“My lord Duke!” Farin bobbed a curtsy. “What do you need?”

“A can of warm water,” Dorrin said. “And a place to wash up.”

“There’s the bathing rooms upstairs,” Farin said. Dorrin shook her head. “Well, then … the servants’ bath, just out there. It’s not … not fancy …”

“I don’t need fancy,” Dorrin said. “I do need to be clean.” She grinned at the cook. “I was a soldier, you know. I can bathe in a cold river, at need. But warm water is better.”

“Jaim—bring water cans!” Farin turned back to Dorrin. “A mug of sib, while the water heats?”

“That would be lovely,” Dorrin said. She looked around the busy kitchen. Where could she be out of the way while water heated?

“Just there,” Farin said, nodding to a corner with a low stool. Dorrin took the mug of sib and sat on the stool, watching. Two more lumps of dough, shaped into rounds, were set next to the others. Farin opened one oven, thrust in an arm, shook her head, and shut it again. The other, she deemed ready. She took down a long-handled wooden paddle from its hook on the wall, and slid it under half the loaves, then swung it around and into the oven with one movement. Dorrin noticed that the others all stepped neatly out of the way without a command, even the youngest.

Work resumed instantly. The young bakers, now they had shaped the last of the dough, cleaned their workspace, took mortars and pestles from a shelf, and began grinding seeds—spices, Dorrin realized, as her nose recognized figan among others.

“Water’s hot,” Farin said. “Jaim, Efla—carry these out to the bathhouse.”

The servants’ bathhouse had a half-barrel tub hung on the wall, a stone floor with a channel for washing feet, and a stone trough with a plug at one end for washing hands. A leather water sack hung from the plugged pipe that supplied water. Dorrin put her pack down on the ledge above the trough, took down the water sack, and pulled the plug. Icy water poured into the sack; she plugged the pipe again when the sack was full. By then the kitchen servants had the barrel tub down and a stack of towels beside the steaming cans of hot water.

“You may go,” Dorrin said; they nodded and withdrew.

She mixed one can of hot water with cold in the barrel tub for a bath, and used the other for washing her hair. Clean and dry at last, and in clean clothes, she felt fully awake, alert.

When Dorrin came back into the kitchen, her dirty clothes stuffed in her pack and water cans atop it, she found Selfer talking to the cook. Servants rushed to take the cans from her.

Farin turned to her. “My lord—your captain suggested meat for breakfast in addition to porridge and bread. We do have smoked ham, of course, and sausages.”

Dorrin’s mouth watered. “Fried ham. Do you have any eggs?”