Herald Spy 02: Closer to the Heart by Mercedes Lackey

Author:Mercedes Lackey [Lackey, Mercedes]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fantasy, Valdemar
Publisher: DAW
Published: 2015-09-08T04:00:00+00:00

The only kitchen that Mags had ever been in that was better run than this was the one serving the Palace. And this one was a tie with the Collegium’s for second place. The Collegium was not quite as well organized, in no small part because it was partly staffed by Heraldic Trainees who often had no more idea of what to do with a strange vegetable, or how to clean and stuff a chicken, than Mags had of how to make lace.

There was one hard and fast rule in every kitchen run like this one: find a place to stand that was out of the way until the head cook acknowledges you. Because until then, and until he or she decides what to do with you, you are an obstacle and a nuisance getting in the way of the important business of preparing food.

The room itself was all of the same stone as all the other buildings here, although, as in the sorting and sluicing sheds, there had been no effort at making the walls and stone-faced floor “pretty,” just smooth. Enormous pillars made of entire tree trunks spaced at intervals along the wall held up the huge beams supporting the second floor. Pots and pans and utensils hung from hammered iron racks suspended from those beams, a clever way of keeping them out of the way but always accessible. It was a good thing that the hooks holding those racks were half as thick as his wrist; if one fell, there would be carnage.

The Head Cook here was a man, a surprisingly small but very nimble man with a head like a sheared sheep, in a bleached canvas smock and trews, who danced about the preparation tables like someone in an acrobatic troupe, admonishing, directing, stirring, scolding, and always tasting.

The very first thing Mags had noticed, was, of course, the heat. It was always hot in a well-run kitchen, even in the dead of winter. Your choice was to leave windows open for air but get flies in enormous quantities, or close them and close in the heat. Most cooks closed them, only opening them again when the cooking was over for the day.

The only kitchen Mags had ever been in that wasn’t hot had been Cole Pieters’. It went without saying that Pieters had skimped on wood for cooking the way he skimped on everything, so that things were often burned on the outside and raw on the inside—or burned on the bottom of the pot, and cold on top.

There was lots of light here, though. Like the sheds, there was good glass here in the windows. Easy to see, easy to keep clean. That was what Cook at the Collegium said, anyway.

He found a good place to stand just to the left of the door and took it all in; one of the things that Nikolas had told him was that no matter what, the kitchen was the real heart of the household, and if anything was amiss in that household, it would show in the kitchen.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.