Elaine was genuinely starving. She rummaged around the kitchen for a good while, opening three cupboards one after another.
What was in them had been arranged very neatly, and amounted to some plain bread, eggs and flour. There was hardly any seasoning either.
Refusing to give it up, she opened the bottom cupboard as well. One bag of dried mushrooms, and a few pieces of black bread.
"How does she even stay alive..." Thinking that, Elaine shut the cupboard door.
She put a hand to a stomach that had started to feel hollow. You could certainly cook with what was there, but she had been out running about all day and had no wish whatsoever for another pot of mushroom soup clear enough to see your own reflection in.
She went back to the table, gathered the remaining copper fen into her palm, counted them once, put her coat on and thought about it.
She wanted meat... Yes. Meat.
Potatoes stewed with pork, a little tomato through it, cooked down soft, with black bread alongside.
Yes. That was it.
Thinking about it, her mouth had already begun to water.
Counting what was in her hand, she had a dozen or so copper fen.
Probably... that should just about stretch to some pork and potatoes. If she could haggle, it shouldn't be a problem.
With that in mind Elaine went out. Early evening was Greybridge's busiest hour of the day.
The public coaches linking the Upper and Lower City pulled up at the bridgehead one after another. Office clerks in pale uniforms walked home to their apartments with document cases under their arms, and the foremen from the nearby workshops stood at the roadside giving the workers coming off shift a brief word about tomorrow.
A few children just back from school chased one another about, playing at something. One of them was called over by the baker's wife and had a small piece of unsold sweet bread pressed into his hands.
The gas lamps along both sides of the street came on one by one, and the butcher, the greengrocer and the little eating houses carried out the wooden boards with their prices on them. Set against the standing filth and coal dust you found everywhere in the Arosa Old Quarter, the flagstones here could not be called clean, but at least somebody swept them daily, and the people living nearby were in the habit of buying tomorrow's food on their way home.
Elaine stopped at a butcher's, went up on her toes to look over the meat hanging on the wooden rack, and finally pointed at a piece of pork marbled with fat.
"How much for this one?"
The butcher had been clearing his block. He looked up, saw that the person outside his counter was a silver-haired girl, and his hands stopped for half a beat.
Elaine's coat was ordinary enough, but Raea kept it clean and well fitted, and with her long silver hair hanging loose behind her shoulders and her face tipped up to ask the price, she looked younger even than she was.
"Eight copper fen."
Elaine didn't haggle. She bent her head and began carefully counting coins out of her palm.
The butcher watched her count out eight in complete earnest, then took only six, and cut a short length of sausage off to one side and tucked it into the paper parcel.
"Not much left today. Call it cheap."
"But the board says eight fen."
"It won't be fresh tomorrow. Clearing it out."
He said it with complete conviction and pushed the parcel across.
Elaine hesitated, then put the remaining two fen back in her pocket.
The greengrocer's wife next door saw her coming over with the meat and, without waiting for her to say anything, called her over to pick out some vegetables, then knocked the odd change off after weighing them.
Only as she walked back with two paper bags full of food did it belatedly occur to Elaine that she had not haggled once and had still spent several fen less than she had budgeted for.
She looked down at herself reflected in a shop window and was quiet for a few seconds.
This face. Elaine appeared to have located the reason.
It was also the first time she had felt quite so clearly that beauty counts as a weapon.
Having come out ahead, she did not think about it any further. Back at the apartment she dumped everything she had bought onto the kitchen table at once.
There was not much pork, but she had bought a good few potatoes, and the greengrocer's wife had pressed an onion and two slightly soft tomatoes on her besides. Elaine rolled her cuffs up, washed the mud off the potatoes at the sink, then picked up the knife and made a couple of practice passes at the board.
This body had a good deal less strength in it than the old one, and cutting the meat meant pressing down on the back of the blade with her other hand. By the time she had the pork into roughly even cubes her long silver hair had slid off her shoulder again and very nearly gone into the wooden bowl of potato peelings.
She frowned, pushed it back behind her, and in the end simply found a length of string and tied it up any old how.
"What a nuisance."
Elaine had turned herself into a little cook, and started working through the steps from memory.
A small piece of butter in the bottom of the pot, and once the fat had melted out she tipped the pork in. The cubes hit the base with a hiss and the smell came up after it. She turned them a few times with the wooden spatula, and once the surfaces had coloured a little she added the chopped onion.
The seasoning in Raea's kitchen was pitiful.
Elaine went through the cupboards and turned up salt, pepper, and one small jar of dried herbs gone dark with age. Fortunately the tomatoes could make up some of the flavour, so she cut them finer still and put them in to soften slowly.
The tomato juice soon coated the meat, and the smell coming off the bottom of the pot thickened.
Only then did she put the cut potatoes in, add water to cover, put the lid on and leave it to stew.
By the time all that was done she was too hungry to have much strength left, and could only lean against the kitchen doorway and break off a small piece of black bread to put in her mouth.
The bread was dry and hard, and it took a long while of chewing before she could get it down at all.
"How on earth is this anybody's staple food..."
Honestly, Elaine badly wanted rice. Unfortunately rice was not popular in the Kingdom of Loren; you could only eat it in the sort of restaurant that served another country's food.
As for the price... that would not be pretty.
She grumbled under her breath, then couldn't help lifting the lid for a look.
Steam hit her in the face. The liquid was bubbling away and the edges of the potatoes had begun to soften. Elaine prodded one with the spatula, confirmed it was not done through, and put the lid back on.
Outside the window the sky had gone fully dark.
Gaslight came in off the street and left a pale yellow edge along the curtain. Now and then a carriage went over the flagstones below, and in the next room the sounds of cutlery and of a child talking had started up.
Only Raea still was not back.
Elaine set two places at the table, cut the black bread into slices and put them near the pot to warm.
By the time the potatoes were nearly soft enough to crush with the spatula, Raea still had not appeared.
Elaine sat at the table with her chin in both hands, her eyes going to the door more than once.
"Is the Judgment Tribunal really that busy..."
She had meant to wait and eat with Raea, but the smell kept drifting out of the pot and her stomach had complained several times over.
Elaine wavered for a long moment, then decided the hell with all that and served herself a small bowl.
And just as she picked up the spoon and was about to take the first mouthful, the familiar tread finally sounded out in the corridor.
A key went into the lock and turned, lightly.
Then Raea's tall figure appeared in the doorway, and the tired, cold eyes softened somewhat once they found Elaine.
Catching the smell of the stew coming out of the room, a little colour came into that pale face.
And her tired body answered the smell with hunger.