In spite of myself, I devour the sight—the lawn blanketed in glittering snow, the trees bare and shivering. I loved Everless best in summer, when flowers spilled from their beds and the gardeners recruited servant children to pick the dandelions marring the emerald lawn. But the pale winter light makes the estate even more beautiful, like something carved of silver and crystal.
Once all of us have unloaded and stand, shivering, in the courtyard, an older footman with a drooping face shepherds us into the narrow servants’ corridor. I keep my head down, heart beating fast, convinced that at any moment someone will recognize me, but the servants barely glance at us.
We’re led through a sloping corridor I don’t recognize, and into the labyrinthine network of servants’ halls and quarters. A sudden memory hits me: Roan discovered that if you press your ears to these walls, you can sometimes hear nobles talk in the main corridor above. Most of what we heard was tiresome, lived-too-long aristocrats amusing themselves by gossiping about so-and-so’s affair or comparing their investments, though we were too young to understand what that meant—centuries bought and sold and traded the way Papa and I played jacks for sweets. But every so often Roan would speak to me through the wall, when he couldn’t be down in the servants’ corridors to play. Even then his voice, his laugh, made my heart race.
Now, though the halls stream with servants, we pass through in silence. I know everyone must be hard at work, preparing the castle for the Queen’s visit and Roan’s wedding—that, or Everless has changed, and there is even less tolerance for chatter and laughter.
Soon, we find ourselves in the kitchen, a cavernous space that would hold my entire cottage in Crofton three times over, filled with servants and ringing with shouted conversation, different accents coming together like music. Like Sempera itself, Everless plays host to people with roots in many different lands. After she ascended the throne, the Queen—finding herself leading a battered, vulnerable kingdom—offered a hundred years to every person from elsewhere who was willing to settle in Sempera permanently, but closed the borders to travelers and merchants. People could come in, but nobody could leave.
At one enormous basin, several fresh-faced young servants work to take apart a whole side of beef. I think of Amma and feel a pang. I’ve watched her strip and dry meat for years—compared to her expert hands, these servants are slow. At this rate, the meat will spoil before they’ve finished.
When I sidle closer to them, away from the group, thinking of offering to help, one boy practically snarls at me, “Find your own work.”
As I move away, I catch a glimpse of the thin white line drawn across his hand. It’s a scar from selling time. Are the blood-irons he earns for himself, I wonder, or someone else?
An entire wooden table is occupied by young servants standing in a line, cutting mountains of root vegetables, and at another table, white-coated in flour, servants knead, pound, and cut rolls into shape. Two massive stoves lick flame into the room, and dozens of pots simmer, stew, and spatter, filling the room with scented steam. The smells make my head spin. I haven’t eaten anything since the bread I took from the cupboard this morning.
A stunning, tall girl with a mass of curls and wearing Gerling colors enters the kitchen carrying a silver tray, which she sets down on a wooden counter. Immediately, brown-clad kitchen servants fill it with plates of sun-colored pastries, a small bronze kettle, and ornately carved utensils. Waiting, the girl plucks a length of twine from the table, languidly tying her hair back with it.
“Lord Gerling pulled me aside this morning,” she says, eyes bright. Her strong arms are crosshatched with freckles. “He wants me to wait on the Queen when she arrives. Lady Verissa agrees.”
Another girl snorts. “We all know why that is,” she says, not tearing her eyes from the onion she’s chopping.
A gray-haired woman in a beautifully embroidered apron cuts through the kitchen, and several servants trot after her, like ducklings after their mother. “Addie,” she says to the tall, curly haired one. “You still serve Lady Gerling, not the Queen,” she snaps. The girl—Addie—hurriedly picks up the tray. “Now, off with you.”
The older woman looks familiar: her face stirs feelings of warmth and safety, though I can’t remember her name. She greets each new Everless girl with a few brisk questions, then directs them to go to one station or another.
When she comes to me, she stops. For a moment, she frowns. Does she recognize me too? But then she blinks, once, twice, and the brief look of uncertainty passes.
“Your name?” she asks.
I consider giving a false name, but then remember Papa’s first rule for lying: tell the truth as much as you can. “Jules,” I say. It’s common enough. “From Crofton.”
“Jules,” she repeats after me. “Have you been in service before? I need someone who can deliver trays to lords’ and ladies’ chambers with no fuss. And for Sorceress’s sake, I need a girl who won’t get nervous and drop her tray.”
Behind her, one of the servants blushes all the way to her ears. She seems like the nervous type, definitely the kind to drop her tray.
I shake my head. When her brow creases, I add, “But I’m a fast learner. I don’t fluster easily.”
I brace myself for more questions. Instead, the woman gives me a final look-over and then nods. “Let’s try you out, then, Jules from Crofton.” And with an arch of her eyebrows, she turns and sweeps away.
As a child at Everless, I lived with Papa in three rooms off the blacksmith’s hut. Like the ladies-in-waiting, the butler, and the underbutlers, we had rooms to ourselves. They were small, but ours to fill with little bits of metal and the smell of smoke.
Now, I realize, we were lucky. The servant women’s dormitory is a long hall containing a honeycomb of stacked beds, at least two hundred to my eye. They are pushed so close together that if we lie down in them, we could easily reach out and link hands.
I’m pleased that I was right—no one seems to recognize me, even servants who I remember from the old days. Ten years of hunger and cold have stretched me out, chipped away at any softness in me, so that I doubt anyone would recognize me as the blacksmith’s daughter unless Papa were by my side, ten years younger and in his apron. No one has time to study me, and I’m happy to blend into the crop of new servants who have descended on Everless for the wedding. After laying claim to one of the narrow beds and being outfitted with a simple brown kitchen uniform, I hurry back downstairs.