Gerald found the kitchens by the smell of bread.
He had come up out of the smugglers' dock with Faen an hour after sunrise, wet to the waist. The tunnel from the dock ran under the palace and came out in a storeroom full of flour sacks. From there it was easy. Nobody stopped him. Servants walked past him in the corridors with their eyes straight ahead and their threads pulled tight, and none of them looked at his face.
Faen had gone the other way, toward the back of the palace and the base of the tower. Gerald had gone up.
The kitchen was long and hot, with four big ovens along one wall. A dozen people were working in it. Kneading dough. Chopping onions. Stirring pots. Nobody spoke.
Gerald saw her at the third oven.
She was about twenty, tall, with her mother's thick arms and short dark hair tied back under a cloth. She was sliding loaves into the oven on a long wooden paddle. One after another. Never faster. Never slower.
"Rose," he said quietly.
She didn't turn around.
