The citadel gate opened when they reached it. Lewin separated at the entrance with a brief nod toward Beorn and turned down the corridor running south. The group moved through without him.

The inner corridors had recovered their ordinary rhythm, the kind a building finds when a crisis passes and the people inside it remember what they were supposed to be doing before it started. Some workers continued to live there, others returned to their residences in the city.

A runner came across an intersection ahead, paused at the sight of the group, gave Beorn the brief acknowledging look of someone who wasn’t fooled by the cheap and plain disguise, and continued on.

Beadu watched the runner go. She looked at his departing back, then at Beorn walking at the front of the group, and the inevitable conclusion reached her face over two seconds.

"He’s the prince."

She said to Mod, beside her. "We walked through the slums with the actual prince."

Mod had both arms around Mab, her pace adjusted to whatever was most comfortable for the youngest.

"Wasn’t that much obvious when they let us inside the citadel," she said.

"Shush. This’s so much worse."

Beadu continued to ramble. "Why does a prince knock on that kind of door himself? Mod, think for once, why does someone who runs a whole city need from five girls in the slums that he couldn’t have sent anyone else to get?"

Tam stepped in from the side. "Well, he has already told us what he wants from us. You can trust him!" She pumped her fist.

"No thank you."

Beadu replied, not unkindly. "Who knows what he said is what he actually wants."

"Mmm, but I’m pretty sure by now they are the same?" Tam said.

"Maybe," Beadu allowed. "But you can see why I would want to be very sure of that."

Mod interjected, still carrying Mab and watching the corridor ahead, "He’s the prince. The prince that just went through a war to control the city, and won. What sort of benefit he could even gain by tricking us? Think for once, Beadu. He’s the one that pays the people that capture Sinbound. He can’t pay himself now, can he. "

Beadu was quiet for a few steps. "Dammit, all right. But there’s no way that punchable face is some sort of selfless person, I’m just afraid what he’ll ask us to do."

"Oh, yes. I have a great deal of interesting things to ask, but don’t worry too much about it. I’m a gentleman at heart." Beorn said, from the front, in a pleasant tone.

He did not turn around and continued walking. Hild, beside him, looked at his face. His expression was at ease and said nothing further about it. She looked back at the corridor.

Behind them, Beadu opened her mouth. Then she closed it.

She said, to Mod, "Did he just confirm it?"

"What do you think," Mod said.

Tam tried once more, starting to explain what he had meant by that, and Beorn said, still facing forward, "Tam, it’s fine."

Tam looked at the ceiling and appeared to conclude privately that it was not fine, but that no version of this conversation was going to help the situation.

The debate trailed off when the wing’s entrance came into view at the end of a corridor running east from the working section.

Beorn opened the first door, then the second, then the third. Stone floors, windows catching the afternoon light, beds with proper frames and linen folded at the foot. He left them all standing open.

"You can sort yourselves however you prefer."

Beadu walked to the nearest doorway and looked inside without entering the room. She looked at the window, then the beds, then the lock on the inside of the door. Her face did not give anything away.

She moved to the next door and gave it the same attention.

Mod carried Mab to the first bed and set her down on the mattress. Mab’s feet did not quite reach the floor from there. The room was warmer than the slums building had been, and she had stopped holding herself quite as carefully as she had for the past several weeks.

Leof, who had been in Beadu’s arms, watched the window.

Hild had said nothing from the start. She stood in the first room’s doorway now, watching Mab on the bed. Then she looked at Beorn.

"How do you actually plan to help her," she said.

She had been holding this question since the slums, carrying it through everything else that had been said.

"What does it look like, how long does it take, what does she need to do."

Beorn opened his mouth to answer.

Footsteps came from the corridor before he had started, an uneven rhythm.

Aestrith came through on the crutches Beorn had made for her during her recovery. Simple construction, wood with iron fittings, sized to her height. She looked like someone who had gotten up before she should have and had already decided the discussion about whether she should had got up in her favor.

The paleness was still in her face, and moving was obviously a strain. She was there anyway.

She looked at the group once and moved toward Mab.

"I will take it from here," she said.

"Aestrith, you are still recovering," Beorn said.

"Thanks for the reminder," she said, still moving.

He stopped. His expression became a rare one in that he did not know what to do, or what to say. He stood where he was.

Hild watched Aestrith cross the room.

The crutches, the paleness, the strain every step of the way there. She didn’t know quite why, but something was fishy, so she tried to stop Aestrith from approaching Mab.

"Hey, that wasn’t the deal. What’s with her-"

The next step Hild took was not one she chose. Her left foot pushed under her, her balance going sideways and gravity doing its job, which in this case was falling down. Hild barely managed from crashing by holding onto the doorknob.

Aestrith had already moved past her. She did not look back. 𝚏𝐫𝚎𝗲𝕨𝐞𝐛𝕟𝚘𝐯𝚎𝗹.𝕔𝐨𝗺

Beadu made a short sound she did not finish. Her arms around Leof tightened on instinct.

Mod had watched all of it. Her face had not changed in any way from the outside, but her arms around Mab drew the girl a little closer without comment.

Leof, set gently down on her feet beside Beadu now, watched Aestrith with the curious attention of a child.

Aestrith reached the bed and sat on it beside Mab, crutches braced on the floor. The words she said were too low for the rest of the room to follow, a whisper that barely carried, though, simple and honest, without any softening for the youngest girl’s sake, which was somehow better than the softened version would have been.

Mab looked at her face, then down at her own hands. The restraint she had been keeping, the effort to not move simply to abate the pain, eased slightly.

Beorn stood back. Hild’s hand was still on the doorknob, in the place she had caught herself. There was a tinge of anger on her expression, but that much was drowned over concern for their youngest one.

Beadu said, to no one or to the room in general, "Well." She let it sit for a moment. "All right."

Mod was still watching Aestrith and Mab, near the bed. Leof was too.

Tam realized she was about to see what she had experienced weeks ago.