IV. Emberhand’s Kitchen

Serelle led Tobin up the service stairway without looking back, taking the steps at a pace that suggested the stairs had offended her by existing. By the time they reached the second-floor landing, the smell of cooking had thickened from a distant promise into something full and immediate: roasting meat, browned butter, sharp herbs, onions sweating in pans, fresh bread, hot iron, and steam. Tobin had only half a breath to appreciate it before Serelle turned toward what appeared to be a dead end in the service hall. The wall ahead was solid brick, or at least it had every intention of looking like solid brick. Serelle walked straight through it.

Tobin stopped.

Not slowed. Not hesitated. Stopped.

One moment she was there, bright orange suit, platinum hair, and terrifying purpose. And the next she had passed into brick as if the wall had decided she was not worth arguing with.

Her head reappeared through the masonry.

“Tobin,” Serelle said.

“Yes, ma’am.”

She pointed at the wall. “Wall.”

Tobin looked at it. “Yes, ma’am.”

“Through it.”

Tobin looked at the brick.

The brick looked exactly like brick.

Serelle sighed the sigh of a woman who had already explained this too many times to people who had not yet learned that the building was allowed to be strange.

“Shimmer spell,” she said. “Placed throughout the waystation so staff may move quickly without guests watching the machinery behind their comfort. Guests see walls, paneling, decorative alcoves, whatever they are most likely to ignore. Staff see the route once they know it is there.”

“I do not see the route,” Tobin said.

“That is because you are new,” Serelle said.

“Comforting,” Tobin said.

“It was not meant to be.”

Then she disappeared again.

Tobin stood alone on the landing with one hand on the rail, his satchel pulling at his shoulder and the warm smell of food rolling through the stairwell like an invitation from a better life.

Go on.

You are about to walk into a wall.

She did it.

She is Serelle Vane. Walls probably apologize to her.

Tobin reached forward with one hand. His fingers touched brick for the length of a heartbeat, cool and rough beneath his skin. Then the surface shimmered like heat over a summer road, and his hand passed through. The feeling was not wet, not soft, not anything he had a proper word for. It was like pushing through a curtain made of someone else’s secret.

“Right,” he muttered. “Perfectly normal.”

He stepped through.

The other side opened into a narrow service corridor running behind the grander parts of the floor. It was plain compared to the entry hall below, built of practical stone, dark wood, and shelves tucked into places guests would never think to look. Staff moved through it quickly, carrying trays, folded linens, covered dishes, messages, and the tight expressions of people who knew exactly how little time they had. Every so often, one of them passed through a stretch of wall and vanished. Another emerged from a place that, to Tobin’s eye, had been nothing but stacked crates a moment before.

He turned slowly.

“How many of those are there?” Tobin asked.

“Enough,” Serelle said.

Tobin glanced at another false wall. “That feels like the sort of answer a person gives before someone gets lost forever.”

“Then do not get lost forever,” Serelle said.

She started walking again, and Tobin followed before his feet could begin another debate.

They moved along the service corridor until Serelle reached another section of wall, this one faced with plain stone blocks darkened by heat and age. She did not pause. Tobin, proud of himself for learning, only paused a little before following her through.

The world exploded into a kitchen.

Heat struck him first. Not unpleasant, exactly, but large. A living heat that rolled out from ovens, fire pits, boiling pots, and iron surfaces polished black from years of use. The kitchen was wide enough to have its own weather. Steam gathered high above, curling toward vents set into the ceiling. Copper pots hung in ordered rows. Long preparation tables stretched across the room. Shelves held jars, baskets, crocks, sacks of flour, bundles of herbs, strings of drying peppers, and more knives than Tobin believed one room should be trusted with.

And in the middle of it stood a very tall man.

He had black hair swept back from a sharp face, with a slice of dark gray running through one side like smoke caught in the strands. His coat was not quite a chef’s coat and not quite a wizard’s robe, but some severe marriage of the two: white and charcoal fabric, high-collared, long-sleeved, buttoned with dark metal, marked by faint stitched symbols along the cuffs. He stood with his hands clasped behind his back, watching a row of floating knives dice onions with the calm attention of a general reviewing his troops.

“Chef Emberhand,” Serelle said.

