Thank you to Lystan for your review, and to those who have followed and favourited the story already! I would absolutely love to read anyone's thoughts on this chapter or any others to come. Who do you think Sigrid is talking about?


Sigrid found me the next day, elbow deep in overripe plums. My short sleeved woolen over dress lay folded on the bench and the sleeves of the brown, light linen dress that I wore underneath it were pushed all the way up to my shoulders. The soft skin of the fruit was easy to peel under my fingers and my arms were beginning to take on an amusing shade of purple.

There were no big pots of preserves to stir, I hadn't had the time, so she started to pull off her own much finer over dress until I realized what her plans were.

I stood up, put my hands on my hips, ready to reprimand her until I cursed at the purple hand prints on my dress.

"This is no task for a lady," I said with a scowl, gesturing to the hand prints as evidence.

Sigrid shrugged. My argument didn't exactly make sense when she had lived most of her life in a way similar to my own, but that didn't stop me from refusing her.

"Are you looking for something to do?" I asked, wishing for once that the royal family I had chosen to serve were articulate and expressive, rather than quiet and serious.

Of course she wasn't. Dale was still being rebuilt and as its princess, Sigrid always had something to do. If she wasn't attending events or representing her father at appointments in the receiving room, she was often to be found on the way to or from Erebor, in the company of the many traders of Dale that had established business with the Kingdom under the Mountain. Sigrid had a talent for detecting honesty, which I suspected came from her father, and she was often a valuable addition in trading discussions.

"No," Sigrid confirmed and sat down heavily on a nearby stool.

I ceased my peeling, assigned myself a well-earned break and washed my hands before sitting beside her. In a practice that had become a habit over the last eight months, I pulled her stool closer and turned her around gently to work my long fingers through her light brown hair. I was no mother to her, would never have assumed that honour given there was only about eleven years between us, but often found in her the comfort to ease the strange loneliness I sometimes felt when I considered that at thirty, I was one of the only women not yet married or busy with bringing new lives into the world.

"Talk, if you wish," I said and stopped for a moment to squeeze her shoulder before continuing to bring the locks together in an Eastern style braid that matched the style I had tied my own hair into that morning.

"You've heard about the Feast next week, then?" Sigrid asked shyly.

"Aye. Though I don't see why that's put you into a mood."

"I thought to ask someone," she replied, so softly that I had to ask her to repeat it.

"And who might that be? Who'd be lucky enough to have your favour?" I asked though I had my suspicions after mentally compiling her hints over the months.

"It doesn't matter. It wouldn't work anyway," she said with a sigh.

I finished the braid and grabbed a small mirror that I kept for this very reason. Young women are so often placated by their beauty, in the most innocent of ways, and Sigrid smiled when she saw the new style I'd worked into her hair. Her heart wasn't in it, that was easy to see, but a smile was the best armour she'd have if she felt alone.

I smiled, too. The sight of her young, beautiful face beside my own was amusing to me. Once I too had the joy of youth, the knowledge that my brown eyes, long black hair, tanned skin and slender curves would carry me places if I wanted them to. Now my face had softness about it, though I was glad for it for it was a testament to my life that had never been full but had made a good attempt to be. In Dorwinion, it was normal to see women like me – darker skin and even darker eyes to match the other half of our blood that came from the Eastern lands of Rhun. I didn't particularly stand out in Dale, either, though I was different enough to have caused a stir when I first joined the King's staff.

"Now," I said, doing my best to put on a serious frown though my attempt sent us both into laughter. "If there's a someone," I began, choosing not to say man in this case, "out there that's caught your eye, don't you tell me that it wouldn't work. Anyone would be lucky to have a woman like yourself and he'd be a fool not to chase you to Bree and back if that's what it would take to win you for his own."

Sigrid laughed louder, her eyes dancing in the mirror. I set it back down in the drawer of my work bench and went to the cabinets that I kept locked. I pulled the key out from the chain around my neck and dug through the middle shelf before I produced a tiny rose made of sugar.

"Here," I offered it in the center of both of my palms, the way my mother used to when I was a child, the way of the Easterlings.

Sigrid blushed, betraying her youthful, easy to please nature and nibbled on one of the petals.

I smiled, feeling proud for once again redirecting her teenage sadness and pushed my sleeves back up, bending over the plums with an exaggerated groan.

"I'm too old for this," I complained though even Sigrid could hear the happy sigh when my fingers once again began to peel skin from flesh. I wasn't too old for it of course, at thirty I was younger than anyone else in the kitchens.

"Nonsense," she replied and I felt her hands kneading my upper back. Sometimes her kindness would leave me speechless, like I was now, and I gave up trying to thank her and instead relaxed into her touch.

"Say," Sigrid began, as innocently as the child she no longer was, "has Da come by here lately?"

My fingers slowed in their efforts, though I kept going, separating the skins and tossing them into another pot. With my face buried in fruit, I could afford a little privacy and frowned into the plums. The King's visit yesterday afternoon had stayed in my mind until I'd fallen asleep with the image of his black eyes locking with mine.

Bard unnerved me. I had been content before his visit – settling into my new home, enjoying the courtly flirtations, admiring the King from afar if I saw him in the halls. But since his visit, if I were absolutely honest, I would say that I disliked his effect on me. He was the King, the ruler of the city that was becoming a home to me. But he was also a father, a man with three beautiful children, the only physical evidence that he'd once had a wife of his own.

