A Palace

Meya had learned four loaves ago that is was better to stoke up the oven fires after putting her baking into the oven. That way, when her bread rose, it took on a lovely consistency very like the bread from the bakery in town, but with a nice added crisp.

Right now though, Meya wasn't baking her regular recipe, but working on a project for the Palace. She often did paid work in the palace kitchens when extra hands were needed, and had friends there, too. She slid a pan into the oven, upon which sat a small clay bowl of liquid, and a medium-sized and slightly pink-tinted round lump of dough.

This I can help with. Meya considered herself somewhat of an inventor, so when Alina (fond of her complexion) complained of grease in the air from the lard boilers, Meya had begun inventing a loaf which could absorb oils and grease from the air into its crust.

Not that she minded the kitchen air so much, herself.

It had taken a while to find an ingredient that both absorbed enough oil and was edible. Meya had done some asking around in the marketplace until a passer-by had suggested she try Vigwort, which was apparently a powdered root of some sort. Its added magical properties, he said, gave it the absorbent properties required when heated, and also a mysteriously deep fuchsia tone. The small amount she added was diluted to a lovely pale pink.

The lump of dough and bowl of oil now in place, Meya closed the oven door, and using a candle, took a flame from the wick of her oil lamp to stoke the fire.

On the other side of the wall backing Meya's little oven, sat a wiry and oddly jittery older man.

I've been waiting too long for this. He pulled stacked firewood from the wall, revealing an opening he'd created, and wedged his hands in along the sides to lift the backing from the oven. He pulled the lump of dough from the oven, replacing it with a similar lump he'd bought in town, this time mixed with a touch of magical colouring agent. He quickly took a brush and spread some oil from the bowl onto the loaf, then carefully wiped out the bowl with a cloth and put it, then the oven's back wall, back in place.

When the next Palace feast came about, Meya had perfected the recipe. The oil-absorbing properties of her new loaf were astounding, its gentle pink tone delightful, and its flavour tantalising.

The bread was started the morning before the feast, and Meya stepped in to add the necessary Vigwort to half of it (as discussed with Alina). The dough was left to rise through the afternoon, which Meya spent stuffing and preparing the catches of this morning's hunt.

By late afternoon the bread was ready for the ovens.

By duskfall, the palace was reduced to a crumbling pile of rock.

But who was to blame?


-Faiora
500 Words
August 17, 2007