The tall man turned his head. “Miss Vane”

“This is Tobin. New Assistant to the Waystation Attendants.”

She motioned at Tobin.

“Chef Emberhand is Director of Dining. When dining runs beautifully, guests praise the food. When it does not, they find me. I prefer they praise the food.”

Chef Emberhand looked at Tobin.

Tobin had been looked at several times already that morning. Nessa had looked at him like a stain near the carpet. Serelle had looked at him like a task already late. Silas had looked at him like a number that might become incorrect.

Chef Emberhand looked at him like an ingredient.

Not a bad ingredient. Not spoiled. Just unknown, untested, and possibly dangerous if added at the wrong time.

Tobin straightened on instinct.

Chef Emberhand gave one small nod.

“Can you carry without tasting?” Chef Emberhand asked.

“Yes, sir,” Tobin said.

“Can you enter a room without touching covered trays?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Can you recognize the difference between hot, sharp, fragile, and expensive?”

Tobin hesitated. “Usually before the screaming starts.”

Serelle’s mouth twitched.

Chef Emberhand did not smile.

“Answer more carefully in my kitchen,” Chef Emberhand said.

“Yes, sir,” Tobin said.

“Do you understand that a closed lid is not an invitation?”

“Yes, sir.”

“That steam burns?”

“Yes, sir.”

“That guests are not to be told what almost happened to their food?”

Tobin blinked. “Yes, sir?”

Chef Emberhand’s expression did not change. “That was not a question. That was mercy wearing grammar.”

Chef Emberhand turned to Serelle. “He has timing issues.”

“He has been here less than an hour,” Serelle said.

“Timing begins before arrival,” Chef Emberhand said.

“Of course it does,” Serelle replied.

“And posture.”

Serelle glanced at Tobin. “He arrived by wagon.”

“A wagon is no excuse for folding like wet pastry,” Chef Emberhand said.

Tobin slowly adjusted his shoulders.

Serelle noticed. Of course she noticed.

“Better,” she said.

Chef Emberhand’s eyes moved back to him. “Marginally.”

The two of them began discussing him as if he were a chair one of them might accept if the legs were reinforced.

“He will assist outside kitchen operation,” Serelle said. “Dining support, event movement, maintenance requests, guest-facing recovery where appropriate. Anything structural or mechanical goes to Edrin’s office before it becomes my problem. Anything involving events goes through Vivi before it becomes everyone’s problem.”

“Not inside production,” Chef Emberhand said.

“No one said inside production.”

“People often imply foolishness without hearing themselves.”

“I am not people.”

“No. People apologize afterward.”

Tobin watched them go back and forth, only half following the words, because the longer he stood there, the more impossible the kitchen became.

There were no cooks.

Not one.

No servers rushing through with trays. No apprentices sweating over chopping boards. No scullions stirring pots. No red-faced men turning spits near the fire. The kitchen should have been packed with workers. A room this large, feeding a building this crowded, should have needed more hands than a man could count.

Instead, the work was happening by itself.

Knives flashed in the air, chopping vegetables in perfect rhythm. A spoon circled through a soup pot, lifted, tasted itself somehow, then added a pinch of something green from a nearby bowl. A pan tilted over a flame and flipped strips of meat with a hiss. Dough folded and turned beneath invisible pressure. A brush swept glaze across loaves without a hand holding it. A rack of plates drifted from one table to another, each setting itself down with soft, disciplined clicks.

Tobin stared.

Of course.

Of course the terrifying chef in the wizard-coat was a wizard.

That should have occurred to him before the self-stirring soup.

Chef Emberhand stopped speaking to Serelle so abruptly that Tobin wondered if someone had dropped something. No one had. Nothing in the kitchen seemed capable of dropping unless the chef allowed it.

The chef looked at him.

“You will come with me,” Chef Emberhand said. “Say good day to Miss Vane. Then we begin.”

Tobin turned too quickly.

“Good day, Miss Vane.”

It came out awkwardly formal, the kind of thing a person said when trying to sound employable and instead sounding like he had learned manners from a nervous book.

Serelle accepted it with the smallest incline of her head.

“Good luck, Tobin.”

That seemed kind.

Then she looked at Chef Emberhand.

“Try not to frighten him useless.”

