by M K Hutchins
I stood, floured granite under my feet, and two lazy, reptilian eyes watching me. It showed no sign of falling asleep.
The door swayed. “Osem? Bane? Anyone? If you closed that, I’d be grateful.”
Grateful to be shut in a room with a deadly pit viper. Dami would laugh until her ribs cracked if she ever heard this story.
No one answered. No one could hear me. I hugged my knees to my chest and glanced at the snake. It lifted its head, as if asking if I’d like to be bitten now.
I didn’t move after that. My limbs prickled with the cold, spring night air. If I were strong-of-skin or endurance-of-blood, I might risk a bite.
The door slammed open, hitting the wall. I jerked upright, ready to warn the newcomer about the snake.
But the shape wasn’t human. Outlined by moonlight in the doorway stood the Hungry Ghost.
The Hungry Ghost scrambled into the kitchen, its rolls of fat dragging on the floor. It tumbled over the crocks, its pinhole mouth turning all the burnt bits and uneaten sauce into a slime that reeked like overripe fruit and sharp urine.
I gagged as the foul ooze dribbled down the dishes, black and slick like molasses. The ghost’s tiny, withered arms jerked frantically, desperate to shove more to the mouth that no food could pass.
The viper hid, slithering under my counter. I plugged my nose and breathed shallowly. Couldn’t the snake have hid somewhere else? Anywhere else? Then I could have run to my room.
Soon enough the ghost destroyed every last drip of food not tucked behind a door—including the basket of buckwheat branches. Ooze dripped from its mouth, making it look oddly like an unwashed toddler. It blinked at me, then hung its head, beady eyes downcast. Almost like it was embarrassed.
The thing shuffled toward me, leaving a trail of its own filth. I stopped breathing altogether.
Then it whined piteously and shifted back.
“I’m not food. You can go now, please.” I waved it toward the door.
It tried to wipe its bloated belly clean of its failed meal, but only dirtied its hands. The ravenous hunger subsided in its eyes, replaced with... what? Desperation?
The thing lowered itself to its belly in a mockery of a bow, its head and puny hands folded against its slime-coated girth.
I wished it wouldn’t do that. I still had a snake to deal with tonight. “I don’t know why you’re still here.”
The ghost swung its arms in a variety of movement, up and down, circling. I tilted my head to the side. It was pantomiming cooking.
“I know you’re hungry, but if I get more food, your cursed mouth will turn it to slime.”
The Hungry Ghost hung its head, tiny eyes wide—so pitiable. It whimpered.
“You don’t want food?”
It pointed at me. It pantomimed cooking. Then it laid its head to the side, as if asleep.
“You want to rest. You want to be exorcised,” I whispered.
The thing keened, high and sad.
“I... I can’t...”
It pointed at me, then pretended to cook again.
Ancestors, this thing couldn’t know my real birthgift, could it? Or did it just want someone, anyone, to save it?
“I can’t help you.”
Its whine grated against my ears.
“The king killed the last people who tried! Do you want me hanged? Do you think my family wouldn’t suffer?” I ranted. “I’m just a dish scrubber. I can’t even get down from this counter because someone left a snake in my crocks. I’m tired and hungry and I don’t understand this place and I want to go home, but I can’t!”
It stared at me, hands folded against its chest. Sympathy shone in its tiny eyes, as if saying I want to go home, too.
Ancestors help me, the only being I could speak honestly to was a Hungry Ghost.
It darted toward me.
I gasped and reached for a weapon that wasn’t there, but it dove under the counter. It slurped the snake out like a long, spotted noodle. The snake writhed, alive, but stuck to the Hungry Ghost’s mouth. Until the ghost snapped its spine with its spindly hands. The dead viper’s skin dissolved against that pinprick mouth, sliding off bones that turned to sludge soon after.
I covered my nose and mouth with the front of my dress and stopped breathing. My head swam with the smell—rotted meat and old eggs. Pain prickled my skull.
The Hungry Ghost shuffled politely backwards, far enough away that I could breathe. It lowered its head and blubbered.
