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Description
--31--

"Mother! The bread is burning!"

Nicholas looked away from his lack of work in time to watch the slim young woman beneath the covered walkway--Mardet, he remembered--jerk to a halt halfway across the yard, causing everything on the tray she carried to slide forward an inch.

"Oh," she said, a pitiful sound somewhere between dismay and disgust. She stood where she had stopped, staring at the open door that led into the dining room, where Tomas waited for his dinner. Her shoulders sagged and her face went blank; it was a look of utter defeat.

"Good woman?" Nicholas called, alarmed.

"Cook!" Thomas bellowed.

"MOTHER!"

Mardet clenched the tray in her hands and bowed her head. Nicholas, afraid that she was about to collapse, leapt up to help her. A waist-high ball of sandy-brown hair and caught-up skirts reached her first, just as she turned around, and sent the tray and all its contents flying. Mardet shrieked as she fell, and let loose an all-out scream when she landed on the farthest-flung branch of thorns. Nicholas tried to avoid the airborne food, tripped over both the child and Mardet, and landed spread-eagle in the dirt of the walkway.

"What's all this?" Thomas boomed as he rattled his way to the dining room door. He blinked with surprise when he saw the tangle of bodies piled on the ground and turned red as raw steak when he noticed a corner of bacon peeping out from beneath Nicholas's tunic.

"I'm sorry, master!" blurted Nicholas before anyone else could speak. His own surprise kept the hatred out of his voice this time as he explained, "The girl said the bread was burning and Cook was taking you your meal, so I jumped up to help in the kitchen and, well, we all met in the middle, you see master?"

Thomas's eyes narrowed and focused on Nicholas.

"Get up...all of you!"

The servants hastened to obey.

He turned to the little girl first. "You ought to know better than to run, girl. You keep your skirts down below your knees where they belong and you obey the law or I'll send you up to the dungeon in the King's Fortress where they'll keep you safe from harm," he finished with a hiss.

The girl nodded without looking up at Thomas and muttered a promise to be good.

"You, Cook," he said to Mardet, "ought to take care of your master's meals first and your servants' fare later."

Mardet said nothing, but her head hung so low that her chin met her chest.

"And you." Thomas had reached his brother at last, and Nicholas had to bow his head like the other two to hide his anger. "Did I hire you to work in the kitchen?"

"No, master," Nicholas muttered.

"Where are you supposed to work?"

"This courtyard, master."

"Then you'll do well to stay here. Now," he said, addressing all three again. "I expect my food in ten minutes' time and I expect you-" he pointed to a gooey spot on Mardet's dress "-to remember that I don't like my bread served with honey. Put it in a pot so the bread doesn't get soggy." And with a great harrumph he lumbered back into the manor.

Mardet must have forgotten to breathe while Thomas told her off, for she started to gasp and gulp for air as soon as Thomas had entered the house, and collapsed a moment later.

Nicholas realized in a matter of seconds that there was no way Mardet could recover and prepare a meal in Thomas's ten minutes. He groaned in exasperation. Thomas had made it clear that Nicholas's place was in the courtyard, but Mardet faced a far worse punishment if she did not deliver the meal on time.

The smell of burning bread drifted across the courtyard, forcing Nicholas to make a decision and act on it before he could reconsider. Thinking fast, he turned to the little girl.

"Your name's Lisia isn't it?" She nodded. "Do you know how to take bread out of the oven?"

"Mother says the King doesn't want young girls near-"

"Never mind the King or your mother right now! Can you do it?"

"I..." Lisia's eyes widened. "I think so."

"Then go get it!" Nicholas cried impatiently. Lisia nodded and darted back into the kitchen. Shaking his head, Nicholas bent down and hauled Mardet upright with one of her arms over his shoulder, then followed Lisia.

The burnt smell was stronger inside, but at least the air was clear of smoke. Nicholas dragged Mardet around the strange new four-sided fireplace in the middle of the kitchen and laid her on the grass just outside the back door. He turned to step back in and a smoking loaf of bread speared on a poker almost hit him in the face.

"Gard'ner! Gard'ner! I did it! I did it!"

"Yes you did." Nicholas forced a smile as the half-charred loaf sailed past his nose again. "Why don't you set that on the rack and go get me the dishes and such that your mother dropped?" He waited for her to follow his first order to be sure she did not spear anything else with the poker before he looked around the kitchen.

