When we returned, the interrogation was short-lived, but I was still glad to have avoided it. I snuck in before them to change and hid in my bunk before anyone could notice I was missing. I doubted anyone cared to look for me unless the Ambuya came knocking again.

The robes were unrecoverable, and I buried them in the back garden before anyone could see them. Not because I thought I would get in trouble for the blood stains but for the lecture on wasting scarce resources.

Ulia came back soon after me to flop into her bunk with a sigh. She stuffed her face in her pillow for a long while before explaining what had happened at the news of the mage.

Elders, like Eudralia and her aunt, had argued more with each other than with the girls’ retelling of events. There wasn’t much they could push back on because they weren’t there, and we were using the description of mages that they had taught us. The best recourse the elders could come up with was to send them to the dormitories while an older group of foragers went out to find the mage or his body.

After the lack of admonishment, there wasn’t any time to relax because the argument quickly ignored the mage's life and went on to discuss his replacement. The coven needed him for something that the elders were unwilling to say out loud.

My guess was the crown, but I couldn’t understand what they would want with a shield enchantment that only someone with mana could use.

The Ambuya had already left for another coven in the area for the next few days and couldn’t be consulted for a new way forward. She’d already left orders for me and whoever else was free to go to the settlements with Darine. Orders the elders weren’t willing to go against. They were more afraid of her coming back to days of wasted time and delays in the plans.

Thus, we were rushed off into the tunnel system hidden deep inside the bowels of the headquarters with a set of extra orders on top of healing Darine: to find a replacement for the mage.

Maisie, Andria and Ulia joined us, the latter to get away from being alone in the abbey despite no longer being welcome in the settlement we were heading to. The cramped tunnel was lit by a single oil lamp Maisie held ahead of us while Andria and I held up Darine. Ulia brought up the rear with the bow she refused to leave behind, along with the bulk of our roe and jewellery.

“I can walk on my own,” Darine said for the hundredth time. She didn’t believe we would let her limp along and slow us down, but that didn’t stop her from asking.

“Mhm. When was the last time you all went outside the walls?” I asked.

“Ha,” Ulia snorted.

“Obviously, not asking you.”

“We take turns working in the different establishments,” Andria said as we reached a fork in the tunnel. “On the outside, it's a place for girls to come to experience the settlements while earning a little something. But the positions are only for us.”

“I want to go back to barkeeping,” Maisie said, holding the lantern to each path before picking one seemingly at random. “I’m sick of this foraging rotation.”

“It’s better than assignments across the country,” Ulia commented.

“Why not leave the city entirely and barkeep somewhere else?” I asked.

Andria almost tripped but was luckily holding onto Darine and me, who kept her from falling. “I forgot we were alone for a second. Let’s not repeat that shit in company, okay?”

“I wouldn’t,” I said. “But it's a reasonable question.”

“Don’t start,” Maisie said, getting to another intersection. “How many times have we had this discussion?”

“About barkeeping? Just once.”

“You know that’s not what she meant,” Darine said, pinching my ear with the arm slung over my shoulder.

“Yes, yes. I’m an ignorant outsider who doesn’t understand,” I mocked. “Someone who has no idea what it's like to grow up under the teachings of a witch and go someplace else.”

“And get captured,” Ulia said.

“Let's not rehash this conversation,” Andria sighed.

I wanted to retort, but that was my story. It wasn’t designed to motivate a bunch of witchlings to break away from their elders, whom I considered rather awful. Andria emphasised her point by changing topics to what we needed to do while in the settlement, what to expect, and what to avoid doing.

That serious conversation winded down into the best places for dessert.

The wards throughout the tunnel system were sparse and reserved for the few exits we walked past. They were at least doing their job since I felt no ghouls nearby.

These weren’t the service tunnels full of pipes that Ulia and I had travelled in to get here, crawling with ghouls due to the abundant surface entrances. The walls looked excavated rather than smoothed out by spellcraft, leaving their origins unclear.

“Do you know who made this tunnel?” I asked once Maisie had finished detailing her lunch order.

“Always been here,” Darine said. “The elders say it's an old smuggling tunnel the mages used to use. Something about laws for everyone but the few who make them.”

