The mill survey took four days instead of three because it rained on the second day and the river rose six inches overnight and Grey spent an unplanned afternoon standing under a tree with Aldren watching the water level with the mutual expression of two people revising their schedules.
"This happens often?" Grey asked.
"Every spring, my lord," Aldren said.
"And nobody built drainage for it."
"The previous lord," Aldren began.
"Had other priorities," Grey finished. "Yes. I know."
Aldren made a note. Grey made a note. The river did whatever it wanted, indifferent to both of them.
He got back to the manor that evening damp around the edges and mildly irritated, handed his coat to a maid who took it with a professional composure, and found Vivienne in the entrance hall apparently in the middle of receiving a delivery.
There were three large crates. Two saddlebags worth of carefully organized supplies. A list that she was reviewing with the focused attention she brought to everything, making small precise marks with a pen.
She looked up when he came in. Looked him over once, the damp hair, the mud on his boots, the general impression of a man who had argued with a river and not entirely won.
"The survey ran long," she said. Not a question.
"The river had opinions," Grey said.
She made a small sound that was not quite a laugh but was adjacent to one, which Grey had learned was the closest she got to laughing at things she found genuinely funny rather than socially appropriate. He had started cataloguing the difference sometime in the second week and he was not going to examine why.
"We will leave in three days," she said, returning to her list. "I've accounted for the rain too."
Grey looked at the crates. "What's in those?"
"Supplies."
"That's a lot of supplies for two people and some staff."
"I prefer to be prepared," she said.
Grey looked at the list over her shoulder. Cooking equipment. Extra blankets. A full medical kit. Three different kinds of tea. Two books he recognized from the library. A small waterproof case that she had labeled, in her precise handwriting, Grey — spare.
He pointed at it. "What's in that one."
"Spare everything," she said. "You lost a boot in the eastern field last week."
"I didn't lose it, it got stuck—"
"You came home with one boot," she said pleasantly.
Grey decided not to pursue this line of conversation. "The tea," he said instead. "Three kinds."
"You drink the Ashveil blend in the mornings. The silver leaf in the evenings. I added a third for rain." She made another small mark on her list. "It's warming."
He stood there for a moment, in the entrance hall of a manor he had not expected to be living in, looking at a supply list assembled by a woman who had noticed which tea he drank in the mornings and the evenings and had added a third variety specifically for rain, and thought about the quest notification sitting quietly in the back of his mind.
'Know her.'
He was starting to think that was going to be significantly easier than the system had made it to be.
And significantly harder, for entirely different reasons.
"I'll finish the survey notes tonight," he said. "Aldren can manage the rest while we're gone."
"I already briefed Aldren," she said.
"Of course you did."
"He seemed relieved," she added, which was such a specific and accurate observation about Aldren's general relationship with Grey's management style that Grey actually smiled before he could decide not to.
Vivienne noticed. She always noticed. But she just returned to her list with that small settled quality she got when something had gone the way she had hoped, and didn't make anything of it.
---
The day before they left Grey did something he had been putting off for two weeks.
He went to the courtyard at dawn, when the light was still grey and the household hadn't fully woken, and he actually tried.
Not the careful small fighting techniques he had been practicing by rather he tried more harder techniques and forms. He pulled up his skill tree, selected Basic Swordsmanship, and pushed it.
His body felt different immediately, and he moved with swiftly and precisely unlike he had performed before, like it was his muscles memory. He worked through the forms until he was breathing hard, then kept going, because the war arc had a very short timeline and with his luck he could only rely on his hard work alone.
He was almost done with practicing a sword technique when the system sounded in his ear.
---
≡ LEVEL UP ≡
LEVEL 5 → LEVEL 6
STR: 4 → 7
AGI: 6 → 10
New Skill available: [ Quick Assessment ] — Active
Rapidly evaluate the combat capability of a target. Cooldown: 30 seconds.
You are still significantly weaker than the protagonist.
Progress noted regardless.
---
Grey accepted the skill, ran through two more drills, and was in the process of cooling down when he heard footsteps.
He turned around to find a figure watching him.
Vivienne was standing at the courtyard entrance in a light morning coat, holding two cups of tea, watching him with an expression of calm and open interest.
Grey lowered the practice sword.
They looked at each other.
"You practice early," she said.
"It's an habit," he said, which was technically true in the sense that he had made it a habit specifically to avoid this situation.
She crossed the courtyard without any particular hurry, held out one of the cups, and stood beside him looking at the practice post he had been working against with the focused consideration of someone gathering information.
"Your footwork is unusual," she said.
"I've been self-teaching," he said, which explained everything and nothing.
"Mm." She sipped her tea. "It works though."
Grey accepted this and drank his tea, it was the Ashveil blend and was at the correct temperature, because of course it was.
They stood in the quiet courtyard while the morning came in properly over the estate walls.
"Are you looking forward to tomorrow?" she asked, after a while.
He thought about it honestly. The territory work had been actually satisfying to in the past days.
The manor had become, without his fully deciding it should, something that felt like a place he lived rather than a place he had landed. And Vivienne had become—
He looked at her. She was watching the garden with her cup held in both hands, the morning light doing something unreasonable to the way she looked, with the patient and undemanding quality she brought to all the time they spent together.
"Yes," he said.
She looked at him sideways. That small almost-smile.
"Good," she said.
---
They left the next morning with two horses, one carriage for supplies, and a staff of three that Vivienne had selected with the decisive efficiency of someone who had already decided exactly how much assistance was appropriate and had no interest in revising that figure upward.
Aldren stood at the gate to see them off with the expression of a man who had been thoroughly briefed, knew exactly what to do in every conceivable situation, and was still mildly apprehensive about being left in charge.
"Two weeks at most," Grey told him.
"One week," Vivienne said, at the same time.
They looked at each other.
"One week," Grey said.
Aldren bowed. Grey could have sworn he looked relieved.
The road out of Ashenveil District was good and well-maintained, lined with old trees that turned the morning light green and gold through their canopy. Grey rode at an easy pace and watched the countryside open up around them.
Beside him Vivienne rode calmly and seemed very familiar with riding a horse, her dark hair was loose today rather than pinned, which was The Only visible concession to the fact that this was not an official occasion.
It suited her.
"How far to Silverfield?" he asked.
"Two days at this pace," she said. "There's a waystation at the halfway point."
"You've been there before?"
"Once," she said. "When I was twelve. My father took me on a territory survey." A small pause. "I remembered it."
Grey looked at her. "You remembered it well enough to plan a trip there fifteen years later."
"I remember most things," she said.
Grey faced forward and watched the road.
He couldn't help but feel that for the first time since waking up in a dead villain's body, that things could be worse.
They could absolutely, definitely be worse.
[LUK: 2,] the system said, apparently reading his mood.
[Don't jinx it.]