“Have you tested the cider, Rapoto?” Santeel asked, for the third time since they’d started serving. This time she added: “You’re from Jotun—I expect an expert opinion.”
Rapoto just gave her a sour smile and took another pitcher through the window.
Ah, he was from Jotun. It was to the west of the Freesand, on the other side of the mountains from her chilly bay. And it was famous for its apple orchards and honey. Pigs, too. Fat as a Jotun pig was an expression. Though it was considered an insult to say it of anyone but babies and livestock.
Santeel watched Rapoto through the window, then sniffed another pitcher of cider as though suspicious. She glanced over at Ileth, who just shrugged. Maybe he didn’t like cider.
“C’mon, you titted calamity, your arm’s as slow as your tongue today,” Gorgantern said.
She left the stir-stick sitting in the cauldron and retrieved the ladle. She filled it brimfull and slopped it into the bowl with such force that it cascaded back out of the bowl to land hot on Gorgantern’s forearm.
“Stones!” he bellowed, dropping the bowl. It struck the tiled floor and spun on its rim like a dancer in a hooped skirt. “You northern sow! I’m burned!”
What came next happened so fast she had to mentally sort it out later; it was just a series of shocks as it happened. Before she knew it he’d slapped her, cuffing her hard enough on the ear to bring a sharp bolt of stabbing pain and fill her ear with a ringing sound. The pain, some of the worst she’d ever experienced in her life up to then, left her insensible, but later she worked out that the force of the slap knocked her off her feet and against the cauldron. She remembered that the sweat on her arm—she’d rolled up the sleeves on her too-large man’s shirt so that they wouldn’t dip in the soup—hissed on contact and the smell of burning hair filled her nostrils.
She bounced off the cauldron in a move that was half ricochet and half fall. She was on the floor when she could think again, feeling weirdly embarrassed for some reason. She rose to her feet, off balance and mazy with pain.
Ileth, who’d been aiming to have most of the soup remain in the bowl and just splatter him, tried to form words but her tongue found itself more reluctant than ever. She held up her arm to guard her face, using the long wooden spoon like a swordsman parrying a swing.
He shouted something that might have been “Oh, will you” and grabbed the spoon and wrenched her sideways. Arms that felt like heavy chains bent her over the steaming soup.
“Say you’re sorry!” Gorgantern shouted into her ringing ears. “I’ll dunk you, by the gods I will!”
The steam rising out of the soup burned. She felt the heat of the cauldron through her apron and smock. The heat on her face turned to agony. Words weren’t coming and wouldn’t have been an apology if they had. She shut her eyes tight, anticipating a burning plunge into the soup.
He forced her head lower. Her forehead and nose touched the hot liquid and she yelped.
“Off her, oaf!” Santeel Dun Troot shouted from a faraway place. She heard a curse.
The pressure released.
Ileth reeled away from the steam, blinked her eyes open, and saw the comic-opera vision of Santeel striking Gorgantern about the back with a long wooden candle lighter and extinguisher. And by strike, the effort Santeel put into it would have done a Stavanzer lumber-cutter proud. She struck him, then whirled the long wooden stick in a great circle, putting her back and waist muscles into it like a man splitting cordwood, briging it down on Gorgantern’s fleshy torso.
Gorgantern managed to get his arms on her and threw her like a bag of oats against the wall. She bounced hard and fell, but for a rich girl she was made of some quality steel. Santeel rolled, her usually pallid complexion flushed as she looked up at him, and her lips were pulled back, baring her teeth like a wolf.
Ileth, her mind throwing off sparks like lightning, each thought bright and clear in the heat of the confrontation, thought that while she had never wished to call much of anyone sister, at that moment, with her face burning from the heat of the cauldron, she’d have been happy to have Santeel as hers.
Shouts from some of the other novices working the kitchen registered in Ileth’s ringing head. Footsteps and a sudden presence of others around turned the struggle into a brawl. She found herself free, away from the heat, able to breathe, picking up the dropped candle-snuffer and holding it like a spear aimed at Gorgantern’s stomach.
A swirl of novices had formed around them; she saw two other boys, each holding one of Gorgantern’s arms. Someone else wiped at her face with a rag. She saw blood dabbed from her ear.
“Witches, the both of you,” Gorgantern said. “I get burned and you use me being hurt to gang up on me! Conspirators! You combined against me!”
“You-You-You swipe!” Ileth managed to say. “I’d have . . . apologized if you had-hadn-hadn’t hit m-me.”
“Why don’t you just call it even,” Rapoto said, a hand soft on Gorgantern’s arm, not that he could have restrained the lumbering apprentice any more than a lace kerchief. He must have come into the kitchens during the ruckus.
Gorgantern ignored him. “Worthless slut,” he said, looking at Ileth. “Who did you spread it for to get in here? A dragoneer let you in on your back?” Ileth threw herself in his direction, screaming every profanity she’d ever learned on the fishing docks in the Freesand. For once she didn’t stutter. Santeel helped another novice hold her back.
“If you’re going to give us entertainments with our meal, you should perform where we can see you,” someone said through the food window. All those not physically in the kitchen already seemed to be crowding between the serving counters and the kitchen wall.
“What? A fight? Is this going to turn into a duel?” another voice said from the crowd at the drinks window.
Ileth’s brain latched onto the word. “I’ll have y-you . . . outside,” she said. But it fell flat; the challenge must not have been in use in that part of the Vales.
“Have me,” Gorgantern chuckled. “You can’t have a conversation.”
“You’ve stru-struck m-m-me and insulted m-me,” Ileth said, slowly and carefully, perhaps overloudly because she needed to speak above her own pounding heart. She kept her hands clasped so Gorgantern wouldn’t see them shaking. “I have the right to ask for a fair duel in return.”
The word duel spread through the dining room like dragonfire.
“No. That’s not how it works at all, girl,” Rapoto said. “You don’t fight. I heard the insult. I’ll stand against him for you.”
“What? You don’t even know her!” Santeel said.
“He fought with you too, Santeel. I’ll stand up for both of you.”
“I don’t—I don’t need anyone to s-s-stand up for me,” Ileth said. “I’ll fight—I’ll duel him myself.”
“She is unbalanced,” Santeel said. “She received a blow to the head. She’s not in her senses. Rapoto—stand up for me—us, I mean! Fishbr—Ileth and me, that is.”
Ileth shook her head at Rapoto. Her face still burned from the heat of the soup. “I know wh-what I’m-I’m—doing. I’m quite c-c-clear of mind.”