"Who taught you?"
"The head cook at the holding. Woman named Hester."
"She teach you to cut?"
"She taught me to watch her cut." Mab kept peeling. The rhythm was even. "I wasn't permitted to prep. Scullery stays scullery."
"Hmm." The sound was noncommittal. Mab heard Kira cross to the larger hearth, heard the iron arm swing and the heavy lid of the cauldron lift. Steam billowed. Something was simmering that smelled of bone broth and bay.
Mab finished the turnips. She lined the quartered pieces along the board, uniformly sized, and wiped the knife clean. She carried the basin to the worktable and stood.
Kira was frowning at the cauldron. "Try this," she said, and held out a wooden spoon. "Tell me what it needs."
Mab took it. The broth was rich and dark, marrow-heavy. Bone stock, bay, the mineral edge of mountain water. Good. Deep. Underseasoned by a margin so narrow most people wouldn't catch it.
"Needs salt," Mab said. "A pinch. Maybe two."
Kira took the spoon back. Tasted it herself. Set the spoon across the cauldron's rim.
"How much salt?"
Mab looked at the volume. Enough for thirty. "Three fingers from that crock. Rubbed, not thrown."
Kira reached into the crock, pinched salt between three fingers, rubbed it over the surface of the broth, and stirred. Tasted again. The chipped tusk caught her lower lip, just for a moment. She set the spoon down.
"Your Hester," Kira said. "She cooked for how many?"
"Forty on a lean day. Ninety when the lord had guests."
"And she kept a scullion who could season by taste and never let her near a knife."
"She let me near the vegetables," Mab said. "Nothing else."
Kira made a sound in her throat that Mab could not parse. "Lentils are in the crock by the flour barrel," she said. "They need picking over. Stones in this batch, I can feel it. After that, the loaves need to go in. You know bread?"
"I know bread."
"We'll see." Kira wiped her hands on her apron and picked up the cleaver again. "Come back tomorrow at first light. I'll have the morning porridge started. You'll do the bread for the day's meals and we'll see if you know bread or if you know the idea of bread."
Mab stood where she was. Grald's knife was still in her hand.
"Should I finish the lentils now, or—"
"I said lentils and loaves. Did I say leave?"
Mab went to the flour barrel. The lentil crock was where Kira said it was. She poured a measure onto the cleared end of the worktable and began sorting, fingers finding the grit of small stones among the smooth rounds of the dried legumes. Behind her, Kira's cleaver came down in steady beats. They worked without speaking.
When the lentils were picked and the loaves were in the oven, Kira came to the worktable and looked at the sorted piles. She picked up a handful of the clean lentils, let them fall through her fingers, and checked the discard bowl. Seven small stones, a splinter of something woody, and two shriveled husks that would have gone to paste and bitterness in the pot.
Kira said nothing about the lentils. She said nothing about the bread. She turned to the shelf above the hearth and pulled down a wooden bowl, ladled stock from the cauldron into it, and set it on the worktable in front of the stool nearest Mab.
"Sit. Eat."
Mab sat. The stool was low and broad, made for someone with longer legs, and her feet didn't quite touch the floor. The bowl was hot between her hands.
The broth was better with the salt. She drank it slowly, not because she wasn't hungry but because she wanted to pay attention.
Kira went back to the joint. The cleaver rose and fell. The kitchen filled with the particular rhythm that Mab had livedinside since she was old enough to stand on an upturned crate and reach the washing basin, and for the first time in six days the ground beneath her felt like ground.
