She explored the cottage as far as her chain would reach, which took her just outside the kitchen door and to every room in the cottage. There had been a kitchen garden there, next to the door, once. There were at least a few hardy herbs still struggling. Mint, of course. Nothing killed mint. She could just reach a few feet away, as far as the outhouse, but at least that meant she could start a garden midden for garbage. She had the sinking feeling she was going to need it.
She quickly discovered that absolutely nothing in the cottage, not the heaviest tools or the sharpest chisel, made the faintest scratch on the loop of metal on the hearth, the chain or the manacle. She hadn't really expected them to, since she doubted that the Dwarves were so stupid as to leave the tools to free herself in the reach of their captive, but it was disappointing anyway.
They'd told her to "clean," but given the state of their house and themselves, it appeared that their idea of what was acceptable was set to a standard a lot lower than hers.
Good.
She got a stick, picked up their discarded clothing with it, started a fire in the kitchen garden with a big cauldron of water over it and boiled the entire lot. That was as much in the way of laundry as she intended to do. She did sweep, and swept everything out the kitchen door to the place where she was making a midden, because there was a prodigious amount of petrified or rotting food, bones and other nastiness. She had no intention of scrubbing the floors, or anything, unless they ordered her to, or she just couldn't stand it herself. And she wasn't using the outhouse; the stench in there was enough to knock a person over and suffocate her. Instead, she made her own place to go discreetly behind some overgrown bushes.
The storeroom actually proved to be somewhat valuable. There were a lot of things in there that looked as if they must have belonged to the previous owner of the cottage, now broken and tossed aside. Some real bedding, for instance, which was moth-eaten and tattered, but was better than sleeping on the bare stone floor. She boiled it, too; heaven only knew what was living in it. And wedged on a shelf, there was a cookbook. She leafed through it, and figured she might be able to manage some of what was in it. By that time, the stuff she had spread in the garden to dry was ready to take in. She left all the clothing in one pile and the blankets in another; let them fight it out among themselves who belonged to what. Coward returned with some scrawny hares at that point. He tossed them on the kitchen table and dived for the piles, greedily picking through them before claiming what looked like the best of a bad lot of rubbish for himself, changed with no thought for modesty and demanded food.
She gave him leftover pease porridge. He didn't complain, gobbled down three enormous bowlfuls and went back out again, leaving her to gut and skin the game herself.
To make it go as far as possible, she made soup, managed unleavened griddle cakes without burning too many and spread the leftover pease porridge, which by now was a paste, onto them. She took her bedding in from the garden, but left it piled in a corner behind the broom and some buckets, because she had a good idea that if they saw it, they'd take it. She also ate first, at least of the griddle cakes, with some of the stewed rabbit meat. Coward turned up again with more game, squirrels this time; he looked with longing at the soup, but this time didn't demand any, though he did grab greedily for griddle cakes. She didn't stop him. He was still stuffing himself when the other six came stumping up the stairs. Bully had a very small bag at his belt. He smacked Coward with the back of his hand when he saw the smaller Dwarf was eating.
"Wha?" Coward sniveled. "I din touch yon soup!"
"See ye remember not ta, then," Bully sneered, and sat down at the table.
She brought bowls of the soup — the squirrel wasn't completely cooked, but they didn't seem to care — and the griddle cakes for as long as they lasted. They had no leavening, no milk, no eggs in them, being more like flat unleavened bread than cakes, but again, the Dwarves didn't seem to care. They ate everything she put in front of them.
Once again, they gobbled everything down and left a mess behind. By the time she was done and had set another kettle of pease porridge up to cook overnight, she was ready to weep with exhaustion. She dragged her bedding out onto the hearth, and made a more comfortable bed there than she had the night before.
And then she did weep. Because how would anyone ever find her out here? Who would come here, even if The Tradition led them? Who would see she was pretty beneath the layers of filth that were going to build up on her? Keeping clean was going to be impossible. And if they did, how would they get her free without cutting off her foot? There was nothing in the Snowskin Tradition about the princess being chained — or having to cut off her foot to get free!
No, this was a new twist, and a horrible one, and right now there seemed to be no Path, Traditional or otherwise, out of it.
Chapter 3
"I've got her!"
Jimson's shout woke Lily from her fitful doze. She had fallen asleep in the chair while Jimson searched for the missing Princess, combing through every reflective surface in the general vicinity of the buildup of Traditional power that he and she could sense. Now she knuckled the fog out of her eyes and leaned forward. "Where?" she demanded.
"It's in the forest. I can place it on a map for you later. Not many reflective surfaces there, I'm using a knife and a water bucket." The image from the bucket wasn't very useful since it showed mostly ceiling. The one from the knife wasn't much better; it was fogged and distorted.
"Ah, I have some more options. Cups."
The glimpses Lily got of the Princess as she filled those cups made her wince. Bruised, hurt, poor child — her hands were a mass of scratches and cuts, the nails broken and torn. She was filthy, too. Her hair was full of twigs and bits of leaf.
Not as filthy as the creatures appropriating the cups, though. The glimpses she got of matted, fouled beards, yellowed teeth, snarled hair and filthy faces made her grimace. The reflection from the knife gave relative heights, proving that girl's captors were Dwarves. But...not the sort of Dwarves that Lily was used to dealing with.
Lily frowned. This was unexpected...perhaps. It looked as if more than one Traditional tale was getting tangled up here.
And the tales were warped and twisted. Those foul little creatures were not the kindly helpers of the proper Traditional Path; the Snowskin Path brought creatures that might be ugly but were always nurturing and kind.Brutish was the most charitable word to describe the things that were being reflected now. The way they were treating the Princess was entirely terrible. Rosa had spirit, and Lily could not imagine her staying there unless she was being held in some way.
Meanwhile Jimson was searching for every reflective surface he could find near her, trying one after another so they could get a better idea of what was going on there. It was beginning to look as if they were not going to find anything useful, until —