The aroma of bread baking was thick in the air.

Its odor was overpowering, and I could smell it clearly even though I was nowhere near the mansion’s oven. In fact, it was so strong that my brain was flooded with synesthesias of intense flavors. The smells ensnared me in a vibrant quagmire, and I couldn’t push the thoughts out of my head even if I tried.

To convey this feeling in greater detail, for a human it would be like stumbling across the tracks of a nice-smelling skunk. It might be a skunk with a very very tasty smelling chemical scent gland, but it was still a skunk nonetheless. Its odor was sticky. You could run outside frantically fanning your nauseated green face, but the sweet stench would stubbornly hang in the air. It was the kind of goopy mess that got all over everything — soggy wet plaster that left invisible stains on clothes and slathered any exposed hair.

Many humans have this habit of applying perfume and deodorant as part of their morning routine, but such vanity products have little efficacy in masking smells. It wasn’t possible to hide scents to begin with. From the perspective of a beastkin, a fitting analogy would be like attempting to drown out loud music by blasting even louder music. A very tasteless notion, most beastkin would privately concur out of the earshot of their masters.

Anyhow, I spent my morning bathroom routine thinking about how much I was going smell like bread for the rest of the day.

Yum. Very yummy.

A stylish, attractive, and sexy smell to wear around. (sarcasm)

Thank god I wasn’t female. Some of the vixen I know pull hairs stressing over how to micromanage their scent. For some odd reason human society is quicker to judge women, and this was generally true for beastkin as well. One must go extreme lengths for the sake of appearances, and the pains of strategizing exactly when to take a poopy poop on the toilet was barely scratching the surface of the many feminine struggles in the world.

In either case, this minor eccentricity about the daily life of a beastkin is completely irrelevant to the rest of the story, so I’ll end the digression here.

 

+ + +

 

Not much later, I made my way downstairs and opened the wooden door that served as the entrance to the kitchen.

A pair of sharp cerulean eyes instantly turned to glance at me. They belonged to a pale woman faintly marked with white cafe-au-lait rosettes. A large assortment of faded birthmarks speckled her entire face, sparing only the arch of her nose. Despite the sporadic streaks of graying hair that hinted at her age, she stood tall and self-assuredly. Her sleeves were confidently rolled up to her elbows, revealing a surprisingly toned musculature for a middle-aged woman of her slender stature.

A few seconds later, her arms that had been steadily churning dough slowed to a stop.

This was a female leopard-kin.

The leopard woman raised her forearm to brush away a tiny bit of scattered flour that had gotten on her cheek, and then stepped away from the kneading board as she promptly wiped her hands with a towel.

“Is Susella awake?” She walked straight past me to the pantry without a single pause to her swift gait.

I backed up half a step and pressed myself against the wall. Soon, she returned with a bowl full of eggs, a jar of cornstarch, brown sugar, and a loose bag of onions balanced precariously in two hands.

“Not yet,” I said. “You look busy. Can I help?”

“No.” Her response was curt as she set down the ingredients on the kitchen table.

I waited for her to say something else, but nothing else followed.

Frankly, this was typical for Leana, the snow leopard beastkin who belonged to Susy’s mother. She simply wasn’t a very expressive person. However, it was an ill-advised mistake to misread her silence as a submissive timidness. In fact, this woman of few words was unquestionably the most frightening pillar of this household.

Leana personally managed virtually all the domestic affairs in the mansion. She alone did the work of at least five people, and was furthermore extremely meticulous and detailed about everything she laid her hands on. Without her, everyday life in the Telleste household screeched to a complete halt. It might sound like a stressful set of responsibilities, but for some odd reason Leana was fiercely territorial about her life occupation.

Long ago, Madam Telleste had even forced Leana to take on some extra hired hands to help alleviate her workload. However, the additional staff only seemed to add to Leana’s stress and work hours. Nobody seemed to be able to complete their tasks to the leopard’s satisfaction. Both parties just ended up more upset than they started for no tangible net benefit. Eventually, Madam Telleste capitulated and raised the white flag, and Leana henceforth had a free reign of terror in the household.

