Chapter 13
The kitchen was cold.
Mab could not remember a time in her life when the kitchen had been cold.
But now the hearths were dark, swept clean of ash but holding none of the warmth that had filled this room every day of her life.
The prep tables had been cleared, scrubbed down to bare wood.
The iron smell of old blood still lingered near the cold hearth, faint but present, and she did not let herself look at the floor there.
Tibbs was already inside, crouched by the spice shelf. He had a small sack in his hands and was methodically checking each jar and pot, setting aside the ones worth keeping.
"Salt's still here," he said without looking up. "And the dried rosemary. They took the pepper."
"Pepper's worth more than salt by weight." Mab crossed to the scullery. "Easier to carry, too."
The trough was exactly as she'd left it. Gray film of sand and grease coating the basin, water long since drained. The rack beside it held the pewter chargers, and she touched the edge of the nearest one before moving past.
Her spare dress was where she'd left it, folded on the shelf above the washing supplies.
Gray roughspun, patched at the elbows, the hem let down twice as she'd grown and never properly finished.
Beside it, her apron. Her wool stockings, the ones Hester had mended three times because Mab kept wearing through the heels.
She gathered them into her arms. The fabric smelled like lye soap and woodsmoke and something underneath that was just her, the scent of years pressed into thread.
"Mab?" Annie's voice came from the doorway to the yard. "Can you come look at something?"
Mab set her clothes on the prep table and followed Annie outside.
The yard was quiet. The water barrel stood half-full, a skin of ice across the surface that caught the morning light.
The midden had been turned over, picked through, and the smell was worse than usual in the cold air.
The gate post where the brown bitch had always been tied was empty, the rope still looped around the wood with its frayed end trailing in the mud.
"She's not dead," Annie said quickly, reading something in Mab's face. "I found her. Come see."
Annie led her across the yard to the stable. The doors stood open, and the smell of hay and horse sweat rolled out to meet them. Most of the stalls were empty now. The orcs had taken the good horses and left the rest, and the remaining animals shifted and stamped in the unfamiliar quiet.
The brown bitch was in the far corner, behind a pile of old blankets someone had dragged down from the hayloft.
She was nursing.
Mab stopped three feet away and stared. The dog lifted her head, ears flattening, a low growl building in her throat. But she didn't move. Couldn't move, not with five small bodies pressed against her belly, eyes still sealed shut, paws kneading blindly at her fur.
"I counted five," Annie whispered. "Three brown like her and two spotted. They're so small, Mab. I've never seen anything so small."
The bitch's growl faded as Mab stayed still. After a long moment, her head lowered back to her paws, though her eyes never left Mab.
"She must have whelped after the raid," Mab said. "No one noticed."
"No one ever noticed her." Annie crouched down, keeping her distance, her voice soft. "She was just the gate dog. Garrad kicked her when she got in his way."
Mab remembered. She'd seen it happen half a dozen times, the bitch yelping and scrambling back, Garrad not even breaking stride. The dog had learned to flatten herself against the post whenever heavy footsteps approached, to make herself small and still and beneath notice.
Mab knew something about that.
"We can't leave them here," Annie said. The words came out in a rush, like she'd been holding them back and couldn't anymore. "The holding's going to be empty. No one to feed her. No one to let her hunt. The puppies will die, Mab. They're too little."
"Annie—"
"I know we can't decide." Annie's hands were clenched in her skirt. "I know it's not up to us. But can we ask? Can we at least ask?"
The bitch was watching them with eyes that held no hope and no expectation.
She had lived her whole life at the end of a rope, fed scraps when someone remembered, kicked when she was inconvenient.
She did not expect rescue. She did not expect kindness.
She expected to be left behind because she had always been left behind.
Mab looked at the five small bodies pressed against that scarred belly, blind and hungry and entirely dependent on a creature the world had never valued.
"We can ask," she said.
Annie's whole body loosened with relief. "Thank you. I'll be good, I promise. I'll take care of them myself. I'll—"
"We can ask," Mab repeated. "That's not a yes."
But Annie was already nodding, already planning, her eyes bright with hope.
Mab left Annie in the stable and went back to the kitchen.
Tibbs had finished with the spice shelf and moved on to the bread paddle, turning it over in his hands. The paddle was old, the wood worn smooth by decades of use, the handle darkened where countless hands had gripped it.
"Hester's?" he asked.
Mab took it from him, felt the familiar weight of it. "The cook before her. Maybe the one before that. It's been here longer than anyone remembers."
"Are you taking it?"
Mab looked at the paddle. At the kitchen around her, cold and empty and full of ghosts. At the scullery trough where she'd spent ten thousand hours of her life washing dishes for people who never learned her name.
"No," she said. "It belongs here."
She hung it back on its hook by the small hearth. The motion was automatic, muscle memory, and she stood there for a moment with her hand still on the wood.
"I'm taking my stockings," she said. "And my dress. And my apron." She turned to face Tibbs. "What are you taking?"
He held up the small sack. "Salt. Rosemary. The good paring knife with the bone handle." A pause. "And this."
