shared a glance with Olem, trying to remember why he came down.
“Please, Field Marshal, walk with me.” Mihali hurried away without waiting for an answer. When Tamas caught up, Mihali was adjusting the heat beneath a vat of soup by changing the airflow in the stove beneath it. He dipped one finger in the soup and popped it in his mouth, before producing a knife and a clove of garlic from his apron, deftly slicing a measure into the vat.
“I heard about the attempt on your life,” Mihali said.
Tamas stopped. He realized the pain of his wounds, the ache of the stitches on his chest, had faded to nothing when he entered the kitchen. They were a distant throb, as if from outside a powder trance.
Mihali had a note of sadness to his voice. “I do not agree with what the sorcerers do to those Wardens. It’s unnatural. I’m glad you survived.”
“Thank you,” Tamas said slowly. His suspicions that Mihali was a spy were slowly fading. His reputation and skills as a chef couldn’t be faked.
“Mihali,” Tamas said, “I came to ask you about the asylum.”
Mihali froze, a forkful of vegetable pie halfway to his mouth. He finished the bite off quickly. “More pepper,” he told an assistant, “and add a dozen more potatoes to the next batch.” He hurried on to the next station, forcing Tamas to catch up.
“Yes,” he said when Tamas was alongside him again, “I escaped from Hassenbur. It was a vile place.”
“How did you escape?”
They had reached a portion of the kitchens where there weren’t any assistants. In fact, it was as if an invisible curtain had been drawn across it. The heat and steam had lessened, and the noise had become muffled. Tamas glanced over his shoulder to be sure that they were still in the same room. Behind him, the flurry of activity continued.
“They gave me access to the kitchens when I wasn’t being treated.” Mihali shivered at a memory. “And though they said I was cooking for the asylum, I soon found out they were sending my meals to the manor homes of nearby nobles and selling my services for quite a bit of money. I baked myself into a cake and had my assistants send me to the next manor over.”
“You’re joking,” Olem said. He rolled an unlit cigarette around between his lips and eyed a stove.
Mihali shrugged. “It was a very big cake.”
Tamas waited for him to say something else, perhaps his real method of escape, but Mihali remained quiet. This section of the kitchen, nearly half of the space of the whole, contained just as many cookpots and fired ovens as the other, but as Mihali moved from one dish to the next, it was clear he was the only one attending these. Mihali reached above his head and pulled down an enormous pot from its hook. It looked to weigh as much as Tamas, but Mihali handled it with ease, maneuvering it down onto a stove. He opened the fire chamber beneath the stove, checking the heat, before moving on to an open spit in the corner.
Tamas followed him across the room. He paused beside the pot Mihali had just pulled down—steam rose from it. He stepped forward and blinked. The pot was full to the brim with a thick stew of potatoes, carrots, corn, and beef.
“Wasn’t that empty a moment ago?” Tamas asked Olem quietly.
Olem frowned. “It was.”
They both looked about for the pot Mihali had just pulled down, but all the pots on this side of the kitchen were full and cooking. Tamas felt less hungry somehow, and more uneasy. Mihali was still at the spit. A whole side of beef roasted above the flames. Mihali lifted a small bowl and began pouring some kind of dressing over the meat. Tamas found his stomach growling again, his uneasiness gone with the advent of new smells.
“Mihali, have you told other people that you are the god Adom reincarnated?” Tamas examined Mihali’s face intently, looking for signs of madness. There was no question that Mihali was a maestro of the kitchens. Tamas had heard that every genius was equal parts madness. He tried to remember his childhood theology lessons. Adom was the patron saint of Adro. The church called him Kresimir’s brother, but not a god like Kresimir.
Mihali poked the side of beef with the tip of his knife and watched grease bubble to the surface and run down the meat, sizzling on the coals below. His frown