Chapter One A Golden Morning I must have looked like all the other Assistants standing in line for breakfast that morning at the Three Onions Café. We all wore the same starched white shirts, gray trousers, and stiff black cotton aprons with deep pockets. The Assistant’s uniform was meant to put each of us on the same level, making us equals for the one year we would spend in service.
What a joke.
We may have worn the same clothes, but it was still clear as glass where we stood. We knew without asking who among us had carriages and who had to walk, whose mothers held important positions on this or that council, which of us had maids and which ones had to clean out their own bed pots. No one ever said anything, but we knew.
I lingered at the back of the line, doing my impression of the shy girl: feet tilted inward, head tipped down, looking like someone who had nothing to add to the conversation. You could learn more about people if they didn’t think you were worth talking to, and I had a whole list of other details I needed to pay close attention to if I was going to play along with them.
Hair: combed free of lice and braided lovingly by my “mother” (or even better—my “maid”). Fingernails: cleaned out and filed. Shoes: the right kind, purchased from the right shop, shined, and with nothing icky sticking to the soles. Spine: held straight, as if I were proud of where I came from and had a bright future to look forward to.
Grumble! I coughed to mask the sound of my growling stomach. A full belly was the one thing I couldn’t fake, and coming to the Three Onions in the morning only made the grumbling worse. The steam in the wood-paneled restaurant smelled of fresh oysters, chopped garlic, and green herbs. It took real effort not to stick out my tongue and lick the air.
Something felt different from other mornings, though. The kids in line were chattier than usual. A tall Assistant leaned her elbow on the counter while the others pressed in close, hanging on her words.
I called her Tippy because of the way she tipped her head back to look down at the rest of us. I didn’t know much about her except that she worked for a Master Pastry Chef near the temple square. Tippy had always been popular and pretty, but that morning, she was glowing.
She laughed and smoothed her long braid over her shoulder. The light from the café windows bounced off something golden and shiny at her wrist.
So that was it. A lineal.
A pang of jealousy worked its way into my empty stomach. She must have turned thirteen the day before.
The other Assistants pushed in closer to gape at Tippy’s gold bracelet. “Hold it up so we can all see!” said one of them. “Oh, it’s so pretty!”
The others oohed and aahed as Tippy held up her wrist and gave the bracelet a little jangle.
“How many links is that—five?” asked another girl, unable to hide the envy in her voice. That spring, she had been the first among us to get her lineal. She touched it now self-consciously: four golden loops hanging from a brooch pinned to her blouse.
Tippy answered, a little too loudly, “Actually, it’s seven.”
Everyone murmured and pressed in closer to count the golden rings of her bracelet for themselves.
Each link in a lineal represented one generation of ancestors—ancestors whose names you knew, ones you were proud to claim.
In my mind, I let out a snort. With a background that fine, what was she doing as a baker’s Assistant?
Suddenly, I realized that all the eyes in the café had turned to me.
Tripe! At least I
thought I’d snorted in my mind.
Tippy narrowed her eyes at me. “You, at the back of the line. What’s your name?”
“Order forty-nine!” shouted a shrill voice behind the counter.
Thank the heavens! I squeezed past the girls to get to the counter, then bowed to Mrs. Noom and took the container of porridge from her. “Thank you, ma’am,” I said in the meekest version of my shy-girl voice. “I had better be going. I’m already late!”
I could feel the other Assistants’ eyes on me as I passed. I knew they were sizing me up. They couldn’t look down their noses at me until they figured out which rung of the ladder I stood on.
And what if they knew the truth—that I wasn’t even on the ladder? That in a few months, when I turned thirteen, there wouldn’t be so much as a cake crumb, let alone a lineal celebration? I had no proud family line, no noble ancestors. There was exactly one link to my past, and it certainly wasn’t made of gold.
If they knew the truth, they would think I was nothing.
And who could blame them?
Copyright © 2022 by Christina Soontornvat. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
