The Cook was waiting at the kitchen door.
He wasn't supposed to be. He was supposed to be inside, at his range, and the boy at the pot tub was supposed to take the churn. But when Tam came down the three steps into the yard with the milk and the eggs, the Cook was already standing in the doorway with his tall white hat on crooked, twisting a cloth in both hands.
"Lad," he said. "Lad. Tell me."
"Evening," said Tam.
"Don't evening me. The Duke's birthday is tomorrow. Tomorrow at noon. Tell me."
Tam set the churn and the egg basket down by the door, where the steward could count them. Then he turned his back and took three things out of his inventory, one after another. A bucket of milk, thick with cream. A brown egg. And a dented iron pot, brim full of fine white flour.
He held them out.
The Cook glanced at the bucket and the egg. He stared at the pot.
"Lad," he said. "That's a..."
"Please don't ask about the pot."
The Cook opened his mouth and shut it again. Then, very carefully, as if the three things might break, he took them from Tam one at a time and carried them inside to his long floury table.
* * *
The kitchen was hot and loud. Pans hung everywhere. The boy at the tub scrubbed and scrubbed and didn't look up. A pot of something bubbled on the back of the range.
The range itself took up most of one wall. It was a huge black iron thing, as big as a cart. It had four doors in the front and two hot plates on top. A chimney pipe went up through the ceiling. A brass plate was screwed onto the front, polished so bright that Tam could read it from across the room.
COOK-O-MATIC 100.
"It has a model number," said Tam.
"What?"
"Nothing."
In the game, the Cook let you use his range once you'd helped him, and it burned less food than an ordinary one. Tam had used it a thousand times. He had never wondered why a castle kitchen had a stove with a model number.
The Cook had set out a round tin, a bowl and a wooden spoon. His hands were shaking so hard that the spoon rattled in the bowl.
"I'll help," said Tam. "What do you need?"
"Crack the egg. Into the bowl. Gently."
Tam picked up the egg. It was the Cook's egg now. But he had picked it up himself, to help, so it stayed in his hand. He held it over the bowl and went to crack it on the edge.
His hands stopped.
They wouldn't do it. The egg sat in his fingers above the bowl. He tried again, and nothing happened. He had cracked a hundred in another life. But this egg was going into a cake.
Forty, he thought. In the game, you needed Cooking level 40 to bake a cake, and even just to put one together. He was Cooking 6.
You're telling me I can butcher a goblin, but I can't stir a cake.
"Lad?"
"You'd better do it," said Tam, and put the egg down on the table, and stepped back. "I'll just watch."
The Cook stared at him. Then he picked up the egg himself and cracked it into the bowl, one-handed, without looking. He had cracked ten thousand eggs. His hands stopped shaking while he worked. Flour, milk and egg. The spoon went around and around in the bowl, fast and sure. The batter went pale and glossy. It smelled like the birthdays Tam remembered.
The Cook was very good at this. That was the strange part.
Then he poured the batter into the tin. He opened one of the middle doors of the range, put the tin inside and closed the door. His hands started shaking again at once.
* * *
"How long?" said Tam.
"An hour. About. Maybe less. It depends." The Cook was twisting his cloth again. He looked at the range door. "It depends on the heat. And the tin. And the egg. A big egg, more time. That was a big egg."
"Okay. So we wait."
"We wait," the Cook agreed. He took two steps toward the range door, opened it a crack and peered in.
A gust of heat rolled out into the kitchen.
"It's been about a minute," said Tam.
"I know. I know." The Cook shut the door. He walked to the table and back, then opened the door again.
Tam watched him do it three more times in the next five minutes, and began to understand.
The Cook burned his cakes out of fear. He opened the door every minute to look, and the heat got out. Then he panicked that it wasn't cooking and stoked the fire. Something else on the range boiled over. He ran to it and forgot the cake. By the time he remembered, it was black.
In the game, years later, the Cook had admitted that all his cakes burned. It had been a joke. Nobody had asked why.
The Cook opened the door again.
"Can I ask you something?" said Tam.
"What? Yes. What?"
"Your four kids. What are their names?"
