The Dragon King's Rejected Mate

16.Leverage

Pippa didn't come up with my breakfast.

In three years of palace mornings that had never happened — not through fevers, not through the week the ovens cracked, not through the morning after the Choosing when half the court was too hungover to stand. My tray arrived instead in the hands of a girl I didn't know, her eyes red, her apron twisted in her fists.

"Where's Pippa?" I asked.

The girl glanced at the door like it might open on its own. "The Dowager's steward took her. At first bell. Her and Nell and Bess." Her voice dropped. "For questioning."

"Questioning about what?"

"A silver dish." She set the tray down hard enough to rattle it. "Gone from the Dowager's own table, they say. They're saying kitchen fingers."

The porridge went cold in front of me. I didn't touch it.

The girl hovered by the door, wringing her apron, waiting to be dismissed. I waved her out and sat with the cold tray, turning it over in my head. The Dowager didn't bother with kitchens. If her steward was in them, it wasn't about a dish.

The kitchens at midmorning smelled of hot iron and yeast, the way they always did — but the noise was wrong. No singing. The girls worked with their heads down and their elbows in, and the big table where Pippa rolled pastry stood empty, flour still ghosting the wood where her hands had been. Two of the Dowager's guards stood by the flour stores with their arms crossed, watching everyone the way you watch a pot you expect to boil over.

I found Bess first, scrubbing pots with her mouth set in a line. "They took her to the steward's room," she said without looking up. "Pippa and Nell both. An hour ago. The Dowager's man says a dish went missing off the high table and somebody's to swing for it."

"What dish?" "A salver, she says. Silver, big as a cartwheel. Off the Dowager's table at the feast. Nobody saw it go, but somebody's to answer."

The steward's room was off the buttery, a narrow place that smelled of tallow and ink. The steward himself — a thin man named Ossian with a permanent ink-stain on his thumb — sat behind a table with a ledger open, and Pippa and Nell stood before him with their hands folded, faces white. Two guards flanked the door.

"Mistress Wren." Ossian didn't look up from his ledger. "This is Dowager's business. The kitchens are closed to visitors."

"Then I'll make it the King's business," I said. "Those are my girls. Whatever's missing, we'll find it — but you'll question them with me present, and you'll do it now."

Ossian's quill stopped. He looked at me for a long moment, then at the guards. "Five minutes," he said. "The Dowager wants answers, not company."

I knelt beside Pippa's chair — she was sitting now, shaking — and took her hands. "Tell me exactly what happened at the feast. Where was the salver last?"

"On the high table," Pippa whispered. "Under the roast swan. I saw it when we cleared. Then — then the Dowager's lady called us away, and when we came back it was gone."

"Who called you away?"

"The Dowager's lady. Lady Sarella. She said the Dowager wanted the kitchens cleared for the night, all of us out. We went. When we came back —" Pippa's voice broke. "It was gone."

I stood up. The steward was watching me, quill poised. "Ossian," I said, "did anyone search the Dowager's lady's rooms?"

His face went very still. "The Dowager's lady is above suspicion."

"Is she?" I let the question hang. "Because from where I'm standing, the only person who moved the kitchen staff away from the high table tonight was Lady Sarella. And the only thing missing is a salver off the Dowager's table. If I were stealing silver, that's exactly how I'd do it — clear the witnesses first."

Ossian's jaw worked. "You have no standing to accuse —"

"I'm not accusing. I'm asking. There's a difference — one I'd be happy to explain to the King." I turned to Pippa. "Did Lady Sarella touch the salver? Did you see her near the high table?"

Pippa shook her head. "I didn't see. But Nell —" She looked at Nell, who had been silent this whole time, twisting her apron. "Nell, tell her."

Nell's eyes filled. "I saw her," she whispered. "Lady Sarella. She had a bundle under her cloak, big and flat. I thought it was linens. She went down the servants' stair, not the hall."

Ossian set his quill down very carefully. "That is an accusation against a lady of the Dowager's household."

"Then investigate it as one," I said. "Because if you hang my girls for something a lady did, the King will want to know why his steward couldn't tell the difference. And I will tell him. Personally."

He paled. The guards shifted. "I'll — I'll make inquiries," Ossian said. "The girls are released into your custody, Mistress. For now."

Pippa threw her arms around me the moment we were out of the room, and Nell cried quietly into her apron. "It's all right," I told them, though my hands were shaking too. "Go back to the kitchens. Stay together. Don't go anywhere alone."

But I didn't go back to the kitchens. I went to find Lady Sarella.

She was in the Dowager's solar, arranging flowers with two other ladies, looking for all the world like she hadn't a care. When she saw me in the doorway, her smile didn't waver — but her hands stilled on the stems.

"Mistress Wren." Sarella's voice was honey over steel. "To what do we owe the pleasure?"

I stepped inside and closed the door. The other two ladies took the hint and left, though not without a look. "I know about the salver, Sarella."

She laughed — a light, practiced sound. "A salver? My dear, the Dowager has salvers enough to pave the courtyard. Why would I —"

"I don't care why. I care that three kitchen girls were taken for questioning at first bell, and the only witness puts you on the servants' stair with a flat bundle under your cloak."

The honey cracked. "You have a kitchen girl's word against a lady's. No one will believe her."

"Maybe not. But the King will believe me. And the Dowager —" I let that hang too. "The Dowager hates thieves in her household more than she hates kitchen girls. If that salver turns up in your rooms, Sarella, no lady's title will save you."

Sarella's hands tightened on the flower stems until a thorn drew blood. She didn't seem to notice. "What do you want, Wren?"

"The salver back by nightfall. In the kitchens, where it can be 'found.' My girls' names cleared — publicly, by the steward. And you tell the Dowager the matter is closed."

"And if I refuse?"

"Then I tell the Dowager myself. Tonight. With Nell beside me." I held her gaze. "Your choice, Sarella."

For a long moment the only sound was the flowers rustling in her grip. Then she dropped them on the table and went to a carved chest by the window. She lifted the lid, drew out a flat bundle wrapped in linen, and set it on the table between us. Silver gleamed through the folds.

"Nightfall," she said. "It will be in the kitchens by nightfall. And the steward will announce the girls are cleared."

I picked up the bundle. It was heavier than it looked. "Why?" I asked. "You could buy a hundred salvers. Why steal one?"

"Because the Dowager counts them," Sarella said. "Every one. And she told me — she told me if I didn't prove my loyalty, she'd replace me. I thought — if a kitchen girl took the blame —" She stopped. "It doesn't matter. You'll tell anyway."

"No," I said. "I won't. If the salver is back and my girls are cleared, there's nothing to tell." I tucked the bundle under my arm. "But Sarella — if you ever use my people as your shield again, I won't come to you first. I'll go straight to the Dowager."

She nodded, once. I left with the salver under my arm and my heart hammering, and I didn't breathe easy until it was hidden in the flour stores, ready to be "found" at the right moment.

That night, when the steward announced the girls were cleared and the salver had been "mislaid in the linens," Pippa brought my supper herself. She set it down, and her hands were steady. "Thank you," she said. I thought of Sarella's bloody thumb, and the Dowager's counting, and the way power moves through this palace like a knife through butter — and I wondered what leverage I'd just spent, and what it had bought me.