I was distracted from asking more questions by a wave of fatigue. We passed under the outer wall, and despite being underground where the mana was less concentrated, I still felt the consequences. I had grown accustomed to the vast quantities of mana swirling around me, so much so that I’d forgotten what it felt like to be outside the city.

Aches that had built up over the months of running across rooftops, being smacked around my armoured ghouls, falling through floors, and uncomfortable mattresses resurfaced. They had all healed quickly, but my body was paying the price now with stiff joints and sore muscles that the abundance had quelled.

The capital’s mana had propped me up, and I missed it already. The reasoning behind syphoning off all the mana into the inner district had always seemed nefarious. However, now I could clearly see why they were so eager to do so. Breathing anywhere else felt like a chore outside of the inner districts.

Would bringing down the walls improve the mana around the county, or would it be insignificant once spread out over a large area? Considering how long they had lasted without repair or oversight, it was a pointless rumination.

The runes used beyond the wall were faint, not having access to the mana of the city or to hide them from the mages above. I didn’t recognise them from the lessons because they were the more complex variety kept for more senior witches to use. The crystals were a variation of warding, more focused on pretending nothing was different about the area than it being off-limits.

Dust shook from the ceiling and floated into the warm glow of the lantern as carriages passed overhead. The people in the settlement above were at the edges of my senses through the thick layer of dirt and dirt, but I could tell there were more mages here than Drasda.

We helped Darine climb up a ladder shaft covered in carvings. It must have been too risky to use proper runes, so they were carved directly into the stone and wood. I climbed up backwards above Darine, ready to grab her if she fell, while Andria pushed her from behind. The girl wasn’t happy with the arrangement, a blush creeping onto her cheeks at the embarrassing amount of help needed to climb.

Maisie reached the iron hatch at the top and knocked in a rhythm. We waited in the shadows as a lock clicked, and the hatch groaned open. A girl in an apron leaned over with twin braids hanging down towards us. “Hi.”

“Give us a hand, Tayka,” Maisie said, holding the lantern up for her to take.

Tayka stuck out a hand to help Maisie out of the shaft, followed by me. She gave me a long look but didn’t ask the question on the tip of her tongue. The hatch had been built into the bottom of a small vault, just big enough for three of us to stand in at a time. Tayka and Maisie stepped out while Andria and I extracted Darine.

Beyond the door of the iron vault was a cellar filled to the brim with vegetables, drying herbs and slabs of meat. It looked out of place among the produce, and I doubted there was an expensive enough fruit to warrant the protection it provided.

“Winter isn’t over yet,” Tayka said, the freckled girl crossing her arms. “I’m not letting you have my job, no matter who says what.”

“Too bad,” Andria said, standing tall. “The Ambuya has spoken.”

“Don’t antagonise the person marking our lunch, please,” Maisie said, explaining why we were not here to take away her job.

Tayka frowned, looking at Darine’s inflexible leg. “The waitlist for the healers is only growing. The smaller towns are all flocking here because it's taking entire seasons everywhere else.”

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“Why the change?” Ulia asked.

“The different guilds are all fighting to explore the next district first; they’re maiming each other more than the ghouls could ever hope to. That’s at the other entrances. Here, they’re planning an expedition in the spring, so everyone is trying to get this and that sorted before.”

“Would this be enough to jump a few places,” Ulia said, opening up the heavy knapsack.

Tayka shrugged, not reacting much to the gems and gold inside. “The market is flooded at the moment. Merchants are buying it up for the price of grain to peddle elsewhere, but healers want roe, not a bunch of stuff they have to sell.”

“Yeah,” Andria said. “Not that surprising.”

“We could steal the roe, or find a healer to persuade,” I said, receiving everyone's shocked stare. “What? I’m not suggesting we hurt them.”

That didn’t stop the raised eyebrows and frowns. For a bunch of witches whose entire teachings were about how evil mages were, I was surprised they didn’t like the idea of stealing from them.

“Who’s this?” Tayka asked, giving me a disapproving glare.

“Patela,” Darine said. “She’s new…ish.”

“Well, she’s your problem to look after,” Tayka said. “Don’t risk our only access to vendors for something so stupid.”