It reminded me of a girl from Clamsriver I treated one winter. Little Ryes was too young to wipe her nose. Snot and tears dribbled down her face for a month. Her mother cleaned her two dozen times a day, but she still perpetually wrung her hands, crying for someone to wash her face.
The ghost was like that. Dripping, miserable, unable to help itself.
My heart felt like someone had laced it onto a skewer. “I... I can’t...”
It burbled mournfully.
Asking someone else to exorcise this ghost could bring the king’s wrath. And I didn’t know how to do it myself. Even if I did, I couldn’t risk getting caught cooking. Nana, Dami, Father, Mother—they all depended on me to fulfill my two years in this post.
“I wish I could help. I do. But... but I have other loyalties first.”
It picked up the basket the branches had been in. It pointed at the basket, then its mouth, then the basket again. Emphatically.
“You need to be fed branches?”
It shook its head, then pointed at the basket again.
“I don’t understand.”
It pointed at the basket, then itself.
A torch blazed in the doorway. The Hungry Ghost skittered onto the ceiling and somehow shot through the narrow opening above Osem’s head. It disappeared into the night.
Osem stepped carefully around the mess, then blinked at me, still up on the counter. “Dami, how do you end up in such interesting places?”
“I was trying to clean the crocks.”
Osem shook her head. “We’re supposed to work extra-long tomorrow to catch up. Don’t you know what time off means?”
We couldn’t leave the kitchen filled with ghost-fouled crocks, so we took them outside. Osem worked with silent resolve, once more taking the second pass at all the dishes. I planned a hundred apologies, but they all choked and died in my throat.
I kept watch for more snakes, but thankfully no more appeared. The stars had moved considerably by the time we finished. We both stank like manure. Osem paused long enough to change into her spare dress, then collapsed on her mattress. In moments, her breathing relaxed into the deep rhythm of sleep.
My bones ached for rest, but my rumbling stomach and aching limbs kept me awake. If I reported the appearance of that snake, someone might investigate—and I couldn’t risk an investigation with me at the center of it.
Surely snakes snuck in now and then, chasing the occasional mouse. I had to believe that.
I chewed my lip and tried to distract myself with everything Father had ever said about ghosts. A meal was one of the steps of exorcising a Hungry Ghost. If the ghost couldn’t pass on due to neglect, their favorite food in life would free them. If the ghost remained because of their lusts for this world, they needed something to balance out their vices. Salted deer hoof tea, which increased the agility of your hands, could exorcise a greedy man. Did a dishonest man need a meal of endurance-of-tongue, or strength-of-tongue? I couldn’t remember.
I drifted to sleep, coveting Sorrel’s library. His father probably had a dozen manuscripts detailing the proper exorcism of ghosts.
The next morning, I woke to an apprentice cracking our door. “Nope. They’re both in here!”
Osem and I both jerked awake and ran like mad to get the fires up, completely forgetting our skirts until, after our third run for wood, an apprentice chuckled at us.
When Hawak came in, he grumbled at the apprentices for being slow with breakfast, but they mercifully said nothing about the pair of dish scrubber
s who’d overslept. Instead, Hawak commended us for getting up early to finish yesterday’s work.
Perhaps the apprentices couldn’t cook, but they were kind. More than ever I yearned to teach them, help them, but I kept my sleep-deprived head down and at my work.
Hawak thanked Osem and me with an especially good lunch—cold buckwheat noodles with julienned vegetables and a tangy, salty dipping sauce.
“Osem. I’m sorry. About last night and this morning...” After all she’d done for me, I’d failed to show her the respect and friendship she deserved.
She gave me a mock-stern look. “Serious crimes indeed, Dami! I’m afraid my forgiveness can only be granted on one condition.”
I knew she was poking fun, but I bowed my head and meekly waited for my sentence.
Osem laughed. “Oh, Dami. I’m not mad. But I am deadly curious about what happened yesterday and I’m not above using your guilt to find out.”
