Pewter Cutlery

The maid rounded the corner of the corridor at a run, leaving behind a trail of dark flakes that floated in the air before settling upon the damp stone. Astrid sneezed. The fine dust smelled of scorched linen and dry leaves passed over the hearth, a dense scent that clung to the palate like raw flour.

"Walk, girl," said Walpurga Holm without even turning her head toward the shadowed hallway. "Soot doesn't bite, but the soup is getting cold."

The great dining hall of Frosthold seemed to have been conceived for giants who hated one another. A solid oak table eight yards long dominated the room, separating the two heads of the table as if a league of desolate moorland lay between them. On the walls, the master beams groaned with dull creaks, complaining against the frost descending from the cliffs of Klint. Outside, a pine branch heavy with snow lashed the leaded glass with rhythmic, dry strikes, like the knuckles of a traveler no one intended to let in.

Severin von Klint was already seated at the northern end, with his back to a colossal fireplace where barely three poorly matched logs burned. He wore a severe-cut grey cloth doublet and his hands rested upon the tabletop, encased in his double gloves: the mineralized fabric and the extremely fine mesh of forged iron that tinkled with a muffled whisper at the slightest brush with the wood.

Astrid took a seat at the southern end. The wood of the chair was rough and the cold of the seat pierced through her skirts in a second.

Walpurga stationed herself beside the sideboard, stiff as a boundary post, holding a serving spoon with both hands crossed over her apron.

No one spoke.

Before Astrid rested a bowl of thick, toasted barley porridge, a piece of rye bread that looked as though it had been cut with an axe, and two strips of salted herring gleaming with a pale fat. To her right lay a pewter spoon with the edge notched by decades of careless use. When she picked it up, the metal chilled her fingertips.

Across the table, Severin watched her with calm eyes, holding his own pewter spoon in his gloved right hand. The iron mesh produced a metallic squeak every time it scraped the bottom of the bowl.

Astrid stirred the porridge.

"Does dinner always proceed like a funeral procession, or is that a courtesy reserved for debtors?" she asked.

Walpurga didn't even blink, but Severin stopped his spoon halfway to his mouth.

"The contract stipulates cohabitation and shared supper," he replied, with a voice that traveled across the oak like a stone rolling over ice. "It does not demand tavern talk."

"A lucky thing. At this rate, the silence is going to save us the effort of chewing."

Severin lowered his gaze to the herring, imperturbable. Astrid brought a spoonful of porridge to her lips. It tasted of cold smoke and old grain, but the warmth of the stew settled her stomach, undoing the knot she had carried since the trek through the gorge. In the mill village, her father used to toss a pinch of ground cinnamon into Sunday's porridge; here, the only spice seemed to be the ash from the chimney flue.

Walpurga stepped forward with the earthenware pitcher, refilled Astrid's pewter cup with a sour, cloudy ale, and returned to her post beside the sideboard without emitting a single perceptible breath.

The hunger in this castle feels altogether too much like military discipline.

Astrid set her spoon aside. The metal clinked with a dry ring.

"The porridge is salty," she remarked, crossing her arms over the edge of the table.

"It is cooked with the herring brine so as not to waste the marinade," said Severin, without lifting his eyes from his plate. "In Klintmark nothing is thrown away that can keep for three more weeks."

"It shows. Even the air feels like it has been preserved since the last century."

A shadow of a grimace—barely a tremor in the left corner of his mouth—appeared on the face of the lord of Klint. He cut a piece of hard bread using a knife with an entirely bronze handle. Not a single fiber of wood touched his fingers; the cutlery was heavy, crude ingots forged to avoid any accidents with living materials.

"If the miller's daughter considers the air scarce, she can open the leaded window behind her back," he said. "The blizzard tends to be generous with foreign opinions."

"I prefer to keep my ears, thank you."

"A prudent decision. Losing them before paying off the one hundred and forty talers would lessen the value of your performance."

Astrid arched an eyebrow.

"Do you have the price of an ear appraised in your ledger books?"

"Walpurga has it. I only sign the receipts."

The housekeeper didn't let on, but her grey pupils slid an inch toward Severin, as if approving the accounting calculation.

Silence once more.

The wind grew fiercer outside, making the lead joints of the windows creak. An invisible draft entered from beneath the servants' door and stirred the flame of the tallow candle presiding over the center of the table, giving off a greasy smoke that climbed lazily toward the paneled ceiling.

Astrid furtively rubbed her side; the corset boning kept digging into her rib, reminding her that she was neither in her kitchen nor beside the kneading trough, but in a fortress that threatened to devour her on a diet of cold and notarial protocols.

"The furnaces downstairs," she said suddenly, breaking the monotonous rhythm of the cutlery, don't heat because the flue is blocked with soot. "Or because someone is throwing green wood into them."

Severin stopped the bronze knife over the crust of the rye.

"Are you an expert in smelting as well as a baker?"

"I am a miller's daughter. And in a mill you learn to listen to the fire before it burns your grain. The little stove in the armory wheezes like an old mule."

Severin stared at her. For the first time since they had sat down, his grey eyes seemed to search for something behind the girl's practical insolence. The tension between them was not one of swords, but of two wills testing each other across eight yards of oak.

"Tomorrow you will inspect the woodsheds," he said dryly. "If you find green wood, dock the bailiff's wages."

"Done."

Severin set aside his pewter plate, which had been cleared with an almost surgical precision. He seemed thirsty. Before him rested a pewter pitcher full of sour ale, with its handle wrapped in a strip of leather to insulate against the cold of the metal and placed safely out of reach of the raw linen tablecloth.

With a fluid and mechanical movement, Severin brought the fingers of his left hand to the cuff of his right glove. He pulled at the tanned leather lacings.

The reinforced linen and iron mesh glove slid off, revealing a pale hand with long fingers and marked knuckles.

Astrid held her breath.

Severin stretched out his arm to reach the pewter pitcher, with the obvious intention of pouring himself a drink without the clumsiness of the iron.

But the moment his index finger brushed the leather strip of the handle, a harsh hiss ran through the air. There was no flame, no visible spark: only a patch of blinding blackness that crawled up the leather like spilled ink upon salt. The entire leather crumbled, dissolving into a cascade of grey soot and odorless dust that vanished into nothingness before ever touching the wood of the table.