After a while of walking, we finally saw a camp in sight. The camp itself was one of those old buildings in the ruins that had been modified with carefulness, and it seed the people that had modified it had a lot of ti to do so. There were wooden structures that extended over the places where the storm of ti had yanked off so parts of the edifice, and the roofing structure also seed refurbished and complete. There were several ropes hanging down from the roof that rounded the building.
And before the building there was a barricade of sharp woods bound together to form a wall around the building.
As we walked along the road and towards the building, the sound of my step suddenly gave way to sothing that seed to sink and deflect it. The ground was suddenly harder, but I paid no attention.
We reached the building in no ti, and the soldier leading us raised a hand to a pair of guards stationed at the gap in the barricade. They wore matching dark coats with silver lining along the collar, identical to the secretary back at the Inn. Night Guards.
One of them barely glanced at us before waving the soldier through. The other one, however, looked at , then at the dark haired lady, then at the green-haired man, and his lip curled just slightly.
"More of them?"
The soldier nodded. "Last batch."
"Last batch," the guard repeated, and the way he said it made it sound like he was talking about livestock arriving at a pen. He stepped aside, and we walked through.
’Charming people.’
The inside of the barricade was busier than I expected. The courtyard, if you could even call it that, was a wide clearing between the barricade and the building itself. And it was crawling with people.
There were rcenaries... dozens of them.
So sat in clusters on the ground, sharpening weapons or eating from tin bowls. Others leaned against the barricade with their arms crossed, watching the newcors with the lazy vigilance of people who’d already asured everyone in the area and decided they weren’t impressed. A few were actually sleeping, stretched out on the hard ground like they’d done this a hundred tis before.
’How many people did they hire for this thing?’
I scanned the crowd as we moved through the courtyard, and my eyes were searching for anyone with a long bag and childish face.
Cressida was nowhere.
I scanned again, more carefully this ti, checking the clusters near the building entrance, the people sitting along the barricade walls, even the ones sleeping on the ground.
Still, there was nothing.
’She should be here by now...’
My chest tightened, just slightly. Cressida was strong, stronger than most people I’d t in Recimiras. There was no logical reason to worry. And yet the fact that I couldn’t see her sitting sowhere with that ridiculous bag of hers, eating sothing she definitely shouldn’t have been eating, made uneasy.
"Keep moving," the soldier said from ahead, not bothering to look back.
We followed him toward the building itself. As we got closer, I could see that the inside had been turned into a proper staging area. Through the open doorway, I could make out tables with maps spread across them, oil lamps throwing unsteady light across the walls, and Night Guards moving with purpose and quiet authority. Their territory. Their operation.
We were not invited inside.
Instead, the soldier led us to a section of the courtyard near the east wall of the building, where a cluster of other rcenaries had already been corralled. And "corralled" was the right word for it, because there was a Night Guard standing at the head of this group like a shepherd tending to sothing he didn’t particularly care about.
This one was different from the guards at the gate. He was older, maybe late forties, with the kind of face that had been handso once before life decided to rearrange it. A thick scar ran from his left temple down past his jaw, and his eyes were the grey of an overcast sky, flat and disinterested.
He was in the middle of speaking when we arrived, and he didn’t stop for us.
"...the formation will be given to you when the call is made. Until then, you sit, you eat if there’s food, and you don’t wander. Anyone caught past the eastern periter before the signal will be treated as a Night Fall combatant and dealt with accordingly."
’He ans killed.’
Jose let out a low whistle beside , just quiet enough that only I heard it.
"Friendly bunch, aren’t they?"
I didn’t respond, but I agreed with the sentint.
’The audacity to even be talking to ...’
The older Night Guard’s eyes swept over the gathered rcenaries with the practiced disinterest of soone who had done this many tis before and expected very little from the people in front of him. When his gaze landed on our small group, it lingered for barely a second before moving on.
We were nothing to him.
"Find space, sit down and wait."
That was all we got before he turned and walked toward the building entrance, where another Night Guard was waiting with a set of scrolls.
Jose found a spot near the wall almost imdiately, dropping himself onto the ground with the ease of a man who had spent many nights sleeping on worse. He stretched his legs out, crossed his arms, and tipped his head back against the stone.
"Wake when they need us to die," he said.
The dark-haired girl, Sulin said nothing. She walked to a spot a few feet from Jose, lowered herself to the ground with far more composure, and sat with her legs folded beneath her. Her blood-red eyes swept the courtyard once, cataloging, and then settled into a neutral stare that didn’t seem directed at anything in particular.
I remained standing for a mont longer, scanning the courtyard one more ti.
Still no Cressida.
’Where is she?’
The worry was harder to push down now. We had been separated when the secretary divided us into groups, but Cressida had been assigned before . She should have arrived first. Unless sothing went wrong on the road, or unless the group she was assigned to took a different route, or unless...
I cut the thought off.
’She’s fine. She has to be fine. If anything, whatever tried to stop her is the one that isn’t fine.’
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