Work Text:
Ahmed was new at the palace. People kept telling him he was lucky to have a job there, even if it was only in the kitchen. Ahmed was mostly feeling nervous; he hoped the lucky feeling would come later, but now all he could think about was his orientation.
“Ahmed?”
“Yes.”
“Follow me.”
The head waitress beckoned him into the kitchen and began to show him around the largest pots, ovens, and knives he’d ever seen. Spices were plentiful, and, strangely enough, jams. But it all seemed normal enough to him until his new boss wrapped up the tour.
“Oh, and always lock the door to the kitchen when you leave,” she said.
“Why is that? Isn’t it open at all times to the royal family?”
“Yes.”
The head waitress laughed at the confused look on the new kitchen boy’s face. “Officially, we’ve been having trouble with missing food and we have no idea how it is taken. Unofficially, the Prince Consort prefers to hunt for his meals. We are just doing our duty to give him a challenge.”
Ahmed forces himself to nod. She said that like it was normal. Was that normal?
As Ahmed’s days in the palace grew longer, he learned to ignore the strange reason he’d been given for his duty to lock the door. It came with other instructions as he was given more responsibility, such as putting out large rat traps for nonexistent rats right in the middle of the floor and moving the supply of jam to a new place every night, but he never failed to complete them.
One night, however, Ahmed and a fellow kitchen servant were working late to clean up after a particularly large dinner the Sultana had given for a visiting Queen‘s birthday. It was the latest he’d ever been in the kitchen. The sun had long since set, and the light from the candle was starting to dim. The palace was quiet.
Tink.
“Did you hear that?” Ahmed looked around the kitchen, suddenly paranoid.
Tink.
Ahmed’s friend pointed to a dark figure crouched in the far counter. She held up a knife and edged closer. Ahmed shoved the candle in front of it, and an annoyed face appeared.
“Your highness!” Ahmed’s friend dropped the knife and curtseyed. Ahmed followed suit, dropping into a bow.
The Prince Consort licked the red off a spoon and set the jar of jam he was holding back in the cupboard.
“I was never here,” he said, and leapt from the counter to the door. “Goodnight.” And he was gone.
Ahmed looked at his friend. She looked at him. They looked at the floor. Neither spoke about what they had just seen.
“Goodnight.”
“Night.”