Not the holding's kitchen. Not Hester's kitchen. But a kitchen, and the logic of it was the same. Heat and timing and the weight of a blade and the smell of stock reducing. Her hands knew where they were.
She finished the broth. Set the bowl down. Wiped her mouth with the back of her hand.
"Thank you," she said.
Kira was back at the worktable, trimming the haunch, and did not acknowledge the thanks. She spoke to the meat rather than to Mab.
"First light. Don't be late."
Mab nodded and set the empty bowl in the wash basin. She wiped Grald's knife on her apron and slid it back into her pocket.
She was almost through the doorway when Kira spoke again.
"Get yourself a proper kitchen knife. You'll dull that one on roots and it's no good for fine work." She brought the cleaver down. "I'll see what I have."
Mab walked out into the corridor. The air was cooler here, and she stood in it for a moment, her hands still smelling of turnip and lentil dust and the lingering ghost of bay leaf.
Chapter 21
Mab walked back toward the captains' corridor. Her footsteps were the only sound, soft against the worn granite, and she counted doors as she went until she came to the last door in the corridor. Varek's.
She lifted the latch and pushed the door open.
The room was larger than she'd expected, with rough-hewn granite walls and a ceiling high enough that Varek wouldn't have to duck. A massive, deep-set hearth dominated the far wall. Coals glowed orange in the grate, banked and steady, throwing enough heat that Mab felt it on her face from the doorway. The stone floor was covered in dark, heavy furs, layered three deep in places and soft enough that when Mab stepped onto them her feet sank.
She closed the door behind her. The latch fell with a quiet click.
The east-facing window was wide enough to frame the view with space on either side. Shutters of heavy wood, currentlyopen, letting in the last of the day's gray light and a draft of cold air that the hearth was steadily losing the argument against. Mab crossed to it.
The mountains filled the window. Ridge after ridge, blue-gray and white, the nearest slopes dark with pine and the distant ones dissolving into cloud. The cold air felt clean against her face, carrying pine and snow and the faint mineral smell she'd been breathing since they rode into the valley. She let it fill her lungs. Let it out. Let it fill again.
Then she turned and looked at the room.
The bed was enormous. A timber frame wide enough for a man of Varek's size and deep enough that Mab could lie across it sideways and not reach both edges. Blankets piled at the foot, fur and woven wool in layers. Two pillows at the head.
On the table beside the bed was a clay oil lamp, a folded cloth, and a bowl full of oranges.
Four of them. Round, bright, impossible in a mountain fortress in late winter. The color was so vivid against the dark glaze that they looked like something from a painting.
I will make sure you always have oranges in Northwatch.
Mab picked one up. It was cold from the room and heavy in her palm, the skin dimpled and tight with juice. She pressed her thumb against it and the peel gave, releasing a bright sharp sweetness that cut through the smoke and fur and stone smell of the room like a blade through linen.
She didn't peel it. She set it back in the bowl, exactly where it had been, and stood with her hand resting on the table and the scent of orange oil on her thumb.
It was such a small thing. A promise kept. A piece of fruit in a bowl. It shouldn't have been enough to crack anything open.
But she had spent her whole life in a kitchen that produced feasts she never tasted, wearing stockings mended by a dead woman's hands, sleeping behind a bread oven on a pallet sonarrow she'd learned to sleep without turning over. She had been given one green ribbon in her life and it was cut from her hair while she slept.
And Varek had put oranges in a bowl.
She was not going to cry about fruit.
She pressed the heel of her hand against her eye and breathed through the heat in her throat and the sting behind her nose and the specific, terrible weight of a kindness she hadn't had to earn.
The door behind her opened. Mab straightened and turned to see Varek filling the doorway. He closed the door, and the room, which had felt spacious for one human woman, reorganized itself around his body.
He looked like he'd been working since he'd left the saddle and hadn't stopped. Dust from the road still sat in the creases of his armor. His hair was half-loose from the braid, dark strands stuck to his neck with sweat.
