The interior work was almost finished. A few final touches remained, but the crew had agreed to wait for Reichert's return before completing them, since several of the decisions involved his specific preferences and none of them were keen to guess wrong again.
While the others occupied themselves with small tasks, I drifted toward the entrance and stopped.
Beside the opening, tucked to one side where I hadn't noticed them earlier, sat a collection of potted plants — hydrangeas in yellow, pale blue, bright blue, and pink, vivid against the neutral canvas of the tent walls. Clearly intended to be planted as decoration flanking the entrance. Clearly not yet planted.
"Mister Benedict?" I called.
He appeared from somewhere inside with the slightly harassed expression of a man who has just been reminded of something he'd rather forgotten.
His eyes fell on the flower pots.
"By the goddess." He reached out, grabbed the nearest plant by the stem with more urgency than the situation called for, and immediately snapped a branch clean off.
We both looked at it.
"Let me handle these," I said, stepping forward before further damage could occur. "I think I can manage it."
He looked at the broken branch in his hand, then at me, and silently pressed both into my arms before retreating back inside with the quiet relief of a man who has successfully delegated a problem.
---
The evening sun had lost most of its ferocity by this point, settling into the softer light of late afternoon rather than the punishing blaze of midday. Gardening tools were arranged beside the plants — someone had thought ahead, at least. I selected a shovel and began digging.
I had never done this before, not personally. But I had watched the servants tend the rose palace gardens often enough to have absorbed the general principles, and the practical requirements — primarily strength and patience — were not beyond me. The holes went quickly. The planting itself required more care; the hydrangeas were fragile in the way of living things, and my strength needed to be managed down to something appropriate, applied with the delicacy of someone handling what they could easily break.
I worked through the row steadily, settling each plant into its hole, pressing the earth around the roots with careful hands.
Laughter reached me from somewhere between the stalls before the voices did.
"—finished with the imports, so what's the harm in a quick visit? You look absolutely exhausted, Gayathri, I'm not imagining it. And don't worry about mentioning you-know-who — you already told me he wasn't here today." Rewathi's voice, unmistakable even at a distance, carries the particular energy of someone who has already decided what they're going to do and is simply narrating it.
I looked up.
The three of them were moving between the stalls — Rewathi in full animated conversation, Gayathri in the middle with her arm linked through Sangya's, leaning into her slightly as they walked. The shadows under Gayathri's eyes were more visible now than they had been this morning. She needed rest, and I felt a renewed pang of guilt for how hard she had been pushed this week.
I looked back down at the hydrangeas and busied myself with the last plant.
*Please just walk past,* I asked the universe, with genuine feeling.
The universe declined.
"Oh — look at these! Look at these flowers, they're absolutely gorgeous!"
Rewathi's exclamation preceded her arrival by approximately two seconds. I heard her footsteps stop, heard the intake of breath, and knew I had no realistic option except to look up.
I stood, brushed the soil from my hands, and produced a smile.
"Good evening. Can I help you with something?"
Rewathi's gaze lifted from the hydrangeas to my face.
"Oh," she said. Then she stopped, apparently having lost the rest of the sentence.
Her cheeks flooded with colour — a deep, immediate pink that spread to her ears within seconds. Her eyes remained fixed on mine with an intensity that had nothing whatsoever to do with the flowers.
An extraordinary reaction to a gardener.
"Here we go," Gayathri said, with the tone of someone watching a very familiar thing happen.
"If you're done admiring the flowers," she added, with a light, pointed look at Rewathi, "we should keep moving."
Rewathi did not appear to hear this.
"What's your name?" she asked me, stepping forward with a directness that most people reserved for considerably longer acquaintances.
"Henry Delgon," I said.
"Henry." She seemed to test the name. "Would you like to have dinner with me, Henry?"
"That's unfortunately not possible," said a voice behind the three of them.
They turned. I looked past them.
Reichert had returned, appearing at the entrance to the stall area with the quiet, unhurried arrival of someone who has been there for slightly longer than anyone noticed. He was smiling — warmly, charmingly, with the full deployment of the polished merchant's social ease — but there was something underneath the smile that was faintly, specifically amused.
"We're welcoming our new crew member this evening," he said, directing his words at the three women with every appearance of genuine regret. "A small dinner — it's a guild tradition for new arrivals. I'd love to extend the invitation to all of you, but—" a small, sorrowful pause — "the merchant district closes to non-residents after sundown, doesn't it? What a shame. Another time, perhaps."
The regret was entirely unconvincing and entirely convincing at the same time. It was a masterclass in expression.
"Come on, Rewathi." Sangya's voice was quiet and final — the particular tone of someone who rarely speaks at length but, when they do, means every word of it. She took Rewathi's arm.
Rewathi went, though not without looking back once — at me, briefly, and then at Reichert for considerably longer. She could hardly be blamed for the comparison she was clearly making. Even my magically constructed appearance, however satisfying, could not entirely compete with someone who looked like Reichert simply existed as a standard of measurement.
The three of them disappeared between the stalls.
The silence that followed had a particular quality.
Reichert stood beside me and looked at the hydrangeas for a long moment.
"Good work," he said simply, and walked inside.
From within the tent came the sounds of his return — greetings from the crew, the immediate resumption of instructions, a few low groans, the sound of things being moved. I stood outside for a moment, and without quite intending to, found that I was smiling.
*This is going to be a long evening,* I thought, with something that was almost fond.
I finished watering the plants, put the tools away, and went in to help.
---
As it turned out, my concern was unnecessary. With Reichert directing and the full crew working, the remaining tasks were finished considerably faster than I had expected. Sheriya and Phoenix were left to keep watch over the stall and its contents overnight — a decision that had apparently already been their established role for the days since the stall was first set up.
"Will they be alright there alone?" I asked, as we made our way to the entrance.
Benedict gave me a look that bordered on pitying.
"Lad," he said, with complete conviction, "those two are the last thing in this world you should spend worry on."
He said it with such certainty that I decided to take his word for it.
Reichert's carriage was waiting at the fair grounds entrance, the driver already in position. The four of us climbed in, and it rolled out into the early evening streets of Arpa.
I leaned toward the open window.
The sky had transformed while we worked. The violent blue of the afternoon had softened into a wide canvas of gold and rose and deep amber, the colours layered over each other with the unpretentious extravagance of a sky that does this every evening and has never once considered toning it down. The air coming through the window had changed too — cooled, carrying with it the particular smell of warm earth releasing the day's heat. Clean, and faintly sweet without being heavy.
"Have to hand it to Arpa." Benedict's voice came from the other window, where he had positioned himself at a similar angle. He was watching the sky with the simple, uncomplicated appreciation of someone who has seen a great many skies and still notices the good ones. "It's a beautiful city. I've been to enough of them to say so with confidence."
He shook his head slowly.
"How someone looked at a desert edge and decided to build one of the great cities of the world right there — I will never fully understand it. But they did it, and they did it extraordinarily well. It's no wonder Selon is one of the only two empires standing in the whole world."
The carriage rolled on through the golden evening, and I watched the sky and said nothing, and thought about several things at once.