No. No. No no no no no no no. She's only barely recovered from last time they took her; she can't let them take her again.
If she draws her saber, she'll die. There's no doubt in her mind about that, outnumbered as she is and with her master right there. There's nothing she can do; he knows it, they know it, she knows it. They wouldn't do this any other way.
The flash of inspiration is more like a memory; the floating, disconnected kind that sometimes linger after... whatever it is that they do to her. It's never been quite like this before, but - she reaches into the Force, nudges it just so...
The burst of feedback - fear and rage and terror - overwhelms her; she reels, barely keeping her feet, distantly aware of the shouting, of her droid stepping forward to steady her. She ignores it as best she can, and continues nudging at the Force, carefully, carefully...
And then, suddenly, she's elsewhere.
The Gravemarsh at dusk: flat, waterlogged ground stretching in every direction, the air thick with the smell of rot and standing water. Twisted trees rise from the muck at wrong angles, draped with grey moss. The fort is visible maybe half a mile distant, torchlight already showing in the dying light.
The dead are already moving toward them. Not running — the marsh doesn't allow it — but wading, pulling themselves free of the sucking mud with the single-minded patience of things that don't tire. A dozen visible, and more shapes shifting in the fog further out. The nearest is perhaps thirty feet away.
She stumbles, catching herself with the Force, and then sees the sky; the last hues of sunset are captivating, but she's only distracted for a moment before more proximal concerns draw her attention. She gestures for the droid to climb on and drops her 'saber into her hand; she can already tell that she'll be more mobile over the mud than the creatures surrounding her, but the nearest concentration of living beings is half a mile off and that's if she doesn't detour to avoid the thickest clumps of the things. Hold tight, she signs, and sets off, the Force serving to stop her from sinking into the mud as she runs.
The dead turn toward her as she moves — or rather, toward the sound and vibration of her passage, heads tilting at wrong angles. They're slow but they're everywhere, rising from the water, and her path to the fort is not clean. Two clusters she'll have to go through or around, and around means deeper water.
At the fort wall, Merra has already spotted her — the lightsaber is unmistakable even at distance, a moving point of light in the darkening marsh. She's shouting down to the yard before she's finished processing what she's seeing.
Inside, the debate is short and loud. "Something's out there fighting them. Human. Alone. Has some kind of — Merra, what did you call it — " Kiril doesn't wait for the answer. Whatever she is, she's killing undead, not running from them, and she's heading for his gates. He makes the call: if she reaches the walls, they open. If she doesn't, the question is moot.
The torches on the wall multiply. They're watching.
Around would be smarter, even with the extra detour that the deeper water represents; she doesn't know what these things can do, and she's increasingly sure from the way the Force is wobbling and churning that something odd is happening here, even if she's not sure how to interpret the unfamiliar patterns. She's not in the mood to be judicious, though, she's in the mood to kill whatever threatens her. She goes through, lightsaber flashing.
The first cluster comes apart quickly — she's faster than they expect anything to be, and the lightsaber does what it does. But one gets a hand on her arm before she takes its head, and the touch lands wrong in the Force, a smear of something that isn't quite death and isn't quite life, profoundly unnatural. The second cluster is harder, mud sucking at her feet at the worst moment, and she takes a glancing impact to the shoulder before she's clear — nothing serious, but another layer of wrong sensation to manage.
She comes out the other side with maybe a hundred yards to the gate. The watching torches haven't moved.
The gate opens.
Kiril is in the yard when she comes through. The gate is heavy timber, moving on a counterweight — fast enough, but not instant. Two soldiers are hauling on the mechanism, watching over their shoulders.
She spins as she comes through the door, her momentum changing in a way that's clearly unnatural, ready to strike down any undead who make it through the door behind her. After half a beat she gestures impatiently at the gate mechanism and it flings itself out of the soldiers' hands, slamming the gate closed.
She turns to face Kiril, giving him a slightly quizzical inspection before gesturing for DZ to let go of her; the droid promptly does, and steps to the side, visible to him but still protected by Deskyl's striking range. Deskyl signs again, and she asks a question in a polite, deferential tone and a completely unfamiliar language.
The soldiers stare at their hands where the mechanism left them. One of them looks at Kiril. Kiril's expression has completed its revision and settled into something flat and unreadable.
He doesn't understand a word she's said. He looks at the droid — a reasonable guess for translator — and then back at her, and spreads his hands in the universal gesture for I don't know what you just said.
"Kiril," he says, touching his chest. Then he waits.
