Chapter 44 - 43 — Flowers
He didn’t know where the Knight Order’s headquarters was.
This was a solvable problem — Universal Perception could find Vera’s mana signature eventually if he walked enough of the city, and failing that he could ask at the guild hall or find a city map or simply follow the concentration of military infrastructure that the civic quarter suggested was in the northern district.
He was walking toward the northern district when he heard her.
Not Vera — the girl.
He heard her before he saw her because her voice had the specific quality of someone who was trying very hard to be heard and was not being heard and was trying harder because of it, the particular escalating effort of someone whose situation required results and was not producing them.
"Fresh flowers — sir, fresh flowers, please — only two copper for a bundle, they’re very fresh, I picked them this morning—"
He turned the corner.
She was young — fourteen, maybe fifteen, with the specific combination of determination and visible distress that came from having a task that needed completing and finding the world uncooperative about it. A basket over her arm with flower bundles arranged carefully, the care of the arrangement suggesting she’d taken it seriously, had thought about which ones went together and how to present them.
The flowers were good.
Nobody was stopping.
The street was the specific type of busy that produced a specific type of indifference — not cruelty, just the accumulated self-absorption of people with their own destinations and their own timelines who had processed the girl and her flowers as background noise and moved on.
She stepped forward to intercept a well-dressed man.
He walked around her without looking at her.
She stepped toward two women talking.
One of them made a dismissive gesture without interrupting the conversation.
She tried a merchant coming out of a nearby shop.
"I don’t need flowers," he said, not unkindly but not stopping either, already past her.
She stood in the street with the basket over her arm and her careful flower arrangements and the specific expression of someone recalculating — how many more she needed to sell, how much time she had, what options remained.
Then someone coming the other direction stepped around her without looking and the movement pushed her slightly sideways and she stumbled and caught herself but one of the flower bundles slipped from the basket and landed on the street.
She bent to pick it up.
The person who had pushed her didn’t look back.
Cidd stopped.
She looked up from picking up the bundle.
Saw him standing there.
Did the assessment children did — threat, intent, what kind of person, what was required — in about two seconds.
He looked at the flowers.
At the basket.
At her face.
"Where’s the Knight Order headquarters," he said.
She blinked.
"Northern district," she said, automatic, the information coming out before she’d decided to give it. "Past the civic quarter, left at the fountain with the three horses, straight until you see the training grounds. The main gate is on the east side."
"Thank you," he said.
He looked at the flower bundles.
"How many do you have," he said.
She looked at the basket. Counted quickly. "Fourteen bundles."
"How much."
"Two copper each. But I can do—"
"Twenty-eight copper total," he said.
She looked at him.
"I’ll take all of them," he said.
Her expression went through several things rapidly — surprise, suspicion, recalculation, something that was trying not to be hope because hope was expensive when you weren’t sure it was warranted.
"All of them," she said.
"Yes," he said.
"You don’t—" she looked at the basket— "there are fourteen bundles. That’s a lot of flowers."
"I know," he said.
"You need fourteen bundles of flowers."
"No," he said honestly. "But you need to sell them."
She looked at him.
At Kuro on his shoulder, which she’d been carefully not addressing since she’d noticed it.
Back at him.
"Twenty-eight copper," she said.
He reached into his pocket. Produced the coins. Set them in her hand with the specific care of someone who understood that the transaction had a weight beyond its monetary value.
She looked at the coins.
Looked at the basket.
"Where do you want them," she said.
"Keep them," he said.
She stared at him.
"Sell them again," he said. "Or give them away. Or take them home." He looked at the street. "I don’t need flowers. I needed to know where the Knight Order is."
"That information was free," she said.
"The information was," he agreed. "The stopping was worth something."
She looked at the coins in her hand.
At the basket with its careful arrangements.
At him.
"Thank you," she said. Very quietly. The specific quiet of someone for whom those words were covering more than their usual ground.
"Good luck," he said.
He walked north.
Kuro watched him walk.
Or rather, Kuro was on his shoulder watching the street ahead, but the tail moved slightly in the specific way it moved when something had registered with it.
"Don’t," Cidd said.
Kuro blinked.
"It’s just buying flowers," he said.
Kuro looked forward.
The tail moved again.
"It’s nothing remarkable," he said.
Kuro continued looking forward with the gold eyes and the patient intelligence and the specific quality of something that knew better and was being polite about it.
He walked north.
Behind him the girl stood in the street for a moment with twenty-eight copper in her hand and a basket of flowers on her arm.
Then she turned in the direction she’d come from.
Walked quickly.
Found the alley she’d been using as a base of operations — a narrow space between two buildings, not visible from the main street, the specific geography of somewhere that worked for a purpose that didn’t want visibility.
A man was there.
Older. The specific quality of someone who operated in the margins of things, not dangerous in the obvious way but not the kind of person you wanted to owe something to. He looked at her when she came into the alley and then at her hands.
"Well," he said.
"All of them," she said. "Sold all of them."
His expression moved. "How."
"Someone bought them all at once," she said. "Just—" she stopped. "Just bought all of them."
He held out his hand.
She looked at the coins.
At his hand.
She put them in it.
He counted them.
Nodded.
Pocketed them.
"Good," he said. "Tomorrow you’ll take twice as many."
She looked at the empty basket.
"Okay," she said.
He left the alley.
She stood in it for a moment.
Looked at her hands, empty now.
Looked at the direction the man had gone.
Looked at the direction the man with the lizard had gone.
She stood there for a moment with the specific stillness of someone who was thinking about something they didn’t have the framework to complete yet.
Then she picked up her basket and went back to the main street.
Tomorrow she would take twice as many.
The fountain with the three horses was exactly where the girl had said it was.
He turned left.
The street changed quality — wider, more deliberate, the architecture on either side shifting toward the functional monumentality of military infrastructure. The buildings were well-maintained in the specific way of institutions that had both the resources and the mandate to keep things well-maintained. The people on the street were different too — more uniform, more purposeful, the specific self-organization of people operating within a structure that had clear expectations.
The training grounds were audible before they were visible.
The sound of combat drills — not combat, drills, the specific rhythm of technique being practiced at volume with the regular call and response of an instructor and a group moving through something together. He’d heard that sound a thousand times and it was immediately, completely familiar.
He slowed.
Walked the last section without hurrying.
The eastern gate of the Knight Order’s main headquarters was manned by two guards in the Order’s colors — professional, alert, not unfriendly in the way of people whose professionalism included basic courtesy.
They looked at him.
At Kuro.
Back at him.
"Visitor," he said. "I’m looking for one of your members. Vera. She arrived from the western region approximately three months ago."
The guard on the left processed this.
"Your name," he said.
"Cael," he said, which was the name he’d given the guild and which was the name in his pocket on a B rank card.
The guard looked at him.
"Relation to the member," he said.
Cidd looked at the training grounds visible through the gate — the sound of the drills, the movement of people, the specific energy of a place that was taking what it did seriously.
"Her father," he said.