Nobody messed with Leana on her turf, and especially not in her kitchen.

Incidentally, Leana was also sort of a mother-figure for Susy and me. Arrangements like this were typical in the Kingdom of Kalastasia, where the standard size of the traditional nuclear family was at least six individuals. Every child had four adults raising them -- a mother, father, and each of their beastkin -- so in some circumstances it was like having two moms and two dads.

Out here in the Provinces, most families had to work hard to make ends meet, so the division of labor often occurred in a way to optimize earnings. Typically only one of the adults served as the stay-at-home caretaker. This was true for us as well. Although the Telleste household was presently wealthy, a habit of frugality of still persisted among the adults. Master Telleste had established his madly successful company from a small business only fifteen years ago, and each of us still recalled a time when the family pocketbook was tight.

In this sense, Susy and I had been raised with excessively pragmatic money-grubbing merchant values.

I shifted on my feet and made my way to the massive array of packages and provisions laid out on the countertop. Evidently, these were the supplies for the journey we’d be departing on today. I thumbed my way through the neatly labeled pile and made a mental inventory of the items present.

—Ten pounds of unsalted butter.

—Eighty pounds of smoked venison.

—Three hundred pounds of finely-milled maize.

“You’re not headed to the magistrate’s office today?” The snow leopard asked all of a sudden, interrupting my stock count.

“No. I said my goodbyes and wrapped my stuff up yesterday.” I answered, mentally bookmarking the number I had stopped on before I turned to bring my full attention towards Leana. The leopard hadn’t bothered to look up. She was currently preoccupied with beating a large bowl of eggs yolks.

“Did you bring a gift to the Vice Magistrate thanking him for giving you the opportunity to work there?” Her icy unemotional interrogation continued in the absence of eye contact.

I nodded. “I asked Master Telleste if it was okay for me to prepare dehydrated saffron tea infused with the distillate from the petals of the Versaille Rose that he brought back from his recent trip to Anelucia, and he approved the general idea.”

“Pft.”

I looked up and saw a rare expression of bemusement on Leana’s face.

“What’s wrong? Was the gift bad?”

The middle-aged snow leopard shook her head as she poured out the whisked golden egg yolks and proceeded to rinse her dirty bowl in the washbasin.

“No. It’s certainly unconventional, but the message it sends is very precise. It’s a very creatively assembled gift, and it shows how much you’ve grown under his guidance.”

“Is that a compliment I’m hearing?” I ventured audaciously, somewhat in a self-satisfied mood.

“No. I’m merely impressed by what sorcery he was able to make out of a little brat like you.”

“...Hey, I wasn’t that bad as a kid.”

I pretend-pouted at those words, but we both knew that neither of us were being serious. Even if Leana was not a very touchy-feely maternal figure, she was affectionate in her weird roundabout eway. This was as close as things got to praise coming from her.

“Keil, you’re still a child in my eyes. While beastkin age faster than humans, you’re still only seventeen.”

“You’re just saying that because you don’t want to be a grandma,” I retorted brazenly.

Suddenly a wooden spatula came flying my way through the air, aimed straight for my forehead. I barely dodged it by the breadth of a hair, causing it to clunk on the wall behind me.

—Whoops, maybe that was crossing the line a bit!

However, Leana did not pursue the topic any further. She smoothed out the ruffles on her apron before she returned to diligently chopping onions in total silence. I figured that the implied message was something along the lines of ‘I have a knife, so watch what you say!’ and promptly decided that enraging the only feline in the house was probably a bad idea.

I bent over, picked up the spatula from the floor, and then returned it to the countertop.

At that point, Leana spoke again, her tone of voice frigid again. “Where’s your chamberlain and the rest of the entourage?”

I blinked and looked at the grandfather clock on the wall. The time was twenty minutes to nine o’clock.

