and ventures a small bite. It is better than anything she has ever tasted.
“Go ahead and show the girls around, Calyn. They’ve probably never seen a kitchen this big before.”
The kitchen takes up an entire upper corner of the Temple, laid entirely in stone, with several rotund chimneys protruding up through the ceiling. A row of giant open-faced ovens line the wall, two with fires burning and hogs rolling on mounted spits. At the far end are several squat, round ovens, each with mortared vents rising from their tops. On the other side of the island, along the outer wall, is a trough for washing, fed by two wooden pipes fitted with stopcocks. Calyn brings them to the center of the room.
“All right, well, this is where all the cooking gets done. That’s about it.” She laughs wildly at this. “Sorry, now, these are the ovens, and these are the pigs we’re roasting for dinner. Smells good, hmm?”
The girls circle around to watch the shiny brown carcasses spin lazily in the flames.
“Here is for soup,” she says, smacking the side of a heavy iron kettle tucked in the corner. “In these small ovens we bake our bread, and over here, look at this,” she moves to the trough and turns the handle on one of the stopcocks and water splashes out of the pipe. “Bet you never seen running water before.”
The girls look quizzically at the flowing pipe, still chewing on their rolls.
“You’re a quiet lot, aren’t you?”
“They’re tired,” Ezbeth says apologetically. “They only just got in yesterday and we’ve been walking the gardens all morning.”
“Oh, I see, well maybe you’ll get a little nap. Anyway, through here is the storage, and that door goes to the prep room.”
Beyond the wide arch they see scullery girls standing around a long table, peeling and chopping vegetables.
“We’ll have two of you in here,” says Ezbeth, “Lia and Haylen, you’ll meet Calyn tomorrow morning to start work. Phoebe, Jeneth, and Eleta, you’re going to be in the sewing shop downstairs, and the rest of you will come with me and I’ll teach you how to be housemaids. Not bad duties, girls. It’s certainly better than the quarry.”
“Is this why you brought us here?” asks Lia.
“What’s that, dear?”
“To make us work for you? Is that why you stole us?”
Ezbeth giggles. “Sweetie, we didn’t steal you. We saved you.”
“You sent bad people to kill our parents.”
The slap comes hard and fast, knocking a string of spit out of Lia’s mouth and leaving her jaw slack and trembling.
“You watch it, little girl. My son is one of those men. They’ve done more to protect us than you could possibly imagine and I will not tolerate that kind of garbage.”
Lia rubs her chin and precious little tears roll down her cheeks.
“I’ve given you good work, Lia. Don’t ruin it for yourself.”
First thing in the morning the children attend their lessons. They learn about their beloved King. They learn that he is one of nearly one hundred and sixty children fathered by Nezra the First, that he was born only days after the fire that ravaged their settlement, and how his uniquely colored eyes are an omen, proof of his otherworldly origins, sent here from the Beyond to protect his family in the flesh, that without him the Rain of Fire will return and retribution will crash down upon them from angry skies. The native children, born of the Temple, chant songs and recite invocations about Nezra the Second, their protector, thanking him for warding off the destruction.
Jack, Braylon and Aiden meet with Karus after their lessons to begin their trek to the quarry. Karus leads a slope-backed horse, saddled with their gear, and they walk along beside her, leaving the Temple grounds by a dirt road that cuts through the foothills and winds north. Stone and wood outbuildings are situated just beyond the grounds, a small manufacturing district with glass and metalworks. A handful of men trudge along behind them, heading off to a day’s work. They pass farmholds set into the gentle hillside in ascending tiers, with workers, many of them children, moving about the rows and turning the soil. Beyond them lay the stables and training fields.
Jack startles with instinctive fear when he sees the pack of wolves running the fields, their snouts furrowed into snarls exposing pink and black gums and sharp rows of yellow teeth. They leap on the men and scamper at their feet, and make no move to rip out their