28. Don't go quiet on me, you hear?

Chapter 28: Don't go quiet on me, you hear

"So," Mikaela said, once she'd worked back through the whole thing in Keth, slower this time, making sure it landed, "that's the deal. We go, we look around, we figure out what's wrong, we fix it if we can. That's what gets Kaplan off my back."

Eto walked beside her in silence for a stretch, hands loose at his sides, eyes on the street ahead.

"We keep secret," he said finally. "Don't say why we come. Say donate."

Mikaela blinked at him. That was more words strung together at once than she'd heard out of him since they met. "You want to go in undercover. Pretend we're just, what, rich benefactors."

"Yes."

"That's actually smart."

"Know."

She huffed a short laugh, more surprise than humor. "I wasn't sure you'd even want to bother with this. Figured I'd have to drag you along and you'd stand in the corner growling at everyone."

"Kids," he said, like that explained it, and maybe to him it did.

The building came into view at the end of a narrow lane, set back behind a low stone wall gone green with moss, the yard beyond it choked with weeds grown knee high. The windows were dark, all of them, even with the afternoon sun still climbing, and the whole place had a stillness to it that didn't feel like peace so much as held breath.

"Quiet," Eto said.

"Too quiet," Mikaela agreed, and neither of them moved for a second, just stood at the gate taking it in.

Then a door banged open somewhere inside and a boy came tearing across the yard, weeds slapping at his knees, yelling something incoherent with excitement before he'd even reached the gate.

"Visitors! We never get visitors, are you visitors, please say you're visitors."

He skidded to a stop in front of Eto and craned his neck all the way back to take him in, eyes going wide.

"Whoa. You're huge. Are those real? Your arms, I mean, are they actually that big or is it the vest doing something." He reached out like he meant to poke one before he'd even asked permission.

"Finn!" A girl's voice cut across the yard, sharp, and a second figure came jogging up behind him, hair in a messy braid, arms crossed the moment she arrived. "You don't just touch people. What is wrong with you."

"I was gonna ask first."

"You had your hand halfway there before you said a word."

"That's still asking. Sort of." He grinned up at Eto, unbothered. "I'm Finn. This is Nora. She's my girlfriend."

Nora smacked him across the back of the head hard enough that he yelped. "I am not your girlfriend."

"You will be."

"I will not." Her face had gone red, and she folded her arms tighter, refusing to look at either of them now, though the way she stood close to Finn's shoulder said more than she probably meant it to.

Mikaela smiled despite herself. "I'm Mikaela. This is Eto. We're here to see about donating to the home."

Finn's face lit up all over again. "Donating? Like money? We never get donation people either. Come on, come on, I'll take you to Elara, she's gonna love you, well she loves everyone but she'll really love you." He was already moving, waving them toward the door, throwing looks back at Eto every few steps like he couldn't quite believe the size of him.

Inside, the halls were dim and smelled of old wood and boiled cabbage, floorboards creaking under every step. They passed a stooped old man dragging a mop bucket along one wall, muttering to himself, and he stopped when he saw them, eyes going sharp and strange.

"New ones," he rasped. "Don't go quiet on me, you hear. Don't let her get your sound."

"Ignore Old Bram," Finn said cheerfully, not even slowing down. "He talks like that. Says there's a banshee in the walls that eats sound. Eats your voice right out of you if you let it. He's been saying it for years."

Bram's eyes tracked them as they passed, and he raised one crooked finger toward the ceiling. "Eats the sound. Takes it quiet, first, then takes the rest. You'll see. You'll all see."

"Right," Mikaela said, not quite sure what to do with that, and let Finn pull them on down the hall.

Elara's room was warm despite the rest of the building's chill, a small fire going in the hearth, and the old woman herself sat in a chair near it, wrapped in a shawl, hands folded soft in her lap. She looked up as they entered and her whole face creased into a smile, gentle, unhurried.

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"Visitors," she said, voice thin but warm. "How lovely."

"We wanted to make a donation," Mikaela said, stepping forward. "To the home. This is Eto, he doesn't speak much Rostalian, only Keth, and honestly not much of that either, so I'll be doing the talking for both of us."

"A Keth." Elara's eyebrows rose, delighted rather than wary. "How rare. Well, you're both very welcome here, whatever tongue you speak."

Finn leaned toward Nora, not quiet about it at all. "Strong and silent. That's so cool."

"You think everything's cool." Nora mocked.

"Not everything. Just cool stuff." Finn defended.

