“Remmie…” Lady Grie smoothed her silk skirts. “If it should chance I can speak up for her, I promise you I will. But discreetly, you understand. Since the Council wants this kept quiet.”

“My lady,” he said again, and offered her a bow.

Travelled home again, exhausted, Remmie sat in his dimly glimlit kitchen. He didn’t have the heart to cook. The cottage felt cold, and desolate, and empty.

“I’m sorry, Barl,” he whispered. “I did my best. But if you’re going to escape this disaster, you’ll have to do it alone.”

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Seventeen

Barl broke three plates, waiting for Councillor Danfey to return. Incensed, Rumm banished her outside to the poultry run.

“Keep yourself out of trouble scrubbing perches and putting fresh straw in the nesting boxes,” he said, close to snarling. “You’ll answer to Pagett. And if he has to come inside to tell me you’ve stepped on a hen and killed it, or smashed so much as one egg, Mage Lindin, a binding will be the least of your strife!”

It was a relief to escape Rumm’s severe scrutiny, even if it meant the mess and stink of poultry. Pagett, she quickly learned, was the Danfey servant who oversaw the estate grounds and all the work of its outbuildings. He was brawny for a Doranen, one of those unfortunates, like Rumm, in whom the talent for magic barely sparked. She had no idea how much the man knew of her. Didn’t care. After she explained what Rumm wanted, he grunted then pointed her in the direction of pail, water and scrubbing brush.

The poultry run with its large, attached coop was noisy, the birds free to scratch grass, raise dust and lay eggs, moult feathers, peck each other and drop runny shit wherever and whenever the fancy took them. Stupid creatures, with their constant cackling and beady eyes. Nesting boxes lined the coop’s four timber walls, with wooden perches set all over the place at every height imaginable. Trapped beneath its low, sloping roof she had to hunch until her chin was buried in her chest. By the time she’d scrubbed five perches clean of muck her whole body ached. Worse, her nose was clogged with acrid shit stink, and there was shit daubed over her shoes as high as her ankles. It stained her sleeves and spackled her face.

If Arndel could see me now he’d laugh himself sick. So would Ibbitha, and that jigget Baret Ventin.

But even though the poultry coop was demeaning, it was still better than slaving in the kitchen. It wasn’t just being hounded by Rumm. The kitchen reminded her of Remmie… and if she was going to survive this ordeal she had to forget him and what she’d left behind in Batava.