I stared down at my nutty-sweet noodles and fresh vegetables. The blue-eyed grass outside the kitchens, dotted with tiny flowers, gave the air a spring freshness. But that all seemed distant, with the memory of those two reptilian eyes staring at me, my pulse pounding in my throat. I couldn’t report the snake. Why would anyone put it there on purpose? To attack me? To attack Osem? In daylight, the notion sounded paranoid, ludicrous.
Osem raised an eyebrow. “Bane was that unpleasant, eh?”
“Bane?” I jerked back.
“What did you think I was talking about?”
“Bane... Bane was...” Attacked. Thrown to the gravel. And he didn’t want me to do anything about it.
“Ancestors, Dami, did he hurt you?” Osem asked, all teasing erased.
“No! Not at all.”
Osem exhaled. “I wouldn’t have left you with him if I’d thought him anything less than respectable... but you’re positively ashen.”
“You know him?”
“A little. I’ve served in the palace for two years; Bane’s been around longer than that. Are you going to tell me what happened, or do I have to stay mad at you forever?”
I swallowed the noodles I was chewing. “You can’t tell anyone.”
“Do I look like a gossip?”
Not at all. I lowered my voice. “A Palace Guard attacked him.”
Osem blinked, startled. “I didn’t know about that.”
Why should she know?
“Bane didn’t report it, did he?” she asked.
“No. He said he’d be in trouble... Osem, you can’t say anything.”
She laughed. “Me? A dish scrubber? Not my place and I said I’d keep quiet. But I’m sad to hear it. This war... it’s flamed the rivalry between the Palace Guard and the military. The Guard Captain, Blue-ranked Gano, doesn’t discourage it. I bet he wants to set some new precedents about who gets jurisdiction inside the palace.”
“He’s making power grabs during a war?” That seemed incredibly unpatriotic.
“General Yuin’s absent, even if his wife, Lady Sulat, isn’t. War’s full of upsets, changes. It’s the perfect time for someone like Captain Gano to reposition himself. Maybe he thinks Lady Sulat won’t notice since she’s expecting.”
Even after weeks here, I felt lost when it came to palace politics. “You’re very knowledgeable.”
“You pick these things up. Gano’s hard to miss. Both politically and physically—he’s ridiculously tall, and the military men are always telling jokes about his silly mustache.” She shrugged. “Soldiers here seem to grumble about the guards more than they do the war.”
The war. I pushed the noodles around my bowl, appetite waning. The longer the war went, the better chance Dami had of getting caught. Or killed.
“I didn’t mean to make you mope.” She gave me a mischievous grin. “Really, I want to know what you think of Bane.”
“He was nice. Though I wish you hadn’t run off like that. You could have both given me a tour.”
Osem spluttered laughter into her noodles. “Wish I hadn’t run off? Oh, Dami, you are a sweet little country girl, aren’t you?”
I frowned. The question didn’t sound like a compliment.
“Nisaat didn’t bring him for a nice outing. She’s trying to help him find a wife. He has no inheritance and no chance of advancement in the military now. At best, he’ll keep his post as a messenger.”
“You’re making him sound calloused and calculating!”
“Ah-ha!” The crinkles around Osem’s eyes deepened. “You think he’s very nice, don’t you?”
“Of course not.” Even if I did, what then? I had secrets to keep. I couldn’t take him back to Clamsriver and pretend I had two names.
My stomach swam. Dami—she would have liked Bane. Skipping rocks seemed like just her thing. She would have punched the teeth out of that Palace Guard, too, instead of uselessly prodding Bane’s ribs. If she’d come, Father could have adopted Bane, left the two of them the house, and I’d be in Westbank with Sorrel.
My marrow ached. Why hadn’t she come? Why had she abandoned all of us in the middle of the night?
I bit my lip. No, she hadn’t abandoned us the day she joined the army. She’d done that long before—when she stayed in the woods and refused to admit that she was part of our family, when she refused to see that her choices impacted more than herself. At least with both of us gone, Mother would have less laundry. I hoped that saved her back.
