The whispers of the king

Esme 

By the third morning, I can tell what hour it is by the way the kitchen workers move around.

I make sure to keep my head down and my movements small, a shadow that carries weight and does not snag. Marek has eyes like hooks and he doesn’t waste words, but everyone hears him when he clears his throat. When he points, hands move. When he says “enough,” the whole line complies.

Today he sets a sack of onions in front of me that smells sharp enough to sting from a distance. 

“Skin and slice,” he says, already turning to snap at a footman who drifted too close to the pastry station. “Even cuts, no waste.”

“Yes, sir.” The knife he hands me is heavy but balanced and it fits my palm better than the ones father shoved between my fingers when I was a child. I fall into the work of cutting in halves, peel, slice and stack. Blinking through the sting is easier than blinking through memory.

“Shadow girl’s learning fast.” Marla shoves her hip against the table beside mine and starts peeling carrots with quick, efficient strokes. She has a smear of soot along one cheek and looks proud of it. “Yesterday she ran the lower hall and didn’t trip once. I almost cheered.”

“Don’t cheer,” Kai says from the dough bench, forearms dusted white to the elbow. He leans into the mass like he’s wrestling a friendly animal. “Marek doesn’t like cheering before the second bell.”

“Marek doesn’t like cheering after the second bell either,” Marla mutters, but there’s affection in it. “He likes order. And knives that chop into that sing.”

“Knives don’t sing,” Hara says without looking up from her station. Her cuts are neat enough to shame a surgeon. “They only complain if you treat them wrong.”

I don’t speak, even though I am listening with enthusiasm. The onion stack grows, my eyes water but my hands never pause.

“Anyway,” Marla continues with a sideways glance that could cut paper, “they say the council’s in a mood this week. The King is late. The old wolves hate late.”

“They hate surprises,” Kai corrects. He lifts the dough and lets it fall back to the table with a soft thud, then folds and turns it again. “Late is only a surprise if you believed the first date.”

“They believed it,” Marla insists, eyes bright. “Varick sent a runner twice yesterday, and Thalos argued with the captain of the guard so loudly even the stairwell heard it. I was scrubbing pans and felt the stone hum.”

The King. Late. I keep slicing, the blade’s steady rhythm giving my breathing somewhere to live. The word late should be good for me, more time to watch, more time to get around in this place before the mission becomes a choice of moments, but every rumor tightens a string inside my chest until it vibrates.

“Stop feeding the hall rumor stew, Marla.” Marek moves past, reading the room like he reads a ledger. His gaze skims my pile, Hara’s tidy bowls, Kai’s proofing baskets. “Save your breath for work.”

Marla salutes him with her peeler and earns a pointed look for it. When his back turns, she leans toward me. 

“I heard other things too,” she whispers. “The King’s wolf is..”

“Work,” Marek says again, without turning this time. Somehow he still knows where she is. She just grins and peels faster.

By the time the first batch of bread is ready, the air is warm enough to dampen my hair at the nape. Kai slides loaves from the oven and the smell catches at my throat; yeast and smoke, a comfort I haven’t known in years. He wraps a basket in linen and nods to me.

“Run the lower hall with me, Esme.”

I wipe my hands and follow, balancing another basket against my hip. The service corridor beyond the kitchen door is a vein that carries all kinds of people into the palace. On the left, the laundry yawns, a white rush of steam and slap of wet cloth as the women works. On the right, a narrow stair climbs toward rooms where the walls change from limewash to carved wood and again to inlaid stone. I put the routes on a map in my head; here is a bottleneck and there is a shortcut. That door is jammed and not to be used when you carry hot broth.

“Rule one for running,” Kai says as we turn a corner. “Guards don’t move.”

“Rule two,” I say, because it’s also true, “don’t spill.”

He smiles at that, pleased, like I’ve offered him a secret handshake. 

“You listened on the first day. Good..”

We pass Marek’s herb yard and the cat that sleeps on the threshold as if it owns the door. We pass the scullery, where Marla is loudly counting how many pans she’s conquered. At the end of the corridor, the lower hall opens like a mouth.

We set the baskets down and the scent of bread turns heads. Kai jokes with a pair of older men about the last time the ovens failed during a storm while I slide my linen back and lay half loaves as quickly as my hands find them. I keep my eyes soft and lowered, pretending I’m nothing and no one. I’m good at being forgettable if I choose it.

“Any news?” one guard asks another over my shoulder, kept low like he’s embarrassed to ask at all.

“Western road’s being cleared,” the second says around a mouthful. “Got it from a runner just now.”

“Cleared for what?”

“What do you think? Either trouble coming in or the King coming home.” He shrugs. The bread trembles in my fingers, so I set it down and move to the next table like nothing is wrong.

We finish the rounds and cut through the quiet side corridor back toward the kitchen. The walls here are lined with a carved screen that makes light into lattice. Wolves chase moons in the pattern, all motion and stylized hunger. It’s old work, the places where hands have passed for years are worn smooth. When I touch it with one fingertip, the wood is silky and cool.

