Dessert
The first step of any plan to grab a kingdom by the balls and wrangle it right was intelligence gathering.
Gossip was a thriving trade in Amaris, its largest marketplace the palace kitchens, tucked deep in the underbelly of the castle. With the heirs here, there’d be fresh whispers to sell, and Esme needed all of them.
She followed the smell of rose pastries down to the dingy labyrinth of ovens and stoves.
Wallain was but a week away, which meant several days of feasts were but a week away, which meant the full body of staff were blazing up and down aisles of sample dinners and appetizers.
Screaming cooks practically cracked whips across their brigade’s spines, and bakers beat dough into submission with swollen hands.
Light trickled down from wrought-iron chandeliers whose cheap lard candles belched smoke onto the soot-stained walls.
The only windows were cracked high above the kitchen’s heads, and if those wet, coal-colored coughs from the pastry girls were to be believed, they didn’t vent shit.
There had to be a hundred tarts on that tray. Who could even eat a hundred tarts? No one would notice if one went missing. Besides, as a Wraith, it was her job to protect the empire, and what if they were poisoned? She had to check.
She reached for one of the strawberry delights only for a hand to wrap around her wrist.
“Stealing isn’t very nice.” A warm body sidled up beside her, and a pair of lips brushed against her ear. “Do I have to teach you a lesson, Wraith?”
Esme pulled her hand back just enough to slip her palm into the one grabbing her wrist, bringing it up to her mouth.
“My dearest Gwendolyn. You look beautiful tonight. The soot really accentuates your eyes.” She winked down at her “Gwendolyn,” and Mina snorted.
She pulled her hand away from Esme’s, though a Wraith courting a pretty woman was far from gossip.
Would be more worrisome should they stop, actually.
Mina had been working in the castle as a baker for the past few years, but not out of necessity.
When Esme had moved Mina and Gia into the city, she’d told her wife she didn’t have to work.
Said wife had laughed loudly in her face.
Mina wanted her own money, and Esme understood.
Of course, today that work could have gotten her killed.
Esme gave her wife a once-over. No blood, no bruises. Obviously, she was fine. She didn’t even seem rattled, though Esme still was. Just the thought of losing Mina and Gia…
She couldn’t bear it.
Mina looked across the kitchen to an eagle-eyed cook who’d already spotted them and put a step between them. Her eyes, however, were as close to Esme’s as could be. “I assume you’re here for your usual?”
“Yes, but you aren’t my usual.” Well, not like that, at least. “Where’s Tasha? I have an order to place.”
Mina lowered her gaze, then pulled Esme close to the counter.
She pretended to arrange a tray of tarts to go into the oven.
“She was expelled. Same day you returned.” She swallowed, licking her lips.
Esme suddenly remembered the woman she’d seen thrown over the edge of the palace cliffs.
Her heart hollowed. Tasha had been her informant for years.
They might not have been friends, but Esme took special pride in knowing Tasha had moved her family to the Stomach two years ago after her salary had mysteriously doubled.
She tried to clear a throat screwing closed with grief. “Do you know why?”
“Stealing food, it seems. She survived, but I don’t reckon she’ll be working anytime soon.” Mina let out a sigh twisted with sympathy. “I’m going to bring her some food after Wallain.”
Esme nodded. She unclipped the sack of silver from her belt and smuggled it into Mina’s pocket. “You’ll give her my regards, yes?” She raised her brow, and her wife gave her a small smile.
“I’m sure she’ll appreciate them,” Mina said. Her eyes dropped down to Esme’s lips… but this was no place for that.
“So, where shall I place my order now?” Esme asked. “Who’s an attentive baker, do you think?” She recognized Urias’s spy, a woman three counters away with her eyes low and her ears open. No… That felt incestuous, using your fellow Wraith’s spy.
Mina hummed before lifting her shoulder. “What about me?”
Esme scoffed. “What about you?”
“Perhaps I’m an attentive baker?” Mina leaned into Esme’s shoulder, not even needing to look down at the tray she sent off in the hands of a runner.
“I thought you simply wanted to be a normal baker?”
“You once hired me to know too much about everything,” Mina said, moving around Esme to grab a bowl of sliced apples.
Back when Esme ran a manor outside of the city, she’d hired Mina to keep tabs on her thirty members of staff, and she’d been excellent at it.
But this wasn’t watching a few maids, and Esme wasn’t just sneaking into the basement to gab.