It was the kind of organized disorder that only the resident Cook would be able to navigate. The fire in the cavernous fireplace had receded to glowing coals, but there were no pots, pans, or platters of meat nearby anyway. Nicholas had only to glance down at his tunic and out the courtyard door to confirm his suspicion that nothing on Thomas's breakfast plate besides the bacon had been hot.

Lisia tripped back in with a wooden tray, a goblet, and a pewter plate that had a large piece of bread glued on with honey. Remembering his first meal with Aimeric, and with no idea how else to arrange food, Nicholas laid a few more slices of bread on the plate and piled on whatever else he could find. A few scraggly greens he found on the counter formed a base layer, then he shredded some meat from the cold carcass of some bird or another that was sitting nearby, rinsed the dirt off a few apple slices that Lisia fetched from the courtyard, placed an egg near the fire to cook, and dumped the rest of the mulled mead from a pot he found into Thomas's goblet. After holding a few slices of bacon over the fire with a pronged stick and draping them around the pile with the few solid bits of egg on the side, Nicholas figured that Thomas's breakfast was about as good as it was going to get.

"What's wrong with Mardet?" Aimeric asked as he stepped into the kitchen. The Steward was sweaty and dusty from his morning walk around the fields, but Nicholas knew he would push his luck to the breaking point if he served Thomas breakfast himself.

"Here," he said by way of reply, shoving the tray with the plate and goblet into Aimeric's hands.

Aimeric stared down at the mess. "Did you make this?"

"Cook!" Thomas hollered from within the house.

Aimeric's wide-eyed glance out the kitchen door provided a view of Mardet's limp hand and an answer to his question. He shook his head and made for the manor. "Faeries help you, Nick," he threw over his shoulder.

Convinced that the worst was over, Nicholas slumped against the back door fame near Mardet, who was breathing easier and regaining her color, and wiped the sweat from his brow, waiting for Aimeric's return.

Not half a minute passed before Thomas's booming voice called his name. Nicholas had to drag himself through the kitchen, across the courtyard, and into the manor, hating Mardet and her daughter for landing him in this trouble one second and tripling his hate of Thomas the next. By the time he reached the dining room and stood at Aimeric's side before Thomas, he knew that he could not keep the resentment off his face.

Sure enough, Thomas's eyes narrowed as he looked Nicholas over. He waved a massive hand toward his plate, which Nicholas realized only then was far too sloppy for anyone in a manor of that size.

Thomas's voice was low and calm, a dangerous combination. "You prepared this, didn't you?"

Nicholas glared at the pile of food so that he would not have to meet his brother's eyes. "Yes, master."

"And are you a cook or a gardener?"

Nicholas gritted his teeth. "A gardener," he muttered.

Before he could react, Thomas's massive fist hit him in the stomach so hard that he fell to the floor.

"Get back to work...your work!"

--32--

"You know, Nick, for all your grand plotting and planning, you can be one gallant sheep brain."

Nick groaned and slumped against the courtyard wall with his hands crossed over his abdomen. "He still hits like a bear."

Aimeric snorted. "He is a bear, I've said it before."

"Gard'ner Nilas?"

Mardet stood framed in the kitchen doorway with her daughter hiding behind her skirts, her face pale but her body otherwise steady. She watched Nicholas straighten up, wince, and bring a hand to his stomach.

"The master hit you," she whispered. "You tried to help me even though you knew he would be angry."

"No problem," Nick muttered, though he was still grappling with a desire to blame her for everything that had happened.

"Thank you."

It came a little late, but the feeling was genuine: her eyes showed nothing but respect and relief that Thomas had not channeled his rage to her. She nudged her daughter, who tripped forward and held out a roll of the fine manor bread filled with properly cooked bacon and eggs and oozing with a valuable chunk of cheese. Few peasants in Thomas's manor ever had such a meal, not the least because Thomas refused to let them make loaves of the finer flour instead of the cheaper grain. The sight of the bread alone would probably send Thomas into another rage, and Nicholas knew how much courage it probably took Mardet to use it for him. He smiled a real smile and hoped she understood just how much her gesture meant to him.

"Thank you."