“I do not frighten useless,” Chef Emberhand said. “I frighten attentive.”

“See you later, Chef.”

“Miss Vane.”

She left through the shimmer wall without another word, bright suit vanishing into stone.

Tobin was alone with Chef Emberhand.

And the knives.

And the soup that could taste itself.

Chef Emberhand began walking the length of the kitchen, and Tobin followed immediately. Not after a pause. Not after being asked twice. Immediately.

Good.

See? Learning.

Do not congratulate yourself for following a tall angry wizard through a room full of flying knives.

Still counts.

Chef Emberhand moved past the preparation tables with long, measured steps. As he passed, the kitchen seemed to adjust around him. A floating spoon dipped lower. A pan shifted off flame. A line of chopped carrots slid from board to bowl. None of it touched him. None of it slowed him. The room obeyed the way staff had obeyed Serelle in the waiting hall, except here the staff were tools, fire, steam, and sharpened metal.

“I prepare the food,” Chef Emberhand said. “I oversee the food. I approve the food. No one interferes with the food.”

“Yes, sir.”

“No one seasons because they think it smells plain. No one lifts lids because curiosity has hollowed out their skull. No one moves trays because they appear to be in the way. Food is not in the way. People are in the way.”

“Yes, sir.”

“No one tells me a guest wants it hotter, softer, sweeter, rarer, darker, lighter, quicker, slower, smaller, larger, simpler, richer, less green, more brown, or ‘like my mother made it’ unless they are prepared to explain the mother’s method, region, tools, fat preference, grain quality, and emotional failings.”

Tobin opened his mouth, reconsidered, and closed it.

Chef Emberhand noticed.

“What?” Chef Emberhand asked.

“I was going to ask if that happens often,” Tobin said.

“It happens constantly.”

“Ah.”

Chef Emberhand continued walking. “Mothers have ruined more good service than war.”

Tobin did not know whether to laugh or affirm him with another “Yes Sir”

Chef Emberhand continued before he had to decide.

“Your duties are outside production. You do not cook. You do not plate unless instructed. You do not taste unless offered. You do not rescue anything from a fire unless I tell you it requires rescuing. My servers handle service. They know the dining room, the tables, the timing, the guest temperaments, and which nobles believe themselves allergic to humility.”

They passed a long table where covered serving dishes floated into formation.

“You assist where the dining operation touches the rest of the building. Clean up beyond kitchen boundaries. General maintenance reports. Moving furniture for events when Vivi has decided furniture is not where destiny requires it. Setting screens, extra chairs, banquet boards, water stands, service ropes, spare linen carts. Carrying messages. Fetching approved supplies and clearing what guests should not see before guests see it. If something breaks in the dining hall, you find the correct person. If something spills, you prevent it from becoming legend. If a guest asks you for anything you do not understand, you do not invent an answer with your youthful little mouth.”

“My mouth is not that youthful,” Tobin said before wisdom could tackle the sentence.

Chef Emberhand stopped.

The knives stopped too.

Every floating tool in the kitchen froze midair.

Tobin felt his soul quietly pack a bag.

Chef Emberhand turned.

For a moment, the room seemed to grow hotter without the fires changing.

“Do you believe,” the chef said softly, “that wit is seasoning?”

Tobin swallowed.

“No, sir.”

“Correct. Wit is garnish. Used poorly, it cheapens the plate.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Used well…” Chef Emberhand held the silence until it became uncomfortable enough to season itself. “It still does not belong in my kitchen unless invited.”

“Yes, sir.”

The tools resumed all at once.

Chef Emberhand walked on.

“You are not here to be clever. You are here to be useful. Clever may come later, if useful survives.”

Tobin followed, careful to keep his face still.

That was fair.

Rude, but fair.

“Dining is timing,” Chef Emberhand said, voice rising now with a pressure that seemed to build from somewhere below his ribs. “Timing is respect. A table seated too early becomes restless. A table seated too late becomes insulted. Soup held too long becomes punishment. Bread cut too soon dies on the board. Meat rushed is theft. Meat delayed is arrogance. A plate is a promise made visible, and every careless hand near it is a liar waiting for permission.”

A pot behind him boiled harder.

Chef Emberhand’s shadow stretched strangely across the floor, longer than it should have been in the kitchen light.