"Xaari Deskyl," the droid replies, gesturing to her companion.
Deskyl signs again, shifts her stance to hold her 'saber in a neutral guard, and closes her eyes. After a moment, the droid asks another question, just as polite and no more understandable.
"What do you want here?" He asks it plainly, not hostile, watching her closed eyes with the particular stillness of a man deciding whether to be alarmed. He adds, slowly: "Food? Shelter? How long?"
Deskyl signs as he speaks, just a beat behind, with her eyes still closed. The lightsaber in one hand doesn't seem to interfere, the tip bobbing in concert with the more complex gestures of her other hand.
"Want shelter. Want..." she gestures from him to herself, then touches the place on her face where a mouth would be.
"Talk," Kiril says. "You want to talk." He glances at Deskyl's signing hands, at the droid's gesturing, working it out. "She can't—" he stops, reconsiders, addresses the droid directly. "She doesn't speak."
"She doesn't speak," the droid nods. "How long, she doesn't speak." She taps her own chest, "can't speak. Want you talk."
He nods slowly, accepting this, and then looks around at his soldiers — still watching, still frozen in various postures of uncertainty — and makes a decision.
"Vass." The sergeant materializes from somewhere to his left. "Get them inside. Food, somewhere to sleep." He looks back at DZ. "Talk tomorrow. When there is—" he pauses, gestures vaguely at the dark, "—light."
Deskyl scowls, at this, and opens her eyes to have a brief signed exchange with the droid.
"Want you to talk," she reiterates, slightly more emphatically.
Kiril looks at her for a moment — the scowl, the emphasis — and then pulls up a crate from the side of the yard and sits down on it.
"Talk," he says, and waits.
"You talk," she replies, back to her original calm tone. "DZ-12-Q," she touches her chest indicatively, "get talk when you talk."
Something shifts slightly in Kiril's expression — understanding, and maybe a flicker of something that isn't quite relief. She's not demanding answers, she's offering to learn the language. That's a different kind of patience than he expected.
He talks. Nothing sensitive — he describes the fort, the marsh, the supply situation in plain practical terms, the kind of thing he'd tell any new arrival. He speaks at a measured pace, gesturing at things when he can: the walls, the gate, the building behind him. He keeps going until it seems like enough.
She's not going to get to fluency from one conversation, but she's a quick study, and she has a reasonable grasp of the very basics of the language by the time Deskyl starts visibly drooping, some forty minutes later. "Deskyl should sleep," she interjects when it happens. "Do you have - things, that are like talking but not talking, that I can see?"
"Books," Kiril says, and looks at Kolar, who has been standing in the shadows this entire time with the expression of someone developing a headache. "Get her books. Whatever we have."
He stands, and addresses DZ directly. "Sleep now. Talk more — tomorrow, next day. When you have words." He pauses. "You eat? Both of you?"
He nods, unsurprised — the droid not eating tracks — and says something over his shoulder. Brytha appears from the direction of the kitchens with the particular expression of someone who was already awake and already annoyed about it, carrying bread and something hot in a bowl.
She looks Deskyl over with sharp, assessing eyes, sets the food down on the crate Kiril vacated, and says something short and practical that DZ probably catches about half of.
Deskyl eats efficiently and without comment, looking somewhat like she's in danger of falling asleep where she sits; the bowl is clean by the time she's done, regardless. She stands, then, and gives Kiril a questioning look and a nod toward the fort's sleeping quarters.
Kiril glances in the direction she nodded — the correct direction — and his expression does something brief and controlled before he gestures for them to follow him. He shows them a small room, a storage space hastily repurposed with a bedroll, and steps back.
He says one word, pointing at himself, and then the door.
Deskyl is not, actually, going to wait for pleasantries rather than depositing herself in the bed the instant she sees it.
The door closes. In the corridor, Kiril stands for a moment looking at nothing in particular.
Kolar arrives with three books — a military manual, a religious text, and what appears to be a ledger of some kind — and holds them out to DZ with the air of someone completing a task they have feelings about.
DZ has, unfortunately, not managed to collect the phrase 'thank you' yet. She takes the books with a nod that's closer to a bow, instead, and retreats into the room to read them.
A few hours later, she pokes her head back out: is anyone watching the room?
Jens is, in the sense that Jens is doing maintenance on a hinge twenty feet down the corridor and has been for the past two hours. He doesn't look up.
