Wench

by Maxine Kaplan

  When a towheaded man, broad shouldered and silent, showed up and Lukas started to dole out the stew, Tanya yanked him away. Then she flashed a smile and presented the silent man with a tray. “This is the one you want,” she told him. He took it from her without meeting her eyes. She followed him for a few steps, making sure that she hadn’t mistaken him. When he turned toward Uncle Tommy’s tent, she relaxed.

  Even under duress, Tanya never ignored the help.

  When it started to get dark and nothing had happened, she began to worry. What if she had misjudged the Tomcat? What if the lackey had waited to serve it until it was too cold? What if one of the dishes was underseasoned?

  But then Riley came jogging around the corner and cupped his hands around his mouth to shout at her. “Hey, tavern maid. Boss wants you.”

  She breathed a sigh of relief.

  Tanya entered the boss’s tent to a slow clapping of hands. Uncle Tommy sat at the same low table as that morning, in front of him the remains of the dinner Tanya had prepared for him. She was pleased to see that those remains were very scant indeed.

  “Well, you have my attention, Tanya,” said Uncle Tommy, beaming. “That was an excellent meal. I haven’t eaten so well on the road, ever.”

  She stood up straight. “I know.”

  Uncle Tommy sat back and put his hands on his stomach. “Duck confit with a red wine sauce. Potatoes gratin with what I have to assume was a cheese you made yourself, because I don’t remember buying mascarpone. Garlic-roasted asparagus tips. A cream of mushroom soup. Fresh bread with garlic butter. And a crème brûlée with caramel sauce for dessert. I don’t know how you managed a brûlée in that kitchen.”

  Tanya bent her head in a curtsy. “I’m glad my lord was pleased.”

  He smiled. “I’m not a ‘my lord.’ Tell me, Tanya: Why did you bother?”

  She looked down in a way she hoped seemed demure. “Only to show my gratitude for your protection in my passage through the White.”

  “It’s our pleasure. It seems as though you’re more than going to earn your keep.”

  Tanya looked up through her lashes. That’s what she was waiting for. “I’m glad you’ve found me valuable,” she said. “I hope to prove I’m worth more than my keep.”

  There was a silence. Then Uncle Tommy laughed. “So, the tavern wench wants a tip, huh?”

  She shrugged. “I need to get to the Capital. Getting dumped in Bloodstone isn’t going to help me get there. I have no idea how long it takes to get from here to Bloodstone, and I wanted to make sure you knew what I could do if properly motivated.”

  “And what made you think I would even entertain this request?”

  Tanya smiled. “I watched you this morning. A man with your fine taste doesn’t ignore a good meal in the middle of a chalky brush with just camp provisions.”

  “And you were determined not to fly under my radar. You wanted to be a part of my comforts.”

  “I’m a waitress, sir. I know we’re invisible to most powerful men. But I can’t afford to be. I have to get to the Capital.”

  He nodded approvingly. “Well thought out.”

  “So . . . do we have a deal? Do I get payment at Bloodstone? Real payment?”

  He chortled. “Oh, absolutely not.”

  “But . . .”

  Uncle Tommy waved his hand, brushing away her protest. “My girl, you’ve forgotten a very important variable. I have numerous fighting men with very good weapons at my disposal. You are utterly defenseless—you don’t even have proper boots! I could simply force you to continue working in that kitchen. For the rest of your life, if I wanted to. Now, don’t look so disappointed, Tanya. You are an excellent cook and you’ve been very bold. I respect skill, and I respect initiative. I will most certainly recommend you to the inn at Bloodstone; or, if you choose to stay on with us, at the tavern in the first town you like. In the meantime, I give you my word that no one in this camp will harm you. Fair enough?”

  Tanya was deflated. But she had no choice. She nodded, watching the Smiling Snake dissolve into sand in her mind’s eye.

  Uncle Tommy nodded, satisfied. “Good, now go to bed. That boy, the incompetent one—”

  “Lukas,” she said dully.

  “Yes! Lukas. He’ll show you where you can sleep. Get some rest. I eat breakfast early, as you know, and after tonight my expectations are high.”

