Ravenous (Taint of the Gods #1)

16. RIEKA

16

RIEKA

I ’d spent the rest of the day in my bunk going over how I was going to survive the training session tonight. I’d done the same thing over twelfth-hour meals, occasionally pausing my thoughts to listen to my companions’ musings over my "husband’s" speech and what The Hunt was.

It didn’t seem to be a topic anyone was willing to discuss with us.

I’d intended on returning to my bunk to sleep, believing that it would be in my best interest to be fresh for whatever physical torture Rhydian intended to inflict on me tonight. However, upon my return to our bunks, I found a roll of freshly washed blankets. As mine was the only bed with the roll, it wasn’t hard to guess who had provided them.

There was another note on my pillow.

Sleep under these instead of your coat. Send it to the laundry. It smells.

I was tempted to write back and say if he couldn’t stand my smell then he was welcome to sleep on the floor. But since we were supposed to be in that newlywed stage, I didn’t. I climbed into my buck, closed the partition off to the prison world beyond, and slept.

It was the presence of a very petite and very pregnant collarless woman standing outside my bunk that awoke me, the partition open.

And the blankets which I had refused to use were draped over me. Familiar scents lingered in the bunks, but only one was fresh.

Earth and pine needles.

I threw off the blanket as I climbed out.

“Hi, Rieka,” the woman said, her voice quite cheery for such a dreary place. “I’m Lily. Thought I’d come and get you in case you got lost on your way to The Kitchen .”

In my half-confused and sleep-deprived state, this Lily, who had the distinct scent of lemons and barley, informed me that due to my unsanctioned change in work roster, it had fallen upon S’vara and myself to fill the empty positions in The Kitchen rotation. For the foreseeable future, we were Lily’s assistants during the dinner shift.

I had concluded during the walk that this was Eleen’s retribution for the display in The Bathhouse. Perhaps out of jealousy, though I had yet to smell anything on her other than annoyance.

Luckily, I was quite fond of working in kitchens. S’vara on the other hand spewed off a chain of remotely sounding Torvian curse words during our walk to The Kitchen . It was safe to say she thought kitchen duty was worse than laundry.

Lily gave a quick tour of the industrial-style kitchen. A series of ovens ran along the right wall with stoves to the left the metal sheen that came with new kitchens long since vanished. Down the centre were pairs of benches, and within those were more pots, pans, and crockery than I think even the inn owned. Lily set us to work immediately. We were to cook the dinner the previous shift had prepped.

S’vara on the other hand stared blankly at the stove top, her dark complexion blanching. “I rig ships not boil stews. I’m going to burn this kitchen down, just you watch.”

Lily simply chuckled at her and showed her the safest way to turn on the stove.

Logistically with the number of passengers on the train, we’d never cook the food on time. But as Lily so graciously informed us, whilst we were not worthy of freedom, The Venerable council, the military leadership of Kensilla, still thought it necessary to provide us sustenance. The Kitchen’s dry storage room was stacked with hundreds of ready-made meals that reminded me of the military ration packs that my father used to bring home. They simply required heating. Regular supply drops provided the weekly meals required for all the collared passenger’s nutritional needs.

How kind of them.

That didn’t account for the fresh goods and dried meat I’d noticed in the dry store though. It also didn’t account for the frozen fish and game I’d seen in the cold store. So whilst Lily stirred one of the three barrel-sized pots of beef stew on the stove, I asked her.

“ The Greenhouse helps a lot with the fresh crops. And what we can’t grow on our own, the Runners bring back. Their runs help us stretch the supplies.” She dipped a spoon into S’vara’s pot to taste.

So that was what Rhydian and his friends did when they weren’t training or running in these so-called Hunts everyone refused to talk with us about. They went in search of supplies. And from what Lily informed us, the supplies only came weekly and were only ever enough for the collared passengers. This meant of the two thousand passengers on the train, over five hundred had to rely on the Runners’ efforts, including two hundred children. When I asked where we stopped to retrieve the supplies her response was as I’d expected.

“The train never stops. Except for the Hunts.” I knew this to be the case, but the fact Kensilla didn’t even allow for the train to stop for supplies made me hate them even more than I already did.

Delivering shipments of goods onto a moving train didn’t exactly seem feasible. I mulled on the practicality of how such a process might work, unable to see any way in which the goods weren’t lost or someone wasn’t harmed.

“I noticed sugar but no flour,” I said an hour later when my curiosity got the better of me. “Does no one make bread here?”

Lily smiled at my question. “My brother did mention you were a baker.”

That caught me off guard. “Your brother?”

Please say someone else, anyone else.

“Rhydian didn’t tell you he had a sister, did he?”

I shook my head apologetically. But just as my pity began to rise so did my apprehension. If this woman was indeed Rhydian’s sister, then there was every chance that she too was a Hemopath. Even with one human parent, blessings are widely known to be inherited.

Rhydian hadn’t had a scent that told me he was a Bloodhound, and as far as I could tell, neither did Lily, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t. But if I was correct, she would be in just as much danger as Rhydian. It was one thing to use the old man against Rhydian, an idea that I hadn’t contemplated simply because of his status, but using the pregnant sister? The idea turned my stomach, and I hated myself for even contemplating it, but the man intended on selling me to someone who wanted me as a leashed dog.

“You’re nothing like him, Lily. ”

“Really? Everyone’s always said we could be twins,” Lily replied believing I had spoken aloud.

Fuck !

I’d said the words as a silent prayer to the world not in the least intending for her to hear me. Damn him. Four days and already he’d unsettled me. I’ve never been this careless with my thoughts before.

From her little corner of The Kitchen where she’d been tasked with polishing the utensils, a job which held as little stress for her as possible, S’vara asked if it was true I’d cooked a pie for Rhydian the first day we’d met.

“Where did you hear that?”

“Farox. So is it true, that you baked him a pie when you first met?” S’vara asked again.

I stirred the stew. “I didn’t bake it for him if that’s the gossip.”

“It isn’t,” Lily confirmed.

“I gave him a slice on the house.” A single brow of his sister’s rose, perhaps in disbelief, so I added, “For gentlemanly behaviour.”

S’vara mumbled something to herself about missing her mother’s fruit pie which garnered a sad smile from Lily.

And as though I hadn’t been surprised enough today, Lily said that she could put in a request to the council for the Runners to allocate a portion of the supplies to obtaining baking goods. It was still food that could be provided to the train’s residents. She couldn’t see why they wouldn’t allow the train the small indulgence of baked goods perhaps once a month. They’d never had a baker on board before, and if Rieka was willing to…

“I am.” Every cell in my body was willing. It was a far healthier use of my time than every other thought that had gone through my head in the last four days.

“Is it true that the pie was strawberry?” I found Lily’s question odd. I confirmed as much as we lifted the first pot off the stove. The result of my answer had a soft knowing smile rise to Lily’s fine features. A smile entirely to herself. When I asked her why it amused her to know that fact, her response astounded me.

“Truly?”

“True.”

It appeared I was already winning this bet before I had even made it. Rhydian hated strawberries, yet not a crumb was left on that plate that night in Keltjar.