The Cook turned around, startled, with the cloth in his hands. "My kids?"
"And the goat. You said you had a goat."
"Well," said the Cook. He blinked. "There's... there's Piers, he's the eldest, he's twelve and he eats like a horse. And Bess. And the twins. Jem and Alys."
"And the goat?"
"Nettle," said the Cook. "The goat's called Nettle. Don't ask me why. The wife named her."
"Sit down," said Tam, and pulled a stool out from under the table with his foot. "Tell me about Nettle."
The Cook sat down on the stool, slowly. He looked at the range door. Tam stepped between him and it, casually, and leaned on the table, as if he were settling in for a long story.
"Nettle," said Tam. "Go on."
And the Cook told him.
Nettle ate washing off the line. Nettle had once eaten half a hat off the head of a man from the Duke's household, and the man had not noticed until he got home. Nettle hated the twins and loved Piers. At harvest time Nettle got into the pantry and ate a whole wheel of cheese. Then she lay down in the yard and wouldn't move for two days. The Cook's wife said Nettle was the only one in the family with any sense.
Every few minutes the Cook's eyes went to the range door, and his hands tightened on his knees. Each time, Tam asked him another question. About Piers. About Bess, who wanted to be a knight. About the twins, who had once painted Nettle blue. The Cook answered, and each time he took a little longer to look at the door again.
Tam had never baked anything, in either life. He had a single memory of a real cake in a real oven, from a long time ago, in a different world.
His mum, standing at the oven in her slippers, sliding a knife into the middle of a sponge, and holding it up to the light. "Clean," she'd said. "See? If it comes out clean, it's done."
He hadn't thought about that in years. He had meant to call her back, and now he never could.
He stood in the hot kitchen and breathed until it passed.
"Lad?" said the Cook. "You've gone quiet."
"Tell me about the time the twins painted the goat," said Tam.
* * *
The smell changed, at last.
It had been a warm smell, sweet and buttery. Now it turned golden, if a smell could be golden, and filled the whole kitchen. Even the boy at the tub looked up.
The Cook was on his feet. "Now? Now. It's now, isn't it? Or it's too late. It's too late. It's always too late..."
"Test it," said Tam. "With a knife. In the middle. If it comes out clean, it's done."
The Cook gave him a look of great wounded dignity. "I know how to test a cake, lad. I'm a cook."
"I know you are," said Tam. "So test it."
The Cook opened the door. A wave of heat and golden smell rolled out. He reached in with a thick cloth, drew out the tin, and set it on the table. Then he took a thin knife from the rack and slid it into the middle of the cake. He drew it out and held it up to the lamp.
It was clean.
The cake sat in its tin on the table, round and high, golden brown all over, with a little crack across the top where it had risen. It wasn't black anywhere.
The Cook stared at it. His moustache trembled. Then he sat down hard on his stool, put his face in his apron and wept.
Tam stood there with no idea what to do. In the end he patted the Cook's shoulder, awkwardly, twice. The boy at the tub had stopped scrubbing. He was staring at the cake with his mouth open, as if it were a dragon.
"Twenty-two years," said the Cook, into the apron. "Twenty-two years, I've been cook in this kitchen. Do you know how many cakes I've burned? I stopped counting. I stopped counting at a hundred."
"It's a good cake," said Tam.
"It's a perfect cake." The Cook lifted his wet face out of the apron. "It's the first one. The first one ever."
Something rose at the edge of Tam's sight, and this time it was a scroll.
It unrolled in front of him in the hot air of the kitchen, as it had in the game: old yellow paper, curling at the corners, with the words written across it in a neat hand.
You have completed Cook's Assistant!
You are awarded: 1 Quest Point. 300 Cooking experience. The use of the Cook-o-matic 100. One very relieved cook.
He read it twice. Then something warm poured down both his arms, once, and then again, so fast the second wave caught up with the first.
Congratulations, you just advanced a Cooking level. Your Cooking level is now 8.
Two levels, from a cake he wasn't even allowed to stir.
He had done the first quest. It was the first quest on every account he had made. Every player started there, and it was meant to take five minutes. It had taken him three days, twelve cows, a goblin's helmet, and the names of a goat and four children.
