It was no surprise to find the pot empty. With his bowl equally void of food and so his stomach Berko could hear the snickers of the guards behind him, whispers mixing in with that low mocking murmur as they were exchanging crude snides amongst each other about the Iqinile newcomer.
“They need less food, very efficient.” Berko heard someone say, as if he was a well-designed stove instead. It was one of the kinder whispers he had caught onto, the feeling of being unwanted thick in the air as Berko avoided the glares given to him.
“What’s with the spots, even?” the question rose above the crowd, intentionally rising over the general volume of the murmurs exchanged as a sly eye was thrown into Berko’s direction, still new and still friendless as he dropped the spoon back into the pot, his bowl still empty as he willed himself not to reach for his face, not wanting to give them the satisfaction that he had heard them and understood them and that he was conscious of the blooming spots in his face.
He felt the fool, agreeing to stay behind to polish the armour while the rest went ahead for lunch. Only now did Berko realise that the request to polish and oil his armour was only a pretension from the rest of the guards, meant to hold him back as the rest ate.
“Think his disease is contagious?” The question came, not directed at him, but at one of the guards that had been appointed to mentor him. A mentor that had soon abandoned him as Berko found himself alone and trying to figure out the patterns of the patrols on his own, unable to figure out who to talk to if his own mentor was unwilling to actually mentor.
“About to find out, he is glued to me,” the guard had responded as Berko winced, knowing that he had indeed been loitering around his mentor in the hopes of observing how the job was done.
But a man was hungry and the day was long and not knowing any better now that there was no food Berko picked up the empty pot and his bowl and walked down to where he knew the kitchen to be, hoping that there might be some scraps left behind, or to find out that the cook had per accident gotten the amount wrong and gotten too few out.
“Hello?” His voice was uncertain, already discouraged at the reaction of his own fellow-guards, while he stepped deeper into the kitchen, reaching a counter on which he set the empty pot.
In the kitchens, it was warm, bustling. The post-lunch clean-up was ensuing, pots and pans scrubbed by maids, men taking away the scraps of cut carrots, tubers, onion skins, and the rest to toss to the hogs. Yet, there was other preparations that were necessary, the work in the kitchens seemingly never-ending. And amongst the hive within, Kinya stood out a mile.
Tall, wiry, with his white hair bound back, he whistled a happy tune to himself, an incomprehensible smattering of notes resembling no recognizable song. Surely, he was an awful musician, but that seemed no deterrent to him as he shelled walnuts for some dish he was to make for the royal family’s dinner.
At Berko’s entrance, he looked up, waving him over.
“Young Berko! Imagine seeing a strapping lad like you in a woman’s world like this,” Kinya joked, the women around him groaning, one tossing a potato peel at his head. He paid them no heed, merely smiled with mischief. “What can I do for you?”
Seeing the empty curry pot, he whistled.
“You all made short work of it! I’ll tell Yona her curry was a hit,” he stated. “You could have left that up there, we would have fetched it.”
Cooking was hard work, Berko knew that in the back of his mind, but it always took a visual to realise that it wasn’t just a matter of throwing and stewing everything in pots and pans and hoping for a good result. If the outside had been hot under the sun, the kitchen was an earthen pot in the oven of the world, the inhabitants the ingredients of the stew.
It made him feel bad coming down to ask for more. He should have been quicker about it, his own fault.
“It was very good,” Berko said instead, licking the residue of the curry that got stuck on his fingers. It was good, from what little he could taste, but he was still hungry with a long day ahead of him where he needed the energy. “Very, very good,” he continued as he felt his stomach protest, not liking the decision to forego food just because the kitchen was busy and the lads Berko called his colleagues decided that he should go hungry.
The grumble that came from his stomach told everyone that Berko had an appetite, earning a giggle from one of the maidens in the kitchen who continued the preparation for the next meals.
“Is there more?” Berko resigned himself to finally ask, feeling betrayed by the world and his own body.
