They came to a sort of crossroads in the kitchens. They were well out of sight of the broad flight of steps Quiss had entered the kitchens from, at a point where he could continue ahead into the mist, or turn either right or left, past huge fat stoves holding great rotund cauldrons of some bubbling, frothing liquid. The soot-black metal of the stoves was carved with grotesque faces from which a dark heat beat out at Quiss. A yellow-red light jetted out from the eye-holes of the distorted faces, like a bright beam shining through a keyhole in a door. Leaking wisps of smoke wormed their way out from the sides of the stoves" doors, adding a pungent aroma of something like burning coal to the medley of smells produced by the man-high vats bubbling away on top of the bulging, flattened-looking stoves.
Quiss looked around. He could see a few of the other scullions nearby, standing on their stools stirring pots, wiping stoves, polishing stove-fronts. They were all studiously avoiding meeting his gaze, though he thought they were watching him out of the sides of their eyes. He brought the minion he had under his arm out, lifted it up to look into its blank face. "Which way?" he asked it. It looked about, pointed left.
"That way."
He stuffed it back under his arm, marched off to the left past the heavy black stoves, through their radiated heat. The scullions ahead of him got down off their stools and waddled away, disappearing in the kitchens" foggy wastes. "Are you sure you wouldn't like to ask more complicated questions?" the small attendant said, muffledly, from his side. He ignored it. "I mean, 'Which way?' is a bit basic, wouldn't you agree?"
"Now which way?" He brought it up, let it look about as they came to another junction, the cauldrons at their backs, great stone tubs set in the floor and covered with some sort of green scum on either side. The attendant shrugged.
"Left."
Quiss went that way. The attendant under his arm said, "That wasn't exactly what I meant; just adding a 'now' on to the start doesn't really make much difference. With respect I don't think you've got the idea of the sort of questions you have to ask. It's quite easy once you get the hang of it. Really, I'm surprised you haven't encountered puzzles like this before. Think carefully."
"Which way here?"
"That way." The scullion sighed and pointed with its arm. It said, "I'm probably saying more than I should, but as I'm giving you the information without you asking for it, I don't think it's covered by the rules. All I'd say is that what you have to do is to ask questions which although are apparently about what you want to do... where you want to get to, should really be telling you about the person you're -"
"Where now?"
"Left again. Do you see what I mean? What you're really finding out is the truth-telling status of the person you're getting the information from, so that - " Quiss half listened to all this as he watched, suspiciously, the same cableway of cutlery and cups squeak and rattle its way overhead," - you can find out two things... no, wait a minute, come to think of it you're finding... hmm. Let me think about this."
Quiss looked at the black stoves, the strange faces cast in hot metal, the giant vats of liquid. He made a rising, growling noise at the back of his throat and brought the scullion out from under his arm, looking into its mask-face again. "We're back where we started, you lice-brained dwarf!"
"Well, I did warn you."
"Cretin!" Quiss screamed into its face. He saw a cauldron to one side with its lid hanging above it, suspended on a pulley. He hoisted the scullion up and threw the creature into the huge vat. The scullion's whines and yelps disappeared in a series of gruelly splashes which spurted from the top of the big tub. Quiss slapped his hands together and turned. Almost immediately he was surrounded by what seemed like hundreds of the small attendants. They flowed from every avenue of the kitchen, a waist-high tide of grubby, grey-cowled figures rushing in towards him, their coloured boots, sashes and hat-brims swirling out of the mist. Quiss experienced the tiniest moment of fear, then savage anger, and was about to go down fighting - take as many of the little bastards with him as he could - when he realised that they were bowing and wringing their hands and making apologetic noises, not howling angry ones. He relaxed.
"I tell the truth! I tell the truth, honest I do!" one was shouting, and it and a few others tugged at the lower edges of the few furs he still had on and pulling on his under-breeches where they appeared out of the top of his boots. He let them lead him away, straight ahead between the rows of cauldrons. Other scullions were running in with ladders and lengths of rope, climbing up on to the big stove and scrambling up to the messy lip of the vat in which, judging by the amount of splashing and screaming, the small attendant still survived.
Quiss was led by the dwarfish scullions, through the banked ranges, past gleaming tubs, boiling vats, open fires and grills, past rows of massive, wing-nutted pressure cookers guarded by blast screens, under huge n-shaped pipes, bubbling and gurgling and leaking steam, and over the dainty, counter-sunk tracks of a narrow-gauge railway until eventually he saw a wall ahead, and was led up a rickety wooden staircase to a narrow gantry, then stopped at a small wooden door set into the wall. One of the attendants rapped on the door, then they all scampered off, a display of multi-coloured boots flashing along the wooden gantry until they vanished into the mist. The door was thrown open. The castle seneschal glared out at Quiss.
He was a tall, thin man of indeterminate age, with hairless grey skin and dressed in a long black robe without ornament save for a small silver fork with twisted tines which hung on a piece of string round his neck, and rested on the black breast of the robe. The seneschal's eyes were long, seemingly stretched out at either side as though the eyeballs within were the size of clenched fists. His right eye had two pupils in it, side by side in the grey whites. "Now what?" he barked when he saw Quiss standing there.
"Guess," Quiss said, putting his hands on his hips and leaning forward, glaring back at the seneschal, who stood blocking the doorway into his office. "There still isn't any heat up there; we're freezing to death and we can't see to play this absurd game. If you can't get more heat up there, let us move the games room down a few floors."
"Not possible. The boilers are being repaired. Full power soon. Be patient."
"It's difficult to be patient when you're dying of hypothermia."
"The engineers are working as fast as they can."
"So they can reheat our corpses?"
"I'll order more furs."
"We can hardly walk for the weight of the ones we've got; what good will those do? Haven't you got any thermal underwear, or even heaters? Couldn't you build a fireplace? We could burn books. There are plenty up there."
"Shouldn't do that," the seneschal said, shaking his head. "Aren't two the same. All unique. Don't have two copies of any of "em."
"Well they still burn - they would still burn well. "Quiss had to be careful. He'd already burned quite a few wallfuls, and had come down, under protest, as much to keep Ajayi happy as anything else. She had complained about the waste, and said they shouldn't have to burn books to keep warm; it offended her. Besides, she had said, perhaps they would take more time repairing the heating system if they knew the two of them were able to keep warm without it. It was a bad precedent to set. He had grumbled but agreed. The seneschal said,
"Shouldn't be too long. I'll have some hot bricks sent up."
"What?"