Tobin came into the Kitchen before dawn because he had been awake since the carriers’ bell, and because Pell had promised him the first heel off the new stove. It was the first loaf ever baked in the Hold by a living Kitchen with no Feed Form in the copper, and Pell had said so three times the night before, as if the bread might forget and go back to being a copy.
The Kitchen was dark except for the oven’s mouth. The fire in it had burned down to a red bed, and the heat came out of the arch in a slow soft wave that made the air shimmer over the flags. Pell was already up. She stood at the long board with her sleeves rolled to the elbow and her hair tied back in a faded blue cloth, and she was shaping dough with the heels of her hands, slowly, the way a person does a thing she has been told she is not very good at and has decided to do anyway.
“Don’t say anything,” said Pell, without looking round.
“I wasn’t going to.”
“You were going to say the loaves are lopsided.”
“They are lopsided,” said Tobin. He came and stood beside her at the board. The dough was sticky and grey with flour, and it had a fold in it that went the wrong way, and Pell was pressing it flat again with a face of deep and personal affront. “The mould made them…
