Just How Many Cakes Does the Crown Prince Have?

My sister spent ten years as a kitchen maid in the royal kitchens. Careful, cautious, never a single mistake. The Abbott granted her thirty silver taels and let her leave the palace to find a good household to marry into. But the day before she was to go, my sister was torn apart by horses. The charge: stealing spiced cakes. Weeping, I asked her why, when freedom was finally within reach, she would make such a careless mistake. She gripped my hand hard, her voice shaking. "Rowena, I didn't steal anything. That spiced cake vanished into thin air on its own!" I was too stunned to speak. But before I could ask more, they dragged her away. She wrenched her head around and mouthed the words to me, over and over. "Something's wrong in the royal kitchens. Run!" That very night I begged for a transfer to the dirtiest, most exhausting post there was: the laundry service. The next day another spiced cake went missing from the royal kitchens, and the kitchen maid in charge wept as she pleaded. "I didn't steal anything, the spiced cake disappeared by itself!" The matron said the girl was playing mad to save her skin, and had her beaten to death on the spot. I scrubbed clothes in the laundry service, my fingertips trembling. Grateful it wasn't me lying dead, and baffled at how any of this could be happening. I'd thought hiding in the laundry service would keep me out of harm's way. But three days later Osric stood before me, his voice cold. "The young prince is crying for spiced cake. You're ordered to the royal kitchens to make it, now." "And if there's the slightest slip, that little life of yours won't be worth keeping!" ... There was a roar inside my skull. I dropped to my knees, shaking. "This servant is posted to the laundry service now, filthy from head to foot. If I were to cook for the young prince, I might offend his very sight." Osric sneered, his voice going shrill with mockery. "If everyone in the royal kitchens who could make spiced cake weren't already dead, do you think I'd have come looking for you?" And with that, my legs gone weak beneath me, the eunuch dragged me into the royal kitchens. Five bloody severed heads hung at the door. The one on the far left was my sister. Her eyes had never closed. Osric pointed. "You have one hour. If those spiced cakes don't reach the young prince with not a single one missing, you'll be the sixth." Watching me shake like a leaf, he lowered his voice. "Strange, isn't it. Everyone in your royal kitchens knows stealing food is a death sentence, and still, one after another, they steal it." "You've seen what became of these five, Rowena. See that you don't follow the same road." I was shoved into the royal kitchens. Every kitchen maid and errand boy around me watched me with pity in their eyes. They all knew, in their hearts, that no one could possibly have stolen those spiced cakes. It wasn't some elixir of immortality. How could five seasoned hands from the royal kitchens, one after another, risk their heads for a single cake? Yet if no one stole it, how did the cake vanish? The wind rose, and outside the window the five heads knocked together with a dull, steady thud. My hands worked the cake flour, shaking so badly I could hardly manage. The young scullion beside me reached out without thinking, meaning to help, only for Hilda Lambert, the head matron, to snap at him. "Insolence! Everyone in the royal kitchens has their own duty. You wash bowls and scrub dishes. How dare you put your hands to the pastry board?" The scullion dropped to his knees with a thud, apologizing again and again. No one in the royal kitchens dared breathe too loudly. But I found myself frowning. The royal kitchens divided labor strictly. My task was only to knead the dough and shape the cakes. The picking of ingredients, the tending of the fire, the plating, each had its own attendant. The good of it was order. The bad of it was just as plain. The more hands a cake passed through, the more places it could go wrong. I set down the flour, turned, and knelt. "Matron, spiced cake is complicated to make, and nothing is stricter than the timing of the fire." "I beg your mercy, Matron. Let this servant make it alone, start to finish, so it never passes through another's hands." The matron's brows knit tight. "Insolence! Every hand to its own task is a rule set down by the late king. Would you defy him?" I pressed my forehead hard against the stone. "I beg your mercy, Matron!" The matron gave a cold snort. She was about to come and discipline me when Osric stopped her. "Enough, let her be." "The spiced cake is what matters." The matron glanced at the five heads hanging outside the window. In the end she gave in. Everyone withdrew from the room. Out of the corner of my eye I caught a fire-tending girl glaring at me with something close to hatred. It sent a jolt through me. I suddenly remembered that this girl, clumsy with her hands, had taken more than a few beatings for it. Could she have nursed a grudge, stealing the cakes while she tended the fire and pinning it on others, meaning to see everyone in the royal kitchens killed off, one by one? But now I was the only one left in the royal kitchens. However much she hated me, she had no way to touch anything. I quickly sifted the flour and shaped the cakes. Before long, five cakes sat neatly in the steamer. I fed the fire myself, and a quarter of an hour later I was ready to lift the lid. Whispers ran through the others. "With the five before you, the moment they opened the pot there were only four left..." "Can Rowena really do it?" I gritted my teeth and threw the lid open. Five cakes, neat and whole, not one missing! Everyone let out a long breath. "Thank the heavens, no slip this time!" My heart lifted too. So it really was the fire-tending girl's doing. I quietly made up my mind. One day I would find my chance and avenge my sister! Spiced cake had to be steamed three times. Full of confidence, I clamped the lid back down. But a quarter of an hour later, I lifted the lid and froze on the spot. A spiced cake was gone! In that instant it was as if lightning had struck me.