* * *
The Cook was himself again a few minutes later. He bustled about, blowing his nose on his apron, and told the boy to fetch the good cake stand from the cellar.
"You'll use my range," he said to Tam. "Any time you like. Whenever you like. You hear me? Cook your fish on it. Cook whatever you want on it. It's the best range in Misthalin, that is."
"The Cook-o-matic 100," said Tam.
"You can read!" The Cook beamed at him. "The steward bought her from a dwarf in Varrock. I've been afraid of her for six years. What else? What else can I do for you, lad? Anything. Name it."
Tam thought about it. Then he thought about Fred's twenty balls of wool, and a wheel upstairs in the castle that a farm boy couldn't reach.
"There's a spinning wheel," he said. "Upstairs. I need to use it for a few evenings. For Fred the Farmer's wool."
"Cadmus's room." The Cook stopped bustling. "That's upstairs, lad. That's next door to the Duke."
"I know."
"There's a guard on the stair."
"I know."
The Cook looked at him, and at the cake on the table, golden and perfect. He took off his apron and folded it. He set his tall hat straight on his head and wiped the last of the flour off his moustache.
"Come with me," he said.
* * *
The servants' stair went up from the kitchen passage. It was narrow and turning. The stone steps were worn down in the middle by two hundred years of feet. At the top, where it came out onto a wide landing, a guard sat on a stool with a lamp beside him and his spear across his knees. He looked up at the Cook, and then at the farm boy behind the Cook, and began to stand.
"He's with me," said the Cook. "He's my lad. He brought the Duke's birthday cake in. He'll be coming up of an evening to use Cadmus's wheel, and when he does, he's mine. Understood?"
The guard looked at Tam's feet. Everybody looked at Tam's feet.
"If you say so, Cook."
"I say so."
The guard sat back down. The Cook led Tam along the landing, past a tall window and a closed door with a carved frame. That was the Duke's door. Then he knocked on a smaller door beyond it and opened it.
The spinning room was small and warm, with a fire burning low in the grate. A spinning wheel stood by the window, made of pale old wood and polished by use. Baskets of fleece stood against one wall, and skeins of wool hung from pegs. A broad-shouldered man sat by the fire with a half-carved wooden spoon. He had a brown fringe and a short pale beard, and he wore a blue tunic with pockets all down the front and a red belt. His fingers were quick and clever, and his eyes went over Tam once and missed little.
Cadmus, thought Tam. In the game, the Crafting tutor had stood in this room and told new players to try the spinning wheel. Then he had sent them north to Fred the Farmer to shear his sheep. His one line of description had said that he looked a bit crafty.
"Cook," said Cadmus. "To what do I owe the honour?"
"This is Tam Fallow," said the Cook. "He wants your wheel, a few evenings. He's my lad. He saved my cake."
Cadmus's eyebrows went up a long way. "Saved it?"
"It's not black," said the Cook, with tremendous dignity. "Not anywhere."
Cadmus looked at Tam again, for longer this time. "Anyone may learn at the wheel," he said. "That's what I'm here for. Bring your fleece tomorrow evening, Tam Fallow, and we'll see if your hands are as good as your cakes."
"I can't bake cakes," said Tam.
"Then we'll see if they're any good at all."
* * *
The Cook walked him back along the landing. At the tall window he stopped, and Tam stopped beside him.
Below them lay the castle courtyard in the dusk, blue and grey, with the two fountains splashing and the statues standing dark against the stone. The gates were shut for the night. A single figure was walking around the edge of the courtyard at a steady pace, past the first fountain, past the steps, past the second fountain.
As he passed under the window, Hans looked up.
He didn't stop walking. He didn't raise his voice much, but it carried anyway, up the wall and through the glass.
"Ten days, eleven hours and nine minutes," said Hans.
Then he was past, and going around again.
The Cook didn't seem to find it odd. "That's Hans," he said comfortably. "Walks all day. Harmless."
Tam watched the small, steady figure go around the courtyard in the dark.
Ten days, he thought. Since the river.