheese pancakes, when she dined with Verenechibel the Fourth. And Beinar had just been the junior Undercook, then.
Beinar chops the chestnuts and adds them to the sizzling pan, then looks over to where the sliced and cooked fennel waits. He knows that the central kitchens roasted geese with chestnut stuffing, for today’s luncheon, and he knows that His Serenity ate it. But tonight, for dinner, the Emperor of the Elflands will have something more to his taste for when he dies alone with the zhasanai and the zhasan. Arbelan zhasanai is fond of monkfish, and Beinar thinks that His Serenity will enjoy the more delicate flavors.
He hopes so, anyway.
Miro sits in her chair, pushes her spectacles up her nose, and touches the heartbeat of the Untheileneise Court.
Message coming in—from the Witness for the Treasury, for His Serenity’s attention, tagged with an orange ribbon—urgent enough that it would be run up to Secretary Aisava, but not enough to interrupt the Emperor’s meeting. At this time of the late afternoon, they were rarely granted a moment free, but few of the messages that came in now would be terribly important. Those yellow ribboned ones came in the night shift, most likely, or the early morning one.
Message coming in—Cseran takes that one, tagged blue, and files it, since Miro is still busy pulling the Treasury message and tipping it into the orange ribbon basket. She tugs on the bellpull and turns her attention to the next message, tagged blue, from the Marquess Lanthevel, and by the time that one is pulled from the tube and filed the page boy is there. It's Teru, this time, and she shoots him a smile as he pulls the two orange messages and trots away up the stairs, her gaze lingering on the power of his legs and shoulders. He’s said he wants to join the Guard, when he’s old enough, and Miro will be sorry to lose looking at him but wishes him luck.
Message coming in.
By the time she looks up, Isheian is standing in the doorway. “Evening!”
“Our benefactress!” Miro grins up as the younger woman steps down into their little cage, a temptingly heavy-looking basket in her hands.
“Tonight it was goose, chestnut stuffing, and mushroom buns, and a bit of jellied eel.”
“Oh, it’s been ages since we’ve had a good bit of jellied eel,” Cseren moans, slumping back into her chair. “Our aunt did a treat of a jellied eel pie.”
“Well, we hope you enjoy it.” Isheian’s always careful to be just as formal as Cseren is, and Miro wishes that neither of them felt the need. But it’s not as if she’s going to be the first one to drop into the singular, not while she’s on shift.
She takes the basket with another smile of gratitude and pulls out one of the napkin-wrapped bundles to take back to her seat. It smells rich, and she knows that the gravy inside will be thick and satisfying.
Message coming in.
Maia sits back in his chair and wishes that he could rub his temples. He can feel a headache coming on, but he suspects that any alteration to the careful edifice of jeweled chains and ebony tashin sticks that Nemer had created with such a loving hand for the post-dinner Reception will only make it worse. He survived the Reception, dancing and all, but he still has one more duty before he can return and be swept clean of Edrehasivar the Seventh for the night, hair plaited and put into his nightshirt to be simply Maia. One more set of papers to be reviewed, so that both he and poor, patient Csevet can go to their rest.
Isheian steps into the Tortoise Room, bearing a tray with a little plate of tiny frosted cakes. “Serenity.”
“Ah! Thank you, Isheian.”
He picks one up and eats it whole—there’s chestnut cream, and Barizheise chocolate. He thinks he might be able to taste some of the newly imported cinnamon, benefits of increased trade with the lands beyond the Chadevan Sea. He hums quietly, pleased, and turns his attention back to his work.