The monthly shopping run. This time Harold came, with Sia quiet at his side the way she always was, staying close to her uncle like the world outside their house was still something she was deciding whether to trust.
And Torra, because Torra was always there.
We arrived in the usual alley and came out into the market. The first stop was Amanda's shop.
The door was unlocked but Amanda wasn't inside. Her staff were handling things without her. I bought everything on the shelves the same way I always did, the staff packing it efficiently without needing to be told twice, everything disappearing into my item box before the last box was sealed.
I hadn't heard from Amanda since I gave her the communication stone. Her herbalist friend worked in the palace, which meant her schedule was someone else's to control. I hadn't pushed it.
We left and followed Torra, who had already spotted the restaurant two streets over and was pulling at my sleeve before I had fully turned around.
"Just to taste it." He said. "Just once."
He had been saying that for two visits now.
The place let us in without hesitation. That was different from the early months. Back then we had walked into shops looking like people who had climbed out of the mountain wilderness, which was accurate.
Now we walked in wearing Tarant fabric cut in styles that nobody in Amlada had seen before. Clean lines. Comfortable fits. Nothing like the layered tunics and draped cloth the capital favored.
Expensive material made in a way that looked effortless. The staff noticed.
We were shown to a table immediately. Torra bounced on his chair and watched me look through the menu with the focused attention of someone who had been waiting for this for weeks.
Harold and Sia sat across from us, both of them taking in the interior with the careful stillness of people experiencing something for the first time and trying not to make it obvious.
I ordered without consulting anyone. I knew what I was looking at.
The waiter left and Torra settled back in his chair.
"Wouldn't it be so good," he said, with the casual tone of someone making conversation, "if someone at home could make food like this? Different things every day. Not just the same ones."
I said nothing.
But I noted it.
A chef. A patissier. Someone who knew fermentation and brewing. People who could do what the settlement's residents couldn't simply because they had never had access to the ingredients or the training.
Eryndor's cooking was honest and the residents worked hard at it. But honest had its limits when you were feeding people who were starting to want more than survival.
The dishes arrived and they were mostly seafood. Grilled, poached, sauced in ways that used coastal ingredients Eryndor had no access to.
I looked at the food and was already somewhere else in my head.
The settlement was landlocked. Mountain ranges on every side, the nearest body of water a significant distance away. No fish. No shellfish. No coastal trade coming through because no one knew Eryndor existed.
The residents ate what the forest and the farm provided and had never questioned it because they had never had reason to.
They were questioning it now, at least in the way Torra asked questions, which was out loud without knowing he was asking.
I was going to have to solve that.
Sia was nodding at something Torra was saying about the food, a small smile on her face, more present than she usually allowed herself to be. Harold watched his niece with quiet satisfaction and said nothing.
I paid the bill and we left.
We were moving toward the departure alley when I heard my name.
Not my real name. The name I used here.
"Leigh."
I turned.
Amanda was coming toward us at a pace that was close to running, her composure slightly undone by the effort. Behind her was a woman in a robe marked with the palace insignia, keeping up with considerably more dignity.
Torra was already moving to meet Amanda before I had taken a step, arms open, greeting her like she was family.
"Can we talk?" Amanda said, catching her breath. "At the shop. Just for a little while."
"Fine." I said.
I looked at Torra.
"You're coming with me." I said.
"But..."
"It's not a discussion."
Torra's shoulders dropped. Then he looked at Sia and his face changed immediately, a new idea arriving.
"Sia." He took her hand. "Come on, I'll show you the stalls. The candied apples are just over there."
"That's the same thing." I said.
"Harold will come." Torra pointed at Harold with his free hand.
Harold was already nodding.
I looked at him.
"Not far." I said. "Stay where I can find you."
"We'll be right outside the dessert shop." Harold said.
I let it go. Reluctantly.
Amanda led us back to the shop, flipped the sign, and sat us down at the corner table. The woman from the palace sat across from me with the composed posture of someone used to palace rooms and difficult conversations.
"This is Mileyna." Amanda said. "The herbalist I mentioned."
Mileyna opened a leather satchel and set a book on the table. She turned it to a page near the middle and pushed it toward me.
A detailed illustration of a plant, annotated in careful handwriting along the margins. Every feature labeled. Root structure, leaf shape, the faint luminescence noted along the stem.
The Chilper plant.
She set Amanda's sample beside the illustration.
"Is this the same plant?" She asked. Her voice was professional. Measured. The voice of someone who had learned not to get excited before they had confirmation.
"Yes." I said.
Mileyna's composure held but something shifted underneath it.
"I need to tell you what this plant is." She said. "So you understand what you're dealing with."
I listened.
She explained it the way someone explains something to a person they assume doesn't know. The rarity. The habitat. The fact that the Chilper plant grew only in forest zones so dense with monster activity that no research team had ever successfully retrieved a living specimen.
Every attempt at cultivation in controlled environments had failed within days. The plant was listed in the palace's records as effectively inaccessible.
She described it as fragile.
"You're thinking of a different plant." I said.
Mileyna stopped. "I assure you the sample Amanda provided matches every recorded feature..."
"The one you're describing died in your greenhouse." I said. "The ones I have don't. They grow faster than we can use them. We trim them back every few days or they take over the plot."
Silence.
Amanda leaned toward Mileyna slightly. "He doesn't lie." She said quietly.
Mileyna looked at me for a long moment with the expression of someone recalculating several things at once.
"Could you give me a sapling?" She asked. "For research. We've been trying to cultivate it for years."
"How much does a single leaf sell for?" I said.
She blinked at the redirect. "At current apothecary rates, five gold coins per leaf."
Amanda went still beside her.
Five gold coins. Per leaf. Two leaves per pot of tea. Four cups per pot.
I thought about the winters I had seen since arriving in Eryndor. The cold that came in through the gaps in the old walls. The people who hadn't made it through. The settlements across Philantria that had no Leigh, no heated houses, no Chilper tea. Just winter and the hope of surviving it.
I exhaled. Just slightly. Just enough.
Amanda noticed. Even through the illusion, something had come through that wasn't the usual flatness.
"Winter's over." I said. "Which means the tea has no market right now anyway."
I reached into my item box and took out the contract. Set it on the table. Found the blank price field and wrote in the number myself.
Five copper coins per leaf.
I signed it.
Amanda stared at the number. Then at me.
"Leigh..."
"That's what you'll pay me per leaf." I said. "So the tea stays affordable. Commoners can buy it. Ten copper coins for a pot that serves four. That's the price. You can adjust it to your own profit margin. The leaves' price remains."
I turned the contract toward her.
She picked up the quill slowly, still looking at the number like she was waiting for it to change.
It didn't.
She signed.
Mileyna had been watching all of this quietly. When Amanda set the quill down, she looked at me with an expression that had moved past professional composure into something more direct.
"You're selling a five gold coin herb for five copper coins." She said.
"I have more than I can use." I said. "It's not a loss if I never needed the profit."
I stored the contract and stood.
"The sapling." I said. "Bring something to carry it in next time Amanda contacts me. I'll have one ready."
I left them at the table and went to find Torra.