A new party, holders by the look of them, now made themselves known to the guards and were admitted, to the angry chagrin of the smithmaster. Then three carts, heavily laden to judge by the straining of the burden beasts struggling up the ramp, forced the smithmaster to one side. The guard waved the carts toward the kitchen courtyard. The last cart jammed a wheel against the ramp parapet, the driver thudding his stick against the burden beast’s rump.
“Wheel be jammed,” yelled Piemur, not liking to see any animal beaten for what was not its fault.
He jumped forward to help guide the carter. The man now backed his stolid beast, swinging its head left. Piemur, setting his shoulder to the tailgate, gave a push in the proper direction. He also tried to peek under the covering to see what on earth was being delivered to the Hold on a Gather day when most business was done in the Gather meadow. Before he could get a good look, the cart had picked up speed as it reached more level ground.
He was past the guards, arguing with the smith and paying no more attention to the procession of carts. Ducking quickly to the side of the cart away from the carter, Piemur gained access to the Hold proper.
As the carts rumbled on into the kitchen court, Piemur rapidly wondered how he could turn this opportunity to advantage and remain in the Hold after the carters had unloaded and left. Certainly if he was actually in the Hold, he might find out more than he could possibly learn wandering about the Gather. If nothing else he could discover what the carter had delivered.
Then he spied a line of coveralls bleaching in the spring sun. He darted over and removed one, ignoring the slight dampness as he slipped it over his head. Kitchen drudges were never noted for cleanliness, and once the beast dirt and stains on his tunic were covered, the dust on his boots and trousers would be unremarkable.
“Hey, you!” Piemur tried to ignore the call, but it was repeated and could only be directed to him. He turned toward the speaker, affecting a stupid expression. “I mean you, with the empty arms!”
Obediently he trudged back to the carter, who slung a heavy sack across his back. At that point, the kitchen steward bustled out to supervise, and Piemur, bent double under the sack, passed him without a glance. The steward alternated between chivvying his drudges out to help unload, and the carter for his ill-timed arrival. The carter replied with equal heat that he had heavy carts and slow beasts and had had to give way and eat dust from those hurrying to this bloody Gather. Meron ought to be pleased he’d got here within the day allotted, much less at an earlier hour.
The steward hushed him and began shouting orders, ordering Piemur on to the back storerooms. Piemur got inside the kitchen, not knowing where the stores rooms were, so, making a business of wiping his face and easing his shoulders, he waited until someone brushed past him and turned down the proper corridor.
“Don’t know where Ah’m t’ put more as is plenty here a’ready,” muttered the drudge as Piemur followed him.
‘A-top them others?” suggested Piemur helpfully.
In the dim light of waning glows, the Nabolese peered at Piemur. “Never saw you afore.” “Nor you haven’t,” Piemur agreed amiably. “Sent from t’Hold to help in kitchen for t’Gather.”
“Oh!” And the sly gleam in the man’s eyes suggested to Piemur that he had just let himself in for the worst and dirtiest of the chores about a Hold on a Gather day when the Lord was feasting guests.
Haste appeared the vital factor in unloading the carts, so Piemur didn’t see many of the seals on the sacks, barrels and boxes he humped out of sight. But he saw enough to realize that the delivery came from a variety of sources: tanner, weaver, smithcraft for the heaviest boxes, wine from many of the yards, but none, he was pleased to note, from Benden. When the last bundle was stowed in the now-bulging stores rooms, Piemur’s sigh of relief was echoed by Besel, the sly drudge, who had managed to stay close to him during the unloading. Piemur had no sooner lowered himself to a sack to rest than the man snatched him to his feet.
“C’mon, we’ve no time to rest t’day.”
Nor did Piemur, who was set first to scrape out ashes from the secondary hearths and then to gutting beasts and wild fowl, thankful that he’d watched Camo often enough at that task to know the tricks. He scoured extra plates, encrusted with the dirt and grime of Turns, until his fingers shriveled. When he’d done that, and peeled a dragon-load of tubers, he was allowed a breather so long as he kept one of the five spits turning.
Chaos broke loose when the Hold Steward arrived to inform the kitchen that Lord Meron chose to eat in his own quarters and these were to be prepared while he walked the Gather.
The kitchen steward obsequiously took the change of order, having only that hour completed the feast arrangements in the Great Hall. The moment the heavy door had swung shut on the Hold Steward’s back, however, he burst into obscenities that won him Piemur’s astounded approval.
If Piemur had thought he’d worked hard already, he was soon disabused of that notion by the rate at which he was sent flying about the kitchen to collect cleaning and polishing tools and preparations. Then he was sent on ahead with Besel and a woman to start cleaning the Lord’s rooms. Already weary from an early rising and more hard labor than he’d known since he’d left his native cothold, Piemur tried to cheer himself by imagining Master Oldive’s reaction to his “quiet day” at Nabol Gather.
“Who’d a thought he’d walk t’Gather?” the woman was saying as they trudged up the steep steps from the main hall to Meron’s apartment.
“Had to. Didncha hear what they be saying at Gather? Meron dead a’ready and none know his heir. Some as want to turn Gather Day into Duel Day.”
That remark set both Nabolese into cackles of laughter, and Piemur wondered if he could be ignorant enough of Hold problems to ask why they were so amused.
“Ah saw ’em comin’ in, Ah did,” said Besel, again with that sly, knowing expression on his face. “Ev’ry one of ’em was with ’im some time t’day, they was. Outsides with him now, shouldn’t wonder.”
“He’ll have his li’l game wi’em, he will, each thinking he’s been named,” said the woman and dug her elbow into Besel’s ribs which sent them both off into malicious laughter again.
“Hope it’s not just us as has to do all the cleaning here,” Besel said, putting his hand on the door handle. “Hasn’t been done in…faugh!” He turned his head away, coughing against the stench that wafted out to them from the opened door.
As the smell reached Piemur’s nostrils, sweet, cloying, sickening, he felt his stomach turn in protest and tried not to inhale. He hung back, hoping the fresher air of the corridor would cleanse the room of its stink.
“Here, you get in and open shutters. You’re used to stinking messes, guttingman.” Besel grabbed Piemur roughly by the arm and propelled him violently into the room.
How Piemur managed not to vomit from the odor of the room before he reached the shutters and flung them open, he didn’t know. He half-threw his body up the deep sill, gasping in fresh, cool air.
“Other windows, too, boy,” ordered Besel from the doorway.
Piemur filled his lungs and opened the other windows, staying by the last until the chill air dissipated the odors of decay and illness. And Lord Meron’s heirs had had to attend him in this funking atmosphere? Piemur spared them a moment of sympathy.
Then Besel shouted for him to go into the other rooms and open them up to air properly. “Else no one’d eat his food, like as not, and we’m to clean up their messes.”
The foul odor hung heaviest in the last of the four large rooms that comprised the Lord Holder’s private apartments in Nabol. It was then that Piemur blessed the happenstance that had sent him in here ahead of the others. Reposing on the hearth were nine pots of exactly the size in which fire lizard eggs were placed to keep warm and harden. Mastering his urge to gag, Piemur ducked across the room to investigate. One pot was set slightly apart from the others and, lifting the lid, Piemur scraped enough sand away to see the mottled shell before he covered it carefully over. He took a quick look at the contents of the first pot in the other group. Yes, the egg was smaller and of a different hue. He’d wager every mark he owned that the separate pot contained a fire lizard queen egg.