Sigrid, Bain and Tilda were perfect, in my eyes. And I had no desire to enter into the territory of the woman who must have been perfection personified to produce such beings. Bard, being the father that I had come to understand that he was, would no doubt feel the same. I had no battle scars on my stomach, no heaviness to my breasts that marked a woman who had fought a war and won, rewarded with a bundle of pink skin and cherub lips. Bard's wife had fought the battle three times, the last earning her a place in the Timeless Halls with the fiercest warriors. I had no right to him.

"Aye," I replied shortly. If Sigrid wanted her father to be happy, I wouldn't ever begrudge her for it, but privately I knew that the woman she was looking for was not myself.

I was half a woman, if you asked those who listened to rumours – Easterling blood was the mark of a beast, they thought. After thirty years of such thoughts, they still set my teeth on edge and even now, buried in plums, I scowled. Half a woman and a childless one at that.

Sigrid was silent for a few minutes, her fingers working down my back as I bent further down into the pot.

"Are you going?" she said finally.

I frowned again, this time in confusion, before I realized she couldn't see me so I held onto her hands and pulled myself out of the plums.

"Going where?"

"To the feast."

I raised an eyebrow. To the feast?

"Aye," I shrugged. "I'll be there in the morning for the final touches and I'll set the table up myself, if I can convince the servers."

"But after that?" Sigrid spread her hands. "Aren't you coming?"

"To do what?"

"Attend the feast!"

I shook my head and rubbed my forehead in frustration before I remembered the colour of my hands and glowered when Sigrid unsuccessfully tried to suppress a laugh.

"No, I won't be, Sigrid," I sighed.

Sigrid hummed and left soon after. For the first time in the months that I'd known her, I felt relieved at her departure.


The summons came two nights later. The plums had been made into a smooth, sweet jam and the skins had been sugared and dried. I had just finished gently removing one hundred shapes from their moulds. I'd made a paste of sugar that morning, the most I'd ever made in one sitting. The trays I had chosen were laid out on my bench and I spooned the mixture carefully into the moulds of roses and pomegranate flowers for Dale, jewels for the Mountain and miniature trees for the Woodland Realm.

I had ordered a new mould to be made as soon as the word had come from Bard that the Dwarves were to attend. I planned to begin work with it the next morning, but I fished it out again, clapping my hands in childish glee at the sight of the near perfect rendition of the Lonely Mountain, complete with the great stone renderings of the gates of Erebor.

I already had a mould in mind to please the Woodland Elves, though I suspected that they had seen such pieces of beauty time and time again in their own feasts. No matter, I decided. It had been five years since I had last catered for such a feast. Not since my time in the courts of Minas Tirith had I had the chance and I was taking great joy in it.

A knock on the door surprised me. No one was around at this time of night – after the main dinner had been served in the Hall and only the courtiers remained.

"Enter," I said clearly and packed the remaining sugar shapes away, placing them gently into boxes of flour to protect them until the day of the feast.

A young man, surely no more than sixteen summers I thought, stepped in lightly. He wore the green and brown livery of the servants that attended the King personally.

"You are summoned, my lady," the young man said with a quick bow.

I frowned and cocked my head to the side. "Summoned? To where?"

He huffed and I raised an eyebrow.

"You have been invited to the royal table, my lady, to share the evening meal."

"The evening meal?" I asked.

He rolled his eyes and I pursed my lips, trying on a matronly scowl though it had no affect on him.

"The royal family take their meal together privately, my lady, and your presence has been requested."

I looked down at my hands, still covered in flour and my brown woolen dress that was white down the front. "Now?"

He didn't reply, instead he moved to the side and gestured for me to follow him out the door.

"Wait a minute then!" I ordered and darted down the corridor and into my own room at the end of it. I had five dresses: two for work, one for funerals, one for weddings and one for… well, anything else. I chose the last one, a simply cut gown of deep red linen that had been dyed by the hands of my mother herself in the colour favoured by the women of the East.

I washed my face and hands and unbraided my hair, combing my fingers through it quickly before redoing it in a simpler, softer manner.

My hands were shaking, though I walked back out of my room and nodded calmly to the young man.

We began the walk from the kitchens to the main hall, warm at this time of night and decorated with fine tapestries on the walls and wooden benches with chairs that had their backs crafted by iron from the forges of Erebor. Courtiers were still flittering about in their silks and fine wool, though thankfully Dale was not Minas Tirith and they didn't stop to sneer at me as I made my way to the back of the hall to the doors that opened to the western wing of the great house.

Guards stood on either side and opened the large wooden doors for me, revealing a hallway of rich brown wood. I wondered if it was cedar, for it shone in the light of the torches on the walls.

There were a number of doors leading off the hallway, to studies or private rooms I imagined. At the end was a more ornate door, the wood carved skillfully with runes and images of the Kings of old. At least that's what I assumed the images were, for I had never been this far into the wing before.

"Why have I been summoned?" I asked in a low voice to the young man as he raised his fist to knock on the door.

"The lady Sigrid requested you," he replied with a shrug and I felt my shoulders sagging in relief. Nothing complicated, then, I thought, if she had asked for me. Perhaps Tilda wanted another story of the princesses of the East, like the ones I often told her when she visited my work space, though why that required I come to the royal quarters, I had no idea.

Though it was the deep voice of the King that answered the announcement of the servant beside me, bidding us to enter, and my hands began to shake all over again.