The courtyard is empty except for the soldier on wall watch, who is watching the marsh and not the yard. The sky is clear and very full of stars — no light pollution to speak of, the Gravemarsh a black expanse beyond the walls. Quite beautiful, if you're the kind of thing that notices.
The marsh is quiet. Whatever was moving in it earlier has stilled.
The fort wakes incrementally. Brytha is first, before dawn, the smell of something cooking following shortly after. Then the watch change — boots on the wall, a murmured exchange. By the time real light is coming through the small window, there are voices in the yard, the ordinary sounds of a small garrison starting its day.
Kolar's voice is the loudest and the least happy about it.
Kolar is running the soldiers through morning drills with the particular intensity of someone who has decided that everything being normal is very important today. Her comments are pointed and frequent.
Closer: Piral and Merra are talking quietly in the corridor, maybe ten feet from the door. Merra is describing last night in low, rapid sentences — the lightsaber, the gate mechanism, the way she moved through the marsh. Piral is listening with the careful stillness of someone trying to decide how worried to be.
"She ate," Merra says, like this is relevant data. "Like a person. Just — ate soup and went to sleep."
"That's not reassuring," Piral says.
"I know, but — I don't know. It kind of is?"
Merra clocks her first — she's that kind of person — and goes still without quite stepping back. Piral turns, and his expression cycles through startled, uncertain, and settling on something carefully pleasant.
"Good morning," he tries.
They exchange a glance — the particular kind that carries a whole conversation in it.
"He'll be in his office," Merra says, and then, after a beat: "I can take you."
Merra blinks at the "ma'am" — it's clearly not a form of address she's used to — and then turns to lead the way without further comment.
Kiril is at his desk with a cup of something and the expression of a man who has already been thinking for several hours. He looks up when they appear in the doorway.
"Yes," he says, and sets down his cup. He glances at Merra — a clear dismissal — and gestures to the chair across from his desk.
"Where you're from," he says. "What she is. What you want here."
He pauses. "In that order."
Kiril is quiet for a moment, working through this.
"The injury," he says. "How does it affect her? What can she do, what can't she do?"
"Deafness," he repeats, and she can see him revising last night through that lens — the signing, the droid as intermediary, the closed eyes in the yard. "She was reading—" he stops. "Your hands. Last night."
A beat.
"What else should I know?"
"Noted." His tone is dry but not dismissive — the tone of a man adding something to a list he already started. "Is she likely to provoke, or only to respond?"
He nods, slowly, like he's settling something.
"The supply situation," he says. "You mentioned it. How much did you understand last night?"
Something in his expression shifts slightly at the precise recall — another thing being filed.
"Tell her—" he stops, reconsiders the phrasing. "Ask her, when she wakes. Whether she's willing to look at the foraging grounds." He picks up his cup again. "She'll have food and shelter regardless. I'm not going to starve someone who fought her way through the marsh."
He pauses. "Anything else I should know before she's up and moving around my fort?"
He considers this with the expression of a man who has decided to simply accept unusual things today.
"There's a stream," he says. "East wall. Jens would know the state of it." A pause. "Metal wire we have. What else?"
He nods, and the slight movement of his hand is a dismissal — not unfriendly, just complete. He has things to think about.
He looks up from whatever he was already thinking about.
"The truth," he says, after a moment. "Abbreviated. She's from elsewhere, she has abilities, she's here to recover and will contribute while she does." A beat. "Don't tell them she can read minds."
The day passes. Brytha brings food at midday without being asked, sets it inside the door without looking at Deskyl, and leaves. Jens fixes something on the window shutter that may or may not have needed fixing. Merra's voice passes in the corridor twice.
Kolar drills the soldiers in the yard for most of the afternoon. She drills them harder than usual.
The yard goes quieter as she crosses it — not silent, but the quality of the noise changes. Kolar stops mid-correction and watches. Torand, to his credit, keeps his eyes forward for almost five full seconds before looking.
The soldier on watch in the tower is Merra, as it happens. She clocks them on the stairs and shifts to make room without being asked.
Deskyl nods an acknowledgement and turns her attention to the gravemarsh beyond the walls.
Merra glances at DZ, then back at the marsh, then at DZ again.
"She's looking for something specific?" she asks, quietly enough not to carry.
Merra accepts this with a small nod, the nod of someone who doesn't entirely understand but recognizes useful information when she hears it.
"It's quieter in the day," she offers, after a moment. "The dead. They move more at night." A pause. "We don't know why."
Merra watches the exchange with the careful stillness of someone who has decided that asking is probably fine.
