Of all the questions Noll Vey had prepared himself to answer in the middle of a royal siege, what is eating had not been on the slate.
He had expected the thing behind the ninth door to ask for blood, or for the names of Vane’s regiments, or for which cellar stair led up to the main gate. Those were dungeon questions. Instead, the nascent catastrophe waiting under his hill was asking for a dictionary definition at half past midnight.
At the top of the gallery stair, Hobb appeared with a fresh horn candle for the wall bracket and a tin mug of warm herb water for Prit. The old cook stopped on the third step down when he saw Prit frantically waving both claws at Noll’s wall seam like a semaphore tower in a gale.
“Plain mechanics!” Prit hissed, his voice cracking into a high bone-whistle as he pointed at the frost-line reading 178h. “Do not speak of devouring! Do not speak of banquets, jaws, or digestion! If you define eating as tearing things with teeth, and the creditor accepts the definition from its own author, you will put teeth into the mold!”
Hobb came down the remaining steps, set the fresh candle into the iron sconce, and looked from the panicked imp to the solid grey stone of the ninth door. “Did it ask what eating is?” the cook rumbled.
