Just How Many Cakes Does the Crown Prince Have

My sister spent ten years as a kitchen maid in the royal kitchens.

Careful, cautious, never a single mistake.

The Abbott granted her thirty silver taels and let her leave the palace to find a good household to marry into.

But the day before she was to go, my sister was torn apart by horses.

The charge: stealing spiced cakes.

Weeping, I asked her why, when freedom was finally within reach, she would make such a careless mistake.

She gripped my hand hard, her voice shaking.

"Rowena, I didn't steal anything. That spiced cake vanished into thin air on its own!"

I was too stunned to speak.

But before I could ask more, they dragged her away.

She wrenched her head around and mouthed the words to me, over and over.

"Something's wrong in the royal kitchens. Run!"

That very night I begged for a transfer to the dirtiest, most exhausting post there was: the laundry service.

The next day another spiced cake went missing from the royal kitchens, and the kitchen maid in charge wept as she pleaded.

"I didn't steal anything, the spiced cake disappeared by itself!"

The matron said the girl was playing mad to save her skin, and had her beaten to death on the spot.

I scrubbed clothes in the laundry service, my fingertips trembling.

Grateful it wasn't me lying dead, and baffled at how any of this could be happening.

I'd thought hiding in the laundry service would keep me out of harm's way.

But three days later Osric stood before me, his voice cold.

"The young prince is crying for spiced cake. You're ordered to the royal kitchens to make it, now."

"And if there's the slightest slip, that little life of yours won't be worth keeping!"

...

There was a roar inside my skull.

I dropped to my knees, shaking.

"This servant is posted to the laundry service now, filthy from head to foot. If I were to cook for the young prince, I might offend his very sight."

Osric sneered, his voice going shrill with mockery.

"If everyone in the royal kitchens who could make spiced cake weren't already dead, do you think I'd have come looking for you?"

And with that, my legs gone weak beneath me, the eunuch dragged me into the royal kitchens.

Five bloody severed heads hung at the door.

The one on the far left was my sister.

Her eyes had never closed.

Osric pointed.

"You have one hour. If those spiced cakes don't reach the young prince with not a single one missing, you'll be the sixth."

Watching me shake like a leaf, he lowered his voice.

"Strange, isn't it. Everyone in your royal kitchens knows stealing food is a death sentence, and still, one after another, they steal it."

"You've seen what became of these five, Rowena. See that you don't follow the same road."

I was shoved into the royal kitchens.

Every kitchen maid and errand boy around me watched me with pity in their eyes.

They all knew, in their hearts, that no one could possibly have stolen those spiced cakes.

It wasn't some elixir of immortality.

How could five seasoned hands from the royal kitchens, one after another, risk their heads for a single cake?

Yet if no one stole it, how did the cake vanish?

The wind rose, and outside the window the five heads knocked together with a dull, steady thud.

My hands worked the cake flour, shaking so badly I could hardly manage.

The young scullion beside me reached out without thinking, meaning to help, only for Hilda Lambert, the head matron, to snap at him.

"Insolence! Everyone in the royal kitchens has their own duty. You wash bowls and scrub dishes. How dare you put your hands to the pastry board?"

The scullion dropped to his knees with a thud, apologizing again and again.

No one in the royal kitchens dared breathe too loudly.

But I found myself frowning.

The royal kitchens divided labor strictly.

My task was only to knead the dough and shape the cakes.

The picking of ingredients, the tending of the fire, the plating, each had its own attendant.

The good of it was order. The bad of it was just as plain.

The more hands a cake passed through, the more places it could go wrong.

I set down the flour, turned, and knelt.

"Matron, spiced cake is complicated to make, and nothing is stricter than the timing of the fire."

"I beg your mercy, Matron. Let this servant make it alone, start to finish, so it never passes through another's hands."

The matron's brows knit tight.

"Insolence! Every hand to its own task is a rule set down by the late king. Would you defy him?"

I pressed my forehead hard against the stone.

"I beg your mercy, Matron!"

The matron gave a cold snort.

She was about to come and discipline me when Osric stopped her.

"Enough, let her be."

"The spiced cake is what matters."

The matron glanced at the five heads hanging outside the window.

In the end she gave in.

Everyone withdrew from the room.

Out of the corner of my eye I caught a fire-tending girl glaring at me with something close to hatred.

It sent a jolt through me.

I suddenly remembered that this girl, clumsy with her hands, had taken more than a few beatings for it.

Could she have nursed a grudge, stealing the cakes while she tended the fire and pinning it on others,

meaning to see everyone in the royal kitchens killed off, one by one?

But now I was the only one left in the royal kitchens. However much she hated me, she had no way to touch anything.

I quickly sifted the flour and shaped the cakes.