“Okay, I wasn’t that invested in the idea,” I said hurriedly. “I wouldn’t call making suggestions problematic.”

Tayka pushed the heavy iron door closed and spun the handle, locking it again. If I hadn’t already known there was a space in the stone below and been so close, I wouldn’t have been able to notice it.

We were led through the crates of legumes and ducked under hanging herbs to the stairs out of the cellar.

Tayka pulled a key that hung from a string of twine from the neckline of her blouse. The reinforced door at the top of the stairs swung open to reveal a short hallway with another staircase guarded by an iron gate. Anyone privy to the security down here would immediately understand that it wasn’t just vegetables and prime cuts of kudu being protected.

“Dump the knapsack in here,” Tayka said, opening another reinforced door before the gate. Inside were bulging bags that were probably full of similar gemstones and jewellery that lay loosely on the stone floor. Ulia took a few personal items from the bag before tossing it into the treasure room.

“It took a lot of hard work to get all that,” Darine said, poting around the room. “You aren’t even selling it.”

Tayka shrugged. “I sell ale and clean tables and take the bags to the vendors the elder tells me to, and she hasn’t been telling me to. Most of the gold gets melted down to use in their enchantments, so it doesn’t matter how nice it looks.”

“And the old coins?” I asked.

“Too old, also melted down,” Tayka said. “I’ll get you all a change of clothes, and we can go put Darine’s name down at the healers. What happened anyway? You’re usually the careful one.”

“We got to the inner district and then got chased out immediately,” Maisie said.

“That far in already? Our group only got halfway before screechers kept messing with us. Suppose the expedition has them spooked?”

“There’s worse shit in the interior,” Darine said with a shiver.

“Yup,” I agreed, under my breath.

…

I was happy to be wearing pants again and have on loafers, even if they pinched my toes. The style was slightly different compared to Drasda, with precious metal incorporated in every possible aspect. The buckle of my shoes was silver, the clasp on my belt was gold, and the eyelets the drawstrings threaded through on my tunic were bronze. All steel and iron available were used for weapons and fortifications, while the other metal flowing in from the capital was used for everything else.

By design, the streets were only wide enough for a single carriage, as iron gates were ready to be swung closed across the bottleneck. There were fewer carriages rolling down the street, so the lack of space didn’t hamper travel.

While I’d seen a lot of tents and wooden structures outside of the city, nearer the wall, the foundations were made of solid stone. There were no windows at ground level, so the street looked ready to transform into a canal if it wasn’t for the reinforced iron doors.

I had the small mana crystal that I’d sewn into my robes sitting in the breast pocket of my tunic. It was off-centre and had less mana than my old necklace tended to contain, but it should be enough to pass as a mage unless a knight decided to scrutinise me.

We walked past a few signs promoting clinics but carried out without a glance inside. Tayka was still in her uniform without the apron, waving to passersby and avoiding the chainmail-wearing Remnant knights loitering in large groups.

There were fewer people on the winding streets compared to Drasda, but as I’d sensed from the tunnels, more of them were mages. However, a more glaring difference was that everyone had a weapon on them, from daggers to broadswords, bows to miniature crossbows.

Some were almost as well-armed as the knights and travelled in closely-knit groups. Like the knights, they all wore the speckled stone necklace that Tometh had given me. The two most prominent shades looked to represent the outer and second walls. My memory may have been failing me, but my necklace back in Drasda looked to be the second.

“Do we get them as a replacement?” I asked Andria, who was still on the opposite side of Darine.

“Nah… maybe,” she said. “I didn’t really like them as customers when I worked in the inn.”

“They’re a weird bunch,” Tayka said, having listened in when we explained why we were here to the elder. “The red and white ones in chainmail are fanatics; you can’t convince them of anything. The looters, don’t call them that to their face, go into the city for roe or fun of it during the day and drink, telling stories of it all, during the evening. Good customers, but weird.”

“What do they like to be called?”

“Their group names, adventurers, collectors, explorers. Really anything but looter or thief,” Tayka said, stopping under the sign for another healer. “Let’s try here.”

“Isn’t this the old man’s place?” Andria asked. “Who’s running it after his passing?”