“The Crown Road Waystation feeds travelers, merchants, guards, performers, petitioners, minor nobles, major fools, and occasionally the royal household itself. They do not come here for excuses. They come hungry, tired, proud, frightened, bored, or determined to be offended. We give them food before those conditions become everyone’s problem. Food is order. Food is peace. Food is the difference between a guest praising the Crown and a guest writing letters.”

He turned toward Tobin again, and the heat in the room seemed to lean with him.

“And nothing, nothing, nothing leaves my care worse than it entered.”

For one second, Tobin thought the fire pit flared in agreement.

Then Chef Emberhand closed his eyes.

The room settled.

When he opened them again, his voice was calm.

“I apologize,” he said. “For rambling on, but I will not apologize for my passion!”

Tobin stood very still, unsure whether surviving an apology from a wizard-chef counted as part of his training.

“Yes, sir,” he said.

Chef Emberhand nodded once.

“Good. Now we may continue.”

V. The Left-Handed Torch

Chef Emberhand led Tobin to a small nook set into the side of the main kitchen, half-hidden behind a rack of hanging copper pans and a tall shelf of flour sacks. It was not an office exactly. It was more like a desk had been placed there under protest and then surrounded by enough notes, jars, folded cloths, sharpened pencils, sealed orders, and stacked wooden trays that the kitchen had eventually accepted it as part of itself. Chef Emberhand opened a narrow drawer, removed a small leather satchel tied with cord, and held it out.

Tobin took it carefully.

“Dry goods,” Chef Emberhand said. “Enough to get you through today. Bread, hard cheese, dried fruit, nuts, and one honey oat cake because Records insists frightened new staff are less likely to faint if given something sweet.”

“I wasn’t going to faint,” Tobin said.

Chef Emberhand looked at him.

Tobin adjusted his grip on the satchel. “But I appreciate Records’ concern.”

“Report here at six in the morning for breakfast ration. Ten in the morning for lunch and dinner ration. Do not arrive early. Do not arrive late. Do not arrive during active plating unless summoned. Do not stand in doorways, breathe over trays, ask what smells good, or make the face young men make when they believe hunger entitles them to conversation.”

Tobin was not sure which face that was, but he immediately tried not to make it.

“Yes, sir.”

“After ten in the evening, you may bother me for emergency ration replacement, work-related injuries, fire, flood, blood, structural collapse, or a guest attempting to season my food.”

“What if it’s only a small fire?”

Chef Emberhand’s eyes narrowed.

Tobin cleared his throat.

“Yes, sir.”

The chef turned away and continued his walk through the kitchen, and Tobin followed with the dry goods tucked under one arm. This time he did not hesitate. He matched the chef’s pace as best he could, careful to keep behind him, not beside him, and absolutely not in front of him. That felt worth remembering. Some people led because they were going somewhere. Chef Emberhand led because everything else had sense enough to get out of his way.

The kitchen moved around them. A spoon rose from a sauce, paused in the air, and tilted toward the chef. He tasted from it without breaking stride, considered, then lifted one finger. A pinch of salt flew from a nearby bowl and vanished into the pot. At the fire pit, long iron tongs turned a slab of meat with a hiss that sent sparks crawling upward. Chef Emberhand glanced at it once.

“Two breaths less on that side.”

The tongs obeyed.

Tobin watched a row of carrots split into perfect pieces beneath a knife with no hand on it.

Chef Emberhand stopped beside a wide preparation table where dough rounded itself into smooth balls beneath invisible palms.

“You have a task,” he said.

Tobin straightened.

“Yes, sir.”

“A simple task.”

That did not sound good. In Tobin’s experience, simple tasks were where complicated people hid knives.

“A very important simple task,” Chef Emberhand continued. “For the remainder of the day, no matter what anyone tells you, this is your task until it is complete. If a porter asks you to carry trunks, you tell him Chef Emberhand assigned you. If a maid asks you to fetch linens, you tell her Chef Emberhand assigned you. If a guard asks why you are walking with purpose instead of terror, you tell him Chef Emberhand assigned you. If Miss Vane herself asks, you tell her Chef Emberhand assigned you, and then you pray she is in a generous mood.”

Tobin nodded carefully.

