The Kitchen was the only room in the Hold where the body’s mass was cooked into something a person could eat, and Pell had never in her life let a pot go cold for want of a plan.
She stood at the long table with her sleeves rolled to the elbow and a bowl of flour in front of her, and she listened to Sella argue with her across the flour bin, which was how she preferred to be argued with: at arm’s length, with something solid between them that she could thump if she needed to make a point.
“Close the Sallow bridge,” said Sella. “To the river villages. Until the cough burns out.”
“Close the bridge and the lodgers starve before the cough can get at them.”
“The fish will keep.”
“The fish will keep,” Pell agreed, “and the fish is the only thing Lowgate has to sell. The river villages buy our salt and sell us their catch, and if we shut the bridge they will eat their own fish and sell our salt to the Lessarans, and we will be left with a thousand empty barrels and nothing in them but the smell of the last time we were hungry.” She thumped the bin. “Old Mattin will not keep, Sella. He does not need fish. He needs broth with barley in it, and he needs it this week.”