She nodded, let a small smile play onto her lips at last, and stepped back into the kitchen.

Aimeric whistled low. "That was so perfect you might have planned it." In answer to Nicholas's blank expression, he explained, "Mardet and Licia are the manor favorites. If you've got their trust, you'll get everyone else's too."

--33--

As soon as Mardet rang the dinner bell that evening, Nicholas was surrounded by servants. Although he had not seen or heard Mardet speak to anyone, they all seemed to know the details of what had happened in the courtyard that afternoon, and made no attempt to hide how impressed they were that he had stood up to Thomas on his first day. As soon as they were done congratulating, they started asking the questions: name, personal history, job, job history, family situation, just about anything and everything that they cared to know.

It was here that he had to insert the awkward business of his name.

"Actually," he said, then waited for a spae of enough quiet that someone would hear him. "Actually, it's Nicholas, not Nilas."

The Houseman frowned and Nicholas winced. "I'm...Thomas's younger brother," he mumbled.

"Hoah!"

"What are you playing, here?"

"Nothing," Nicholas insisted, "except gardener."

"Marn, just look at him," Aimeric cut in. "He needs a job, food, and a place to sleep."

"Now why does that case sound familiar?" Mardet said with a pointed smile at the Houaseman. The joke was lost on Nicholas, but everyone else laughed, including Marn. Mardet gave Nicholas a wink before tugging a few sleeves for help bringing out the food, a task Nicholas was more than willing to help with.

Though Aimeric had been adamant that none of the servants knew the details of Nicholas's expulsion, they knew enough to guess that it would be worse for everyone to let their eagerness for information loose enough that Thomas might hear anything that could hint at his tremendous hiring error. They queried Nicholas less than they wanted, avoided using his name except in undertones, and limited their questions to the latter, far less interesting, part of his life. Nicholas laughed a lot to make up for the questions he could not answer and quickly turned the questions back, asking names he knew he would not be able to remember on the spot, trying to keep straight who had filled which positions.

"All right, all right," Aimeric called over the crowd. "Back off and settle down. You can ask questions after we eat."

Thomas had enlarged the manor almost beyond recognition, but the back wall of the old mano remained mostly in tact, still forming the back wall of most of the servants' rooms and the stables, though the back door now led to the new kitchen. A few new servant rooms hunched against the first trees of the Forest, holding back the wilderness from the little lawn where a line of three trestle tables just accommodated everyone. Nicholas guessed that there were about twenty servants, almost double the number his father had employed, and his nervousness returned as he tried to guess how long it would take to earn everyone's trust.

Then there was food, and Nicholas could have cared less about how he was going to befriend everyone in a just a few days. It did not matter what, exactly, the meal was--only that it was hot, smelled good, and tasted better. Praising the dishes seemed to be something of a ritual, with the servants calling out that everything was better than ever and teasing Lisia about stealing a secret recipe's ingredients.  This made it easy for Nicholas to make Mardet smile again, this time without any pain on his part, and tell her just how much he appreciated having such a good meal.

One of the Fieldmen shook his head, a wide smile on his face. "You act like you've never eaten before, Gard'ner."

"May as well not have," he replied, earning a laugh.

"Anyway, why isn't your body big enough for your bones?" called the Herdsman from the end of the table.

Nicholas's heart kicked into a gallop. It had been easy to lie to Thomas, but this delicate balance of truth and half-truth was what really mattered. "I've not had any work before this other than a few odd jobs. I went over to the Lady widow's, but she's got no use for a gardener or any more help now that she's gone blind," he explained.

"Good riddance!" the Housemaid exclaimed. "Maybe now her servants will finally get some peace."

"She's got a housemaid left," Aimeric supplied quickly.

"So are you here to stay?" asked another Fieldman.

Nicholas's heart leapt into his throat, and he decided that he had finished eating. "As Long as Thomas wants me."

"So 'til you die, pretty much."

Nicholas raised his eyebrows. "What's that supposed to mean?"

The Fieldman shrugged. "I've been here six years. We all have--'cept Steward Aimeric, he got hired after the old steward died."

"His mastership doesn't like us to leave," the Weaver explained. "He actually threatened us last year when we approached him about going to the spring market."

"Then who goes?" asked Nicholas, giving the reply they expected.

