Now, the best way to be unnoticed, Herald Nikolas had said, was to look as if you belonged someplace. And while it was true that most of the Palace servants wore livery, not all of them did. Not the ones that did very menial work; they wore ordinary clothing. That included those who served in the kitchen, for certain. Dallen had absolutely agreed with him on this score, and had some good ideas on how to get into the kitchen without arousing any suspicion. It wasn’t as if he could go loiter there without knowing anyone who worked there, and a Trainee of any sort was going to excite comment showing up to beg a snack.

So he went back to his room and changed out of his Trainee Grays and into civilian clothing, his oldest and most worn outfit. :All right,: he thought at Dallen. :Where’s the Palace kitchen?:

Wordlessly, Dallen showed him exactly how to find it while avoiding most people. And having been in two large kitchens within the Palace walls already, Mags had a pretty good notion of how the third was likely to be laid out. So he made his way circuitously to the kitchen—making his way from the stable to the wall, from the wall back to the kitchen gardens, and from the kitchen gardens to the kitchen door. He waited patiently and once there, slipped inside on the heels of someone who was bringing in supplies. For once it was an advantage to be small.

The heat and the smells of cooking hit him with a kind of shock, though a pleasant one. This kitchen was easily twice the size of the one that served the Collegia, and had three times as many people in it. Which was ideal since it meant he could probably remain completely unnoticed in all the bustle. It had an entry, a kind of alcove in immensely thick walls, which were thick for a good reason. The baking ovens were built into one side so that the chimney could go straight up the wall, taking the excess heat with it. Rooms above this would be very cozy in winter, and although in summer that could be a bit problematic, one solution might be to use them for storage of things that needed to be kept dry—linens for instance. At any rate that meant there had to be an alcove about as long as a bed, which made for a good place for him to stand in the shadows and examine everything.