Chapter 4
Despite its busy-ness, the palace bakehouse was far less chaotic than the gilded ballroom.
Una stepped through the focused flouriers like clockwork. She had grown up in this room, floating between the kitchen and the bakehouse as her father spent a considerable amount of time in both.
Mastering the codex was far more than just knowing how to perfectly bake every official dish made with Lameran wheat.
It also meant knowing how to organize the flow of the cooks and flouriers, how to monitor the heat of the ovens, to read the weather, and understand how rain or low cloud cover would affect the freshly milled flour.
Una had never learned these things, she had simply grown up living and breathing them.
Her earliest memories had taken place in this very room, watching her father work late into the night as he secured his position as the Royal Flourier.
Perhaps, if her sickly mother was still alive, her father would not have felt the need to spend every night perfecting his understanding of the codex.
But then he never would have become the youngest Royal Flourier to be written in the back of the codex.
Una held one hand over the cuff of her left sleeve. It was not so loose that the bite of cake or cocoa could slip out, but she did not want to take any chances.
She veered to her right when she noticed an older woman chopping vegetables on a far counter, tucked away from the main walkway of the room.
“How many passed today?” Tilde asked her.
“More than half,” Una said, stopping on the other side of the counter.
It was a rare sight to see vegetables in the bakehouse as they were usually only used in the kitchen.
Due to the massive size of the domed, brick oven necessary for baking—and the amount of heat it constantly emitted—the palace had built an entirely separate space for the flouriers to work in.
“Hungry?” Tilde asked, sliding a carrot across the counter toward her.
Una nodded, happily picking up the vegetable. The orange color of a carrot was her favorite shade of gold.
"It’s not a crime to eat in the hall," Tilde said, resuming her chopping with a practiced precision.
Una shrugged. "There were no carrots in the ballroom."
Tilde shook her head. "Can you imagine presenting raw carrots to the king on presentation day?"
"Do you think he has ever had one?" Una asked.
"Of course he has," Tilde replied. "What kind of man has never eaten a raw carrot?"
"A man who never chooses his own food,” Una replied, “and only eats what is placed in front of him."
Tilde shrugged, her head tilted as she reconsidered. “Perhaps you are right. He eats what he is served and what cook is going to serve him a dish of raw carrots?”
Una reached across the counter to grab another carrot. “I don’t think he knows what he is missing.”
Tilde smiled at her. “I think he prefers his buttery pastries.”
It was Una’s turn to shrug. “What are you baking?” Tilde was a sauce cook. She spent most of her time in the kitchen, not the bakehouse.
“Your father requested carrot cake for tomorrow, I am here to prepare the ingredients.” Tilde was no master, but she chopped with an efficiency to rival one.
Una scrunched her nose.
“Even that is too rich for you?” Tilde asked.
“I will stick with carrots and oats to break my fast,” Una replied.
“You are like a horse,” Tilde said.
As she turned toward the door, Una bit into her carrot, snapping it as loudly as she could to make the older woman laugh.
On the far side of the bakehouse, Una stepped through a wide open door into a small garden.
It was not an official garden, not like the beautifully flowered and tended spaces near the front of the palace or outside.
This was more of an actual garden.
A place where raised beds of dirt held bushy herbs for the cooks to pilfer through as needed.
While it had likely been a vegetable garden in the distant past, the palace was far too busy for one small garden to sustain it, so it had become more of a place for herbs than for vegetables.
Except for the carrots and peas that Una planted in the rare openings she could find among the shrubs.
The pleasant scents of fragrant basil and soft sage instantly calmed her after the pressure of being the center of attention in the ballroom.
Rounding the raised beds, she found her favorite spot in the back corner and sat on a wooden bench under an old, sprawling apple tree. She leaned her weight against the elegantly twisted, wrought-iron back of the bench.
The only gold in sight was the flowering feverfew.
Placing the carrot between her teeth, Una used her free hand to undo the button on the cuff of her left sleeve.
She shook her left hand, feeling the heavy ball of cocoa bouncing along the light fabric bringing the sticky piece of cake with it. With her right hand, she reached through the cuff to grasp the piece of cake first.
Her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth as she looked at the smashed and crumbling piece of pastry. The sleeve method worked better for breads and rolls.
Gingerly, she reached out behind her to deposit the bite of cake in a nook of the apple tree.
The sticky mess had barely left her fingers before the soft whir of wings sounded just above her head and a large black crow landed—somewhat gracelessly for a bird—on the thick trunk of the apple tree right next to the piece of cake.
"I brought you something, Sable," Una crooned to the bird as she freed the carrot from her mouth.
Sable ignored her, wholly engrossed in the tasty treat he was now pecking at. Usually, Sable preferred a plain bread or roll to something sweet, but all of today’s presentations had been intentionally rich.
Except, for maybe one thing.
Una shook her head at the bird’s enthusiasm and chomped on another bite of carrot as she reached back into her sleeve for the other thing she had stashed there.