“He took an apprentice before,” Tayka said, a smirk playing across her lips. “Much easier to persuade.”

She pushed open the door, provoking the chime of a small bell. “Mauricio, I brought you customers.”

Tayka was all smiles as she walked up to the young man sitting at a desk laden with glass vials and herbs. She went up on her toes to kiss his cheek, which had turned red before her lips brushed skin.

His eyes darted over the three of us nervously before returning to her. “Tay, what a surprise. I was, ah, planning to come see you at work after I was finished for the day.”

“That’s sweet of you,” Tayka said, linking her arm with his and turning Mauricio around to look at Darine. “My friend’s leg has been hurt quite badly, and we really need someone to help us. Can you take a look, please?”

“Oh…I’m, ah, between appointments at the moment, trying to recoup mana before the next.”

“Please…Just a short glance.”

Mauricio sighed and refused to look her in the eye. “I can just take a look. Nothing else.”

Andria and I brought Darine over to a stool, and she folded her pants to reveal the damage. Tayka’s smile faded as she sucked in a breath through clenched teeth.

“Nasty…Very nasty,” Mauricio said, examining the leg. “May I?”

Darine nodded, and he began running a finger across the deep gouges in her muscle. “No infections, the bone seems intact. There's some residual mana here, so it's surely a ghoul’s doing.”

I squinted at the leg and couldn’t sense any many at all in the leg.

“Diagnostic spell,” Mauricio offered, noticing my curiosity.

I didn’t acknowledge him, scolding myself for attracting attention the first time I was in a room with mages and witches. There was no answer I could give that would be appropriate in front of the girls and continue the conversation, so I stayed silent and watched the rest of his spellwork.

The boy reminded me a lot of Quinten, someone who was timid until it came to his work. I spent the whole process of him examining Darine's leg, watching his expression shift as he hunched over the injury.

“That’s going to be expensive,” he said, straightening up.

“We have the roe,” Andria said. “And items to barter.”

“And free drinks,” Tayka added.

“Expensive in terms of mana,” Mauricio corrected. “I’d need to rebuild the entire leg all at once to ensure all the ligaments form and attach properly. I need time beforehand to review some workpapers because it’s been a while since I’ve done something this complex on the leg, taking away the time I can brew. And just in terms of mana, I’m all booked out by the knights for the next week at the very least, and this will take a full reserve plus crystals.”

“You don’t want to know what the price of the smallest crystal has risen to,” he added.

“I can brew for you,” I said, getting a warning look from Andria.

“Kind of you, but there’s a certain quality I need to uphold.”

I ignored the barb and moved on to the next solution. “What if we get the crystals for you?”

“Sorry, I want to help. I really do, but I can’t trust you with the few crystals I have. Not that you’ll steal them, but someone else might. And even then, I’m still booked out; using that much mana is strenuous, and I won’t be ready for my clients. I’ll make a space for you if there's a change, but the earliest I can do it is three weeks from now.”

“No, no. Thank you for taking a look,” Tayka said, shooing us out. “Sorry about all the questions. I’ll see you later?”

“Looking forward to it.”

We helped a sullen Darine to her feet and left the building, the chime of the bell following us out. Tayka marched down the street until no one else was with us. “Are you…insane? Offering to do alchemy? Do you have a death wish?”

Darine saw my confused look and sighed. “We don’t do any alchemy whatsoever outside the walls. It’s a short leap from that to being labelled a witch. It’s not worth it.”

“Oh.” In hindsight, it was a justified worry, but I’d been doing alright, telling everyone I could do alchemy without being branded a witch. At least out loud.

When we returned to the inn, I was repaid for my gaffe by being tied into an apron and handed a wet rag. I was to wipe down all the tables after people had finished their lunch and collect all the dishes to take to the back kitchen.

The constant back and forth, being waved down for requests and asked a hundred times if I was new, tired me more than avoiding a hoard of ghouls. When business picked up, and all the tables were filled, I was laden with plates and cups to take to tables. Maisie twirled through the chaos, as cheerful as ever, while Andria was similar to me, with a strained smile at constant risk of slipping.

I didn’t think I would survive the dinner rush.