"I do," said Aimeric. "Sometimes he lets a Fieldhand come if he knows there'll be a lot to carry either way."

"I guess we ought to warn you now, Gard'ner," said the Houseman, all joking gone from his voice. "This has been going on for a while, now, and none of us are too happy with Master Thomas."

"And tell him--" said Mardet, her voice quiet and hesitant. "It's not just--the no leaving--"

"That's right," the Housemaid muttered darkly. "He hasn't paid us either."

"What?"

He must have been convincing enough, because the servants all nodded, the smiles gone from their faces.

"We ought to get a copper every now and then, but it's been a few months now since the last time any one of us saw a coin form his purse."

"Not that that's so bad," the Weaver offered. "It's not like we'd have anywhere to spend it or anything to spend it on, and we still get our rooms and plenty of food, and-"

"Oh, shut it Elya," the Groundsman muttered. From the way the Weaver failed to react to the sharp remark, Nicholas guessed that she made this unpopular point frequently.

"The point, Gard'ner," said the Houseman, drawing attention back to himself. "It's three days until Scholar's week."

Nicholas nodded. In the Forest, where the few families and clusters of houses were spread so far apart, it was impossible for Scholars to teach locally. Instead, the Scholars in the woods gathered twice a year at the marketplace for week-long lessons. It was an opportunity for the people of the woods to learn something other than the basics of survival, and for the Scholars to meet, teach from their areas of expertise, and learn from each other as well.

"We've all decided we were going to go," the Houseman continued. "Whether the master liked it or not."

Please, by the King, let me seem surprised, Nicholas thought. "So...?"

"So you just got here and we're all leaving."

"Not me," Aimeric called down the table, feigning annoyance.

The Houseman waved his hand dismissively. "Someone's got to cover our backs."

A few servants laughed.

"Anyway, we know you're new and you might be nervous about keeping your job. Thomas has fired his whole staff before, so we'll understand if you want to stay here."

"Of course you don't have to say anything right now," Mardet said, patting his arm. "You only just got here, you shouldn't be tangled up in service rebellions yet."

Nicholas smiled. "I'll think about it," he promised. And he did, to the extent of thinking about all the thinking he had done already.

Description
--31--

"Mother! The bread is burning!"

Nicholas looked away from his lack of work in time to watch the slim young woman beneath the covered walkway--Mardet, he remembered--jerk to a halt halfway across the yard, causing everything on the tray she carried to slide forward an inch.

"Oh," she said, a pitiful sound somewhere between dismay and disgust. She stood where she had stopped, staring at the open door that led into the dining room, where Tomas waited for his dinner. Her shoulders sagged and her face went blank; it was a look of utter defeat.

"Good woman?" Nicholas called, alarmed.

"Cook!" Thomas bellowed.

"MOTHER!"

Mardet clenched the tray in her hands and bowed her head. Nicholas, afraid that she was about to collapse, leapt up to help her. A waist-high ball of sandy-brown hair and caught-up skirts reached her first, just as she turned around, and sent the tray and all its contents flying. Mardet shrieked as she fell, and let loose an all-out scream when she landed on the farthest-flung branch of thorns. Nicholas tried to avoid the airborne food, tripped over both the child and Mardet, and landed spread-eagle in the dirt of the walkway.

"What's all this?" Thomas boomed as he rattled his way to the dining room door. He blinked with surprise when he saw the tangle of bodies piled on the ground and turned red as raw steak when he noticed a corner of bacon peeping out from beneath Nicholas's tunic.

"I'm sorry, master!" blurted Nicholas before anyone else could speak. His own surprise kept the hatred out of his voice this time as he explained, "The girl said the bread was burning and Cook was taking you your meal, so I jumped up to help in the kitchen and, well, we all met in the middle, you see master?"

Thomas's eyes narrowed and focused on Nicholas.

"Get up...all of you!"

The servants hastened to obey.

He turned to the little girl first. "You ought to know better than to run, girl. You keep your skirts down below your knees where they belong and you obey the law or I'll send you up to the dungeon in the King's Fortress where they'll keep you safe from harm," he finished with a hiss.

The girl nodded without looking up at Thomas and muttered a promise to be good.

"You, Cook," he said to Mardet, "ought to take care of your master's meals first and your servants' fare later."

Mardet said nothing, but her head hung so low that her chin met her chest.

