LITMIR.BIZ

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were no weapons on the wall nearby, but even if there had been, she was no warrior. The servants were too afraid to help. Maybe she could throw the bread, she thought with a dark glance at the hunk that sat on a platter on the huge slab of a dining table to her left—it certainly looked hard enough.

      Oh.

      “I can cook!” she yelled as Bard started to drag her through the doorway. “I’ll cook you the most delicious meal you’ve ever had in your life if you—”

      The door began to close on her words.

      “Bard.”

      The big ugly lug stopped at his master’s voice.

      “Take her to the kitchen,” came the order. “If she lies, throw her in the cauldron.”

      Relief had her feeling faint, but she managed to wobble around to walk beside Bard when he released his hold and turned to lead her down a different corridor. “He was jesting about the cauldron, wasn’t he? You cannot have a cauldron big enough for a person?”

      Bard halted, sighed, looked at her with those wide, liquid eyes. When he spoke, the sound came from the depths of some deep cave, so heavy and thunderous that her eardrums echoed. “We,” he said, “have knives.”

      Liliana couldn’t tell if he, like his master, was making a jest at her expense, so she shut her mouth and said nothing as they wound their way through black hallways free of all ornamentation, down a single wide step and through a heavy wooden door into a warm, sweet-smelling room at one end.

      A startled pixielike creature looked up from where she stood by the large freestanding bench in the center. “Bard!” the woman said, her voice as high and sweet as her face was tiny and wrinkled in the most unexpected way—at the corners of her lips and along the bridge of her nose. The rest of her skin, the color of the earth after rain, was taut and smooth, the crinkled tips of her ears poking out through dark hair she’d pulled back into a thick braid.

      A brownie, Liliana thought in wonder. She wasn’t a pixie at all, but a brownie, a creature her father had hunted to extinction in Elden, for their blood made his magic so very strong.

      Bard pushed Liliana into the room with one big paw. “New cook.” He was gone the next instant.

      The brownie’s face fell.

      Feeling terrible, Liliana walked over to stand on the other side of the bench. “I’m sorry.” She hadn’t even thought when she’d spoken. “I was trying to save myself from being sent back to the dungeon when I said I’d cook.”

      The other woman blinked at her. “Oh, no, oh, no. I’m an awful cook, I am.” Picking up a biscuit from a tray on the bench, she dropped it to the floor. It bounced. “I do not know why the lord has not had me beheaded. Perhaps, oh, yes, perhaps he enjoys that my food matches this place.”

      Startled by her friendliness, Liliana said, “But you looked so disappointed just then.”

      The woman’s ears turned pink at the tips. “Oh, no, that was nothing. Nothing at all. I’m Jissa.”

      “Liliana.”

      Reaching out, Jissa pinched Liliana’s wrinkled and blood-encrusted dress. “I am not a good cook, but I keep this place clean. You are not clean.”

      “No.” Embarrassed, Liliana scratched at her hair. “A bath would be much appreciated.”

      “You’ll have to be quick, quick indeed, if you are to cook a meal,” Jissa warned, shaking a rolling pin at her. “The lord will not wait past the early dinner bell before consigning you to the dungeon again.” The brownie was moving as she spoke, waving at Liliana to follow with quick, birdlike motions. “Noon meal he will not eat today. Not in the castle, he isn’t.”

      Running after her, Liliana found herself led to a small bathroom where Jissa was already working the pump to fill the tub. “I’ll do—”

      The brownie shook her head. “Take off your clothes and get in, in right now.” Impatient words. “I’m sorry but it must be cold, so cold, for we have no time to heat the water.”

      Glad for the chance to be clean after spending days in her father’s dungeon for the infraction of refusing to slit a man’s throat, and then last night here, she gave up any attempt at modesty and stripped away her clothing to step into the frigid bath. Shivering, she picked up the bar of rough soap on the ledge, and dipping her head under the pump, wet her hair.

      As she lathered it, Jissa said, “You are not very well put together, you aren’t.”

      From others, it may have been an unkind statement. From Jissa, it sounded like simple fact, so Liliana nodded. “No.” Her breasts were so small as to be nonexistent, while her ribs stuck out from beneath her skin. Her behind, by comparison, was rather large, and one of her legs was shorter than the other.

      “You will fit in very well here, yes, you will,” Jissa said with a sudden smile that gave her a quixotic charm. “For he is the only creature of beauty, and even he turns into a monster.”

      Laughing, Liliana ducked her head under the water and washed off the suds before repeating the soaping process. Jissa stopped pumping to give her the chance to lather up her entire body, leaning against the pump as she recovered from the exertion.

      “Where do you come from, Jissa?” Liliana asked, running the soap down her arms with a bliss even the cold couldn’t diminish. “You are surely not a denizen of the Abyss.” There was no evil in the brownie—on that Liliana would stake her life.

      Jissa’s face grew sad. “A mountain forest far from here, so far,” she whispered. “The Blood Sorcerer came to our village and stole our magic. Stole and stole. I survived, but he said he couldn’t stand the sight of me, so he enspelled me beyond the kingdoms, beyond the realm. This is where the spell stopped.”

      Liliana’s stomach curdled. She knew Jissa would hate her if she learned of the murderous blood that ran in her veins, but Liliana needed her friendship. So she bit her tongue and stuck her head and body under the pump as Jissa began to work it again.

      I’m sorry, she whispered deep inside. I’m sorry my blood is responsible for the spilling of your own.

       Chapter 3

      Bath finished, she got out and rubbed herself down with a rough little towel while Jissa disappeared—to return with a black tunic that hit Liliana midthigh, black leggings and soft black boots. “I think these were meant for footmen,” she said, holding out the garments, “when there were men of foot. There have never been any in the years I have lived here. Never, ever.”

      “Thank you, they look very comfortable.” The leggings fit well enough but the tunic was baggy, so she was grateful for the thin rope Jissa found for her to use as a belt. “Do you have a comb I could—Thank you.” Brushing it through the knotted mat of her hair, she pulled the whole mass severely off her face and tied it using a smaller piece of rope. She didn’t look in the mirror. She had no wish to see the face “that would frighten even a ghoul into returning to its den.”

      “Can you truly cook?” Jissa asked as they made their way back to the kitchen.

      “Yes. I spent many hours in the kitchens of the castle where I grew up.” In spite of his cadaverous frame, the Blood Sorcerer liked to eat, and so he didn’t brutalize the cook. As a result, the man had been the only one of the castle’s servants unafraid to offer a little kindness to the child who clung to the shadows so as not to attract her father’s attention.

      “What raw ingredients do you have?” she asked Jissa, shaking off the memories. That child was long gone, her innocence shattered into innumerable shards. The woman she’d become would let nothing stop her—not even the monster who was the lord of this place.

      “Oh, many things.” Moving to the bench where she’d been working, the brownie waved a hand and the mostly empty surface was

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