The dining hall was quieter than usual.
Most of the priests and priestesses had already eaten and returned to their duties. Only a handful remained at the far end of the long table, in low and unhurried conversation. The evening light came through the tall windows at a long angle. Like horizontal bars. The steam rising from the food.
Garima sat between Ava and Agatha. The rich smell made her stomach growl. She was very hungry.
She had spent the afternoon with Sir Lawrence going over eastern trade maps. He had called it contextual literacy. She called it navigation. Which would be useful in the long run.
She was thinking about her decreased pain. And Ava appeared in the courtyard with an expression which was both gentle and 'non-negotiable' and informed Garima that she needed a meal.
Garima had followed without argument. Agatha had already been at the table. That's how she ended up sitting between them. Ava on her left and Agatha on her right.
The spread in the front was simple. Thick broth with leafy vegetables she didn't get their names yet, warm loaves, roasted root vegetables and grilled meat from something she didn't identify even after two weeks of eating it regularly. She decided it didn't matter. It was good. That was enough.
At the centre of the table lay a small dish of preserved food at the centre that nobody had touched. It looked like Jelly.
Garima ate slowly and carefully. Her ribs still hurt. Agatha ate without speaking this was not unusual.
Agatha's silence was simply her preferred method of observation. She watched the others eat. Steadily.
Ava told about fun instances. Apparently Riley had once hidden every book he'd been assigned to study, distributed across the shrine in locations that took three senior priests and one very irritated Zihan to locate. He had been caught playing cards during morning cleaning duty. He had been caught, reprimanded, allowed back on duty, and caught again six weeks later with different cards and a worse poker face.
Then there was an incident with Orb.
"He left the kitchen door open. For orb to sleep." Ava said. "It was intentional. Even Zihan turned a blind eye to it."
"Orb has a place to sleep." Agatha said.
"That's what Dylan said."
"And then Orb bit Dylan," Garima said, because this part she had already heard from two different people. Different versions.
"Dylan threatened to throw him out once. Priest Hill told Dylan he was being ridiculous. Zihan called him an idiot–"
"Zihan is a completely different person when it involves orb." Agatha said.
"Dylan sulked until dinner." Ava said as she reached for the loaf.
Garima ate slowly and quietly for some time then spoke to Agatha "I want to go into the city tomorrow."
She kept her voice casual and conversational, the same tone she used to ask about the weather and time. "Sir Lawrance and I were discussing visual learning. I can learn better when I see things. Old markets. Smithies"
"Smithies." Agatha said. "Do you want a weapon?"
It didn't feel like a question. It was a statement disguised as a question.
"Maybe," Garima said, "My ribs are mostly healed."
Agatha looked at her.
Garima looked back.
They stared at each other for a along time.
"You cannot train till you are cleared," Agtha said atlast. "You cannot lift anything heavier and yet you want to spend several hours on foot through market districts."
"Sir Lawrence will be with me."
"Lawrance." Agatha said quite impolitely. Then selected her words carefully. "...is not useful in practical situations."
Agatha pressed her lips together into a thin line.
"He would follow you directly into a burning building if you told him it was educational."
Ava tried to suppress her smile. But failed.
"Then send someone with me." Garima said. "Someone Practical."
Agatha looked at her then at her bowl of broth then at the preserved food dish nobody had touched. As if making quick calculations.
"Zihan." Agatha said finally.
Garima blinked.
"He doesn't leave your side. And you return before the midday bells. Those are the conditions."
"Can Riley–"
"No."
"What about–"
"No."
Garima had wanted someone who could be distracted. Riley could be distracted by a bread crumb if it was shaped interestingly. Dylan could be distracted by anything he'd decided was beneath him, which was most things, which made him paradoxically easy to manage. Zihan noticed everything and forgot nothing and would be watching her the entire time with the focused attention of someone who had been asked to watch her and took that seriously.
"Fine," Garima said, "Sir Lawrence, me and Zihan. Before the bells."
Agatha nodded. The conversation was closed.
The conversation shifted again.
Ava was saying something about Dylan and Garima laughed at the right moment because she had been listening enough to know when to. Underneath she kept thinking about Renya. Garima ate another piece of preserved fruit and pushed it back down.
Garima reached for the preserved fruit, it tasted like tart. and slightly sweet she ate three pieces.
Priest Filly arrived breathless as usual, robes slightly askew appeared at the door.
"Your Holiness," he said. "I apologise for the interruption." He glanced briefly at Agatha. When her expression didn't change. He took it as a permission to continue.
"Guild Leader Rowan Voss has arrived. He is in the council hall. He has requested an audience with the Saintess."
