Dallen was, of course, entirely aware of how oddly the mercenaries had acted this morning, and he was just as eager to talk about it. So after Mags settled onto a bale of straw in his loose box, they both went over how the men had acted in their minds.
“Ye know,” Mags said, looking up into Dallen’s bright blue eyes. “If I didn’ know better, I’d’a thought they’d seen a ghost, and was still lookin’ for it. You ever heard tell of somethin’ like a haunt around here?”
Dallen bobbed his head. :The Collegia are not haunted, let me promise you. Believe me, we Companions would know if they were. Neither is the Palace, even though by all rights it should be, if emotional turmoil is what creates a ghost. But you’re right. They did act as if they were expecting something supernatural to manifest at any moment: He bobbed his head thoughtfully. :People can be haunted as well as places, you know.:
:Ye think mebbe they brung a haunt with ’em?: Mags hazarded, but then shook his head. :Or one followed ’em here? Nah, if they had a haunt followin’ ’em, they’d be used to it, don’ ye think? An’ it’d have to be hauntin’ all of ’em for all of ’em to be so jumpy. How likely is that?:
Dallen rubbed his nose against his knee. :I don’t know. I am rather out of my experience when it comes to ghosts. All I know is the ghost stories other people tell. I’ve never actually seen one myself, nor has anyone I know.:
Mags pondered. :Well, ye reckon I ought tfollow ’em?:
:No. You are too obvious in your Trainee Grays, and you would be even more obvious in civilian garb, since the Palace servants all wear livery. No, you let Marc deal with that end of it. You and I will ask some careful questions, not too many, and not all of the same person. I have some ideas where you might go within the Palace that you might hear things without exciting any suspicion. And above all, you will listen.:
Mags grinned. :Now that, I c’n do.:
So he spent the afternoon doing just that. Dallen had excellent ideas, and more than just ideas, he had sound advice that not even Herald Nikolas could better.
He started in the kitchen, since in his experience, that was where most gossip took place, and Dallen agreed. Even in Cole Pieters’ household, as tightly controlled as it was, the servants in the kitchen and the ones that came into the kitchen shared gossip.
Now any Trainee could come and go freely from the Collegia kitchen, as the cooks dispensed food to any Trainee or teacher out of mealtime hours with no questions asked. That was where he went first, professing hunger, which was no lie since Marc had eaten all of his sausage rolls and Mags’ share as well. Once fed, he loitered, knowing that as long as he stayed out of the way, no one would chase him out.
The kitchen that served the three Collegia was rather devoid of anything other than talk about who had done what during the holiday. He moved to the kitchen that served the Guards, but it was empty of everyone but the head cook, who was putting loaves to rise. He left without alerting the cook to his presence, not really disappointed since he honestly had not expected to hear anything about the foreigners there. That left the Palace kitchen. And truth to tell, that was where he expected to get the most information.
Now, the best way to be unnoticed, Herald Nikolas had said, was to look as if you belonged someplace. And while it was true that most of the Palace servants wore livery, not all of them did. Not the ones that did very menial work; they wore ordinary clothing. That included those who served in the kitchen, for certain. Dallen had absolutely agreed with him on this score, and had some good ideas on how to get into the kitchen without arousing any suspicion. It wasn’t as if he could go loiter there without knowing anyone who worked there, and a Trainee of any sort was going to excite comment showing up to beg a snack.
So he went back to his room and changed out of his Trainee Grays and into civilian clothing, his oldest and most worn outfit. :All right,: he thought at Dallen. :Where’s the Palace kitchen?:
Wordlessly, Dallen showed him exactly how to find it while avoiding most people. And having been in two large kitchens within the Palace walls already, Mags had a pretty good notion of how the third was likely to be laid out. So he made his way circuitously to the kitchen—making his way from the stable to the wall, from the wall back to the kitchen gardens, and from the kitchen gardens to the kitchen door. He waited patiently and once there, slipped inside on the heels of someone who was bringing in supplies. For once it was an advantage to be small.
The heat and the smells of cooking hit him with a kind of shock, though a pleasant one. This kitchen was easily twice the size of the one that served the Collegia, and had three times as many people in it. Which was ideal, since it meant he could probably remain completely unnoticed in all the bustle. It had an entry, a kind of alcove in immensely thick walls, which were thick for a good reason. The baking ovens were built into one side so that the chimney could go straight up the wall, taking the excess heat with it. Rooms above this would be very cozy in winter, and although in summer that could be a bit problematic, one solution might be to use them for storage of things that needed to be kept dry—linens for instance. At any rate, that meant there had to be an alcove about as long as a bed, which made for a good place for him to stand in the shadows and examine everything.
From his vantage point in the entryway, he could see a line of aprons on pegs across the room. Walking quickly, but without any urgency, he threaded his way directly through the bustling cooks and helpers, got himself one of them, pulled it on over his head, and rolled up his sleeves. He walked as if he belonged here, as if he knew exactly what he was doing and what his job was. He was dressed no differently than the lowest of the servants here, and he was small and unthreatening. No one paid any attention to him.
Then he headed straight for the pile of dirty pots and the huge double sink they stood beside, also right on the outside wall, but on the opposite side of the entryway. You needed light when you were scrubbing pots and dishes—at least, you did if you wanted to be sure you were getting them clean. Beneath the high windows, covered in oiled parchment that let in light but nothing else, was an arrangement of two huge side-by-side sinks and two hand pumps, where a tow-haired scullion scrubbed manfully away at the dirty pots with a stiff bristle brush and plenty of soap. Just as Mags got there, he let out the dirty water through a drain at the bottom of each sink and began refilling the sinks from a hand pump. Mags took over the one he wasn’t pumping and copied him. When both sinks were mostly full, the scullion added hot water to both from steaming buckets at his feet.
Now, Mags was no stranger to pot scrubbing. He’d done plenty of it before he was big enough to work in the mine. So he grabbed a second brush and set to, and the scullion didn’t even look up.
There was a science and a rhythm to doing this sort of work. Nasty, crusted pots with things burned in them, you filled full of water and put to boil, unless they were very bad indeed, in which case you filled them with coals until everything was ash. Pots that had only been used to simmer something gently, you gave a quick scrub and rinse. The rest, you soaked in hot water before you tried scrubbing them—something that the other scullion evidently had not learned. So Mags took the hard ones away from him—filled them full of hot water, of which there was, miraculously enough, a plentiful supply—took the very worst ones and put them to boil, leaving them on the hearth where there was an entire calf and an entire pig roasting, with a clanking mechanism to turn the spit instead of a boy as there had been in Cole Pieters’ kitchen.