Rosa returned to the kitchen. When she had left for the dining room, only Neups had been there, but now seven men, Hal among them, had gathered to observe her. They stood here and there, pretending they had happened to come by and were occupied with something else. To Rosa, however, they all wore the same expression: they were dying to know when this young lady would scream.
Rosa folded her arms.
“Thank you.”
Hal stuck his chin out slightly.
“Thank you?”
“Haven’t you all come to help me?”
The men grinned. One said, “If you’re thinking of making us clean, forget it. We don’t live this way because we haven’t got mothers to nag us.”
Rosa snorted at once.
“I wasn’t thinking of it.”
Another man spoke.
“Then you’re just going to cook here? Hmm… Well, it might be better than Harat’s soup.”
At that, the big man standing in the very back flared up.
“What’s wrong with my soup? It’s because you lot go around with horse piss on your trousers!”
“Are you sure it’s not because you wash your hands in horse piss?”
“Perhaps it’s actually the horse that’s cooking?”
“Was that your horse?”
“No wonder the smell from its hooves seemed familiar.”
“Of course. That’s where it pisses the soup.”
While the men exchanged nonsense, Rosa found a poker in a corner. Scraping beneath the oven with it, she brought out quite a lot of embers and twigs. Then she looked beside the oven, where pans hung, swollen with dried-on lumps of something that might have been meat or rust. She took one down and felt its surface, then singled out a man.
“You have a dagger, don’t you?”
After hesitating briefly, he drew one and handed it over. Naturally, each had a weapon of his own. Even if they had not, they were hardly so unskilled that they could not subdue Rosa merely because she held a dagger. With its point, Rosa scraped a patch of the bottom of the pan. Sound iron appeared beneath the residue. Nodding, she set the pan beside the worktop and spoke, still holding the dagger.
“Please move those things outside.”
With a knife in her hand, her words somehow carried more weight. Their eyes followed where she indicated. It was the pile of firewood. At least it was still used, and apart from the cobwebs underneath, it was in decent condition. Hal asked, “What for?”
“To cook.”
“This is the kitchen.”
Rosa gave him a pitying look.
“What kind of kitchen is this? It doesn’t look fit to make horse feed in. Are you saying people eat things made here?”
One man began to chuckle. Another spoke in a sly tone.
“So you’re going to do it outside? Why should we help with that? Didn’t you agree to prepare the meal by yourself?”
“Oh, really? If this little girl and I have to move all of that ourselves, I suppose the meal will be ready around dinnertime.”
Hal looked at the pile, then at Rosa and Nana.
“Oh, just move it. Mikun, go upstairs and tell a few more to come down.”
With six men at work, the wood was carried into the front yard in a couple of trips. By then, dawn had begun to break and the fog was thinning a little. Meanwhile, Rosa pulled out all the pans and found a scrubbing brush. She had the last two men carry out a water jar that had stood behind the altar, then picked up a kitchen knife and inspected it. Perhaps because knives, at least, were familiar objects to the men here, it was quite well maintained.
When Rosa went outside, the firewood lay in a disorderly heap in the misty gloom of early morning, and the men stood about looking blank. Rosa brought out an armful of the twigs she had scraped from the hearth, set them aside, and spoke.
“Build a fire here. There are six men. That shouldn’t be difficult, should it?”
“Wait, what for…”
Hal began to reply, but Rosa turned as though she had not heard him.
“I’ll go to the shop and find a board. The chopping board’s so dirty I couldn’t even cut fodder on it.”
After Rosa disappeared inside, the six men looked at one another. They could at least light a fire for a lone woman preparing food for eighty people. They confirmed that thought in one another’s faces. That was all very well, but the next part was a problem. Hal spoke.
“Hey, who knows how to build a fire?”
“I don’t.”
“Neither do I.”
“None of us? What do we do?”
Delphinad was the most developed city on the continent. Most young people born and raised there were so-called “city folk.” They knew nothing of building fires, hunting animals, or camping out. In Delphinad, if you had to sleep rough, you could simply find a suitable public building and sleep inside. Animals of every kind hung in butcher shops, neatly dressed instead of roaming in herds. Even fire could be bought for money. Though the patrolmen did rough work, a fair number had never even left Delphinad. That meant Delphinad had every service within it.
Fortunately, one man spoke.
“I’ve done it before, though I don’t remember very well. Give me a hand.”
