Cypress’s rumbling stomach penetrated the veil of emotive uncertainty which had started to wrap around Thoth. He blinked away the trance and glanced back at Cypress, who was hugging her stomach, her cheeks glowing. A red face could be a sign of anger or embarrassment. Since Thoth was better at recognising anger from tone, he guessed she was embarrassed – although, to be honest, anger felt like the more suitable reaction. Any reasonable boss shouldn’t mind if she was a little late because she was getting breakfast. It was her fear of the kennel master which would have made her rush out of the house. The thought flickered briefly across Thoth’s face, drawing his eyebrows closer together and the corners of his mouth down a fraction. It reminded him why they were here: to fund her freedom.
“Let’s see if there’s something to eat,” he suggested, glancing over her shoulder out of the window. From the position of the sun, he deduced that the door to their left took them roughly due west, while the door to the right took them due east. Thoth pointed right. “The architect likely built the servants’ quarters due east,” he told Danny and Cypress, resting his hand on the doorknob, “since you would want the rooms to entertain guests due west.”
He pushed the door open, to reveal… a small, cosy drawing room. Bookshelves lined the walls while a few elegant armchairs gathered dust around a mantlepiece. Thoth didn’t pause to look around, but passed straight through it into a dining room. This looked more promising. He made a quick scan of the room and spotted a classic Victorian ‘secret door’. One of the wooden wall panels had a small, subtle doorknob built into it. Thoth made straight for it, pushed it open and grinned triumphantly at the sight of the undecorated narrow corridor it led to. According to his books on the subject, Victorian houses like this often had secret rooms and passageways to enable servants to get around the house without being seen by their masters. Sure enough, the secret corridor had doors leading off to small, simply-furnished bedrooms, a laundry room, and – finally – the kitchen.
The kitchen was incredible. Easily the biggest room they’d been in yet, it looked every bit the classic Victorian kitchen. Red-brick masonry formed an attractive pattern on the floor, off-set against beige walls. A line of wooden counters ran down one wall and also occupied an island in the middle of the room. The most impressive feature was the enormous fireplace, big enough for Thoth, Danny and Cypress to all comfortably stand in with room to spare. A meat rack and spit hung just in front of it.
Moving a little more slowly now that he’d found his destination, Thoth skirted the island counter and made for a door at the far end, which he correctly assumed led to the larder. The temperature in there was several degrees cooler, owing to the stone walls. This house would have been abandoned at least a hundred years ago, so there wouldn’t be anything fresh, but maybe… he scanned the shelves, his eyes narrowing. There wasn’t a lot, but on one of the lower shelves a few cans were stacked up. He pulled one off and studied the faded label.
“Ugh,” he wrinkled his nose at Cypress and Danny who had followed him into the larder. “Spam.” He scanned the other cans. “Tuna… bully beef… gross. See anything you want?”
Not all of the cans were meat. Thoth replaced the spam and plucked off a tin of preserved peaches, rolling it round in his hand to read the label with interest.
MASTER OF THE ORBIS . MASTER OF THE WATER ELEMENT . SON OF AURA