“Yes, sir.”

“You will not be distracted.”

“No, sir.”

“You will not decide another task looks easier.”

“No, sir.”

“You will not abandon the work because someone with louder boots gives a louder order.”

“No, sir.”

“You will complete it, return directly to me, and report the result.”

“Yes, sir.”

Chef Emberhand studied him for a moment. The firelight moved across his face, catching the dark gray streak in his hair until it looked almost like ash beside coal.

“I am left-handed,” he said.

Tobin waited, because that sounded like the beginning of a trap.

Chef Emberhand lifted his left hand.

“This hand has served kings, sealed treaties, ended duels, mended bones, split stone, bound stormlight, and perfected the only acceptable shallot reduction in the three kingdoms.”

Tobin decided very quickly that nodding was safer than speaking.

Chef Emberhand lowered his hand.

“It has also burned through my last left-handed torch.”

The kitchen seemed to hush around them.

Tobin looked at the chef.

Then at the fire pit.

Then at one of the torches mounted along the kitchen wall.

Then back at the chef.

The words formed in his head before he could stop them. Unfortunately, his mouth was closer than wisdom.

“Are not all torches left-handed if you hold them in your left hand?”

For one clean second, nothing happened.

Then the fire pit roared.

Not flared. Roared.

The flames climbed higher, bright and sudden, throwing heat across the kitchen hard enough that Tobin felt his eyebrows reconsider their future. Every floating knife stopped in midair. The boiling pots stilled, though the water inside them trembled. Steam curled backward as if trying to retreat. Somewhere above, the hanging pans gave a soft metallic shiver.

Chef Emberhand turned slowly.

The room turned with him.

Tobin’s earlier suspicion settled into certainty with both boots.

Wizard.

Very wizard.

Possibly the kind of wizard people wrote laws about after surviving him.

Chef Emberhand’s voice came low and even, which somehow made it worse.

“Do you believe I have reached my years, my station, and my mastery of flame without understanding the common handling properties of a torch?”

Tobin’s tongue tried to hide behind his teeth.

“No, sir.”

“Do you believe I would send a new assistant wandering through the waystation for amusement?”

That question felt more dangerous because the honest answer was beginning to look like yes.

“No, sir.”

“Do you believe the term left-handed torch is a jest?”

Tobin looked at the fire pit, which was still too large and much too interested in his answer.

“No, sir.”

“Good.”

The heat held for another breath.

Tobin swallowed.

“I am sorry, sir. Yes, sir. I will go get your left-handed torches right away, sir.”

Chef Emberhand stared at him a moment longer.

Then he lifted one finger.

The flames settled.

The knives resumed chopping.

The soup began stirring again, though Tobin could have sworn it stirred more judgmentally than before.

Chef Emberhand pointed toward a far wall where the stone shimmered faintly near a stack of serving boards.

“Out.”

“Yes, sir.”

Tobin did not ask if that was a door. Asking felt like an excellent way to become an ingredient in tomorrows special he assumed. He hurried toward the shimmer, hoping with every step that it was, in fact, a passage and not just a decorative spell meant to embarrass people with poor survival instincts.

At the last moment, the wall wavered.

Tobin stepped through it and found himself in the service corridor again.

Only then did he breathe.

Behind him, the kitchen sounds continued: chopping, boiling, sizzling, the steady movement of impossible work under impossible command.

Tobin adjusted the dry goods under his arm and looked down the corridor.

Left-handed torches.

Of course.

First day, first task, and already a wizard might turn him into a pig and cook him if he came back empty-handed.

He started walking quickly, because walking quickly looked almost the same as knowing where he was going

VI. The Red Door Supply Closet

Tobin headed back the way he had come, or at least back in the direction he hoped counted as back. The second-floor service corridor looked different without Serelle in front of him. With her, every passage had seemed selected and approved. Without her, the walls became walls again, the corners became questions, and every shimmer in the stone looked like it might lead somewhere useful, forbidden, or deeply embarrassing. He found the service stairway by following the cooler air and the sound of feet below, then nearly stepped into the path of a server rushing past with a covered tray balanced on one hand and a stack of folded cloths tucked under the other arm.

“Sorry,” Tobin said, shifting aside. “Do you know where I’d find left-handed torches?”

