"Not really. Bits of him in the bridle brass. Bits of dogs and woods in the bridle brass. A lot of storm in the bridle brass. The question is, why would he be out in this weather?" Jimson's mouth pursed shrewdly. "The Princess is missing, and the Huntsman is miles away in the forest? In a storm?"
"That is a very good question, which is probably answered by 'because he is chasing the Princess.'" She rang immediately for a servant; one came, cowering. She'd had to maintain the illusion that she was Evil by a fierce and intimidating manner, though she hadn't actually done anything to any of the servants. Poor things, she felt so sorry for them. Queen Celeste had been a gentle and considerate mistress. She could console herself by reminding herself that if she was terrifying them, at least she wasn't making their lives a living hell the way a real Evil Stepmother would have. "I want a count of the horses in the stable immediately. Get the grooms to do it. Tell me if any are missing, and which ones."
The man left and returned very quickly; he must have gone himself, for his green livery was rain-soaked and his hair was plastered to his head by water. He made a profound obeisance and stayed that way. "Two horses are gone, Majesty," he said, his voice a little muffled by the fact that he was still in a deep bow. "One is the Huntsman's, and one is your usual ride." She noted that he did not also mention that the Huntsman and his pack were gone before he backed out of the room. Already the servants were rebelling in small ways, telling her only what she had asked about and no more. While this was good, since it meant they were much more likely to be very loyal to Rosa, it meant she was going to have to be very precise in what she demanded of them.
Lily put the mirror down and began to pace; though her body moved restlessly, her mind was curiously calm. "I can still feel The Tradition putting pressure on the situation, so we can assume something or someone will come to her rescue."
"Or try to kill her again," Jimson said glumly.
"Well we can deal with the Huntsman — does the man have a name?" she added irritably. "At any rate I am fairly sure I can find a way to tie him up, at least temporarily... in fact, I know exactly how." She felt just a little satisfaction at that. "I'll put him to looking for her, and partner him with someone trustworthy. I'll have to do this carefully, so it doesn't look like my idea, but I think I can manipulate things in our favor." She ran over the list of Thurman's best men in her mind. "Hodges and May. They are both Captains of the Guard and technically outrank him. I can reinforce that by putting them in charge of the search effort. He won't be able to shake them, and they're suspicious of me — well, of 'Queen Sable."'
She rang for the servant again. The poor man. He was going to get a back injury from spending so much time bent over in a bow.
"I want to be informed as soon as the Huntsman returns," she said. "And gather the Guard. Princess Rosamund must be found."
This was Eltaria. Rosa was an Eltarian Princess who studied The Tradition. So Rosa had known all of her life that there were some skills an Eltarian Princess needed to have that... were not generally in the curriculum of a Royal or even a Noble.
She knew, basically, how to clean clothing and a room, how to mend garments, how to plain-sew as well as embroider, and how to cook very, very basic food. She could not make bread, but she could make griddle cakes. She could make porridge, soup and stew. She could milk a cow or a goat. She could cook game over a campfire after cleaning and skinning it herself, and she could start the campfire herself. She could spin, and in a pinch, knit and weave. She knew how to hunt, of course, and shoot; most nobles knew that. But she also knew how to set snares and traps, choose wood, find edible plants and knew a half a dozen mushrooms that were safe to eat.
In short, she had most of the skills her mother had. After all her mother had been a shepherdess before she was a Queen.
An Eltarian Princess never knew if The Tradition was going to decide to dump her in the middle of nowhere and force her to fend for herself.
And now, faced with a filthy kitchen, and seven sullen "masters," she needed those skills.
In her mind, she started giving them names. The biggest, she called "Bully," because he shoved everyone around, not just her. The eldest was "Deaf," because he was, or nearly, but since he didn't speak at all, and none of the others spoke to him, it didn't seem to matter; pushing and pointing pretty much conveyed everything that needed to be said. There was "Sly," who could never look at anyone straight on; "Surly," whose every other word was a curse; "Angry," who was too out of sorts even to curse, and just glared; "Lumpy," who, when not eating, just sat and stared into space; and "Coward," who deferred to everyone except her.
"Need meat," Bully said when they were on their second bowl of the stuff. He glared at Coward, who cringed. "Ye didn't get meat."
"'S the storm, see? Can't check the traps inna storm!" Coward whined. "What'f I get struck by lightnin'?"
"What if I shove me foot up yer arse?" snarled Bully. "Ye got one job, tha's traps. We need meat. Dwarf gotta have meat t'dig. Tha's yer job, cause yer shite at diggin', ye lazy sod."
Coward sank down in his chair and whimpered into his bowl. Bully indicated to Rosa that he wanted more by the simple expedient of flinging the empty bowl at her and grunting at the kettle.
They pretty much ate the kettle bare, left the dirty bowls and spoons on the table and shuffled off to some other part of the cottage. To sleep, she presumed. She gathered everything up and started cleaning — the two kettles first, and since it didn't seem that they minded a bit of ash in their food, the second one got filled with coals from the fire to have its insides burned out.
It didn't appear that the Dwarves cared what they ate or when, so she did what was easiest: she took the clean kettle and filled it full of water and dried peas with some salt and set it to cooking all night for pease porridge. They could eat that in the morning. Right now, she was too tired to think past morning. Her hands were a mess; she was filthy, bruised, exhausted, wanted to sit on the floor and howl with fear and grief; and at the moment, the only thing good about her life was that the Huntsman wasn't going to be able to kill her. Tonight, anyway.
In the morning, the Dwarves woke her with the sound of their thumping and quarreling. With that warning she had the bowls full of pease porridge waiting on the table for them, even though she was sleepy and muddleheaded and so stiff and sore from sleeping on the stones that her eyes leaked tears with every stab of pain. They said nothing to her about the food, which she knew wasn't particularly good, which just told her that their own cooking must have been pretty bad.
Then again, judging by what she'd had to scrape out of the bowls, it was stuff that the Palace cooks would have beaten an apprentice for making, just before throwing him out the door onto the rubbish pile. If they noticed she was crying, they said nothing about that, either.
When they were full, they stomped out of the kitchen and headed into the cellar, all but Coward, who went out the door into the forest. So their mine must be below the cottage, and they reached it by the cellar. How had they found her in that tree? Was it an extra way in that they had been checking? Did they seize her thinking she was a thief coming to loot their mine? It couldn't have been a very good one, since the really good mines were all in the mountains; she wondered what they were mining. But she didn't wonder for long; there were a lot of other things she needed to get done right now. She had to find out just what her options were, here.