“And food,” Trey pointed out helpfully. “We also need food. Kee talked someone into bringing him and Tory snacks, but the rest of us haven’t eaten since lunch.”

Neither have I, she realized, and the thought awoke a ravening beast in her stomach. “Feel like coming with me to the kitchen?” she asked Kat, knowing that having one of the Royals with her was going to make scrounging food much, much easier. “Because I’ll bet Mama is with the Queen, and that is going to leave all of us and Papa to starve unless we do something about it.”

Kat’s stomach chose to growl at that moment, and she laughed. “Obviously yes. Trey, you’re coming too. Niko, you make sure Tory and Kee don’t get up to mischief. No one is going to refuse the Heir. Particularly if you look wan and pathetic.”

“Like this?” Trey asked, and put on a mournful face.

“That’s too much. You’ll start rumors that Mama is dying.” Kat shook her head at him. “Just think about how hungry you are.”

“That’s not hard.” Trey got up and joined them, and the three of them slipped down the servants’ stair to the ground floor, which was where everything that kept the Palace going actually got done. Two corridors later, and they presented themselves at the side door of the Palace kitchen, well out of the way of the servers who were taking food up to the Great Hall where all the courtiers were dining. The King would probably be there as well, actually; it would start rumors that there was something wrong if he didn’t go about his normal business. In the minds of the members of the Court, the only interest that a man should have in a birth was in the begetting of it.

As usual during a meal, the kitchen was a bedlam. Dirty dishes going to the sinks, scullery maids and boys scrubbing them, pots getting put down next to the sinks to soak, cooks shouting orders, servers rushing in with stacks of used dishes and plates of leftovers and more servers streaming out with laden plates of the next course. They waited politely to be noticed, and the moment finally came when the final dessert course went out and the cooks’ jobs were over.

“Lady have mercy!” exclaimed the head cook loudly, startling everyone. “How long have you lot been standing there?”

“Not long,” Trey said, and licked his lips with a longing expression on his face as he stared at half a ham. “Everyone’s busy with the Queen and we kind of got—”

“How is the Queen?” asked a dozen voices at once.

“Yelling like she’s on a battlefield,” Kat said crisply. “And half of Healers’ is taking care of her. But nobody’s taking care of us.” She gazed meaningfully at a partly dismembered chicken sitting with the other leftovers on the worktables.