  Tanya turned to go, but stopped when she saw a familiar glimmer on the desk. She asked, wistfully, “Are you enjoying your new toy?”

  “Pardon?”

  She turned to him. “The quill. I hope it’s all you wanted it to be. It’s cost me enough.”

  His face got very still. “It’s a work in progress.”

  Tanya inched closer to the desk. The quill was lying askew across an ink-blotted parchment. She craned her neck around to study it further.

  It was a mess.

  Someone—Uncle Tommy, she surmised—had started, very modestly, by writing “GOLD” in an elegant, looping script, large and confident across the paper. Clearly that hadn’t worked the way he wanted it to, because he had followed it by “SILVER” in slightly hastier handwriting, down and down the list of valuable substances until there were nothing but angry scribbles.

  Tanya looked over at the quill. It appeared tired. It was pulsing with a faint, white light. She felt a strange urge to stroke it, as if it could be soothed.

  “What do you think you’re doing?”

  Uncle Tommy was standing up. She had never seen him standing before. She dropped her hand.

  “Nothing,” she said, stepping away. “Just . . . saying hi.”

  “Good night, Tanya. Riley, escort her back to the kitchens. Now.”

  A firm hand gripped her by the elbow and steered her toward the exit. She shook it off. “It’s not my fault he hasn’t figured out a system yet,” she grumbled as Riley pushed her forward. “No need to get rough.”

  “Stop!” Tanya and Riley both stopped in their tracks. The Tomcat strode toward the desk and looked at the paper. Then he looked back at Tanya. He held out his hand. “Bring me her apron.”

  Riley’s hands immediately went to her waist. “I beg your pardon,” exclaimed Tanya. “I’ll remove my own clothing, thank you.”

  But the apron was already in the Tomcat’s hands. He waved a hand at Tanya. “Take her away.”

  The next morning, Tanya was begrudgingly mixing strawberries into a brown-sugar-infused whipped cream for biscuits, when the serving lackey turned up at her table.

  “I’m not done with his breakfast yet,” she told him, frowning. “I can get you some porridge.”

  The lackey shook his head and held out his arm. She stared at it. “Biscuits take a certain amount of time to bake,” she explained. “I can’t magically make them appear.”

  The silent lackey shook his head and again thrust his arm out at her. He inclined his head behind him. She followed the gesture. “He wants me now? With or without his breakfast?” The lackey nodded.

  She found Uncle Tommy sitting up at his desk. Yesterday he had been scrupulously groomed and nattily attired, but not this morning. His hair was disheveled and greasy, as if he’d spent the night riling it up, and he was wearing the same vest and shirt as he had been wearing the night before, and both were hanging open and wrinkled. He was scowling and his eyes were bloodshot.

  “Are you not feeling well?” asked Tanya bluntly. “I have many talents, but I’m not an all-purpose domestic machine. I have no skill at healing.”

  Uncle Tommy pointed at the chair sitting opposite him. “Sit,” he ordered.

  She sat. The chair was considerably lower than Uncle Tommy’s.

  He pointed. “Pick that up.”

  She followed his finger. He was pointing at the quill, which was lying quiet and dormant, an ordinary white feather.

  Tanya looked at the feather and saw her ticket to the Capital. To the Queen and Council. To the Smiling Snake. Her ticket back to the only thing she wanted. Her
fingers trembled.

  “Now!”

  Tanya grabbed at the quill and held it tightly. The quill shivered in her grasp, the spines tickling her palm.

  “What now?” she asked.

  He reached under the table and retrieved a wadded-up piece of cloth. He threw it at her. “Tell me what I’m looking at,” he demanded.

  Tanya smoothed out the cloth to find her apron. It was wrinkled and dirty, but the map shone out dark and clear, without a single smudge. Her eyes drifted across the desk and saw that the scratched-out, misbegotten demands had multiplied overnight. Discarded paper cascaded onto the floor like driftwood after a shipwreck.

  She looked at Uncle Tommy. “You couldn’t get the quill to work?”

  His fists tightened into an even thicker coil and Tanya heard a gasp from behind her. She had made a mistake.