The server did not stop.

“Red Door Supply Closet.”

Something about that sounded far too easy.

Even Tobin, new as he was, knew better than to trust an answer that simple.

And where is—”

Right then, the server vanished around the corner.

Caught with one hand half-raised, Tobin stared after him.

Hardly an answer.

Really, it was only the beginning of an answer wearing the clothes of a whole one.

Exactly thirty steps into the task, his stomach dropped.

Down the corridor, the server’s head suddenly popped back around the corner.

“Only one floor down,” he called. “First floor.”

Of course, that still did not tell Tobin where on the first floor he was meant to look.

“Right,” Tobin muttered. “Helpful—in the way a locked door is technically a wall with ambition.”

Still, first floor was something. First floor was where he had already survived several conversations and one chamber pot corridor. Compared to the kitchen, that practically made it familiar country. He started down the service stairs, one hand on the worn rail, moving quickly enough to look purposeful and slowly enough not to trip himself into becoming Chef Emberhand’s next lesson about gravity.

By the time he reached the ground floor, the noise of the kitchen had faded behind him, replaced by the lower, wider murmur of the waystation at work. Tobin stepped into the back corridors and began looking for red.

That, at least, seemed simple.

A Red Door Supply Closet would have a red door.

Probably.

Unless shimmer spells made it look blue. Or like a wall. Or like a decorative alcove guests were most likely to ignore. Or unless “Red Door” was a person’s name, which would be exactly the kind of thing this place would do just to see if new assistants cried before noon.

He turned down one back hallway, then another, passing plain doors, marked doors, half-open doors, and one door that smelled strongly enough of vinegar to discourage investigation. None of them were red. He was leaning slightly to peer down a narrower passage when a warm voice spoke behind him.

“Hello there.”

Tobin turned.

A woman approached from the direction of the Guest Support Station, her expression kind enough to make him immediately suspicious that he looked worse than he thought. She was dressed neatly, though less sharply than Serelle, with the kind of practical polish that suggested she had already solved twelve problems this morning and forgiven nine people for causing them. Her smile was soft. Her eyes were careful.

“Are you in need of scraps, dear?” she asked gently. “Or a place to sit a moment? You mustn’t wander back here without help. The guards get very proud of themselves when they find someone to escort out.”

Tobin looked down at himself.

Dusty boots. Road-worn clothes. Satchel. Dry goods tucked under one arm. No uniform yet. Probably the expression of a boy who had recently been threatened by a wizard over a torch.

Fair.

“I’m not— I mean, thank you, but I’m not here for scraps.”

“Oh.” Her smile did not vanish, but it changed shape. “Then are you lost?”

“That feels more likely every time someone asks.”

“New staff?”

“Yes. Tobin. Assistant to the Waystation Attendants.”

Her face brightened with recognition.

“Oh! Tobin. Of course. Serelle said you had arrived.” She offered her hand. “Maribel Thorne, Guest Relations Attendant. I’m usually over at Guest Support, and if anyone loses anything, forgets anything, misplaces anything, or insists something was stolen by ghosts when they packed it under their own stockings, it finds its way to me.”

Tobin shook her hand.

“Good to meet you, ma’am.”

“Maribel is fine when we are not rescuing a guest from their own temper.” She glanced down the corridor. “So, Assistant to the Waystation Attendants, what has you searching back halls with the face of someone trying not to be eaten by the architecture?”

Tobin took a breath.

“Chef Emberhand assigned me a task.”

Maribel’s eyebrows lifted just a little.

“Did he?”

“He said I’m to stay on it no matter what anyone else tells me, and if anyone says anything, I’m to say Chef Emberhand told me to do this and only this until it’s done.”

“That does sound like Chef.”

“I’m looking for his left-handed torches.”

Maribel stared at him.

Not blankly. Not cruelly.

Almost kindly.

Then she nodded as if he had asked for towels.

“Oh, yes. Those would be behind the Red Door Supply Closet.”

Tobin felt a small, dangerous bloom of hope.

“You know where that is?” Tobin asked.

“I think so.” She turned and pointed with perfect confidence. “Out by the wagon shed, near the back. It moves around a bit in people’s telling, but if I remember right, that is where they keep odd maintenance stock and things no one wants guests asking about.”