Garima set down her spoon.
"I'll be there shortly."
Priest Filly bowed quickly and disappeared. Garima wiped her hands on the cloth beside her plate.
"Finish eating." Agatha said.
"I finished."
"You haven't."
"I have had enough."
Garima pushed back her chair. The movement caught her ribs by surprise. The pain only reserved for sudden movements. She kept her face neutral about it.
"I won't be long."
Agatha's gaze followed her to the door.
The council hall was the same with the way places became familiar quickly when enough had happened in them—The long table and the chairs. The windows. Even the person standing was familiar.
Rowan Voss was standing near the far end of the room. He never sat when he arrived first. She had noticed this about him across the previous meetings. He always positioned himself where he could see the door. An old habit perhaps. That followed subconsciously.
"Guild Leader."
"Saintess." His gaze moved over her quickly assessing. "You look worse than the reports suggested."
"The reports were being generous." Garima said and sat.
Rowan remained standing. Neither of them mentioned it.
"Your message said a vision." Rowan asked. "Is there a connection to my guild?"
"I saw a woman," Garima said. "Red hair, travelling alone. She left Fanthia on foot several days ago heading towards Solmere. She has very little money. No weapon."
Rowan's eyes sharpened. "Is she a warrior?"
"A Swordswoman."
"A swordswoman without a sword."
"She sold it." Garima said. "For food."
The room felt silent. Rowan understood what that sentence meant. A Swordswoman's blade wasn't equipment. It was identity, reputation and pride. Selling it meant everything else had run out first.
"She is important." Garima continued. "To things that are coming. I need her to reach Solmere safely. And I need her to know he got here on her own."
"Why?"
"She is scared, she was betrayed recently, by someone she trusted." Garima kept her voice even. "If she suspects help she might refuse it, cautious as ever. If she suspects surveillance she will run. I will lose her"
Rowan was quiet for a moment. Then he folded his arms. "So what exactly are you asking for?"
"Your one stars working on the eastern roads. Cargo escorts, message runs, merchant accompaniments between Fanthia and Solmere." Garima looked at him directly. "I want them to find her and I want them to arrange something that looks like luck.---A kind merchant heading in the right direction. A caravan with space. Other travellers to make it more believable. She takes the offered ride, she reaches Solmere, she never knows it was arranged."
"And after that?"
"After that I will handle it,"
Rowan looked at her for sometime. "You have already decided what happens after."
"Have I?"
"You will appear exactly at the right moment." He said. "A saviour."
Garima said nothing.
That's not why, said something inside her. But she couldn't finish the sentence honestly. It was partly why. The timing was partly deliberate. Everything was partly deliberate and
Garima had stopped being able to locate exactly where the genuine concern ended and the calculation began, and that — that was the thing she could not say out loud in any room, to any person, including herself at three in the morning when the shrine was quiet and she was very tired.
She was doing this because Renya was real and suffering and Garima had authored that suffering without a second thought.
She was also doing this because Renya was the strongest swordswoman she had ever written and Garima needed her.
Rowan exhaled slowly. "There is a simpler interpretation of this. You plan to use her."
"She is important to what's coming," Garima said. Her voice did not waver. She had known this objection was coming and had prepared for it and the preparation itself was evidence of what she was. "She will be with us eventually. I am making that happen sooner. She won't suffer. Her life will get easier in the process."
"Those two things don't mean the same." Rowan said. "That's almost what makes it worse. You make yourself believe you are doing everything for the better."
He rubbed his forehead. Then. "What else?"
"Your one stars." Garima said "Merchant traffic patterns. Unusual gatherings. Strangers passing through. Tribal movements.I want them to convey it to me"
The evening light passed through the window. Only then Garima noticed the passing time.
"You want to build a network of your own." Rowan said.
Garima kept quiet.
"That happened to cover a major route in Arden.But you could just ask me." He said.
"It's a test Rowan." Garima said. "Help me and show me your competence."
"Why the one stars?" He asked. "If you ask for competence."
"Using members nobody would look twice at." Garima paused."Members who, if caught,the guild could distance itself from them completely."
"Anything questionable?"
"They won't be doing anything questionable," Garima said."They will be doing exactly what I said. Road reports.Safe passage for one woman.Nothing more right now. I would never harm your guild members."
"I can't decide if you are kind and naive or calculating and manipulative.You are standing in front of me asking me to run a covert intelligence network and arrange the life of a stranger so she ends up exactly where you need her." He paused. "I can't understand any of it."
"I won't harm anyone,Rowan."