  Uncle Tommy stared at her and then drew a very sharp dagger from his belt. He pointed it at her. “Tanya,” he began. He seemed to reconsider his positioning and moved forward in his chair, leaning over his desk so that the knife’s point was less than a centimeter away from Tanya’s wrist.

  “Tanya, are you listening?” She nodded, her eyes on the knife. “I’m betting that you’re a girl who hates to waste time. Riley gave me a full report of your campsite. I know it matches where he found you on that map. I know that on your way to my camp, he passed an irrigated wheat field that wasn’t there when he left, but was very clearly marked on your map. You made the quill work and you’re going to show me how. Or you’re going to be very sorry.”

  Tanya didn’t move. She couldn’t stop staring at that knife. She had thought she could control this situation, as she had controlled every situation since she was seven years old, but this was very clearly not the Smiling Snake.

  The thought occurred to her: Maybe the Snake was the only thing she was capable of controlling.

  “Tanya.” She ripped her eyes away from the knife and forced them to refocus on Uncle Tommy’s stormy face. “Do we have an understanding?”

  She nodded.

  He thrust a fresh piece of parchment at her. She felt the quill tingle in her fingers. They hovered above the paper.

  She hesitated. “What exactly do you want me to do?”

  “At this point, I don’t really care. Conjure anything. Conjure gold if you want to make me really happy with your job performance.”

  She frowned. “I can’t just conjure gold out of thin air. That’s not how this works. At least, I don’t think it is.” Tanya thought for a moment and bit her lip. “Can I see what you were working on?”

  “Why would you want to see that?”

  She sighed. “I’ve used this quill exactly once. I want to see what didn’t work. No offense,” she added quickly.

  He studied her through narrow eyes and then pushed a stack of scribble-covered papers at her.

  “Thank you.” Tanya bent over the desk to examine the failed attempts.

  He had gone wrong from the very beginning.

  Tanya perused the list of demands to the universe listed on that paper. Give me fifty gold pieces. Give me a diamond the size of my head. Give me a bucket of the finest wine in Lode.

  “Give me, give me, give me,” she muttered under her breath. Where did he think it was all going to come from?

  She grasped the quill more firmly and brought it to her mouth so that she could lick the tip, this time a slight shock rippling through her tongue at the touch.

  The feather sparked, throwing out rainbow specks of light so bright they cast shadows on the dim tent walls. She put the fresh piece of parchment on top of the rejects and wrote: Draw me a map thirty miles wide. Put me in the center.

  The ink soaked into the paper, disappearing. Then it exploded, energetically spreading itself across the paper, forming lines and landmarks, as if it had been waiting for just that request.

  It was waiting for me. Tanya quickly dismissed the thought as fanciful. Jobs get done. The job doesn’t wait for the right person.

  She got to work. She surveyed the landscape. She saw a lot of chalk and a lot of salt, just as Jana had said. But remembering how dangerous the salt deposit had made the White, she decided it was best not to mess with it and moved farther out.

  There. Just over the river near the kitchens was a small ravine. In the ravine was a tiny thread of copper. It was too small for anyone to bother mining. She took the quill and marked an X at the copper ore. Then she drew it to her, marking the parchment with an arrow when it got to the center.

  There was a pop and whoosh, and then the ground rumbled beneath them. With a crack, the earth underneath them was thrust up and out, knocking several men off their feet, nearly overturning the table. A ripple of something solid materialized under one of the carpets.

  Uncle Tommy stood up. Tanya kept working. She pored over the map, looking for junkoff. She found it in a nearby town called Loomstead: A snowstorm had broken out. Tanya carefully redirected it into the river next to the camp’s kitchens.

  There was a splash in the distance. Tanya nodded and put the quill down. She pushed the piece of paper across the table. “Here you go.”

  Uncle Tommy didn’t answer. He was staring at the carpets. He made a gesture. Riley leapt forward and began peeling back the carpets, pushing back furniture, piling up pillows. Eventually, they cleared the way to reveal a dirty green column of what looked like moldy rock.

  Tanya frowned and bent over to examine it. “That’s copper, right?” she asked. “I’m no miner.”

  “It’s copper ore,” said Riley, looking stunned. “You have to extract the copper, but . . . it’s in there.”

