The interior garden had become theirs through repetition. They had simply kept returning until the habit made it a meeting spot.

A gap in the roof let sunlight spill across the stone floor, and plants climbed two of the walls in uneven patterns that suggested someone had cared for them once, then stopped abruptly. Here, the cold stone scent was replaced by a greener one.

Hild barely noticed it anymore. What mattered when she stepped through the archway was who had arrived and what they were doing.

Mab sat on the nearest bench with a small stone resting in her palm. The stone gave off warmth that had nothing to do with the afternoon heat. She wasn’t paying attention to it, her eyes were on the far wall instead while the warmth remained in the stone through pure habit.

Beadu occupied the opposite bench with bread and a cloth-wrapped bundle beside her, eating with alarming intensity.

Leof sat on the ground against the wall with her legs stretched out, studying the plants as if waiting for them to do something unexpected.

Mod stood beneath the roof gap sorting small flat stones into two piles on the ledge. Her attention was somewhere else entirely.

All four were here, nothing had happened with them in this day, as well.

Hild crossed the rest of the garden and dropped onto the bench beside Beadu with more weight than she intended. She pulled off one boot and knocked mud from the sole, and enough came loose to hit the stone floor in clumps.

Beadu watched the mud, then looked at the damp stains still darkening parts of Hild’s hem.

"That’s a lot of mud for one afternoon," Beadu said. "Where’d they send you?"

"The marsh near the city."

Hild removed the second boot. "He wants to drain it or something and wanted to test what I could do to help."

"And?"

"Wet soil is a pain in the ass."

Hild let the second boot fall beside the first.

She examined the mud coating her fingers, then wiped them against her trousers with limited success.

"And the whole place smells like the bottom of a dead river." 𝒻𝘳ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝒷𝘯ℴ𝓋ℯ𝘭.𝑐ℴ𝑚

Mab finally looked over.

"Are they going to keep sending you back?"

"Regularly. I guess that can be considered my job now."

She didn’t explain the specifics. There was no reason for it. Mab pursued her lips, apparently not satisfied with the little information.

Meanwhile, Mod placed another flat stone onto the left pile. "If Hild received a job, the rest of us will probably get tasks soon too," she said to the roof instead of to any person. "Probably. I can’t tell what he is thinking most of the time."

Nobody disagreed.

Beadu tore off another piece of bread and chewed while thinking through the idea.

"Me neither."

She said after a moment. "I sure hope there’ll be a warning if mine has muddy work all day. With plants, that seems inevitable."

"Might be construction too."

Mod remarked. "Wood is used for construction and it’s part of a plant. Well, tree, you get me."

Hild studied the plants herself. They were thriving. More than thriving, honestly.

One herb along the wall had spread into neighboring space far too aggressively, and the flowers in the lower bed remained open despite the hour.

Hild chose not to mention it. Beadu’s exercises affected nearby growth often enough that pointing it out now would have been as unnecessary as pointing out the warmth in Mab’s stone.

"How’d training go?" Hild asked.

Beadu rested the cloth bundle on her knee. "I finished all my food at midday and I’m still hungry! Apparently my body thinks the training is heavy labor."

She sounded offended by the concept.

"The flowers, meanwhile, do not care about my opinion at all."

She unwrapped the cloth to reveal another portion of food. "Also, Mod did those weird exercises during paired practice, and I couldn’t hear properly for ten minutes afterward because the air vanished around my ears."

"I warned you to stand farther back," Mod snickered.

"You said stand back."

Beadu pointed at her with a piece of bread.

"Not farther back, Mod. Those are different."

"Whatever, stop whining."

Leof looked up from the plants.

"Are we copying the same letters tomorrow?" she asked.

The question went generally outward, at whoever knew the answer.

Mab turned the warm stone in her hand.

"No. Tomorrow we are reading."

She frowned slightly at the stone, thinking through the realization.

"I find reading easier than writing, for some reason."

Mod said to the garden at large. "Copying letters is physical repetition. Reading is pattern recognition. Different skills."

Beadu pointed at her again with the bread.

"Mod said something smart. Shocking."

Mod ignored Beadu and placed the final stone onto the right-side pile. She left both piles exactly where they were, as if the sorting itself had been the only objective.

Silence washed over them for a while.

The city noises carried across the walls in layers Hild had learned to separate automatically. The wagon wheels over stone, distant voices. The garden had quieter sounds of its own. Leaves brushed lightly whenever wind passed through the roof gap, one of the benches shifted against the stone floor with a faint scrape.

Tam entered through the archway still wearing her apron. Fine marks lined her forearms, narrow and precise rather than the heavier residue left by casting work.

She sat at the far end of Hild’s bench and pulled at the apron strings without fully untying them. Hild had noticed before that Tam only removed it that way when exhausted.

"They started something new in the foundries," Tam said.

She sounded like she might stop there.

Beadu leaned forward immediately.

"New how?"

"New enough that I have no idea what it is."

Tam folded the apron over her lap.

"I spent most of the afternoon checking tolerances with Aestrith."

Beadu glanced between Tam and the rest of them.

"So we copy letters and stand in marsh water while you get the interesting work."

"The interesting work involved standing perfectly still in one place for two hours," Tam giggled.

"Still," Beadu repeated skeptically.

Mab spoke before the conversation could drift elsewhere.

"Did anyone else see her again?"

Nobody asked who she meant. There was only one person in the citadel who drew that attention simply by existing.

Mab was the one that replied, "Near the east corridor. She had that attendant with her, the one that carries everything."

Mab rotated the stone once more. "She was standing beside one of the wall tapestries explaining something about it with her hands while the attendant nodded along. She sounded a bit... annoyed?"

Beadu lowered her food.

"All right. I’ve been thinking about this for days now, what exactly is she doing here?"

Her tone had shifted from joking curiosity to real interest. "She’s an actual noble. I can tell immediately by the posture, the attendant, the expression that says every room is beneath her. So why come here?"

Mod answered while staring at the archway.

"She’s out of better options. As anyone in the Badlands."

"We came because nowhere else in the world handles people like us," Beadu countered.

"Then she has a different problem," Mod rolled her eyes. "But probably the same solution."

"She probably came with the new steward. His name is Heinrich." Tam added.

Beadu blinked at her.

"I’ve passed him twice in the records corridor this week. He seems really busy."

Leof looked away from the plants again. "Does she know about us?" she asked.

Hild considered the question carefully.

A displaced noble living in a frontier citadel already complicated matters. Add in the Arcane Department and six girls with abilities nobody outside this place properly understood, and the situation became harder to predict.

"Whether she knows doesn’t really change anything."

Hild said at last. "She’s here because she doesn’t have anywhere better to go. Same as most people who end up in this city."

Hild rested her forearms on her knees.

"And if she somehow becomes a problem, then she’s the prince’s problem. Not ours."

Leof accepted the explanation immediately and returned to watching the plants.

"I’ll still keep observing, she’s weird." Beadu added suspiciously.

She picked her food back up.

"She might be like that naturally," Tam shrugged.

Beadu considered the possibility while chewing, then decided not to argue further.

Mab set the stone beside her on the bench. Most of its warmth had faded now.

The sunlight through the roof gap had shifted lower while they talked, striking the far wall in a way that made the plants glow brighter green than they really were.

Hild looked around the garden again.

Mab beside the cooling stone.

Beadu finishing the last of her second meal.

Leof watching the movement of light across the leaves.

Mod leaving both carefully sorted piles untouched.

Tam finally folding the apron neatly across her lap instead of fighting with it.

They were all fine.