Before long, five cakes sat neatly in the steamer.

I fed the fire myself, and a quarter of an hour later I was ready to lift the lid.

Whispers ran through the others.

"With the five before you, the moment they opened the pot there were only four left..."

"Can Rowena really do it?"

I gritted my teeth and threw the lid open.

Five cakes, neat and whole, not one missing!

Everyone let out a long breath.

"Thank the heavens, no slip this time!"

My heart lifted too.

So it really was the fire-tending girl's doing.

I quietly made up my mind.

One day I would find my chance and avenge my sister!

Spiced cake had to be steamed three times.

Full of confidence, I clamped the lid back down.

But a quarter of an hour later,

I lifted the lid and froze on the spot.

A spiced cake was gone!

In that instant it was as if lightning had struck me.

The chief eunuch saw it happen and slapped his own thigh in a panic.

"Five people ahead of you are already dead, and you still dare to sneak a bite?"

My mind went blank.

"Osric, you saw everything! Every move I made just now was right under your eyes!"

"How could I possibly have eaten it?"

Osric gave a cold snort.

"The five before you all said the very same thing!"

"If you didn't eat it, are you telling me a spiced cake can simply vanish into thin air?"

"Guards! Drag this thieving little wretch away"

My thoughts raced, and I dropped to my knees with a thud.

"Osric, the spiced cakes need the heat controlled to the exact degree."

"I must have gotten careless just now and steamed one of them clean away"

Something wavered in Osric's eyes.

But the Matron slid me a cold glance.

"They were all steamed in the same pot. How does just one melt away and the rest come out untouched?"

"Osric, a lying, slippery little slave like this cannot be kept!"

With my life on the line, I forgot every rule of decorum.

I clutched the hem of Osric's robe.

"Right now I'm the only one left in the royal kitchens who knows how to make spiced cakes."

"I beg you, give me one more chance!"

Osric glanced at the hourglass in the corner, was silent a moment, then spoke coldly at last.

"Fine. Kill you, and I'll have to go outside the palace to find another cook."

"You have half an hour. Slip up once more, and not even the gods themselves could save you!"

I thanked him quickly.

Trembling, I went back to the stove.

Staring at the steamer with only four cakes left in it,

my thoughts flew as I ran through every detail of how I'd steamed them.

Then it struck me.

What if someone had tampered with the ingredients themselves?

When I was little, my sister told me about a shape-shifting powder said to exist among the common folk. Mix it into food, and once the food was steamed through, it would dissolve into vapor and vanish without a trace.

I'd always taken such street rumors for nonsense.

But now

I asked Osric at once to send to the royal storehouse for fresh ingredients.

Osric's face soured with impatience.

"If the young prince weren't at stake, I'd never let a little girl make this much fuss over a plate of cakes."

I kept my eyes down and apologized over and over.

By the time the new ingredients came, I had only three quarters of an hour.

I worked faster than I ever had in my life.

First steaming: all five cakes, not one missing.

Second steaming: still fine.

On the last steaming, my hand shook on the lid.

The Matron's brows knotted.

"Waste the hour, and it's still a death sentence!"

I gritted my teeth and lifted the lid.

This time, five cakes, not one missing!

Heat rushed through me, giddy with relief.

Everyone in the room let out a breath.

The cakes were packed into the serving eunuch's food box.

The Matron cut me a look.

"The food's done. Still standing there? Waiting for a reward?"

"Get yourself back where you came from!"

I turned to go back to the laundry service, but my heart was pounding.

My sister had told me you could never let your guard down for a single moment in the palace.

The more you relaxed, the easier it was for things to go wrong.

I glanced back at the serving eunuch, uneasy all over again.

"Osric, spiced cakes are soft and bruise so easily. Would you allow me to deliver them myself?"

The Matron glared at me the way you'd glare at hopeless dead weight.

"What's gotten into you today, girl?"

"The serving eunuch has been in the palace more than thirty years. What delicacy hasn't he carried?"

"Since when is it a little girl's place to run her mouth?"

But the moment the words left the Matron, the serving eunuch set the food box in my hands.

"It's all right. No harm in Rowena being careful."

Five people had died over a single cake.

These spiced cakes had become a hot coal no one wanted to touch.

On the way, a few of the ladies grew curious and wanted to peek inside the box.

I turned each of them away.

When I finally reached the hall where the young prince waited,

I watched Osric carry the food in himself, and only then did I breathe again.

I knelt outside the hall through the burning of a stick of incense. All was calm. Nothing happened.

At last I let go of the fear, rising to take my leave.

But the instant I turned, a furious roar came from inside the hall.

"Who made these cakes?"

"I want her chopped to pieces and fed to the dogs!"