Tobin let out a small breath. “That sounds like a supply closet.”

“It does, doesn’t it?” Maribel said.

Tobin should have questioned the phrase moves around a bit in people’s telling. He should have. A wiser version of himself, older by even one full day, might have paused there and asked why a supply closet had rumors.

But Maribel had been kind, and kind people were easier to believe when your morning had included Nessa, Serelle, Silas, and Chef Emberhand in rapid order.

“Thank you,” he said.

“Of course. And Tobin?”

He stopped.

“If you are going outside, drink water when someone offers it. People forget that nerves dry you out faster than summer.”

That was an oddly specific kindness.

“I will.”

He excused himself and followed the back corridor toward the rear of the waystation, passing through a service door that opened onto the backside of the building. The change hit him all at once. Inside had been polish and controlled noise. Outside was work without the courtesy of walls.

He came out almost directly across from the hay barn and feed shed, where the smell of dry grass, grain dust, and animal feed rolled warm and heavy into the open air. To his left stood the stable complex, larger than some villages, with wide doors, long rooflines, busy hands, and horses shifting in shadow. The smell coming from it was not one smell but a full argument: hay, sweat, leather, damp straw, manure, oiled wood, and the sour authority of the dung pit nearby. Tobin looked toward the pit once and decided that was enough looking for a first day.

To his right sat the wagon shed.

It was not a shed in the way Tobin understood sheds. It was a long, open-sided repair house big enough to shelter several wagons at once, with tool racks along the posts, spare wheels stacked against the walls, axle beams laid across trestles, and a roof high enough for men to work without crouching. Hammers rang somewhere inside. A wheel leaned at an angle near the entrance like it had given up on travel and taken to resting.

Tobin started toward it and had to jump back almost immediately as a wagon rolled across the back road between him and the shed.

“Mind the road!” someone shouted.

“I am beginning to understand that roads are where people put wagons,” Tobin called back, then instantly wished he had said nothing.

The wagon driver either did not hear him or did not care, which Tobin was learning was one of the road’s greatest mercies.

He crossed after it passed, stepping around a muddy rut and into the wagon shed’s shade. The air inside was cooler, packed with wood dust, iron, grease, old rope, and the clean sharp smell of freshly cut lumber. Tobin scanned the walls.

Brown door. Open stall. Tool rack. Wheel hooks. Pegboard. Another brown door. A hanging tarp. No red.

He walked deeper inside, peering behind a stack of crate boards.

Still no red.

Maybe behind meant behind the wagon shed. Maybe “Red Door Supply Closet” meant a closet near a red door, not a red closet door. Maybe Chef Emberhand had already turned him into a pig and this was simply how pigs experienced confusion.

“What do you think you’re doing?”

The voice came from behind him, low and sudden enough that Tobin nearly collided with a hanging harness.

He turned to find a broad-shouldered man striding toward him from between two wagons. The man was about thirty, sun-browned, solid, and dressed like someone who had never once been afraid of mud because mud knew better than to start trouble with him. His sleeves were rolled. His boots were work-worn. A coil of rope hung from one shoulder, and he carried a short-handled tool Tobin could not name but immediately respected.

The man’s eyes narrowed.

“Who are you, and why are you snooping around my wagon shed?”

Tobin took one step back.

Then another, because the man kept coming.

“I’m not snooping.”

“That was a very snooping-shaped answer.”

“I’m Tobin. New Assistant to the Waystation Attendants.”

The man stopped.

Tobin lifted both hands slightly, dry goods still tucked awkwardly under one arm.

“Chef Emberhand sent me on an important task. I’m looking for left-handed torches. Maribel said they were behind the Red Door Supply Closet out here by the wagon shed.”

The change was immediate.

The man stood a little straighter. The suspicion left his face so quickly it almost looked practiced. In its place came a calm smirk, not unkind, but carrying the unmistakable weight of someone who had just understood the joke and had no intention of saving Tobin from it.

“So you’re the new Assistant to the Attendants.”

“Yes.”

“Well then.” He shifted the rope higher on his shoulder and offered his hand. “Rowan Pike. Grounds Attendant.”

Tobin shook it.

Rowan’s grip was firm enough to make Tobin aware that he owned fingers.