Rowan sighed. "Thats why I am still here."
"You are too." She said.
"Is the woman dangerous too?" He asked.
"Only to those who deserve it." She said.
Rowan sighed as if deciding.
"The eastern roads," he said. "I have three members currently running cargo between Fanthia and Solmere. I will redirect their route slightly. If your woman is on that road they will find her."
"Good." Garima said. "She shouldn't know it was arranged."
He turned toward the window. For a moment he just looked out at the courtyard below, the steady shapes of people moving through their evening with the ordinary purposefulness of people who knew where they were going and why.
Then, quietly said. "When I agreed to work with you, I understood I was agreeing to something I couldn't fully understand."
"I am not so complicated." Garima said.
"Are you not?" Rowan asked.
Garima remained quiet.
"I shall take my leave"
He turned from the window. His expression had shifted — not warm exactly. The look of someone who judged based on outcomes.
"I move when I need to move." Garima said.
Rowan left without turning back.
His footsteps faded down the corridor.
The shrine courtyard below was settling into the evening.
The last of the light was orange at the edges of the sky. She stood at the window and watched it.
Her mind was already on the eastern road.
Renya would be walking still. Probably had been walking since before sunrise.
Garima had written her that way — stubborn past the point of sense, the kind of stubborn that looked like strength from the outside and felt like having nowhere else to go from the inside.
She had written it because it made for compelling reading. She had not thought about what it cost.
A caravan heading the right direction at exactly the right time. And Renya would feel the specific, fragile relief of a person who has been surviving on nothing for long enough that one piece of luck feels enormous. She would feel grateful.
And it would be a lie.
Not a cruel lie. Garima had been turning it over since the dream and she still believed that — it was not a cruel lie, Renya would be safer, Renya would reach Solmere, Renya's life would genuinely improve.
But Renya would not know. And Garima would know that she did not know. And that gap — that specific gap between what Renya believed about her own luck and what was actually true — was something she had created.
On purpose. Because it was useful.
Make sure this hurts, she had written in her margin note, about the scene with the sword and the meat buns.
She wondered if that version of herself — sitting at a desk with chips, pleased with a good tragedy — would recognize what she had become. A person who could look at someone else's pain and think 'useful. Necessary. Justified.'
She pressed her fingers lightly against the window frame.
The sword. She was still thinking about the sword.
Darla. That was what Renya would have named it. After her mother. A sentient blade sitting in a small, a forgettable smithy down an alley nobody bothered with anymore, waiting — she had written it waiting, had given it patience — for the person it was meant for.
And she was going to take it first.
She had reasons. Good reasons. She needed it more right now. She was still weak, still healing, and had no real power in a world full of people with magic and swords. Darla would help her protect people. Help her protect Renya herself, eventually.
Renya would understand, when the time came.
Renya doesn't know you exist, said something quiet and honest inside her.
She knew.
She pushed off the window and turned from it. Her ribs protested the movement. She ignored them.
She had made her choice about the sword before she'd even walked into this room to speak with Rowan. She had made it somewhere around three in the morning after her talk with Cosmo. That was the thing about her own decisions — had already decided.
She had just not admitted it yet.
I'm sorry, she thought. Directed at no one. At Renya, who didn't know her. She knew. She sat with that for a moment. The specific weight of it. A person whose worst days she had authored — and that person had no idea she existed. Not even as a stranger. As nothing. At Cosmo, who would probably find out. At whoever Garima might have been, in some other version of this, who might have found a cleaner way.
She was going to do it anyway.
She walked back toward her room. The corridors were quiet. Somewhere down the hall, she could hear Riley's voice, probably talking too much to someone too patient to stop him.
She thought 'I will compensate her. A real sword. Something worthy. I will find her mother's blade or I will have one made. I will give her a place here and food and something better than luck.'
She knew that doesn't make this clean.
Both things were true. She held them both. They were heavy and she carried them, the way she was learning to carry most things in this world — without putting them down and without pretending they were lighter than they were.
Tomorrow she would go into the city with Zihan and Sir Lawrence. She would find the smithy and take the sword.
And Renya, somewhere on the eastern road, would step into a caravan and feel, for the first time in weeks, that maybe the world was not entirely against her.
Garima did not know if that was an apology or a promise.
Maybe it was both.
She stopped walking.
Looked down at her hands in the lo
w lamplight. The bandaging Zihan had rewrapped that morning. The faint tremor she hadn't told anyone about.
Then —
"Hadd hai yaar," she said quietly. To no one. To herself. To the version of herself that had sat at a desk and written other people's worst moments fot entertainment. "Hadd hai."