"Is she alright?"
Merra looks out at the marsh for a moment.
"She fought through that—" a small gesture toward the marsh "—injured."
It's not quite a question.
"No," Merra agrees, with the tone of someone updating a prior assessment. She's quiet for a moment. "She should probably know — we get waves. Of them. The dead. Not every night, but sometimes thirty, forty at once. Piral can only do so much."
"No pattern we've found." A pause. "Piral thinks it's the marsh. Something shifting. But he doesn't—" she stops. "He'd know better than me."
"Infirmary, mostly. Or the yard." She glances at Deskyl. "He's not — he won't be difficult. About talking to her."
Kolar doesn't stop. If anything, her corrections get slightly more precise, her voice a fraction flatter. The soldiers are very focused on being focused.
Torand fumbles a sequence he's probably done a hundred times and gets a short, cutting remark for it. He resets and tries again.
Deskyl signs a comment to DZ, and continues back to her room.
The droid emerges again a few minutes later to bring a report to Kiril: in addition to the wide (ideally copper) and waterwheel, Deskyl will need a magnet, the larger the better, to make the charger she needs. The project would also benefit from flat pieces of at least two different metals, some acid (vinegar or citrus juice will do), some scraps of leather the same size as the metal pieces, and a few containers large enough to hold everything, made of wood or ceramic, but those aren't as important.
Kiril listens, and writes it down with the air of a man who has decided that understanding is a secondary concern to having an accurate list.
"The magnet will be the difficulty," he says. "We have iron. Copper wire — some. Vinegar." He looks at the list. "Jens will know if there's anything else." A pause. "What did she say? Watching the drills."
DZ needs to think about that one for a moment; Deskyl hadn't specifically told her that that particular interaction was private but the Sith is clearly working on the assumption that the locals won't understand her signing. On the other hand, it does seem less likely that someone will end up provoking her if Kiril knows about her concerns. "She was warning me to stay away from your lieutenant, sir. She would take it as a provocation if I was damaged."
Something in Kiril's expression shifts — not surprise exactly, more like a piece settling into place.
"Vass," he says, correcting the rank absently. "Sergeant." He's quiet for a moment. "She read that from watching two minutes of drills."
It's not quite a question either.
He's quiet for a moment longer than usual.
"I see," he says, in the tone of a man making a significant number of rapid adjustments. He looks down at his list. "I'll speak to Vass."
Kiril finds Kolar after the drills, in the small armory where she goes to think.
"The droid came to see me," he says, and closes the door.
Kolar doesn't say anything.
"She reads emotions. The stranger. Passively, apparently — not something she chooses to do." He lets that sit for a moment. "Vass. I need you to be predictable right now."
"I'm always predictable," Kolar says.
"You're always consistent. That's not the same thing." He leans against the wall. "She's not a threat to how this fort runs. She's here to recover. She'll contribute while she does."
"She threw the gate mechanism."
"Yes."
"With her mind."
"Yes."
Kolar is quiet for a moment. "And you're comfortable with that."
"I'm practical about it," Kiril says, which is a different answer. "She fought through the marsh injured, alone, protecting a droid. She didn't come here to take anything. If she'd wanted to take something, we couldn't have stopped her." He picks up a whetstone from the bench, sets it down again. "I need you to give her nothing to respond to. Can you do that?"
The silence is long enough to be its own kind of answer.
"Yes," Kolar says finally.
The sunset is unhurried and extravagant — reds bleeding into orange, the Gravemarsh below turned briefly beautiful, the standing water catching the light like scattered coins. A few birds cross the sky in the middle distance, silhouettes against the color.
From up here the fort is very small. The sounds of it — Brytha clattering in the kitchen, Torand getting a correction from someone, the ordinary texture of people living in close quarters — rise and then fall away under the wind.
The stars come out the same way they did last night — all at once, it seems, once the last color drains from the horizon. The marsh settles into its nighttime sounds: water, wind, something distant that might be animal and might not be.
Jens is in the watchtower when she comes down that way. He doesn't look up from whatever he's mending.
She's already aware that they have him watching her; it's relatively inoffensive as such things go.
She takes a moment to look out over the marsh, squints in concentration, and gets the night watchman's attention to point to a particular copse of trees.
The watchman — young, probably Torand — follows her pointing finger to the treeline, peers into the dark, sees nothing. He looks back at her uncertainly, then looks again more carefully.
Jens has also, without appearing to move, ended up where he can see what she's pointing at.
