Beadu had been talking since the time they left the citadel, and Beorn had been answering with single words for nearly the same amount of time. The fact that the conversation still continued said more about Beadu than either of them needed to state aloud.

"I’m saying it’s been days."

She whined, stepping around a puddle with cautiousness that did not match the rest of her behavior. "Mod and Mab have the foundry, Hild has the marsh work. Even Leof trains with Aestrith now, which is not exactly a job, but at least it’s a responsibility."

She glanced toward him, then back down the road. "Meanwhile I’ve been attending lessons, doing exercises, and eating your food. Which I appreciate. I do appreciate it, but I’ve also been feeling like a bum."

"Mm," Beorn said.

"I’m not complaining!"

She added immediately, sounding exactly like someone complaining while trying to appear reasonable. "I just want you to know I’m not ignorant. So when you finally tell me what I owe, it won’t surprise me."

"Right."

"Unless this is the part where you tell me now."

She narrowed her eyes slightly. "Because I’ve been preparing for that conversation."

"For how long?" he idly asked.

"Since Hild started at the marsh." 𝗳𝚛𝗲𝕖𝚠𝚎𝚋𝗻𝗼𝕧𝗲𝐥.𝚌𝚘𝐦

"Quite some time."

"Ughh, stop playing with words." she snorted.

Beorn let the silence sit.

The road curved south ahead of them, and beyond the bend the agricultural zone came into view. The reclaimed marshland had been divided into compact plots of dark soil, still heavy with moisture from the drainage work. Even at a distance the crop rows were visible, laid out with intentional spacing.

At the southwest corner, the V3 engine sat on its timber platform, running through its steady pumping cycle. Water moved through the drainage channel beside it with the flow of an engineered system.

Beadu stopped talking the moment she saw it.

Her eyes moved from the plots to the engine, then to the drainage channel carrying water away from land that, until recently, had been useless marsh ground.

"That’s a very small field," she noted.

"We started small," Beorn replied. "Come look at it."

The soil near the plots was dark as wet clay. When Beadu stepped onto it, the ground compressed slightly under her boots.

She looked down, sighed with visible disappointment, then continued forward anyway, accepting a necessary but unpleasant cost.

The first plot had a grain crop. Local name Stearne. Beorn’s fragments of memory identified it as something very close to oats. Pale-gold seed heads hung from stalks at mid-growth, not yet fully mature.

The second plot contained Nepe. Thick leafy tops spread above the soil while pale rounded roots pushed upward beneath the surface. Turnips, effectively.

At the far edge sat a smaller section of Bēan plants, broad-leafed legumes intended as much for soil recovery as for food production.

"Stearne," Beorn said, indicating the grain. "That’s the grain you’ve been eating in the bread."

He pointed toward the next section.

"Nepe. The winter root plants."

Then toward the final plot.

"Bēan restores nutrients to the soil before the next planting cycle."

She fell quiet.

Beorn recognized the expression immediately. Her prepared expectations had collided with new information, and now she was restructuring the problem in her head. Maybe she had expected a debt discussion.

Instead she was standing in mud beside a crop field.

"Right," she said slowly. "So what do you actually want?"

Beorn pointed toward the Stearne rows.

"Naturally, we will try out your abilities in an agricultural field."

He focused on one section of grain.

"Can you accelerate one row without affecting the others beside it?"

Beadu looked at the stalks. They stood motionless in the windless air, growing at their normal pace because nothing was directing them.

"Mm, I can try," she tilted her head and considered the task.

Then she looked down at the mud coating the sides of her boots. The soil had the thick adhesive texture common to recently drained marshland. Anything left standing in it collected half the field in layers.

Beorn waited patiently.

Beadu exhaled sharply, then stepped into the Stearne plot. One boot sank, then the other. The wet soil compressed around each step with a sucking resistance that clearly offended her on a personal level.

She faced the nearest row of grain.

Beorn watched her posture change first. The focus moved through her shoulders, then her hands, then into the crop itself.

The grain responded.

The movement was subtle at first.

Just growth accelerating beyond normal biological pace.

The stalks extended upward by inches over seconds instead of days. Seed clusters thickened and ripened as the change progressed down the row, the color deepened gradually from pale gold toward full maturity, advancing exactly where she directed it.

The next rows did not change.

Beorn immediately opened the ledger and began writing, the quill spreading across the page while he tracked timing, strain, and precision.

"It works," Beadu announced from inside the plot.

She looked down at the mud around her boots.

"This is still terrible."

"One row."

Beorn nodded, studying the clear contrast between the accelerated grain and the untouched rows nearby. "Approximately four minutes."

"I know how long it took."

"I’m recording it for reference."

She released the domain. It broke cleanly.

Then she stepped back out of the plot.

Her boots looked worse now.

Beadu stared at them for a moment, accepted reality with visible resignation, then looked back at Beorn.

"I’m hungry," she whined.

Without comment, Beorn reached into the supply bag he carried and removed a wrapped meal.

Bread, dried meat.

He handed it to her.

Beadu looked at the food, then at him.

"Mmmmm."

"Yes?"

"... thanks."

Beorn lightly shook his head, "You’re welcome."

She accepted the meal and unwrapped it.

Then she ate in silence for almost forty seconds, which might have been the longest uninterrupted silence Beorn had experienced from her under any circumstances.

Behind her, the transformed Stearne row stood visibly more mature than the surrounding grain.

Beorn looked at the crops while he added another line to the ledger before partially closing it.

One row. Four minutes. Observable fatigue. Immediate hunger.

The agricultural zone was planned for multiple plots at full capacity. Even rotating usage daily, even distributing the workload carefully, the numbers still failed at any scale that could be used.

He had suspected that before they arrived.

The purpose of the test had never been to determine whether Beadu alone could feed Ashmark through manual acceleration.

The real question came afterward.

"Now onto your real task," he remarked.

Beadu swallowed another bite and looked at him suspiciously.

"Other than growing plants?"

Beorn looked across the reclaimed fields. Stearne. Nepe. Bēan.

Every crop depended on environmental conditions. Drainage, reliable water access, nutrient-rich marsh soil, shelter from the harsher conditions farther beyond Ashmark.

Twenty miles into the Badlands, none of those advantages existed.

"What if the task isn’t making plants grow faster?" he asked.

Beadu stopped chewing.

"What I actually need," Beorn continued, "is a plant capable of surviving where these cannot."

He gestured toward the grain rows. "These crops survive because we reshaped the environment to support them. We can’t do that everywhere."

He paused, organizing the idea into simple words. "But if you can influence more than growth... if you can influence the plant itself, then maybe we can change where a crop survives."

Beadu had gone completely stiff now.

Her eyes fixed on the accelerated grain row, but Beorn could tell her attention had moved beyond the field itself. She was following the idea step by step, thinking where it might lead before deciding whether it was possible.

"Change the plant," she tested the idea aloud. "Can I do that?"

Beorn met her eyes.

"I’m confident that you can."

She looked back toward the grain.

"How?"