Free Kalimpura (Green Universe) by Jay Lake

among them as if I were another servant without the alarm being raised.
    However, I could arrive on a cart.…
    I retreated up the alley to await the next worthwhile delivery.
    *   *   *
    Less than an hour later, I returned to the back of the Red House clucking at a pair of mules who drew a cart loaded with cabbages and root vegetables.
    “You ain’t Marsby,” said a redheaded boy in a clean but threadbare tunic who came out to meet me. He sounded cheerful about that.
    “Marsby’s been took sick.” If by sick I meant “tied up in a wood box with his own stockings in his mouth,” that was even a true statement.
    I hadn’t hurt him.
    Not much.
    “You’re foreign,” the boy announced. As if this were a notable discovery.
    “I’ve noticed that, yes.” I jumped down off the driver’s bench and patted one mule on the flank. Like horses, but slower and meaner, I understood them to be. So far they had not argued and had played their part. But then, I figured the mules knew their way with or without me.
    The boy fed each of them half an apple as I dropped the gate on the cart and tugged out a crate of rutabagas. “I don’t know where to take this,” I told him.
    He grudgingly took hold of a crate of cabbages. “Marsby carries ’em two at a time.”
    “I ain’t Marsby.” I was beginning to wonder how often this lad received a good kicking, and if he knew how richly he deserved such treatment. Now that I was here, I wanted to be inside and about my business before someone of wit noticed me.
    The idiot boy led me up three steps to a stone porch, and into the pantry beyond. I set my crate on a table, where an exasperated woman was counting out an inventory of herbs. She glared at me, then went back to her work.
    Outside, my little friend had grabbed another crate of cabbage, but stopped to whisper to the mules. That was fine with me. I pushed around him with a crate of potatoes, walked right past the herb counter, and strode into the kitchen.
    Such a place. In other circumstances, I would have liked to cook there. A central fire with a massive spit fit for a whole game carcass. Three bread ovens, each with their own firebox. An oil stove and a woodstove. A huge butchering counter. A cold room, judging by one overbuilt door. Copper pans hanging above like the rain falling from an explosion in an armory.
    Cook’s boys and assistants pushed everywhere, through steam and smoke and the smell of some fish meeting its end in a fry of olive oil, lemons, and capers. I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, then shoved my crate into the hands of a passing scullery maid. “Here, these are in the wrong place,” I said in my best, and very genuine, quality-accented Petraean.
    Contrasting with my dark skin, I knew it confused her, but that was the point. Confusion and continued motion: those were my weapons right now.
    And being here, I was glad I had not simply blocked the doors and fired the house.
    With that thought, I grabbed up a jelly pan and strode confidently toward the doors that led into the main house.
    A hand grasped at me. Someone nearly had their wrist broken for their trouble, but I stifled the impulse and turned.
    This was Cook. Not a cook, or even the cook. Just Cook. The tyrant of the kitchen, and in a great house, the only servant over whom the chatelaine or majordomo had no real power. She was red-faced with stringy hair and piercing gray eyes. Unlike most cooks, she was also quite thin. Her dress was dark blue in a cut a respectable grocer’s wife might have worn. This in contrast to the simple striped smocks of the maids and undercooks. I noted the skin of her fingers was peeling. She shook slightly as she grasped me.
    “You do not belong.”
    “No.” I tried for honesty first. More persuasive methods were still readily available, and I was close to the door, in any case. “I am here on urgent purpose for the councilor, and preferred not to be announced through the front.”
    Her eyes narrowed,