Torand shifts his weight, uncomfortable with not knowing what to do with this information. He looks at Jens.
Jens looks at the treeline for a long moment. "Happens," he says, quietly. "Sometimes they come from there. Sometimes nothing." He glances at DZ. "She can see it from here?"
Jens absorbs this without visible reaction, which is probably the most informative response he could have given — he's filing it the same way Kiril files things, carefully and without comment.
Torand is less practiced. "Can she tell if something's coming?"
Torand nods, with the slightly too-quick energy of someone grateful to have actionable information even if it's vague. He looks at Jens.
"I'll tell Vass," Jens says, and is gone with the particular quietness that is apparently just how he moves.
Torand accepts this with a nod and returns to watching the marsh, standing a little straighter than he was before.
Kolar arrives twenty minutes later, quiet for someone her size. She looks at the treeline, looks at Deskyl, looks at Torand.
"What exactly did she see?" she asks DZ, without preamble.
Kolar is quiet for a moment, looking at the treeline with the expression of someone translating unfamiliar information into familiar categories.
"The dead come from there sometimes," she says. Not to DZ, not to Deskyl specifically — just saying it to the dark. "We don't know why that spot." She pauses. "How long has it been building?"
Kolar nods, slowly. She's quiet for long enough that it might be the end of the conversation.
"Piral should know," she says finally. And then, with visible effort that she probably thinks doesn't show: "She did well, seeing it."
Deskyl gives Kolar an assessing look that's out of place from the rest of the conversation, then nods at DZ's translation.
"She says she'll go with you if you intend to investigate it tonight."
Kolar considers the offer for a moment — weighing it, probably, against several things at once.
"Not tonight," she says. "If nothing's coming yet, we watch. Piral paralyzes them when they come, soldiers finish them." A beat. "That's how we do it here."
"Yes ma'am," DZ offers, before translating. "She does need to get back to bed if she's going to go foraging in the morning."
Kolar nods. No argument, no comment on the weakness implied by needing to leave. She's already turned back to the treeline.
Torand watches her go and recalibrates something he couldn't name. The marsh is quiet in the direction she was pointing.
She stays a while longer, looking out on the marsh and occasionally signing something to DZ. It's still quiet by the time she leaves for bed.
Around the third hour of the night, a small wave — eight of them — comes from that treeline. Piral paralyzes four; the soldiers handle the rest. One soldier takes a minor injury, nothing serious. The whole thing is over in under ten minutes.
In the morning, the fort is running on slightly less sleep than usual but otherwise normal.
Deskyl rises with the rest of the fort, this morning, and when Merra is done with her breakfast, she goes to find her.
Merra is finishing the last of her breakfast in the yard, sitting on a crate in the early morning light. She clocks Deskyl's approach and stands, unhurried.
She waits, since starting a conversation seems like DZ's job.
"Yes," Merra says, and tosses the rest of her cup into the dirt. She looks at Deskyl directly, the assessing look of someone who spends a lot of time judging terrain. "How far can she go? In the marsh."
Merra accepts this without blinking — she's a practical person — and nods toward the gate. "There's a path. Mostly solid ground. I'll show you where it stops being reliable."
Merra leads them out through a smaller side gate, one Deskyl probably hadn't seen yet — a sally port, kept clear for exactly this kind of small group movement. The path beyond is real, if narrow: raised ground winding between the worst of the standing water, marked in places with stakes that have seen better days.
The marsh in daylight is a different thing than the marsh at dusk. Noisier — birds, insects, something splashing distantly. The fog has mostly lifted. The stand of trees from last night is visible to the northeast, maybe a quarter mile off the path.
Merra walks like someone who has done this many times and stopped finding it interesting, eyes moving constantly.
Deskyl takes the rear, with DZ in the middle; the chance of them being attacked is negligible but she wants to be able to catch the droid if she slips.
"Can you tell us more about what kinds of supplies the fort would find useful, ma'am?"
"Meat, mostly," Merra says, not turning around. "We have grain still. Salt. What we can't get is fresh anything — greens, fruit. Piral says people will get sick without them eventually." A pause. "Game is thin. I don't know if something's driving it off or if we've just hunted this stretch too hard."
"Hm." Merra considers this, then gestures ahead to where the path narrows and the water on either side gets deeper. "This is where we usually turn back unless there's a reason not to. Past here the ground gets unpredictable."
Merra settles into a waiting posture that suggests she's done a lot of waiting in this marsh — weight back, eyes moving, comfortable with stillness.
