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“The dawn bells.”

It is now well past midday.

“Have you eaten?”

He glances at the pot of mash. “Not yet.”

The Zagfer cook places her knife beside the dripir. “The human meal begins when the upper meal is complete.”

“Why?”

“So there are no interruptions.”

The nearest scullion scrubs a pan with her shoulders bowed. A raw patch covers the back of one hand. She never looks up.

I turn to the cook. “I want the kitchen work logs.”

“My lady?”

“The work logs, meal schedules, and spoilage records for the last month.”

“Those are household records.”

“I am aware.”

“Sarveth controls access.”

“Then send someone to request her authorization.”

The cook hesitates.

“Now,” I say.

She signals to an assistant, who hurries toward the accounting rooms.

I remain in the kitchen.

That decision unsettles them more than my request.

I walk along the outer tables and watch the labor. Human servants carry twice what the Zagfer assistants carry. The servants nearest the hearth have no rotation away from the heat. One young woman nearly falls asleep while plucking a dripir. Another bears a bandage around two fingers and continues chopping winter roots with the remaining hand.

Every few minutes, a Zagfer cook corrects a mistake.

None asks why the mistakes keep happening.

The records arrive in a wooden box.

The assistant places it before me with Sarveth’s written authorization fixed beneath the latch. I take the box to a narrow table near the storeroom and begin reading.

The work logs list duties, names, and starting bells. Ending times are entered less reliably. I compare them with oven logs and meal schedules, tracing each servant through the day.

Perrin began carrying water before dawn. He cleaned roasting pans after the midday meal and remains assigned through the evening service.

Eighteen hours.

The woman with the injured hand has worked the same schedule for six consecutive days.

Meal records grant humans two short periods at times that frequently overlap with preparation for the upper household. Those periods exist on parchment. The kitchen tallies show that many servings are never collected.