Terry came from a farming village in western Turen. He said his family had fled to Delphinad when he was in his early teens, pursued by creditors. As Terry knelt and began piling twigs, the others squatted in a circle to watch solemnly. He was trying to make a mountain. After he had spent some time building it, he knocked it the wrong way and it collapsed, bringing sighs and complaints from the others. They were concentrating on this useless activity when a sudden crash sounded, as though someone had thrown down something heavy.
Hal raised his head and called Harat.
“Hey, go inside. What’s she doing?”
When Harat ran to the kitchen, Rosa, emerging from its doorway, looked pleased.
“Good. Help me carry this outside.”
What Rosa was dragging was the cauldron that had hung over the oven until a moment earlier. Although nearly empty, the cauldron itself must have been enormously heavy. Harat’s eyes widened as he wondered how she had taken it down. Then he saw another man walking out behind her, rubbing his shoulder. It was Onil, whom she must have fetched from somewhere. As Harat and Onil carried the cauldron outside, Harat asked, “Why did you suddenly take this down?”
“She asked me to.”
“I mean, why did you come when she called?”
“Some girl called me, and I followed to see who she was. Then that young lady asked me to take this down.”
Without noticing that they were meekly putting the pot out, the two men set it in one corner of the yard. Rosa soon followed and spoke.
“Would you throw away what’s inside? You can eat it if you want to.”
They peered once into the cauldron, then tipped out the remaining soup without a word. Rosa handed the empty water jar to Harat.
“Please fetch some water and rinse this. It smells. There’s no need to wash it properly. Just rinse it.”
That much was something Harat did once every ten days. By the time he finished rinsing, Terry had finally managed to pile his twigs. The men Mikun had gone upstairs to wake were gathering one by one to see what was happening. Neups fetched an ember from the oven. As the fire-lighting party, now fifteen strong, offered advice from all sides, Terry placed the ember on the twigs and began to blow. But the fire only smoked and went out.
“Ugh, you idiot.”
“Do you even know how?”
“The ember’s too small.”
“You stacked the twigs wrong. The bottom needs to be wider.”
“No. I told you earlier. We need more tinder. Bark or something.”
“It’s because the wind’s blowing.”
Irritated, Terry said, “Oh, is that so, you bastards? Try it yourselves.”
While they grumbled and argued, Rosa’s voice came from behind them.
“Is the fire ready?”
Since it was not, the men all moved aside, trying to avoid responsibility. Rosa held a shovel in one hand and a broom in the other. She looked down at the twigs, which had done nothing but smoke before going out, then around at the faces of the men surrounding them. Although she said nothing, Hal somehow felt embarrassed and offered an excuse.
“The weather’s bad for starting a fire.”
“Is it?”
“Not enough tinder either.”
Without replying, Rosa handed the shovel to Hal and the broom to Terry. Then she put her freed hands on her hips.
“It must have been too difficult for you. Well, I’ll show you some magic. The magic of lighting a fire.”
The men, who had been about to leave, stopped and looked at Rosa at the word “magic.” Rosa spoke to Terry.
“Thank you for your hard work. Now sweep these beautifully piled twigs over this way and clear them away. Then sweep this area clean, about this far. Until there’s only earth left on the ground.”
Terry regarded his artistic arrangement of twigs with a complicated expression, then began to sweep it away. Rosa beckoned Hal.
“Dig a pit here. It needn’t be deep. This much will do. And about this size.”
The ground was cleared without difficulty. They made a pit about half a handspan deep and a pace across. Rosa called Neups.
“Take the shovel from Hal and fetch a fresh ember. The rest of you, gather some stones. About this size. And bring a piece of firewood each on your way back.”
None of her instructions was particularly difficult. A few men worked while the others strolled about collecting stones and logs. Meanwhile, Rosa roughly poured the twigs into the middle of the pit and tossed in a handful of bark from her pocket. Then she had them stack the logs around it, crossing them into a square. When finished, it looked as though the twigs sat inside a tower of firewood. They placed a ring of stones around the logs. By then, Neups had brought an ember, and it went inside too.
“Now wait. Don’t poke at it or blow on it for no reason. Just leave it.”
Then Rosa went away. The men tilted their heads and looked at each other.
“Doesn’t look like much.”
“Will this catch?”
“Who knows?”
A little later, the fire-lighting party was excitedly clapping and hopping about. More men came down to join them. Neighbors roused from sleep opened their windows to see what was happening, then stared in dismay, mouths hanging open.
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