After a moment: "She always move like that?"
Merra watches without comment. A heron crosses overhead, slow and unhurried, headed roughly the direction Deskyl went.
"Piral will want to know what she found," she says eventually. "About the game being overhunted. He worries about the supplies."
Merra is quiet for a moment.
"There's a pond there," she says, mostly to herself. "We didn't know that."
"Mm." Merra watches Deskyl work with the focused attention she probably gives most things. "How large an area can she sense?"
Merra absorbs this with the stillness of someone doing arithmetic. Several miles covers a significant portion of the marsh. She doesn't say anything for a moment.
"Kiril will want to know that too."
The marsh is quiet except for the ordinary sounds. Merra watches, patient, and doesn't try to fill the silence.
The heron has landed somewhere in the middle distance, which is probably its own kind of confirmation about the pond.
Merra takes the fish with the matter-of-fact air of someone who has carried stranger things, and turns back toward the path.
"Marsh samphire, when we can find it. Cattail roots. Some mushrooms, but Brytha's particular about which ones." She pauses at a clump of vegetation at the path's edge and points. "That's samphire. There's less of it close to the fort than there used to be."
"Flavor," Merra says, with the faint dry tone that's probably what her humor looks like when she's being careful. "She has opinions."
Merra glances back at Deskyl with something that might, briefly, be amusement. "I'll tell Brytha. She'll either appreciate it or take it as a challenge." A pause. "Probably both."
Merra's mouth does something small at that — not quite a smile, but close — and she turns back to the path.
"Didn't know there were ducks nesting out this far," Merra says, watching the pocket. She sounds less like she's making conversation and more like she's updating a map in her head.
"She says you shouldn't take any more from that nest, she intentionally left a few to hatch. But she should be able to get more at least somewhat regularly."
Merra nods. "Good practice." A beat, and something in her tone shifts slightly — less scout's report, more person. "She knows this kind of thing. Hunting, foraging."
It's not quite a question.
"Common sense isn't common," Merra says, and leaves it there.
The fort gate is visible ahead. She's been keeping an eye on it the whole walk back, probably without thinking about it.
Brytha looks at the fish first, then the eggs, then Deskyl, with the rapid assessment of someone calculating meals.
"Hm," she says, which covers a lot of ground. She takes the fish, looks at the size of them, looks at Deskyl again. "There's more where these came from?"
"Good." Brytha sets the fish down with the care of someone who intends to use all of it. "Tell her—" she stops, looks at Deskyl directly instead, making a visible adjustment. "Thank you. This helps."
Deskyl nods agreeably and signs: "She says you're welcome, ma'am." And, after a beat, "would you like to show her the mushrooms you like to use?"
Brytha considers this for a moment, then wipes her hands on her apron and goes to a shelf, returning with three different dried mushrooms — small quantities of each, carefully stored. She sets them on the counter and watches Deskyl's face.
Brytha listens to this with the focused attention of someone taking notes mentally. She picks up the first mushroom, looks at it, sets it down.
"How long to reestablish?"
"Fair enough." Brytha puts the first mushroom back with the careful deliberateness of someone revising a plan. "The bitter ones — show me, when she finds them. I'll decide if they're worth the trouble."
Brytha gives Deskyl one more assessing look — the kind that seems to be recategorizing her from 'unknown quantity' to something more specific — and turns back to her fish.
"Not that I know of," Merra says. "Kiril might want a report. But that can wait."
She pauses, then adds, with the careful neutrality of someone delivering information they think is relevant: "Piral usually has a quiet hour before midday, if she wants to talk to him about the marsh."
"Infirmary," Merra says. "He's usually there in the mornings. Should be free unless someone's hurt."
The infirmary is small and smells of herbs and something astringent underneath. Piral looks up from a cabinet he's reorganizing when they appear in the doorway — takes in Deskyl, takes in DZ, and puts down what he's holding with the deliberate calm of someone deciding to be calm.
"Good morning," he says.
"Yes," he says, and means it on both counts. He pulls a stool out from under the cabinet and offers it — to Deskyl, specifically, a small deliberate courtesy — before leaning against the counter himself.
"The foraging first, if that's alright. Then the other."
Piral exhales — not dramatically, just a small release of something he's been holding. "That's — good. That's better than I expected." He looks at Deskyl directly. "The greens especially. I've been watching for deficiency symptoms."
A pause. "How confident is she in that assessment?"
He nods slowly, filing this. "And the combat situation. She's willing to talk about that?"