The pantry.
She pulled Annie past the prep-tables, past the hanging copper pots, past the shelf where Hester used to keep the good salt locked away from careless hands. Her free hand snagged a boning knife from the block as she passed. She didn't know what to do with it beyond slice bread and joint a chicken, but the weight of it in her palm was something. Tibbs stayed with her, his breathing loud and fast but his feet steady.
The pantry was a narrow room off the main kitchen, lined with shelving that held the dry goods. Flour in sacks. Oats in barrels. The hard cheese wheels that came up from the south and lasted through winter. At the back, behind the oldest shelving, the wall met the floor at an angle that had never been quite right.
Mab had found the gap six years ago. A turnip had rolled off a shelf and she'd gone after it and discovered that the wall didn't sit flush with the foundation stones. There was a space behind the lowest shelf. Not a room. More like a crawlspace or some forgotten storage nook.
She dropped to her knees in front of the shelf and started pulling sacks. "Get in."
Tibbs understood immediately. He dropped flat, then hesitated at the gap.
Mab pressed the boning knife into his hand. "Take it."
He swallowed, nodded, and slithered through the gap, disappearing into the darkness behind the shelving. Mab pushed Annie down after him. The girl went without resistance, her sobsmuffled now against her own hands, her body small enough to fit through without scraping.
Mab followed. The gap was tighter than she remembered. Her hips caught on the edge of the foundation stone and she had to twist, shoving herself through with her elbows, the rough wood of the shelf scraping against her back through the wool of her dress. For a terrible moment she thought she wouldn't fit, that her body had finally betrayed her in the one way that mattered, and then Tibbs's hands closed around her wrists and pulled and she was through.
The space was black. Not dark. Black.
She reached back and dragged the grain sacks in front of the gap, stacking them blind, feeling for the edges. One. Two. Three. The fourth sack was heavier than the others—barley, probably—and she wedged it sideways across the opening.
Annie was still crying. Mab could hear it in the dark, the wet hitching sound of someone trying to breathe through a closed throat.
"Annie." She kept her voice low. Not a whisper. Whispers carried. Just quiet. "Annie, I need you to breathe."
The crying didn't stop.
Mab found her by touch and pulled her against her side, tucking Annie’s face into the crook of her neck where the sound would be muffled.
"Slow," she said. "Through your nose. Slow."
Annie shuddered. Her fingers dug into Mab's arm hard enough to bruise.
"I can't," she gasped. "I can't, I can't—"
"You can." Mab pressed her palm flat against Annie’s back, counting the ribs through the thin fabric. "You're doing it now. In. Out. That's all."
Tibbs was somewhere to her left. She could hear him breathing, quick and shallow but controlled.
"Don't move," Mab said. "Don't speak unless I say."
She felt Tibbs nod. Annie made a small sound that might have been acknowledgement.
Above them, through the stone and the shelving and the sacks, the raiders came into the kitchen.
The first sound was the door to the great hall, the one the servants used when carrying dishes up to table. It hit the wall hard enough that Mab heard the hinges scream.
Then boots. Heavy boots, heavier than any she'd heard in this kitchen before. The stone floor transmitted the impact up through the foundation, through the gap, into her body.
Voices. Not words she knew. The language was guttural, full of sounds that seemed to come from the chest rather than the throat.
A crash. One of the copper pots coming down from its hook, probably. Then another crash, and a sound that was not metal but something wet. Something final.
Annie's hand found Mab's in the dark. The girl's fingers were ice-cold and shaking. Mab squeezed once and did not let go.
The boots moved through the kitchen in a pattern she couldn't track. Too many of them. They seemed to be everywhere at once, and the voices kept cutting across each other, sharp and fast. She heard Garrad's voice once, high and cracking, saying something about mercy. She did not hear it again.
More crashes. The sound of pottery breaking. The sound of wood splintering. The sound of the hearth-irons being knocked over.
