"If you're up," the gray haired old woman known simply as "Kal", called to her, "get to work! We've got the morning meal to make!" Kal was the unnoficial leader of the kitchen drudges, most of them considered her just a step below the steward.
Zulyeva sighed and got up, wincing against the pain in her leg from a bruise she'd aquired the day before in an unfortunate accident with a cooking pot. "What're we making today?"
"The usual," Kal replied, waking a few other drudges with well aimed kicks. "Klah, bread, sweetrolls, eggs, maybe some pig if there's any left."
As Zulyeva worked, she let her mind wander. It had been at least two months now, and still she had had no chance to escape. She did not intend to stay in this miserable place for the rest of her life.
"Little faster with that bread, Zulyeva!" Kal called from where she was mixing a gigantic cooking pot full of klah. "We don't have all day; they do want to eat the morning meal while it's still morning."
"Yes mam," Zulyeva muttered and began to kneed the bread dough with all her strength. Deilayni was still asleep, she wouldn't even be thinking about eating for many hours now. The wher. How dare she do this to her?
Three hours later the breakfast carts were rolled out into the dining hall, Zulyeva watching wistfully as they left the kitchens, something she had not done for two months now. She wasn't allowed to take the carts out lest someone recognize her and realized what had happened.
Someone recognizing her, however, was very unlikely. She had hacked her shoulder-blade length hair to just above her shoulders and, where she had let it hang down before, now kept it in a tightly wound bun. Since drudges rarely bathed except before serving an especially important guest her face and hands were perpetually covered in grime. All in all, no one would ever think that this disgusting drudge was Zulyeva, a journeywoman healer.
There was about five minutes of free time before the carts came back with dishes to be cleaned and with requests for more food. Zulyeva found herself pouring more klah into pitchers because Kal was busy trying to catch a fleeing spit canine. Everyone was too busy to notice her and Zulyeva, pushing a cart laden with ten pitchers of klah, slipped out the door and walked down the short passageway to the dining hall.
The dining hall was set up much as it always had been, with Lady Deilayni and Lord Gedran and their children seated at the high table with a few other guests of rank and the rest of the holders seated at long tables. As Zulyeva rounded a corner, she saw that one of the guests this morning was a dragonrider. Deilayni had the man engaged in conversation and her three older sons were all listening raptly to whatever he had to say.
"Oh!" Deilayni exclaimed, spotting Zulyeva. "There's the klah! Drudge!" Zulyeva hurried as was expected of a drudge but glared all the time at Deilayni, who tried not to see her.
"As I was saying," Deilayni continued as Zulyeva poured her a mug of klah, "I think all my sons have great potential to suceed my dear husband, but if you were to Search one, P'mir, it would be wonderful to have one less to worry about."
P'mir nodded. "I see. I wish I could help, but Siyeth is the one who does the Searching. As of yet, he has not found any of your sons to be dragonrider material."
"Klah, sir?" Zulyeva asked, picking up his mug and pouring the klah into it before returning it to P'mir.
"Leave us, drudge," Deilayni commanded, eyes flicking around the room to see if anyone had recognized Zulyeva.
"Would you care for anything else, sir?" Zulyeva continued, pointedly ignoring Deilayni.
"Your name, for a start," P'mir replied after a moment. "You're not a drudge, are you?"
Zulyeva smiled as she heard Deilayni gasp behind her. "No, I'm not. My name is Zulyeva, journeywoman healer."
"Zulyeva... why is that name familiar? Didn't a Zulyeva get mauled by wild felines a few months ago?" P'mir asked, eyes flicking suspiciously to Deilayni.
"Is that what Lady Deilayni told everyone?" Zulyeva chuckled. "Obviously, I'm not dead. I've been forced to work as a drudge."
"How did this come about, Lady Deilayni?" P'mir asked, voice icy. "What crime has Zulyeva commited that she is punished with being a drudge."
"She was responisble for my daughter's death," Deilanyi informed him. "Zulyeva gave Reive a strong medicine when she already had a fever and it killed her. I gave her the punishment I saw fit."
"If this was the fitting punishment why did you feel the need to tell people she had died?" P'mir snapped.
"I don't need to explain my actions to you or anyone else," Deilayni snapped back.
"I think the rest of the Holders will be interested in this," P'mir mused. "But if I were allowed to remove Zulyeva from her situation, I might be able to forget that it ever happened."
"You may not take one of my drudges! We need everyone we have! And if you dare tell the other Holders about this I swear I'll..." Deilayni's voice trailed off as she realized P'mir was chuckling. "What do you find so amusing, bluerider?"
"Just that I don't need anyone's permission to take Zulyeva with me," P'mir told her, "because Siyeth has just informed me that she will make an acceptable Candidate." Outside, Siyeth bellowed his agreement, making everyone except P'mir flinch.
"How can she be acceptable when my fine sons aren't?" Deilayni thundered. "She's nothing but a drudge!"
"You're forgetting, dear Deilayni," Zulyeva reminded the Lady, "that I am not a drudge, I'm a journeywoman healer, and your sons are nothing but spoiled holdbrats."
P'mir held up a hand to stop Deilayni's protests. "I've enjoyed eating with you, but Zulyeva and I must be on our way to Falas."
Without another word, P'mir got up and left, Zulyeva following him past a hall of silenced holders. "Just take me back to the healer hall, please," Zulyeva asked as she climbed up onto Siyeth's back behind P'mir.
"Why only there?" P'mir asked. "Don't you accept the Search?"
"You mean I'm really Searched?" Zulyeva stammered, having thought until now that P'mir had just pretended he had Searched her to get her out of Deilayni's hands.
"Of course you are," P'mir scoffed. "Why else would I say you were?"
