~ KAEL ~
It was Bertha's idea, in the end — though she'd deny it if anyone asked, claiming she'd "only mentioned, in passing, that the Cracked Lantern had a perfectly good courtyard that nobody ever used."
Within a week, the courtyard had been swept, the tables dragged out from storage, and Bertha had — also "in passing" — cooked enough food to feed three times the number of people Kael had actually invited, which turned out to be exactly the right amount, because roughly three times the number of people he'd invited showed up.
Aldric and Vesna arrived first, Vesna carrying a small potted herb — rosemary, Kael noted, the same smell as her doorway — which she planted, without ceremony, in the corner of the courtyard "because every good gathering place needs something growing in it."
Pale arrived precisely on time, which Kael had learned meant she'd been watching from somewhere nearby for at least twenty minutes first.
Mott and Druven arrived together, mid-argument about harbour tariffs, which they continued for the better part of an hour before either of them seemed to notice they were technically off duty.
Master Renn arrived last, slightly out of breath, clutching a small wrapped parcel that turned out to be — to Kael's considerable surprise — a hand-bound ledger, blank, with his name embossed on the cover in careful gold lettering.
"I had it made," Renn said, looking faintly embarrassed. "For… personal accounts. You're always saying everyone should keep their own books in order. I thought—" he trailed off.
"It's perfect," Kael said, and meant it, turning the ledger over in his hands — good leather, careful stitching, the kind of object someone puts real time into.
"That one went somewhere too," Nyxara said quietly, just for him, and Kael felt it — small, warm, settling, not unlike the rose-burning but gentler. "Renn made something, with his hands, because he was grateful. I don't think he even knows that counts."
— ✶ —
~ NYXARA ~
She spent the evening doing what she'd once have called nothing, and now simply called being present — listening to a courtyard full of people who, two months ago, had been strangers, debt-collectors, conspirators, and a particularly unimpressed cat, and were now, somehow, something else.
Mott was explaining to Vesna, in considerable detail, the harbour commission's new audit procedures — procedures that existed, Nyxara knew, because Kael had designed half of them. Vesna was listening with the polite attentiveness of someone who didn't care at all about audit procedures but cared a great deal about the person describing them.
Druven, three cups of wine in, had cornered Aldric to ask — loudly, and not for the first time — whether the temple might consider a "practical wing" for people who wanted to be devout without all the robes.
"We have several practical wings," Aldric said, with the patience of a man who had had this conversation before. "They're called 'most of the temple,' Druven."
And Pale — Pale sat slightly apart, as she always did, watching the courtyard with an expression Nyxara had learned to read as something close to contentment, on a woman who rarely allowed herself anything so unguarded.
"Mr. Kael," she said, when Kael came to sit near her with a plate Bertha had pressed into his hands whether he'd wanted it or not. "I received an interesting letter this week. From the harbour commission of Velsk."
— ✶ —
~ KAEL ~
"Velsk," Kael repeated. "That's… three weeks' sail from here, isn't it?"
"Four, this time of year. Word travels slower than people, Mr. Kael, but it travels." Pale turned her cup slowly. "They'd heard — a much-distorted version, I imagine — about our harbour's rather sudden improvement in administrative efficiency. They wanted to know if the city had 'engaged a specialist.'"
"That's… flattering, I suppose," Kael said, slightly bemused. "But I'm not going anywhere. I have a perfectly good ledger here, and a cat, and—"
"I didn't say it as a recruitment, Mr. Kael," Pale said, and there was something careful in her tone now — the particular carefulness Kael had learned meant she was choosing her next words with unusual precision. "I mention it because the letter also included something else. A question, from their temple district. About whether our 'unusual theological development'—" she said the phrase with the faint distaste of someone quoting a poorly-written document, "—was something other cities should be… concerned about."
The courtyard, for a moment, felt very far away — the warmth of the fire, Druven's laughter, Biscuit asleep in a patch of lamplight — all of it suddenly background to something colder, arriving from very far away, carried on a four-week voyage in the form of a single, carefully-worded letter.
"Concerned," Nyxara repeated quietly. "That's an interesting word for a temple in another city to use, about something that happened here."
"Isn't it," Pale agreed. She set down her cup, and for once, her composure had something almost gentle underneath it — the look of a woman delivering difficult news at the best possible moment, because she'd learned, the hard way, that there was no good moment, only better and worse ones.
"I don't say this to spoil the evening, Mr. Kael. Quite the opposite. I say it because—" she gestured, briefly, at the courtyard, at all of them, "—whatever is coming, I find I'd rather face it having had this first. So." She picked her cup back up, and raised it, slightly, toward him. "Tonight, we celebrate. Tomorrow, we'll find out what 'concerned' means."