The apron was still tied around Tam’s waist when she came through the back door from the southern street, which meant she had forgotten to take it off again.

She always forgot when she was tired, and the particular tired from a working day had a specific exhaustion to it, something in her hands and behind her eyes that needed the walk home to settle.

When she arrived at the citadel, she untied the apron strings on her way through the corridor and folded it over her arm.

Pam was coming the other direction down the workers’ wing with a bundle of clean linen tucked under one arm and the expression she wore when she had been at work since dawn and was nearly done but not quite.

She stopped when she saw Tam.

"You’re later than yesterday," she said.

"There was more to do today!"

Pam looked at the apron.

She looked at Tam’s face, the one she had been looking for fourteen years. The tiredness was always there, but this time there was a glow to it.

"What do you actually do in there?"

Pam asked with a suspicious gaze, "I still find it hard to imagine they need an young girl to check machine parts, and even if they do, it shouldn’t take nearly eight hours of work."

Tam had known this conversation was coming the same way you know when it is going to rain.

"That’s what I do, just making sure the shape of the things are right before they go anywhere."

"That’s what you’ve been saying."

"Because that’s what it is."

Pam was quiet, in a way she had more to say and was choosing not to say it, which was the trust she had been giving since they moved to the citadel, still cautious.

"Go eat something," she said. "You look like you skipped the midday meal."

"I didn’t though?"

"Tam."

"I know, I know," Tam said. "I’m going!"

Pam went back the direction she had come, linen still under her arm, and Tam took the turns through the main corridor toward the kitchen.

The kitchen at that hour had the scent of bread and something savory under it.

The cook had her own rhythm in the room and she moved through it with efficiency, paying no attention to whoever was at the table as long as they stayed out of the way of the hearth.

The girls had found that out early.

They had been there every day since they arrived, which the cook accepted as a fact of life without either welcoming or objecting to it.

Beadu was at the part of the table with the best sightline to whatever the cook was doing.

She had been talking when Tam came in, saying something to Mab about whether the bread was different from yesterday’s or whether Beadu was just noticing it more.

Mab had food in front of her and was eating with the attention of who has not been able to eat comfortably for weeks and is still catching up to the fact hunger wasn’t a problem anymore.

Mod was at the far end of the table with more space around her than the others needed, which was how she always sat.

Leof was next to Beadu.

Hild had her back to the wall in the spot that let her watch both the door and the room.

Beadu looked up when Tam came through.

"You’re late," she said.

"Just a little," Tam said, and sat down.

The cook set a plate in front of her without being asked.

Mab tilted her head.

"Are you friends with the cook?"

"Yes? But I think she just pays attention to everyone that needs to be fed." Tam replied.

Meanwhile, Beadu’s bread was gone.

She had been eating it routinely since the first morning, making up for a long time.

"So," she said, not exactly to anyone. "We have been here several days."

She picked up the next piece and looked at it. "The food keeps coming, the rooms are still there. Nobody has come to us with a list of what they want or what we owe. Are we like, freeloaders?"

"You mean guests or residents," Tam giggled.

"I mean we haven’t been asked for anything."

Beadu put the bread down. "Look Tam, I know your trust them or whatever, but I lived enough to know there isn’t a free lunch in this world."

Mod quipped in, to the table rather than anyone at it, "It’s because we don’t know what we owe. Who knows what he might end up asking."

Hild moved her eyes from the door to Tam.

"Or what happens if he decides we are more trouble than we are worth."

Tam thought about that for a moment.

The honest answer and the reassuring answer were not the same, she had already learned that from Pam.

"He won’t," she said. "But I won’t tell you I have proof of it."

Hild waited.

"He has a a paper thingy," Tam said. "I have one, it says what you agree to do and what you get back. I think you’ll get the same thing."

She paused, working it out as she said it. "There’s payment in silver, per month, a place to stay, food, obviously. And the main thing, he promised that he won’t let anyone come and take us."

Beadu looked at Mod. Then at Tam.

"How much silver a month?"

"Uhhh... I get fifteen."

Beadu blinked, the surprise obvious on her eyes.

Whatever she had been expecting was way lower than that. She said nothing for a moment and picked the bread back up.

"And the work," Hild said.

"I guess it depends on what you can do? Mine’s physical work, very hard but also rewarding!"

Tam glanced at the cook’s back, then back at Hild. "I can’t go into it more than that here, but I do it, I come home, and this is the less scared I’ve been in years."

Hild pursed her lips in contemplation.

She looked like someone given the true version of something, deciding whether true was enough.

Tam tilted her head. "There’s also a book he gave me, about how your specific thing works. The one I have is very technical, I still have to re-read parts of it."

She paused.

"And there’s Aestrith."

Mab looked up from her plate.

Tam looked down, a small smile on her face. "She’s like a big sister, but the stern kind that hides her feelings. She’s been teaching me, how to use what you have without losing control, but it’s not like lessons exactly, more like she gives you something to do and watches until you can do it, and then the next thing. I’ve been doing that this entire time."

Leof had been still the whole time.

She spoke now, one question and nothing around it.

"Was she like Mab? When she was starting out?"

Tam thought about it honestly.

"I don’t know," she said. "She told me once that hers didn’t go quietly."

She looked at the table.

"That’s all she said."

Leof blinked, more confused than before the question.

Hild folded her arms.

"What if we decide we don’t want to stay."

"Ehh.. I don’t know for certain? I’ve never tried to leave."

Tam looked genuinely confused.

Nobody spoke for a moment.

The cook moved something from one surface to another.

Beadu then sighed, "You know, it just sounds too good to be truth."

She said it flatly, and then looked down at her plate.

"But fine. I’ll wait and see."

Mod just shook her head.

Tam looked around the table.

She thought about Beorn in the office with the ledger, either a charcoal or a quill going across the paper while he was listening to someone else talk, the way he kept writing when there were twenty other things on the same page.

Tam had watched that long enough to understand what it meant.

"He doesn’t forget about people."

She fiercely nodded. "He’s just really, really busy. Sometimes I wonder if he even sleeps at night, every time I check it the candles on his office are still burning..."

She did not make it bigger than it was.

"I don’t think you’ve been forgotten, he’s just giving some time for it."

Nobody said anything to that.

Mab looked at the window.

Beadu pulled her plate closer.

Leof looked at Tam from across the table, the patient and old-before-its-time gaze.

She did not ask anything more.

She just looked at Tam, and Tam looked back, and they held that for a moment while the kitchen went on around them.