Chapter 473

Breakfast was loud, which helped.

The dining hall had the specific energy of the morning after something significant – people eating with the appetite of those who’d burned through significant reserves and were replenishing, conversations running at a higher volume than usual, the particular noise of a community that had done something together and was still processing the doing. It wasn’t celebration anymore, not quite. More like the settling stage, the morning version of the night’s cheer.

vory ate with the focused dedication of someone who’d said she was running on compound and spite and had meant it. She had opinions about every item on the table and expressed most of them, which meant she was functionally herself. The wrist was wrapped but moving well – better than it should have been at this stage of recovery, which I attributed to whatever she’d used on herself before I saw her in the meeting room, with Kael and the elders.

When I’d asked her about it during the walk from the corridor to the hall, she’d said: “Emergency healing compound. I keep it for genuine crises.”

‘You being shot with a silver bolt wasn’t a genuine crisis?” I said.

‘That was a setback,” she said. “Being taken was a genuine crisis.”

‘Those are the same event,” I said.

‘The setback was the injury,” she said. “The crisis was being unable to manage the injury in a timely and appropriate way due to confinement. Philosophically distinct.”

‘d let it go because Ivory’s philosophical distinctions were their own ecosystem and I didn’t have the energy to navigate it before

ood.

After breakfast, the group moved toward the botanical garden with the specific momentum of people who had a shared direction and no formal schedule since we were basically suspended and that meant aimlessly wandering around everywhere – Ivory eading because the plants were hers and she’d been away from them through an ambush and a capture and a rescue operation and was going to check on them regardless of any other consideration. Nina and Jordan falling into step because the alternative was staying in the main building where Morrison might find them.

‘We’re hiding,” Jordan said, as we turned toward the garden.

‘We’re conducting a post-engagement assessment of the botanical defensive systems,” Ivory said.

‘We’re hiding,” Nina said.

“The assessment is necessary,” Ivory said. “The plants were deployed at significant scale last night. Some of them may need attention. The traps need to be reset. There are at least fifteen different approaches I want to try-”

“We’re hiding,” Kael said, from behind her.

Ivory turned and looked at him.

“We are hiding,” she said, with great dignity, “in the botanical garden. While conducting a necessary post-engagement assessment.

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These things are not mutually exclusive.”

“The elders can’t easily find us in the secondary sections,” Jordan said.

“The elders know where the botanical garden is,” I said.

“The elders,” Nina said, “don’t like the botanical garden. The plants make Bram nervous. He had an encounter with the secondary sedative compound three years ago that he considers unresolved.”

“The encounter was resolved,” Ivory said. “He recovered completely.”

“He doesn’t see it that way,” Nina said.

“He was only mildly affected,” Ivory said.

“He fell asleep standing up,” Nina said. “During a council meeting. With his eyes open.”

“That’s quite an unusual side effect,” I said.

“It’s a known variation,” Ivory said. “It’s in the documentation.”

We went into the garden.

The main section looked largely undamaged. The eastern perimeter had been deployed – the aggressive vines from the back wall section, the ones that had delivered Alric Vesper, had seen significant activity and some of them had the slightly depleted quality of vory’s annotation about energy-use from aggressive activation. She moved through them immediately, crouching at the root bases of each one with her working hand checking the soil, talking to them in the low voice she used when she was doing the voice ‘esonance technique.

watched her do it.

Silver watched too, from inside, with the attentive quality of someone filing information they found interesting.

‘She’s been doing that for years,* Silver said.

‘I know,” I said.

She talks to them like they are alive, in a way they are., Silver said. *The plants respond. I can feel it – the root systems shifting when she speaks to specific ones. It’s the resonance in her voice, a different expression of the same mechanism. She doesn’t have the full bloodline of a whisperer, someone who is known for being close to nature but she has something adjacent to it from her wolf heritage, either from her father or mother or she is just a prodigy at that.”

This was new information. I stored it for the conversation I was going to have with Ivory later – the documentation session she’d been barely containing since she’d seen the runes.

“The aggressive vines are fine,” Ivory said, to the garden at large. “Tired, but fine. The large deployment was a strain on the eastern section specifically – they’ll need the support compound we applied after the Vesper situation.”

“I remember how to do it,” I said.

She looked at me with the expression that confirmed she remembered me talking to her plants in the east courtyard and had filed

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“The traps,” Jordan said. “The crossbow mechanisms.”

“Need resetting,” Ivory said. “The triggers on two of the three northern points fired last night. The third held because they redirected away from it.” She was already moving toward the shed. “I’ll reset them. And I want to add two additional trigger points on the western approach – last night’s second wave came through there and we had less coverage.”

“Let me,” Nina said.

Ivory turned to look at her.

“Let me reset the traps,” Nina said. “Your wrist-”

“My wrist is functional,” Ivory said.

“Your wrist is significantly better than it was twenty-four hours ago because you used the emergency compound,” Nina said. “Which you use in genuine crises and that you kept and used for me when i got shot in that ambush months ago.” She held Ivory’s gaze. “You used your emergency supply on yourself. Which means the injury was worse than you told us.”