Chapter 21: Spring Banquet

The kitchen at the Council's banquet hall had forty burners and a ceiling like a cathedral.

Tomoe had cooked in it for six years, for a man who signed every dish.

She stood in the doorway now in her indigo apron with her knife roll on her back and looked at the long steel counters.

"Sixty guests," Aizawa said at her elbow.

"The Council, the ministers, and the families of the soldiers from Wolf Pass. The meal is at dusk."

"Who's the cook?"

"The Mori Kitchen holds the Council's contract."

"I know that name."

"I thought you might."

Aizawa's dry mouth twitched.

"The steward of the hall fell ill this morning. I may have helped him decide to."

"And?"

"And I told the chamberlain that the Saint's cook is the best in Akitsu."

"He believed me. Nobody believes me when I joke."

"Was that a joke?"

"No."

She left.

Tomoe turned her sleeves back and started to work.

The kitchen staff came in a line out of the back rooms, thirty cooks and scullions in white aprons.

They stopped in a half circle when they saw her.

They were the same people she had worked beside for six years.

Nobody said her name.

A thin young cook at the front, whom she had trained to cut onions without crying, put a hand over his mouth.

"It's her," he whispered.

"It's me," said Tomoe.

"I need the stock pots filled, a side of salmon, forty pounds of rice, and everything in the cold room that isn't rotten."

"Now?" someone said.

"Now."

For a count of three nothing happened.

Then the thin young cook ran for the cold room, and the others scattered after him.

Keep reading free with an account. Start The Exiled Sword Saint Hired Me to Cook, Not to Fight from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.