That did seem to cover it, yes.
*
Once they were cleaned up again, they emerged into the midday sun to find the settlement buzzing with activity. “Where were all these people before?” Hendrik wondered, still trying to orient his mind to the world outside their bedroom. There was something so jarring about going from feeling so soft and showering Dagan with pleasure and praise, then stepping out into a world where they had to behave as if that wasn’t precisely what he’d still like to be doing.
And all these people. They were everywhere, today.
“Must be getting ready for the full moon.” Dagan took a bite from a plum, the juice squirting down his chin. “Ugh, so much for clean.”
“You look good messy,” Hendrik assured him.
Dagan shot him a hot look just as they came into the winery hall. Kajja, Piret, and Jessica sat around a little table laden with flatbread, cheese, fresh fruit, and clear glasses of sweet water. That had been one of the strangest things about the Heart Wood: they drank water before brewing it into ale, it was so fresh and free of the taste of the mines, nothing like the well water in the city.
“Hen!” Kajja, wide awake and enthusiastic as ever, waved them over.
Hendrik’s heart swelled. It wasn’t that he’d forgotten she was here, really and truly, in the settlement and just down the market square from him. It was just that seeing her felt like too much good for one morning. A landslide, an avalanche of happiness that Hendrik didn’t know how to digest. He waved back and started toward her.
As they approached, Kajja stood and said, “Dagan, did you really find Hen in the woods all alone?”
“He was on the beach when I first spotted him, but yes,” Dagan replied easily. “It’s a pleasure to finally meet you, by the way; I’ve heard so much.”
“Have you?” Kajja glanced at Hendrik.
He laughed. “It was good. I really did miss you. Even if you’re a pain in the—”
“Come and eat something! Ooh, what’s that?” Kajja interrupted playfully.
Hendrik slid onto the bench next to her and reached for some bread. Suddenly, he remembered he hadn’t eaten in almost 24 hours, and his stomach gurgled in protest.
Dagan sat across the table, between Jessica and Piret, and said, “Plum. Hendrik likes them too. I don’t know how you all go without fresh fruit for one year, yet alone your whole lives.”
“I’m not sure I do either, anymore,” Kajja admitted.
“It’s good you’re here.” Jessica had waited for a lull, but it was clear she had a direction in mind for the morning’s conversation. She was a beautiful woman, almost stately though she was short in stature, and her eyes and neck and hands crinkling with age only added to the effect. Varied beads hung in little braids through her thick, gray hair, and she smelled pleasantly of some rich, warm, smoky thing. “We’re expecting Bartolo today, and then we can make real plans.
“The long and short of it, though, is that we spend a few days with Marsalis’s information, first. Then, we formulate an entry plan. You two came out through the mines?” Jessica turned to Kajja.
She nodded, and Piret said, “That’s right. There’s a mass of tunnels down there, and one of the captains of the guard is with us.”
This surprised Hendrik. Finding resistance in the Mid- or Tavern Districts, even in the Manufacture, made some sense, at least, since people had a little free time and education. But in the mines, people, mostly convicted prisoners or new refugees from the waste and their carefully licensed offspring, were known to be perpetually hungry and overworked, as well as more susceptible to injury and disease. The guards there, of course, had regular shifts and the same food Hendrik had, but the darkness and desperation of the mines had ended more than one of their careers, too. Conversely, captains who came up through the mines tended to be tougher and more able than any others, if they made it to an elite corp.
Almost the moment Hendrik had the thought, Piret added, “I know, I didn’t expect it either. She is not fucking around, though.”
“Piret has a crush,” Kajja said.
Piret rolled her eyes. “I don’t have a crush; but if I did, it’d be on Maya, yes. She led us through the mines almost with her eyes closed, right out to the river—or what’s left of it, anyhow.”
“Could you lead the way back in?”
“Oh, absolutely not,” Kajja replied without hesitation. “But Gareth has a secret spot for leaving her messages, so we can get her to come for us. Probably. Might have to wait a few days until she’s free, though.”
“You can’t go back there,” Hendrik said with a snort. “Neither of you.”
Piret and Kajja turned twin looks of supreme oh really on him.
Only then did he realize his mistake. He held up both hands in front of him. “No one should go in there, once they get out. That’s all I mean.”
“Yes, you’re both remarkably brave and capable, and I for one am very impressed with you,” Dagan cut in before Kajja could let loose a blistering verbal attack or something equally unpleasant.
This seemed to soothe her, but Piret continued to glare.
“Ideally,” Jessica said, “we should send Heart Wood scouts, for their combat training, tracking, and general survival knowledge, including stealth, though that’ll be a very different matter in the City than it is in the forest.”
Dagan nodded, listening raptly as he finished off his plum. Hendrik’s stomach twisted up in an ugly knot, watching him. He knew that look. Dagan was interested.
“And of course you two,” Jessica nodded to Piret and Kajja, “if you’re willing to go back. But another refugee might be willing to take your place; it’s important that some of you have connections in the City, if we’re to tap into this resistance network.”
“Why?” Hendrik asked, louder than he meant to. “I mean, why does anyone have to go there at all? Why not just convince everyone to come out; that’d be easier.”
“To go where?” Jessica asked, her gaze and voice level. “To the wastes? They’d be even worse off. Over the mountain? That’s bad country, and those people barely scrape by. To the Heart Wood? Have you any idea how much a population shift of that size would damage the ecosystem here? To the islands? They won’t even show us where they are, when they come to trade.”
“There are islands?” Hendrik and Kajja asked almost at the same time.
“Did you never wonder where silk comes from?” Jessica raised her eyebrows. “Do you want to free the Stone City from its curse?”
Hendrik wanted to say no, but he knew what the next question would be.
“Do you want to see the Heart Wood wither and die in its shadow?”