“Good to meet you, sir.”

“Rowan is fine unless Serelle is watching. If Serelle is watching, all of us are suddenly much more official.”

“That seems wise.”

“It is survival.” Rowan glanced toward the wagon shed. “You’ll be helping around my side too. Exterior work. Dung pits, wagon shed, stable complex, hay barn, feed shed, gardens, front lawn, road edge, seasonal flowers, inside flowers when Guest Experience remembers people like looking at living things, and whatever the weather breaks before Edrin Holt can tell me it was my fault.”

“That’s a lot.”

“That’s grounds.” Rowan started walking, and Tobin followed because apparently that was the shape of his life now. “Pretty parts and ugly parts. Same job. If the front beds bloom, guests say the waystation is charming. If the dung pit backs up, guests say the whole kingdom is collapsing.”

“Does it?”

“Only when ignored.”

“The kingdom?”

“The dung pit.” Rowan looked at him sideways. “Usually.”

They walked past the edge of the wagon shed toward a stone-lined well set between the working yard and the garden path. The well was old, round, and shaded by a simple timber frame. A leather water bag hung from a hook nearby. Rowan took it, dipped it deep, waited until it filled, then pulled it up with the easy motion of a man who had done the same thing ten thousand times without considering it impressive.

He tied it off and tossed it to Tobin.

Tobin caught it badly but successfully, which felt like the theme of the day.

“Drink,” Rowan said.

Tobin hesitated.

“It’s water.”

“I know.”

“Then drink it before you start looking at it like Silas handed you a contract.”

Tobin drank.

The water was cold enough to surprise him. It cut through the kitchen heat still clinging to his throat, through the dust from the road, through the tightness of the morning. He drank more than he meant to and lowered the bag with a quiet breath.

“Thank you.”

Rowan nodded toward the garden beds nearby, where green leaves pushed up in careful rows and flowers brightened the service yard more than it deserved.

“Plants wilt when they forget water. Animals get mean. People get stupid. This place makes all three happen faster. You want to survive here, stay watered before someone has to tell you.”

Tobin looked at the water bag, then at Rowan.

“That sounds like advice people pretend is about water.”

“It is about water,” Rowan said. “Mostly.”

Tobin handed the bag back.

“Thank you. Mostly.”

He started toward the waystation again, crossing back toward the rear service entrance with a little more steadiness in his legs. He made it several steps before the important part of his task remembered itself.

He turned quickly.

“Rowan?”

The Grounds Attendant looked over from the well.

“The left-handed torches. Where exactly are they?”

Rowan rested one hand on the well frame, calm as a man watching a seed sprout.

“Behind the Red Door Supply Closet.”

“Yes, but where is that?”

“Fourth floor.”

Tobin stared.

Rowan pointed upward, not at any window in particular.

“Fourth floor. Ask near the guard side. Someone will know.”

Of course.

First floor. Wagon shed. Fourth floor.

A simple task.

“Right,” Tobin said.

Rowan’s smirk deepened. “Walk with purpose.”

“I’ve been told it looks almost like knowing where I’m going.”

“Then you’re halfway trained.”

Tobin turned back toward the waystation, now less certain than ever that the building contained one Red Door Supply Closet or any mercy at all. He crossed the back road more carefully this time and headed toward the rear entrance.

Then, as he passed the edge of the garden, he caught a smell that stopped him.

Not horse. Not dung. Not bread. Not herbs for soup or flowers for guests.

This was different.

Familiar.

Warm, earthy, sharp-sweet, and curling through the air like a secret trying not to laugh.

Tobin turned his head slowly.

Somewhere beyond the garden beds, hidden between the green rows, the clipped hedges, and the service-side plantings, someone was having a very good time.

A good time he could really use, considering his day had begun with anxiety, passed through coin, chamber pots, shimmer walls, flying knives, and now involved finding a torch that apparently had floor preferences.

He looked back at the service entrance.

Then toward the garden.

Go inside. Chef Emberhand said task only.

Find the smell. Just for a moment.

That is how disasters begin.

It might also be how a man finds out where the Red Door Supply Closet actually is.

Tobin adjusted the dry goods under his arm, took one careful step toward the garden, and decided that a moment of investigation was not the same thing as abandoning the task.