But a growing sensation of discomfort momentarily distracted her. The itch on the inside of her wrist was getting more intense. Loosening the button of her cuff had only made it worse.
She scratched angrily at the red spot that had appeared there. It had only been one bite. Scratching only helped for a moment, then the discomfort came back worse than before.
Una slapped her wrist to numb the sensation then reached back into her sleeve for the cocoa sphere. Pulling it out, she looked down at the thick, dark shape in her hand.
It had left a smear like brown paint across her fingers. It had probably done the same to her sleeve. She would have to wash the sleeve regardless, thanks to the sugary caramel, but she did not know enough about cocoa to know if it would leave a stain.
It was a rare ingredient that grew in a distant kingdom. No one in Lamera gave it any credit as it was neither sweet nor golden.
Una had tasted it once, many years ago. Her father had shared a cup of it with her.
She had no idea how the weighty, pasty substance she was holding now had been transformed into a drinkable substance, but she did remember puckering her lips at the bitter flavor.
Her father had laughed at her good-naturedly.
"I didn't think you would like that," he'd said, handing her a sweet buttery slice of shortbread to wash the cocoa flavor from her mouth.
Frankly, she had not thought about cocoa since then. It was bold of the Kanaskian student to include it on his choux crown—straying from the codex like that could have cost him the victory he won today. Fortunately for him, the king was easy to please.
The newness of the texture in her hand, however, gave her pause. The small molded sphere was heavy and firm. If she truly applied pressure, it would break easily in her hand, but the thick cake-like texture held together like frozen mud.
She was almost tempted to try it, just to see what it would taste like. What it would feel like against her tongue.
But the growing itch on her left wrist held her back. She couldn’t risk anything further.
No, the cocoa sphere would have to be for Sable only.
Reaching out, she dropped the sphere onto the crook of the tree next to the sweet cake.
The crow squawked at her closeness, opening his wings and taking a small step back.
"It's just me and you know it," Una said. She had not gotten the bird to eat directly out of her hand, but he had come close several times. He knew better than to be scared by her.
Let him have dramatics.
And dramatics they were indeed, as he quickly forgot his own ruffled feathers as he stared down at the new food she had placed before him.
He tilted his head to the side in an endearing motion to give one small glassy eye the full view of dark food.
He must have decided that this new thing was, indeed, food, because he repositioned his beak and made to peck at it.
"No! Stop!" a voice yelled from right behind Una and she jumped.
A flourier in a yellow cap ran past her, grabbing the orb from under Sable's beak.
The crow squawked in dismay and jumped backward off the branch, flapping his wings dramatically to catch the air as he tumbled toward the ground.
Una reached forward, the stub of a carrot still in one hand. She was concerned for the bird, but he righted himself and flew off over the wall of hedges.
Turning with fury at her intruder, Una did not hold back the anger in her voice. "Why did you do that?" she said loudly.
The academy student held up his hands defensively, clutching the sphere of cocoa as he did so.
Una narrowed her eyes. It was the student she had noted earlier, the one who had been awarded the Royal Apprenticeship.
"Cocoa is not safe for birds," he said. He dropped his arms, crossing them over his chest. “It will make them sick.”
"It will make them sick, but you were pressing me to taste it?" she said, her voice coming out higher than she would have liked.
"It is not bad for humans," he replied.
"You scared Sable!" Una replied, pointing over the hedge toward where the bird had disappeared as she avoided the man’s logical response. "I've been trying to earn his trust for weeks."
"Earn the trust of a bird?" the student replied, raising both his eyebrows at her.
"Yes," Una huffed, "I . . ." She stopped speaking and crossed her arms. She had no need to explain herself to this person.
The man waited for her to speak.
Una kept her mouth closed, staring right back at him.
Eventually, he dropped his eyebrows. Then he dropped his eyes down to her toes and back up again.
She recognized that look. He was judging her, sizing her up like she had just done to his presentation.
Nothing on his face revealed his thoughts, just a cold aloofness.
Una said nothing, refusing to be the one that broke the silence. He had intruded upon her after all. She had no idea why he was even here, in this side garden off of the bakehouse. Shouldn’t he be lording his new title over his fellow students back in the ballroom?
"You're welcome," the man finally said, dipping his chin as he spoke and rolling the words out as though he had literally done her a favor.
"For what?" Una replied, tilting her head back to give the illusion she was looking down on him. He was taller than she was, but not by much.
He looked down at the cocoa confection in his hand. "For saving . . . Sable from this. That would certainly have broken the bird's trust in you." One corner of his mouth twisted up.
Una felt an uncomfortable but familiar prickle at the base of her neck, just above her collar bone. She wanted to reach up and scratch it.
Instead she looked over the man's shoulder and set her eyes on the kitchen door ahead. Walking straight forward, she pushed her shoulder into his upper arm, forcing him aside as she moved past.
Just because she was used to the mockery did not mean she had to take it.