“You’re pensive for someone whose mind is made up.” Osem ate, watching me out of the corner of her eye. “Bane will need a wife—and strong children to support him when he’s no longer spry enough to be a messenger.”
My gut twisted. “He flirts with all the new servants, doesn’t he?”
“So he was flirting with you?” Osem grinned and continued before I could protest. “Nisaat dragged him out to meet people for the first two years after his injury, but he refused after that. It’s been a year since he let Nisaat introduce him to someone. I wonder what she said about you, to change his mind?”
My cheeks burned. “He’s not courting me.”
“You should make sure he knows that.”
I took my sandals off and wiggled my toes into the lawn. The coolness and the smell of earth was almost as centering as candied beets. “He has no reason to be interested in me.”
Unless he knew about my lies. Unless he suspected. Then he could blackmail me into whatever he liked. He seemed too nice for such trickery, but Fir had been more charming still.
Osem laughed, a rich, rolling sound that somehow managed to be kind as well. “Do you want me to ask Nisaat about it?”
“No. I’m not interested,” I mumbled into my noodles. I couldn’t afford to be interested.
“But he is. He’ll be at the kitchen door our next half-day off. I’d bet my post on it.”
That evening, Osem and I crashed onto our mattresses as soon as possible for some much-needed sleep. At the end of the next day, my arms still ached, but in a good way. My muscles felt stronger. I wouldn’t beat Dami in a wrestling match, but I could probably break a boy’s nose.
“You’re getting the hang of this, aren’t you?” Osem asked that night in our dark, pine-musty room.
“I think so.” At least with the dish scrubbing part. Bane, Fir, Hungry Ghosts, and poisonous snakes were another matter. “You’re not going to abandon me now that I’m half-competent, are you?”
Osem laughed. “What?”
“You’ve served your two years. You could go. I know a lot of girls don’t—the palace is safe, a lot of the marriage prospects are off fighting...”
“I’m happy here.”
“Good. Some people might get bored after two years.” I’d be gone as soon as two years came, though not from boredom. I wanted to keep my neck.
“Three.”
I blinked. “Three?”
“That’s how long I’ve been here. Lady Sulat housed me for a year, until my name came through the list.”
“Housed you?” I stared in her general
direction, though I couldn’t see her in the dark. “Your family must be important.”
Osem’s mattress rustled. “They weren’t. Not terribly. We were the stewards of her lodge in Moonhill.”
Moonhill. Near the western border with Shoreed. “That’s... where the Shoreed first attacked.”
“I know. I was there.”
My words stuck in my throat. She said her family wasn’t important, not that they aren’t. “I’m... I’m sorry.” Words weren’t enough. “You must have left behind many loved ones.”
“My parents, my siblings, my husband.”
I managed a shaky whisper. “You were married?”
“For six short months. Goodnight, Dami.”
Osem rolled over. I wanted to say something comforting, but what could I say? The silence of our tiny room leeched away the laughter than had echoed here.
Candied hazelnuts. Endurance to the soul. That’s what I’d make Osem, if I could cook for her.
I woke in a morbid mood. Buckwheat branches for breakfast reminded me how insistently the Hungry Ghost had pointed at that basket.
Who had it been, before it died? A glutton for branches? That didn’t seem right.
I spent the morning trying to puzzle out his gesture as I scrubbed cold broth residue off crocks. But its actions didn’t make sense. Or I didn’t know enough about Hungry Ghosts.
What had Osem’s family been like? Her husband? I knew her father’s heart had been weak, but that didn’t tell me what kind of person he’d been, or what kind of relationship they’d had.
All morning, Osem acted like she’d said nothing of importance last night. But I ached for her as I smiled along with her jokes and jibes.
Not that we had time for talking after lunch. The apprentices shattered three crocks in quick succession—one hadn’t dried from scrubbing and the other two were placed over the hottest coals without being warmed up. It left them behind schedule and Master Hawak in a foul mood. The char of burnt food mingled with that of sweet cakes. All my thoughts about the Hungry Ghost oozed out my ears like overly loose dough.
