The five girls stood awkwardly in the office in the particular way people stand when they do not know what a room expects of them.

Mab was looking at everything. The ledger on the desk, the lamp at its position, the crutches leaned against the table where Aestrith was standing.

Beadu had already taken stock of the exits, namely one door and if she was feeling bold, the window. Leof was by her side.

Mod was slight away from the group, watching the walls rather than anything in particular.

Hild was at the front, her arms loose at her sides rather than folded.

Tam was to the side, as if knew where to stay in this room.

Beorn had a stack of documents on the desk in front of him. He looked at the girls for a moment, considered how to start, and began.

"You are being brought into a formal department."

He continued. "The Arcane Department, short for Magical Engineering and Arcane Department. That’s what it will be called in the administrative records and what it will be referred to going forward."

Mab looked at Beadu. "Isn’t that name too big?" she said.

"It really is," Beadu agreed at once.

Beorn tacitly ignored them. "The department has two kinds of work. The first is simple, to use your abilities in service of Ashmark’s operations. Be it production, construction, anything where what you can be efficiently applied."

He let that sink in for a moment. "The second is research. I want to study what your abilities actually are, how they work, how they interact with each other and with the world. I reckon nobody in recent centuries have promoted this sort of development, so we’ll be starting fresh."

Mod’s eyes squinted in suspicion. "That’s very vague? What research even means on practice?"

"That depends on what there is to find."

Beorn calmly replied. "It starts with documenting what each of you can do under certain conditions."

Hild cut in without a care, "So that means you are our boss?"

"In a way, yes, but as this protectorate seat. The head of the department will be Aestrith."

Hild looked at Aestrith.

Aestrith hadn’t moved during any of this, still at the edge of the desk.

She glanced at Beorn with the corner of her eyes, "Despite the fact I was supposed to be only an engineer and a bodyguard, not this whatever janky title."

Beorn shrugged. "The Secretary of Arcane and Magical Arts covers both of those things, which means everything you were promised is accounted for in it."

He opened the first document on the stack.

"You were right and so am I."

Aestrith deadpanned, in the way she knew he was technically correct and somehow worse for it. She said nothing more.

Hild was watching them a extremely focused expression.

Whatever she took from the exchange, she kept behind her face. Then she turned back to Beorn.

"Then she’s the boss and you are the big boss?" Hild said.

"That’s... a way to see it."

Hild nodded once. The nod was the kind that confirmed her prior suspicions.

Beorn sighed and moved to the terms. "Housing is the wing you have been in, food from the kitchen. Neither of those changes." He looked at the documents in the stack. "The monthly salary is one mark per member."

The room stopped. Or rather, the six girls on it stopped breathing, too shocked to even realize it.

Beadu almost choked, "A whole mark?!"

"Correct," Beorn said.

"Every month."

"Also correct."

Beadu snapped her neck and looked at Mod.

Mod did not look back, but her expression was as shocked.

Mab’s face widened, as if something arrived larger than she had been preparing for, and she didn’t even bother to hide it.

"That’s the same for all of us?" Mod finally found enough words to ask.

"At the start, yes." Beorn said. "But that can change over time."

He looked at Tam. "Tam’s different, one mark per month, plus the fifteen silver from her prior contract. The extra silver recognizes the work she has been doing before this department existed. In other words, your salary can increase depending on your work merits."

Tam looked down at the desk, too embarrassed to look at the other girls.

"Thank you, my lord." she said, and it came out quieter than she meant it to.

Beorn moved to the contracts. He placed one in front of each of them and described what the documents said.

The housing.

The food.

The terms of protection.

The salary.

The expectations of work and research.

The chain of authority.

He indicated the signature line at the bottom.

Hild picked up her contract and tried to read it. She barely managed the start before she gave up on it. "I guess at this point I can only trust whatever you say, and that there’s no tricks in here."

It was hard for Beorn to say if what she felt was inevitable acceptance or a budding sense of hope.

Hild went to sign.

She stopped at the line.

She set the quill down.

"I don’t know how write" she said.

Beadu added, "Me neither~"

Leof and Mab shook her head once.

Mod said nothing.

That was its own answer.

Beorn looked at the group. Then at the contracts. He opened the ledger and made a brief note in the margin.

"I’ll need to get a teacher for you girls..." he said in the volume he used for supply shortages.

He did not look up.

"For now, a thumbprint on the line is sufficient."

He showed them the simple process, a thumb pressed to the small ink block at the corner of the desk, then to the signature line.

The contract was valid either way. The signature would come later, when they had one to give.

Beadu looked at the ink block. Then at the paper. Then at Beorn.

She pressed her thumb to the ink and then to the page, lifted it, and looked at the print.

"That’s a very unimpressive way to start a department," she said.

"Welcome to the bureaucratic world." Beorn said.

She tilted her head and set the contract on the desk.

The others went in sequence.

Hild was last, she pressed her thumb to the page without hesitation and placed the contract on the stack without looking at it again.

Tam picked up the pen and signed her name on the new contract without making anything of it.

Beorn looked at the stack, then at the room.

"Now the interesting part."

He clapped with a smirk, "I need records of what each of you can do, so we can start with the documentation and I can theorize the sort of tasks and practice exercises for the future."

He closed the ledger.

"One at a time," He looked at each of them briefly.

"That’s what the Arcane Department is about," he said. "We start now."