“Don’t let Marek catch you petting the wall,” Kai teases, eyes warm.

“I’m memorizing it,” I say before I can stop myself.

“Memorizing the wall.”

“The pattern,” I correct, heat creeping into my face. “So I know this is the right corridor if I take it half-asleep with a tray.”

He grins like that’s the cleverest thing he’s heard all morning. 

“Her first week and she already thinks like an old hand.” He grins, walking on and I silently cuss at myself.

Back in the kitchen, Hara sends me to fetch marjoram and bay from the herb shed and Marek adds mint at the last second with a nod that says he noticed I came back with all ten fingers.

I measure out leaves by weight and palm, because the scale’s needle sticks. Mint cools my hands while the bay cracks crisp like thin bark when I press it. When I turn for the door, something moves in the corner of my eye and I freeze but it’s just the herb cat stretching from its nest of sacking. It blinks at me as if I’ve interrupted a nap and closes its eyes again.

“Lucky animal,” I murmur, moving on. 

On the way back I nearly collided with Rastin at the yard gate. He stands in the doorway, shoulders filling the frame, expression as calm and flat as ever.

“Careful,” he says, as if I walked into him on purpose.

“Sorry, sir.” I hold the basket steady so none of the leaves bruise.

His gaze slides from the basket to my face and back again. 

“You’ll take the night sweep with the water team. And you’ll meet me after the second bell in the dry store.”

“Yes, sir.”

“For your dose,” he adds, voice silk-wrapped and colder than ever. “You aren’t forgetting your obligations.”

No, I think, my fingers already numb where they wrap the basket’s handle. I never forget them; they bloom under my ribs like something poisonous and stubborn. Aloud I say, “No, sir.”

He steps aside without touching me and I slip past, heartbeat thudding. When I reach my station, Hara takes the basket and dumps marjoram into her pot with a satisfaction that’s almost smug.

“Good leaves,” she says. “You didn’t bring me the stems. I hate stems.”

“Noted.”

Marla appears, hair escaping its tie. 

“The steward’s boy says the council sent a formal query to the Western Post this morning. That’s not nothing,” she announces.

“Without proof,” Hara says, “it’s nothing.”

“He also says..” Marla says, ignoring the jibe. 

“Work,” Marek says from two tables away. He doesn’t raise his voice. It pours through the heat and steam and lands exactly where it needs to.

She pulls a face and scrubs at a pan silently, sulking. Kai bumps my hip with his elbow as he passes and slides me the heel of a loaf. I break it and tuck the pieces into my pocket for later.

By afternoon, I finally sit on a crate behind the dry store door to catch my breath, the stone is cool at my back and my hands won’t uncurl. I flex them until they remember how.

“Esme.” Rastin’s voice finds me. Of course it does.

He steps into the doorway and holds a small glass vial pinched between two fingers.

“Nightly,” he says.

I take it. The glass is colder than the stone. 

“Yes, sir.”

“You’ll keep to the schedule. Don’t wander. Don’t get clever.” He lets the last word soften into something like amusement. “Clever girls bleed.”

I keep my face as blank as the wall. 

“Yes, sir.”

“Good. The Head Omega runs a tight room. Don’t mistake his rules for protection.” He tips his head as if he’s giving me a gift. “They’re only rules.”

He is gone before my brain works properly again. Everything inside me presses for a private corner, while the tonic lays in my pocket like a vice.

I found it at dusk. I crouch behind the rosemary, and uncork the vial. The smell stings my eyes. I pour it into the dark soil and watch it sink, then rinse the glass twice at the pump and leave it upside down where it will look like I washed it after. My hands shake. They always do after this.

Back in the dormitory, the buzz of evening voices has loosened into something warm. Kai hums as he mends a tear in his sleeve; Marla tells Hannah a story about a noble who fainted after seeing a small frog. I lie on my narrow bed and stare at the ceiling.

The deep bell rolls through the stone before the lamps are out, and the dormitory sits up like a startled flock. It’s not the first or second bell of kitchen life. It’s older and heavier, the kind of sound that makes you want to count without knowing why. One. Two. Three.

Rastin’s head appears in the doorway and finds me in the dim without effort. “Esme,” he says softly. “With me.”

In the corridor, the stone holds the bell’s echo in its pores. Rastin walks two steps ahead, not bothering to check if I follow. We stop beneath a small niche where a lamp licks at the wick like a patient animal.

“Western road is clear to the river,” he says, voice low and pleased with himself. “Runners came at dusk. The steward sent word to the council.”

My mouth is dry. “Meaning?”

He smiles like a man who has just tasted something he was promised. 

“Meaning the way is open and there’s no excuse for waiting. Meaning you will keep your head down and your ears open, because when the summons goes out, the palace will turn itself inside out to make it ready.” He tilts his head, studying my face with those cold grey eyes. “You wanted a timeline. You have one now.”

“How long?”

“A week.” He draws the word out. “Maybe less.”

He doesn’t wait for my answer. He never does. The corridor swallows him, and the bell finally stops reverberating in the stone.

A week, maybe less. The King is not here.

But he is coming.