The hook on the wall beside the oven was empty, and Pell had not stopped complaining about it since dawn. The Kitchen’s copy of her spare Feed Form had gone up to the Great Hall before the bread was set, carried on a Hard Hand’s shoulder in a sack of straw, and it would come back when the Chamber was finished with it, which meant at the end of the season, which meant never, if the Chamber was anything like its last sitting. A lent Form left its Hand idle until it came home, and idle hands were the one thing Pell would not feed.
“Nobody wears a Form like a coat,” she told the empty hook. “You don’t hang it up and forget where.”
The new girl did not answer her. Kessa was scrubbing the copper pans at the far end of the bench with a cloth and a handful of ash, and she was doing it properly, which was rare enough in a girl who had come off the Lowgate laundry boat with nothing but a grey cord round her wrist. The Lowgate laundry had recommended her. Pell had taken her on for a week’s trial and had not sent her back, and that was all the recommendation Pell had ever needed for anyone.