She was planning to seize this country by the throat, and Mina would be inserting herself into a network of treasonous spies for it.
Not to mention that the very castle could decide to collapse and kill everyone if Esme made just one wrong move…
No, Mina was deep enough in this mess already.
“This is a risky job, Mina,” Esme whispered, lowering her mouth to Mina’s ear so no one would hear her real name.
“So is kissing Wraiths with big metal gnashers, and I do that all the time.” Mina sighed at the concern wrapped in Esme’s voice and touched Esme’s hand covertly under the counter.
“Isobel’s been down here thrice these last few days, asking all kinds of questions about who bakes for whom.
I’d rather be the one answering those questions than some half-loyal kid. ”
“I’d rather no one ask you anything.”
“You look at me like I’m the sun. They’re going to ask questions. Besides, it’s better to have me inside your world and informed than outside and ignorant,” Mina said, and raised her brows.
She had a point. If Esme was worried for her, she should have her eye on her. She couldn’t watch someone she pushed out of her scope.
Esme punched her cheek with her tongue and looked at her wife.
On one hand, Mina was the loving, soft woman Esme could wake up with every morning for a million mornings.
She was the warmest of noons, the sweetest of midnights.
She was a fireplace at the center of Esme’s frozen chest. But on the other, she’d also come to Esme as a shrewd trickster of a woman, breaking more Micrean laws than one human should be able to manage.
She’d raised a daughter on her own and managed all kinds of seedy places for unsavory masters before deciding to spy for a Wraith, all while showing not a drop of fear.
She was Esme’s fireplace, but she was a crackling blaze all the same.
Esme sighed. “I assume you know how to bake?”
“I’m assuming you have an order?” Mina popped an eyebrow.
Esme snorted, but nodded, turning around to spy across the kitchen. “I’ll need a few desserts,” she said, her eyes flicking to the door leading down to the kitchen coldrooms.
Mina followed her gaze, only for her face to screw up with confusion. Esme followed that confusion to see a little girl, about three feet tall with a mop of black hair, creeping towards the door.
“Nell! Here!” Mina yelled. The girl flinched at the sound of her name.
Hmm. Children down here didn’t flinch.
Esme squinted at the kid. They also didn’t usually have six fingers on each hand.
“Nell” lowered her head as she slipped through the hustling kitchen and came to stand before Mina, her shoulders hunched. She looked up with big, blue eyes—and then she saw Esme and hunched deeper.
Nice try.
“Which one of yours do you think it is?” Mina asked, crossing her arms over her chest and raising a brow at Esme. “Tagas?”
Esme didn’t know which part to be more impressed with: Mina’s ability to spot a glamoured Wraith or said Wraith’s ability to cram themselves inside such a tiny glamour.
“This small? I say Daphna.” Esme propped her hands on her hips, bending down to “Nell.” “How about you take off the little girl, hm?”
“Nell” grumbled and peeled their scalp from their skull. Daphna crawled out of their itty-bitty glamour and rolled their shoulder. Finally stretching to their full height, they pinned Esme and Mina with a slightly annoyed smirk. “I assume you’re here for the same thing I am?”
“Is what you’re here for chocolate cake?” Esme asked.
Daphna rolled their eyes. They had wider shoulders and long legs, designed as if Valos had gotten drunk one night and stuck together whatever he thought looked nice.
A square jaw and a full body and bow-shaped lips, always half smiling.
No one batted an eye when Daphna donned a pair of stays and a massive dress, nor did they notice anything amiss when they threw a loose shirt over their bound chest and shoved their legs into a pair of pants.
“Royal tarts, fighting flowers, and blood sausage,” they said, speaking in the code Wraiths and their kitchen spies used to trade information.
Esme stood up a little straighter when she realized they were asking similar questions.
Daphna caught on to it too, and grinned. “How about a trade? We do this together. I give you what I know, and you give me what you know.”
“How can I be sure you know anything?” Esme asked, crossing her arms. Usually, sharing information with one of her fellow Wraiths wasn’t a problem—as long as there wasn’t a bet in play—but Esme didn’t need to clue someone into a plan she hadn’t even formulated yet.
“Because unlike you, I brought an heir here without putting a beartrap spell on his throat,” Daphna said, then pursed their lips.
“Of course, we don’t have to share. Though I think Padrian and Urias are out drinking in the Hand tonight, and you know how Paddy talks when he’s drunk.
” They tapped their chin, eyes low and knowing.