"And you." Thomas had reached his brother at last, and Nicholas had to bow his head like the other two to hide his anger. "Did I hire you to work in the kitchen?"

"No, master," Nicholas muttered.

"Where are you supposed to work?"

"This courtyard, master."

"Then you'll do well to stay here. Now," he said, addressing all three again. "I expect my food in ten minutes' time and I expect you-" he pointed to a gooey spot on Mardet's dress "-to remember that I don't like my bread served with honey. Put it in a pot so the bread doesn't get soggy." And with a great harrumph he lumbered back into the manor.

Mardet must have forgotten to breathe while Thomas told her off, for she started to gasp and gulp for air as soon as Thomas had entered the house, and collapsed a moment later.

Nicholas realized in a matter of seconds that there was no way Mardet could recover and prepare a meal in Thomas's ten minutes. He groaned in exasperation. Thomas had made it clear that Nicholas's place was in the courtyard, but Mardet faced a far worse punishment if she did not deliver the meal on time.

The smell of burning bread drifted across the courtyard, forcing Nicholas to make a decision and act on it before he could reconsider. Thinking fast, he turned to the little girl.

"Your name's Lisia isn't it?" She nodded. "Do you know how to take bread out of the oven?"

"Mother says the King doesn't want young girls near-"

"Never mind the King or your mother right now! Can you do it?"

"I..." Lisia's eyes widened. "I think so."

"Then go get it!" Nicholas cried impatiently. Lisia nodded and darted back into the kitchen. Shaking his head, Nicholas bent down and hauled Mardet upright with one of her arms over his shoulder, then followed Lisia.

The burnt smell was stronger inside, but at least the air was clear of smoke. Nicholas dragged Mardet around the strange new four-sided fireplace in the middle of the kitchen and laid her on the grass just outside the back door. He turned to step back in and a smoking loaf of bread speared on a poker almost hit him in the face.

"Gard'ner! Gard'ner! I did it! I did it!"

"Yes you did." Nicholas forced a smile as the half-charred loaf sailed past his nose again. "Why don't you set that on the rack and go get me the dishes and such that your mother dropped?" He waited for her to follow his first order to be sure she did not spear anything else with the poker before he looked around the kitchen.

It was the kind of organized disorder that only the resident Cook would be able to navigate. The fire in the cavernous fireplace had receded to glowing coals, but there were no pots, pans, or platters of meat nearby anyway. Nicholas had only to glance down at his tunic and out the courtyard door to confirm his suspicion that nothing on Thomas's breakfast plate besides the bacon had been hot.

Lisia tripped back in with a wooden tray, a goblet, and a pewter plate that had a large piece of bread glued on with honey. Remembering his first meal with Aimeric, and with no idea how else to arrange food, Nicholas laid a few more slices of bread on the plate and piled on whatever else he could find. A few scraggly greens he found on the counter formed a base layer, then he shredded some meat from the cold carcass of some bird or another that was sitting nearby, rinsed the dirt off a few apple slices that Lisia fetched from the courtyard, placed an egg near the fire to cook, and dumped the rest of the mulled mead from a pot he found into Thomas's goblet. After holding a few slices of bacon over the fire with a pronged stick and draping them around the pile with the few solid bits of egg on the side, Nicholas figured that Thomas's breakfast was about as good as it was going to get.

"What's wrong with Mardet?" Aimeric asked as he stepped into the kitchen. The Steward was sweaty and dusty from his morning walk around the fields, but Nicholas knew he would push his luck to the breaking point if he served Thomas breakfast himself.

"Here," he said by way of reply, shoving the tray with the plate and goblet into Aimeric's hands.

Aimeric stared down at the mess. "Did you make this?"

"Cook!" Thomas hollered from within the house.

Aimeric's wide-eyed glance out the kitchen door provided a view of Mardet's limp hand and an answer to his question. He shook his head and made for the manor. "Faeries help you, Nick," he threw over his shoulder.

Convinced that the worst was over, Nicholas slumped against the back door fame near Mardet, who was breathing easier and regaining her color, and wiped the sweat from his brow, waiting for Aimeric's return.

