Free The Skies Discrowned by Tim Powers Page B

someone else’s duties? Did you lose another cousin?” Frank’s bronze ear gleamed in the lamplight.
    “What a horrible thing to say, Frank. But yes, as a matter of fact, I was thinking of broadening your functions, giving you some experience in another field—now that my art collectors are so tax-strangled and the museums so heavily guarded and our night runs are becoming so few and far between.”
    “My new field being … ?”
    “Well, I entertain quite a bit, you know. Pons handles the details quite well, but the kitchen is a chaos. Kitchen boys come and go like sailors in a brothel, and now my chief cook has walked out. So I thought that, in the free time between our night runs and your painting, you might help Pons out with the dinners, cooking and washing up, and all.”
    Frank swallowed the indignant anger that Orcrist’s suggestion raised in him.
Take it easy
, he thought. Orcrist’s employment is all that stands between you and the lean life of a fugitive. He’s fed you and taken care of you, and it isn’t his fault that the new government has made affluence an archaic word. Orcrist works as hard as you do (harder, probably), and risks his neck as well as your own on the night raids.
    “What do you say?” asked Orcrist, and Frank suddenly realized that the older man was, to his own surprise, embarrassed to be making the request.
    “It sounds okay to me,” Frank said. “I guess a little kitchen experience is a valuable thing to have.”
    “Of course it is,” Orcrist agreed heartily. “I propose we celebrate it with a couple of glasses of this excellent Tamarisk brandy.”
    After downing his brandy Frank went to the kitchen to get acquainted with the layout. He found Pons sitting on a stool, nibbling a chunk of Jack cheese. The tall, skinny servant regarded Frank skeptically.
    “Don’t tell me you took it,” he said.
    “Matter of fact, I did,” answered Frank. “What is it I do?”
    Pons stood up and ran his fingers through his graying hair. “Well now, you’ll find that kitchen work isn’t as easy as painting.” He peered at Frank, who said nothing. “But at least its
honest
work.” Frank smiled coldly.
    Encouraged by Franks silence, Pons grinned and took another bite of cheese. “Yessir,” he said. “Liquor and books is all very well, but you don’t get time for that sort of trash in here. You know what I say?”
    “What do you say?”
    “I say, if you’ve got time enough to lean, you’ve got time enough to clean. Now we don’t have to get started on dinner for another two hours yet, so why don’t you get a rag and a bucket of hot water and clean off the oven hood? And then after that you can clean out these drains. What?”
    “I didn’t say anything,” said Frank.
    “Well, see that you don’t. I don’t like noisy help.” Pons took his cheese and left the room, on his lips the smile of the man who has had the last word.
    Now
what
, thought Frank, have I done to provoke all that? He looked helplessly around himself at the kitchen. A big, gleaming oven stood in the center of the room. Around the walls were sinks and refrigerators and freezers. Years of airborne grease had darkened the yellow walls near the ceiling.
    With a fatalistic sigh he began looking for a mop, a rag and a bucket.
    When Pons returned at four, he criticized Frank’s cleaning and asked him if his father and he had been accustomed to living in a pigpen.
    “No,” said Frank evenly. I will deal with this Pons fellow, he told himself, when the opportunity arises.
    “Well, that’s what anyone would think, to see the lazy-man job you did on these sinks.” He looked around the room with a dissatisfied air. “It’s high time we got started on dinner. And let me tell you, sonny, the best way to get on Sam’s bad side is to serve him bad food.”
    Spare me your pompous master-chef act, thought Frank. And I’d like to see you call him Sam to his face.
    “He’s having eight guests to dinner tonight,