"Eighteen," said Liu, in the tone of someone conducting an inventory. "Almost all of us."

"Yes yes, we know you’re already nineteen," said Taro.

"Almost all of us," Liu repeated, without modulating.

Taro looked at him for a second.

Then he decided the conversation was not going to produce useful results in this direction and let it go.

Anuar served with the efficiency of someone who had practiced the process and was satisfied with how it was going, right up until Li reached the central serving dish before Anuar had finished distributing from it and helped himself directly, with the implicit argument that Anuar’s serving system was less efficient than the alternative system of reaching the dish yourself.

"Li," said Anuar.

"Your food it’s good," said Li, already eating.

"There is an order."

"It’s very good, Anuar."

Anuar looked at Tao for support.

Tao was looking at the garden through the window with the empty expression of someone who had decided that Reed’s garden was genuinely fascinating and that this fascination justified not being involved in what was happening at the table.

Mayo, from her position by the service door, wrote something in the small notebook with the smile of someone recording information about Ren’s childhood friends for future use.

The conversation that followed had the disorder of conversations that happened when many people who knew each other were in the same space without a formal agenda and with food in front of them. Not linear, not organized, branching in several simultaneous directions that crossed and separated with the naturalness of something nobody was managing, following whatever thread arrived next.

Liu described, with a level of detail that started high and kept climbing, the military rank system and common practices he had researched to understand what the first months at the wall would involve. Three phases, a rotation protocol that had apparently changed considerably in recent years due to the constant siege... he even had notes.

Taro listened with the doubtful expression of someone calculating how many parts of the system were actually applicable and how many parts were Liu being Liu.

Larissa asked Ren about the wall sector they were going to cover first, which was a reasonable question that in the context of the table arrived like work that had walked in without being invited. Liora noted this gently.

"We still have three days of rest," Liora said.

"Two and a half," said Larissa.

Mayo still watched Li and Tao with the attention of someone who hadn’t interacted this directly with people of that background before, people who weren’t unusual in the way Ren was unusual but from his ’first world’, just people from a different world than the one she had always occupied, and who she found genuinely interesting from an angle that wasn’t condescending but simply new.

Li, who had the radar for that kind of attention, noticed and returned a look that contained the complete evaluation of Mayo in approximately two seconds.

The two of them reached a tacit agreement about how the dynamic was going to work.

"Tao," said Li, without taking his eyes off Mayo, "tell the miss from the academy how they evaluate us in the schools for poor people."

"The same way," said Tao, with the dignity of someone carrying the result as a badge. "Fewer beast varieties but the same protocols... We were the most distinguished too, thanks to the extra guidance Ren gave us."

"Same protocols," Li repeated, toward Mayo.

Mayo looked at him and smiled.

"Congratulations," she said, with the direct sincerity of someone who had recalibrated their assessment in real time and had no difficulty showing it.

Li nodded.

♢♢♢♢

After breakfast the mansion revealed its spaces the way houses revealed them when people actually lived in them: not in an organized tour but through the natural transit of individuals going from one place to another for their own reasons, sharing what they found when they found it.

Reed was back in the garden with the focused concentration of someone who had identified a plant in need of attention and was going to give it that attention regardless of how many people were passing nearby. The old man Chen didn’t pass, he stayed.

Tao went out to the garden without anyone seeing him leave and spent twenty minutes with Reed and old Chen discussing something about the plants with the enthusiasm of two people sharing a specific vocabulary and being happy to use it, the kind of conversation that didn’t require an introduction because it had its own built-in one.

The library on the second floor held the collection Ren had been writing and accumulating over the years, buying books when they were relevant, when he had time, when something caught his attention, not always finding time to read them before buying the next interesting one.

Larissa found it before anyone else and spent enough time there that by the time Liora came up to find her, she had already formed opinions about most of the titles on the nearest shelves.

The tool room, which in noble mansions was normally the most ignored space, maintained for appearances rather than use, had the quality of a place Ren visited regularly.

Not only tools but also weapons, which made it slightly dangerous, and an order that was functional rather than decorative: things arranged according to how they were used, not how they looked. Luna found it while looking for something entirely different and stayed long enough to do the mental inventory of what was there and what it said about how Ren used the space that was his.

The main sitting room had the furniture Fern had chosen with the judgment of someone who knew what she liked and had no intention of justifying it, producing a comfort that no noble decorator could have replicated, because no noble decorator would have chosen those specific combinations.

The aesthetic of someone who had decided that the room was for sitting in and had selected everything accordingly.

Liora settled into the largest sofa with the naturalness of someone who had found her point and had no intention of moving from it for the next several hours.

Luna found the second-floor balcony that looked out over the garden and the corridor where Reed’s plants had begun invading slightly beyond the space that was technically theirs, and stayed there with the calm of someone who had access to a view that gave her perspective, the kind that came from being able to see forward and backward at the same time without the horizon feeling like a limit. A future she didn’t dislike at all.