Not half a minute passed before Thomas's booming voice called his name. Nicholas had to drag himself through the kitchen, across the courtyard, and into the manor, hating Mardet and her daughter for landing him in this trouble one second and tripling his hate of Thomas the next. By the time he reached the dining room and stood at Aimeric's side before Thomas, he knew that he could not keep the resentment off his face.

Sure enough, Thomas's eyes narrowed as he looked Nicholas over. He waved a massive hand toward his plate, which Nicholas realized only then was far too sloppy for anyone in a manor of that size.

Thomas's voice was low and calm, a dangerous combination. "You prepared this, didn't you?"

Nicholas glared at the pile of food so that he would not have to meet his brother's eyes. "Yes, master."

"And are you a cook or a gardener?"

Nicholas gritted his teeth. "A gardener," he muttered.

Before he could react, Thomas's massive fist hit him in the stomach so hard that he fell to the floor.

"Get back to work...your work!"

--32--

"You know, Nick, for all your grand plotting and planning, you can be one gallant sheep brain."

Nick groaned and slumped against the courtyard wall with his hands crossed over his abdomen. "He still hits like a bear."

Aimeric snorted. "He is a bear, I've said it before."

"Gard'ner Nilas?"

Mardet stood framed in the kitchen doorway with her daughter hiding behind her skirts, her face pale but her body otherwise steady. She watched Nicholas straighten up, wince, and bring a hand to his stomach.

"The master hit you," she whispered. "You tried to help me even though you knew he would be angry."

"No problem," Nick muttered, though he was still grappling with a desire to blame her for everything that had happened.

"Thank you."

It came a little late, but the feeling was genuine: her eyes showed nothing but respect and relief that Thomas had not channeled his rage to her. She nudged her daughter, who tripped forward and held out a roll of the fine manor bread filled with properly cooked bacon and eggs and oozing with a valuable chunk of cheese. Few peasants in Thomas's manor ever had such a meal, not the least because Thomas refused to let them make loaves of the finer flour instead of the cheaper grain. The sight of the bread alone would probably send Thomas into another rage, and Nicholas knew how much courage it probably took Mardet to use it for him. He smiled a real smile and hoped she understood just how much her gesture meant to him.

"Thank you."

She nodded, let a small smile play onto her lips at last, and stepped back into the kitchen.

Aimeric whistled low. "That was so perfect you might have planned it." In answer to Nicholas's blank expression, he explained, "Mardet and Licia are the manor favorites. If you've got their trust, you'll get everyone else's too."

--33--

As soon as Mardet rang the dinner bell that evening, Nicholas was surrounded by servants. Although he had not seen or heard Mardet speak to anyone, they all seemed to know the details of what had happened in the courtyard that afternoon, and made no attempt to hide how impressed they were that he had stood up to Thomas on his first day. As soon as they were done congratulating, they started asking the questions: name, personal history, job, job history, family situation, just about anything and everything that they cared to know.

It was here that he had to insert the awkward business of his name.

"Actually," he said, then waited for a spae of enough quiet that someone would hear him. "Actually, it's Nicholas, not Nilas."

The Houseman frowned and Nicholas winced. "I'm...Thomas's younger brother," he mumbled.

"Hoah!"

"What are you playing, here?"

"Nothing," Nicholas insisted, "except gardener."

"Marn, just look at him," Aimeric cut in. "He needs a job, food, and a place to sleep."

"Now why does that case sound familiar?" Mardet said with a pointed smile at the Houaseman. The joke was lost on Nicholas, but everyone else laughed, including Marn. Mardet gave Nicholas a wink before tugging a few sleeves for help bringing out the food, a task Nicholas was more than willing to help with.

Though Aimeric had been adamant that none of the servants knew the details of Nicholas's expulsion, they knew enough to guess that it would be worse for everyone to let their eagerness for information loose enough that Thomas might hear anything that could hint at his tremendous hiring error. They queried Nicholas less than they wanted, avoided using his name except in undertones, and limited their questions to the latter, far less interesting, part of his life. Nicholas laughed a lot to make up for the questions he could not answer and quickly turned the questions back, asking names he knew he would not be able to remember on the spot, trying to keep straight who had filled which positions.

"All right, all right," Aimeric called over the crowd. "Back off and settle down. You can ask questions after we eat."

