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“Fine,” Salas mumbled.
Lio smiled a little. “You know, despite you not liking your clothes, your hair stands out really nicely against the brown. Your hair’s always been so pretty!”
“I…thank you,” Salas murmured, running a hand through his hair and realizing that it was much smoother than it should have been without being attended to with a comb in days. Yet it was as though someone had brushed it in his sleep, for it hung glossy and free around him, absent of tangles.
“I think it will take some getting used to, but I think you will like it here,” Lio declared confidently.
Salas didn’t reply.
He was shown the mess hall, which turned out to be a grand hall with long wooden tables, an iron chandelier, and a multi-tiered mezzanine. Nearly empty now, as the hour was past breakfast, but scattered with people socializing over warm brews.
Lio also showed him the library: a great room with geometric slated tiles and wooden shelving that escalated up the walls all the way up to the dome ceiling. However, when Salas began pointing and talking loudly about the shelves being too high, Lio quickly escorted him from the room.
Lastly, Lio offered to show him the courtyards, but Salas refused with the excuse that it would be bad for his leg if he were to trip on the ice. Really, he simply had no wish to have another encounter with the well.
He thought of Victoria and wondered where she was, so he knew which areas of the castle to avoid. When he said his thoughts aloud, Lio informed him that Victoria had been banished from the castle grounds, and that she had left this morning. This new information reassured him greatly, despite being confusing.
Though when he said that Victoria was also rumored to be Newtalia’s mother, the information made even less sense. Why would she be banished if she had an intimate relationship with the King?
It seemed the King was not careful with his lovers. This only served to scare Salas.
Finally, they reached the kitchens, where Lio parted with him, telling him that he was to find the cook, who would know what to do with him.
Salas hesitated, desperately wishing Lio would stay by his side with his warm attitude, assurances, and overall familiarity. But he could not bear the embarrassment of voicing this, afraid of seeming weak in the eyes of someone who saw so much in him.
So Salas watched as Lio walked away.
He hesitated before the arched iron door. Through a grated window wafted the thick scent of sage and roasting fowl. The rhythmic clatter of pots and pans moving and scraping about repelled him, causing a rising shyness of interrupting a space he knew nothing about.
He thought about leaving—retracing his steps back to the King’s chambers and hiding. It would have been much easier to do than face whatever fate this kingdom thought they had in store for him.
Salas took a breath and entered the kitchen.
Tall men and women in aprons and smocks scattered a wide area, bustling about the large kitchen. A dauntingly-sizeable coal pit, about two human-lengths wide, was off to one side, burning hot with black and red lumps of rock. A thick cauldron hung over it, the largest Salas had ever seen (though he could count on one hand the amount of times he had ever entered a kitchen and laid eyes on such a pot) along with other pots and pans scattering the area.
It seemed as though all spaces were occupied. A large table sat in the center, where women with sinuous arms proved their strength in kneading dough and tenderizing pork with meat mallets. Off to another side, away from the fire, children sat on the floor over floor-tables and peeled potatoes. Salas watched as a rebellious one snuck to the others with a handful of stolen sugar cubes.
No one looked up as Salas entered the kitchen and he cleared his throat, distinctly aware more than ever that he did not speak Diagorian.
He stood there awkwardly until suddenly, the door burst open from behind him, the heavy frame knocking his feet from under him, as a kitchen-hand came bustling in with supplies. Salas’ crutch flew to the ground in a disruptive clatter and he fell to his knees, a flush already warming his face for having made such a display, lacking grace.
He remembered moments in Suscon where he’d entered a room in a skip and had danced upon a tabletop, but now his fingers curled into themselves, in more frustration than embarrassment, as all eyes in the kitchen landed on him.
He wobbled to stand on his good leg as a looming figure pulled away from the scene of the kitchen and stood over him, grabbing his arm and pulling him the rest of the way to his feet.
It was a heavy woman with a worn-face and uncompromising eyes. She stared him down, jostling him a bit as she began a rapid stream of Diagorian that he didn’t catch a single word of.
Feeling indignant and more than a little cross at the rough handling and entire situation, Salas straightened himself and pulled out of her grip. “I don’t understand you,” he said flatly.
“Diagorian,” she retorted roughly, “No Susconian.”
Yes Susconian, Salas thought viciously, grinding his teeth and glaring up at the woman. “I don’t speak it,” he said in her language.
She said something that sounded like she was implying he would learn it by dropping his use of his ‘native’ tongue.
She jostled him again, gestured to an empty place at the table, and gave him an order to sit, perhaps, and that was when he understood. This woman was his new overseer. The one that he would report to. The one that would command him.
Salas took a minute to look around the kitchen again, at the workers with their rough, calloused hands, with their hunched backs and thick arms, and felt a sense of foreboding seed itself inside of him.