  Uncle Tommy stepped around the desk and crouched to examine the ore. He looked up.

  “Explain how you did this.”

  Tanya shifted nervously at his tone. She didn’t want to insult the armed and powerful man who had spent the night attempting to do what she had accomplished in a matter of minutes. But it was really so simple.

  “It’s just a matter of organization, I think,” she said finally. “The quill doesn’t create things, or at least, I haven’t gotten it to do that. But it can sort of . . . rearrange raw materials. The thing is that if you move one thing, something else goes weird—it’s like the junkoff!” Tanya got excited, suddenly realizing the implication. “That’s why those brainless magicians cause junkoff! They don’t know how to fill in the blanks they make, or make the junkoff useful. They can’t even know where it is. None of them are organized enough.” The quill shivered, rolling over on its own. Tanya put her fingers on it. “This is an excellent tool.”

  “You’re probably right,” Uncle Tommy said mildly.

  Tanya looked up. She hadn’t even noticed him moving, but he was settling comfortably into his breakfast nook, looking perfectly calm and amiable again.

  Tanya picked up the map. “Did you want to keep this? It’s a fairly simple system. I just stumbled into it.”

  Uncle Tommy turned to the serving lackey. “Go get some porridge from the boy. I’m ready for breakfast.”

  “The biscuits should be ready by now,” Tanya interjected automatically. Then she shook her head. “I’m sorry, you don’t even want to look at this? Isn’t that why I’m here and not in the kitchen?”

  Uncle Tommy poured a cup of coffee. “Oh, you don’t work in the kitchen anymore.”

  “Excuse me? You’re firing me from the kitchen? Me?”

  He sighed. “Unfortunately, I am. It’s a shame, really. You’re an excellent cook and a very funny waitress. That tavern you ran away from must have been a first-rate place.”

  “I didn’t run away from it. I’m going to the Capital so I can get back to my tavern.”

  “Well. Whatever. That,” he said, pointing at the quill, “is your new job.”

  Tanya was quickly installed in a small tent adjacent to Uncle Tommy’s. This one was just a small circle of canvas, tall enough for Tanya to stand up straight, but just barely, and just wide enough to fit a bedroll, a des
k, and a chair.

  It was only when she was left alone with a lantern, a stack of parchment, and the quill that Tanya realized how much trouble she was in.

  She had been conscripted into being a thief. And she had never met a queen, but she was pretty sure that queens and their councils weren’t enthusiastic about granting the requests of thieves.

  There was a guard outside the front of her tent, so Tanya got on her hands and knees and crawled out the back.

  She got about five feet before she was caught by three men with clubs, all about twice her height, three times her weight in solid muscle, and bearing the red-and-black patch that marked them as sworn to Uncle Tommy. Before she knew it, she was back in the little tent at the little desk. Except this time, both her ankles were tied together with a thick rope staked into the ground with an iron bolt.

  “Tanya, I really don’t see why all this fuss is necessary,” said Uncle Tommy in a weary voice, while Tanya struggled and kicked.

  “Oh, you don’t, do you?” Tanya gave so ferocious a kick that she threw herself off the chair and landed bottom-first in the dirt. Riley unsuccessfully stifled a giggle and Tanya shot him her most dangerous glare.

  Uncle Tommy also sent a tsk in Riley’s direction. He stepped forward and offered his arm to Tanya, but she shook him off, struggling to her feet by herself.

  “I am not a thief,” she said hotly. She sat down with as much dignity as she could muster.

  Uncle Tommy sighed. “Fine. So, I’ve done you a favor by tying you to a stake in the ground. You’re not a thief, you’re my hostage.” He smiled, and Tanya looked away, sniffing primly. “Chin up, my girl,” he continued. “And find me some gemstones.” He nodded to Riley and left the tent. Riley gave her an apologetic shrug and followed his boss.

  Tanya was left alone. “I am a tavern maid,” she whispered. “I am not a thief.” Except for that one time when you stole a horse, she thought. And a quill.

  The quill was lying dormant again, as if it had decided that with all the commotion, it might as well take a nap. Tanya sighed and picked it up. At her touch, it immediately sparkled to life, twitching and throwing off sparks.