Ever since the third prince of the crown unexpectedly requested Susy’s hand in betrothal, our household had been put into the awkward position of needing to assemble an entourage on a short notice. In the Royal Capital, all courtesans were expected to arrive with their own maids, maidservants, chefs, guards, couriers, coachmen, and other affiliated staff. The size of an aristocrat’s entourage reflected on their prestige, so traveling to the capital without any entourage was absolutely unthinkable.

While money was not a problem for the Telleste family, the primary issue on hand was that the Telleste mansion already ran a short staff. There were few redundant positions, and thanks in part due to Leana’s idiosyncrasies, the Telleste household operated on the bare minimum. It was not possible to fill Susy’s entourage simply by splitting the house staff.

Consequently, there had been a lot of new hires in the past month. The bulk of the new employees were inexperienced, untrained, unmotivated, underqualified, or even dishonest in some instances. Coming from a business standpoint, one couldn’t underestimate the difficulty of hiring good employees. For a provincial city like Edlehemn, where the population was small and the unemployment rate was low, it was an employee’s market rather than an employer’s market. Recruiting and hiring a full team of talents was next to impossible. In fact, it was challenging enough to fill the positions with staff that were competent with even the bare minimum.

“The chamberlain set the morning assembly time at nine o’clock, I believe?” I said.

Leana shook her head with a frown.

“I barely hear any noise coming from upstairs.”

Although Leana did not elaborate, I got the general gist of her meaning. The new hires were living on the second floor of the mansion as part of a month long intensive crash-course. It had been structured as an audition, and the final picks for Susy’s entourage had only been chosen late last night. With the remaining applicants’ jobs finally guaranteed, the high pressure of the past month had been relieved.

The absence of clatter upstairs indicated that the majority of new hires were sleeping in. Leana was probably displeased by the idea that the new employees would be stumbling to morning report straight out of bed at the last minute. Even if the official departure time wasn’t until after noon, it was the wrong attitude for a hired maid to let things slack even if there weren’t formal duties scheduled for the morning.

“Maybe I should have a word with the new chamberlain.”

Although I said this, there was an uncomfortable look in Leana’s eyes as well as mine. The chamberlain was traditionally a position filled by a human, and in theory he outranked all the house staff. Furthermore, it was very difficult for a beastkin to criticize a human in the first place. Leana and the new chamberlain had already quarreled on multiple occasions, which left a slightly sour impression on the older staff in the household who were already accustomed to Leana’s way of running the show.

However, this mild friction was hardly grounds to replace the chamberlain. First of all, the man had been personally recruited by Master Telleste on the premise that he was most qualified — he had extensive prior experience serving in the Royal Capital, which all of the rest of us lacked. His expertise and knowledge was instrumental to running an operation that would not embarrass Susy in royal court. Furthermore, Susy’s entourage was technically an independent entity separate from the main house, so it was completely outside of Leana’s jurisdiction to comment on the chamberlain’s management.

Needless to say, it was a fairly unpleasant idea.

“No, I’ll speak to Aria about it.” Leana murmured, referring to Susy’s mother. “Honestly, I’d feel a whole lot more comfortable about this if Stere, Vlin, or at least Ranella were coming with you two.”

I shook my head. “We’ve spoken with Master Caron about this already. Stere and Vlin are critical to running the family business, and Ranella will refuse to serve anyone other than Madam Aria. The only ones who’ve volunteered to come were Mariella, Isie, and Tristan. I don’t want to take any of the old house staff if they’re unwilling to move with us to the capital.”

The middle-aged leopard sighed and shook her head silently.

“Never mind. Forget that I mentioned it. Do you think you could change the water in the wash basin for me, Keil?”

“Sure, I’ll take care of it right away.”

“And Master Caron asked to see you alone in his office at ten o’clock.”

“Oh.” I paused for a split second, quite surprised by the unusual request. “Thanks for letting me know.”

 

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