“Used to sleeping under the stars, or with
his foot in m’face,” one of the girls told me, hiking a thumb at the tambourine guy. “This is luxury.”
“Don’t get too comfortable,” the lyre player, a tall man with sharp cheekbones, said. “Dinner’s at sundown. Then we’re up.” He looked at Pritkin. “Why don’t you start taking everything to the main hall?”
I guessed that was for the benefit of the kitchen staff, despite the fact that none of them seemed to be paying us any attention. Until a frazzled girl came over, with sweat on her brow, and handed me a wooden tray. “Take this up if you’re going.”
“You take it,” the cook said, bending over a pot on the fire. “Don’t be giving your tasks to those who have their own.”
“But she’s going anyway—”
“And doubtless will be carrying her work with her.”
“Not with those arms,” the kitchen maid said, looking at me critically. “Don’t they feed you where you’re from?”
She grabbed my pathetic excuse for biceps, but before I could say anything, the cook had turned around. He was a kind-looking older man, but was clearly tired of repeating himself. “Why does everything have to be an argument with you?”
“I’m not arguing,” she argued. “But my feet are killing me.”
“You’re arguing while the food’s getting cold. Now take it up—”
“But I must have been up and down those stairs fifty times today.”
“The fey take you, girl! If I have to tell you again—”
“Fey don’t want her,” a young man said, looking up from chopping something. “Too lazy, and whines too much.”
“I’ll show you lazy—” she said, and started for him.
“’Pona!” The cook was looking genuinely angry now. “The princess isn’t feeling well, and she’s waiting for her food!”
“All right, all right, I’ll take it,” the girl said sullenly, and reached for the tray.
I pulled it back. “I’ll take it,” I said, giving the cook what I hoped was a winning smile. “Where is she, again?”
The stairs turned out to be every bit as much of a bitch as the girl had claimed, stone, steep, and slippery. And packed. I kept being buffeted to one side or the other, but Pritkin couldn’t help much. He was carrying a pitcher of ale on one shoulder and a heavy roll of painted canvas on the other, where they could help to hide his face.
“We lost him . . . remember?” I panted. “You could probably ditch the disguise.”
“You just want help carrying that tray.”
“Which doesn’t . . . make it any less true.”
“You don’t lose a fey lord that easily,” he informed me. “He’ll be back, and it would be well for both of us if we have the staff when he does. Speaking of which—”
“Later.”
Pritkin glanced around at all the people, many of whom were shooting us annoyed looks for blocking half the stairs. “Soon.”
The main hall was like the rest of the castle: utility combined with plundered beauty. There were numerous long tables and benches, simple, sturdy things, without adornment. Like the iron sconces on the walls, which a prop department would have sent back for being too plain. But the big gray blocks of the floor were intercut with areas of intricate tile work, some featuring vines, others with geometric shapes, none of them matching. Like someone had dug them out of other floors and brought them here, plunking them down like so many area rugs.
They gave a weird, funky vibe to the place, colorful and eclectic.
Likewise, the walls weren’t bare stone, as the movies had taught me to expect. Red plaster with a green border circled three sides of the large room, decorated with banners embroidered with red dragons. The fourth wall was white, but not plain. A faded mural of a woman inside a silver circle looked down at us benevolently, metallic paint still glinting in spots, here and there.
“Arianrhod, Lady of the Silver Wheel,” Pritkin told me. “The king’s father had it brought here, block by block, from the old bathhouse. Said she had a kind face.”
And a familiar one, I thought, staring upward.