Thomas had enlarged the manor almost beyond recognition, but the back wall of the old mano remained mostly in tact, still forming the back wall of most of the servants' rooms and the stables, though the back door now led to the new kitchen. A few new servant rooms hunched against the first trees of the Forest, holding back the wilderness from the little lawn where a line of three trestle tables just accommodated everyone. Nicholas guessed that there were about twenty servants, almost double the number his father had employed, and his nervousness returned as he tried to guess how long it would take to earn everyone's trust.

Then there was food, and Nicholas could have cared less about how he was going to befriend everyone in a just a few days. It did not matter what, exactly, the meal was--only that it was hot, smelled good, and tasted better. Praising the dishes seemed to be something of a ritual, with the servants calling out that everything was better than ever and teasing Lisia about stealing a secret recipe's ingredients.  This made it easy for Nicholas to make Mardet smile again, this time without any pain on his part, and tell her just how much he appreciated having such a good meal.

One of the Fieldmen shook his head, a wide smile on his face. "You act like you've never eaten before, Gard'ner."

"May as well not have," he replied, earning a laugh.

"Anyway, why isn't your body big enough for your bones?" called the Herdsman from the end of the table.

Nicholas's heart kicked into a gallop. It had been easy to lie to Thomas, but this delicate balance of truth and half-truth was what really mattered. "I've not had any work before this other than a few odd jobs. I went over to the Lady widow's, but she's got no use for a gardener or any more help now that she's gone blind," he explained.

"Good riddance!" the Housemaid exclaimed. "Maybe now her servants will finally get some peace."

"She's got a housemaid left," Aimeric supplied quickly.

"So are you here to stay?" asked another Fieldman.

Nicholas's heart leapt into his throat, and he decided that he had finished eating. "As Long as Thomas wants me."

"So 'til you die, pretty much."

Nicholas raised his eyebrows. "What's that supposed to mean?"

The Fieldman shrugged. "I've been here six years. We all have--'cept Steward Aimeric, he got hired after the old steward died."

"His mastership doesn't like us to leave," the Weaver explained. "He actually threatened us last year when we approached him about going to the spring market."

"Then who goes?" asked Nicholas, giving the reply they expected.

"I do," said Aimeric. "Sometimes he lets a Fieldhand come if he knows there'll be a lot to carry either way."

"I guess we ought to warn you now, Gard'ner," said the Houseman, all joking gone from his voice. "This has been going on for a while, now, and none of us are too happy with Master Thomas."

"And tell him--" said Mardet, her voice quiet and hesitant. "It's not just--the no leaving--"

"That's right," the Housemaid muttered darkly. "He hasn't paid us either."

"What?"

He must have been convincing enough, because the servants all nodded, the smiles gone from their faces.

"We ought to get a copper every now and then, but it's been a few months now since the last time any one of us saw a coin form his purse."

"Not that that's so bad," the Weaver offered. "It's not like we'd have anywhere to spend it or anything to spend it on, and we still get our rooms and plenty of food, and-"

"Oh, shut it Elya," the Groundsman muttered. From the way the Weaver failed to react to the sharp remark, Nicholas guessed that she made this unpopular point frequently.

"The point, Gard'ner," said the Houseman, drawing attention back to himself. "It's three days until Scholar's week."

Nicholas nodded. In the Forest, where the few families and clusters of houses were spread so far apart, it was impossible for Scholars to teach locally. Instead, the Scholars in the woods gathered twice a year at the marketplace for week-long lessons. It was an opportunity for the people of the woods to learn something other than the basics of survival, and for the Scholars to meet, teach from their areas of expertise, and learn from each other as well.

"We've all decided we were going to go," the Houseman continued. "Whether the master liked it or not."

Please, by the King, let me seem surprised, Nicholas thought. "So...?"

"So you just got here and we're all leaving."

"Not me," Aimeric called down the table, feigning annoyance.

The Houseman waved his hand dismissively. "Someone's got to cover our backs."

A few servants laughed.

"Anyway, we know you're new and you might be nervous about keeping your job. Thomas has fired his whole staff before, so we'll understand if you want to stay here."

"Of course you don't have to say anything right now," Mardet said, patting his arm. "You only just got here, you shouldn't be tangled up in service rebellions yet."

Nicholas smiled. "I'll think about it," he promised. And he did, to the extent of thinking about all the thinking he had done already.