POV: Mara
They unlock the cell at graylight. My muscles complain as I stand. The older guard gestures with his chin. “No tricks,” he says, but there’s no malice in it, just habit.
“I’m too tired for tricks,” I answer.
Jax waits in the hall with a small ledger tucked under his arm. “Hearthworks,” he says. “Matron Silvie. You’ll answer to her, not to me, unless you stab someone. Please don’t stab anyone.”
“I’ll try to disappoint you,” I say dryly.
“Good,” he replies, as if pleased to have a co-conspirator in making the day ordinary. He nods to the guards. “Uncuff.”
The cuffs come off. My wrists feel naked and sore. The cold air bites at the skin where metal sat.
We walk. Sublevel corridors become narrower, less damp, then widen into a low-ceilinged passage that smells like bread and soap and something sweet—chime-flower tea? My body leans toward the scent without permission.
“Hearthworks runs kitchens, linens, candles, minor repairs, and half the morale of this citadel,” Jax says as we pass a vaulted arch. “If the Crownward breathes, Silvie probably mended its lungs.”
“Is she very frightening?”
“Yes,” he says, amused. “But only to those who deserve it.”
We turn into a long room full of tables and steam. Women and a few men move like a tide around each other—chopping, kneading, laughing, snapping. A short, broad-shouldered woman with gray in her black braid looks up and pins me in place with a gaze like a broom handle to the ribs.
“Arden,” she says. “You brought me a stray.”
“Matron Silvie,” Jax replies, respectful and fond. “Observed labor. Review in thirty days. Don’t let her vanish or die.”
“I can do one of those things,” Silvie says. She wipes her hands on her apron and steps close. Up close, her eyes are not hard—they are exact. They inventory my shoulder, my pallor, my tremor. “Name.”
“Mara.”
“Age.”
“Twenty.”
“Dominant hand.”
“Right.”
“Can you sew a straight line?”
“Yes.”
“Burn yourself often?”
“Less than I used to.”
“Good.” She lifts my chin with two fingers, not gently, not cruelly. “Do you look up when you shouldn’t?”
“No,” I say, because I learned that lesson long ago.
She grunts, satisfied. “Then you’ll last.”
A whirlwind appears at my elbow, all curls and chatter and flour dust. “Hi! I’m Pia! You look like a fox that survived a river. That’s a compliment. Come on, I’ll show you the tide ovens.”
Before I can answer, she’s taken my hand and tugged me through the hum of the room to a slate-black mouth in the far wall where heat breathes like a patient animal. The tide ovens. I’ve heard of them—ovens whose heat is regulated by sluices drawing in warm air from the steam tunnels, more reliable than temperamental coals.
“They sing when they’re happy,” Pia says, patting the brick like it has feelings. “Listen.”
I listen. In the hum I hear a pitch that is almost music. Aster leans toward it, curious.
“Alive,” she murmurs.
“They’re not alive,” Pia says, as if she hears Aster too. “But I pretend. It keeps me kind.”
“You talk a lot,” I say, no heat in it.
“Yes,” she says cheerfully. “Silvie says it’s why the bread rises.”
I almost smile. Almost.
She drags me next to a wide doorway open to a small courtyard strung with shells on threads. Every breath of wind makes the chimes sing different notes. Blue glass lanterns hang unlit, the day too bright for flame. Plants push up in pots made from cracked bowls—herbs, something with silver leaves.
“The chime garden,” Pia says, sudden soft. “When the world hurts, I come here and tell it to be quiet.”
It is impossible for the world to obey, but I understand the habit of wishing.
“Here,” she says, undoing a basket. “Eat.”
A crust of bread, still warm. A little pot of honey. A pear, bruised but sweet. I eat like someone waking, slow at first, then greedy.
“Good,” Pia says, satisfied. “We like you better human-shaped.”
Matron Silvie appears, hands on hips. “Pia, stop talking for six breaths.”
Pia inhales, counts by lifting fingers, then grins and fails at the fifth.
Silvie faces me. “We run on rhythm here. You’ll wash, then sleep in the corner cot until the bell. After bell, you work. You do not vanish into shadows, and you do not make yourself a story people whisper about, because stories get people killed. You will eat when I tell you. You will drink when I put a cup in your hand. And if you feel faint, you tell someone who is not the floor.”
“Yes, Matron.”
She studies me, decides I’m not pretending, then softens an inch. “Good. Pia, show her the washing room. Find her a dress that doesn’t look like it survived a knife fight with a mule.”
“It was a Drift,” I say before I can stop myself.
Silvie’s eyebrow rises. “Then you’re very lucky. Don’t test luck twice in the same week.”
“I won’t.”
She nods, satisfied. “Eat, bathe, sleep. Tomorrow the Regent sees you.”
My jaw goes tight. The Regent. Dawn judgment in silk.
Aster presses close, steadying.
“We’re clean now. We can stand straight.”
Pia bounces on her toes. “Come on. Soap that smells like lemon and a dress that makes you look less like a drowned cat.”
“I like cats,” I say.
“Then you’ll like yourself,” she chirps, and tugs me toward the washing room.