He pulled something from his pocket. A leather cord with a small wooden disc hanging from it, the kind of thing a child might whittle on a slow afternoon. The disc was carved with uneven letters that Mab couldn't read from this distance.
"My mother made it," Tibbs said. "Before she died. It says my name. She was teaching me to read, but I only got through the first three letters before—" He stopped. His throat moved. "Garrad found it once. Said it was a waste of leather. Said I should throw it away and do something useful."
"Did you?"
"I hid it in the flour bin." A ghost of a smile crossed his face. "He never checked the flour bin. Couldn't be bothered."
Mab watched him tuck the cord back into his pocket, his hand lingering there for a moment like he needed to make sure it was real.
"That's a good thing to carry forward," she said.
Tibbs nodded. He didn't say anything else, but his shoulders had lost some of their tension, and when he went back to sorting through the kitchen supplies, his movements had steadied.
Mab changed in the scullery.
She stripped off the borrowed nightgown, shivering in the cold air, and pulled her own dress over her head.
The roughspun was coarser than silk, scratchy against skin that had grown accustomed to softness.
The fit was different too. The dress had always been loose on her, made to allow for movement and work, and she'd never thought about how it hung on her body because there had never been anyone to notice.
Now she noticed.
She tied her apron around her waist. The wool stockings went on next, and she wiggled her toes inside her clogs and felt some of the tightness leave her.
This was who she was. Not a woman in borrowed silk, playing at being someone the lady's wardrobe had been made for. This was Mab. Gray dress, stained apron, mended stockings. Kitchen hands and kitchen knowledge and a body that had worked every day of its life.
She looked down at herself. At the soft curve of her belly beneath the apron, the width of her hips that had always made her turn sideways in narrow doorways. At the hands that knew how to butcher and chop and stir and scrub.
Varek had seen her in silk. Had stripped the silk off her and looked at what was underneath and called it abundance. Had put his mouth on her and his hands on her and told her she was exactly what he wanted.
Would he still want this? The real version, the working version, the version that smelled like lye soap and looked like exactly what she was?
She didn't know. And the not-knowing sat in her stomach like a stone.
But she was not going to Northwatch dressed as someone she had never been. If he wanted her, he would want her. If he didn't—
She would survive it. She had survived everything else.
The day passed in small tasks.
Mab helped Tibbs finish sorting the kitchen stores, setting aside what the orcs would take and what would be left for whoever came after. Annie drifted between the stable and the kitchen, reporting on the puppies' progress with the intensity of someone who had been given a purpose.
"The spotted one is the smallest," she said over the midday meal, which they ate in the great hall with the warriors. "But she pushes the hardest to get to the milk. The brown ones just wait their turn, but she shoves right in."
Drogga laughed at that, his whole body shaking the way Annie had described. "A fighter. She'll need a strong name."
"I was thinking Bramble," Annie said. "Because she's prickly."
"A good name." Drogga tore a piece of bread and handed it to her.
Mab listened to them talk, her spoon moving between bowl and mouth without her tasting much of the stew. Varek's seat at the head table was empty. Had been empty when she'd arrived, remained empty now.
He was busy. She knew he was busy. A raid of this size didn't end when the fighting stopped. There were supplies to inventory, messages to send, decisions about what to take and what to leave. She had seen the ink stain on his arm last night, evidence of hours spent on exactly this kind of work.
And yet.
He was tired last night. You were convenient. A warm body in a cold room.
She took another bite of stew. Chewed. Swallowed.
You're wearing your real clothes now. Gray roughspun and a patched apron. Ugly. Fat. Human.
Mab set her spoon down. Picked it up again.
She had never had this problem before. But then, she had never had anything to lose before.
You couldn't fear abandonment when no one had claimed you in the first place.
You couldn't lie awake wondering if someone still wanted you when no one had ever wanted you at all.
This was new territory. Uncharted and treacherous and she had no map for it.
He said mine. He said it into your hair while you were falling asleep. He said it in front of thirty warriors. He said it while he was inside you.
Yes, and men say things. Men say things when they're hard and they say things when they're tired and they say things when a woman is soft and available and willing. That doesn't make the things true.
Mab picked up her bread. Tore a piece off. Put it down without eating it.
The voice in her head sounded like Iris. It always sounded like Iris, even when Iris wasn't there. A lifetime of commentary had worn grooves into her thinking, channels that her thoughts fell into without permission.
You know what you look like. You know what you are. A scullion in a borrowed bed, playing at being wanted.
She made herself eat the bread.
After the meal, she found herself in the lady's chamber again, standing at the window and watching the yard below.
Warriors moved back and forth, loading supplies onto pack horses, checking straps and adjusting weight.
Tomorrow they would leave. Tomorrow she would walk away from the only home she had ever known, toward a place she had only heard described in a child's excited whisper.
Hot springs. Mountain gardens. Orchards heavy with fruit.
A fairy story. And she was walking into it wearing her own clothes, carrying her own stockings, hoping the monster at the center of it still wanted her when the silk was gone.