The door opened again and a younger woman came in balancing a tray, tea things rattling softly, setting it down at Elara's elbow with practiced care. She had tired eyes, Mikaela thought, tired in a way that didn't match how young she looked.

"This is Lyra," Elara said. "She helps me with, well, everything these days, my legs aren't what they used to be. Lyra, dear, why don't you show our guests around."

Lyra managed a smile, though it didn't quite reach her eyes. "Of course. This way."

She led them out through the back, past a kitchen with pots hanging dark and cold along one wall, out to a yard with a hen house missing half its slats and a pig pen with only two animals rooting in the mud where there should have been more. A vegetable garden ran along the far fence, tended but sparse.

"We used to have more caretakers," Lyra said, catching Mikaela's glance at the empty pens. "A few left. It's, it's been a hard season."

"How many children are here?" Mikaela asked.

"Twenty two." A pause. "Give or take."

They rounded the corner to the play area last, a stretch of packed dirt with a few worn toys scattered across it, and Mikaela felt Eto go still beside her before she even understood why.

Half the children were running, shrieking with laughter, chasing each other in loose circles the way children did everywhere.

The other half sat.

Just sat, along the low wall at the yard's edge, hands in their laps, eyes open but somewhere else, not talking, not playing, not even watching the others run. One girl, couldn't have been older than six, sat with her mouth slightly open like she'd meant to say something and simply forgotten partway through.

"They're tired," Lyra said quickly, too quickly. "Some of them just get tired easy."

Eto didn't say anything, but his eyes moved slow across the row of quiet children, cataloguing.

A man's voice called out from the gate before anyone could say more, and a guard in city colors came striding up the path, young, maybe mid twenties, with the kind of tired eyes that matched Lyra's exactly.

"Lyra." He nodded at her, then caught sight of Mikaela and Eto and paused. "Didn't know we had guests."

"Donors," Lyra said. "Kael, this is Mikaela and Eto."

Kael's eyes lingered on Eto a beat too long, taking his size in, then turned back to Lyra. "How's it been. Since last week."

"Better," Lyra said, and something in her voice didn't quite sell it. "Elara says they'll come around in time. It's just a phase, some of them go through it."

"You've said that before."

"Because it's true."

Kael's jaw worked, like he wanted to push further and didn't have the ground to stand on to do it. "Yet the number increases every week. I will keep coming by. Just to check."

"You don't have to keep worrying, Kael."

"I grew up here," he said, quiet. "I'll worry as much as I want."

Mikaela stepped in before the silence could stretch too long, pulling a small pouch from her belt and pressing it into Lyra's hands. "For the home. Ten gold."

Lyra's eyes went wide. "That's, that's far too generous, I can't."

“That what I used to make my first year as a city guard,” Kael added.

"You can," Mikaela said. "Buy the pigs back, at least. It’s the least we can do."

“Thank you very much,” Lyra said. “We have not had good news in some time. I am sure the children will appreciate your kindness as well.”

They said their goodbyes at the gate a while later, Finn practically vibrating with the effort of not asking them to come back tomorrow, Nora rolling her eyes but lingering close all the same.

"You'll visit again," Finn said. It wasn't quite a question.

"Maybe," Mikaela said, and Eto, unprompted, reached down and clapped one hand briefly on the boy's shoulder, which nearly knocked him sideways with the weight of it, and Finn beamed like he'd been knighted.

They walked away from the home in the fading light, the overgrown yard shrinking behind them, and it was Eto who felt it first, a weight settling low in his gut, the same feeling he used to get in the forest right before something in the trees decided to stop hiding.

He turned.

A window on the upper floor, dark like all the others, and behind the glass, still, unmoving, something was looking back.

He couldn't make out a face. Couldn't make out anything at all beyond the shape of watching itself.

"What," Mikaela said, following his gaze, but by the time she looked the window was empty, whatever had been there gone without a sound. "Whatever, anyway that was ten gold," Mikaela muttered once they'd put some distance between themselves and the gate, rubbing at her temple. "We just gave away ten gold. Do you have any idea how much that was? That was most of what we had left, that was the market money, that was, that was basically everything."

"Mm."

"Don't 'mm' me, this is a problem, a real problem, you eat enough for six men at every meal, we've got a room at the inn that isn't free, and now we've got maybe enough left for a week if we're careful, and you don't even seem bothered."

"Not broke," he said.

"We are extremely broke, that's the whole point I'm making right now."

He reached into the bag at his hip without breaking stride and pulled out a pouch, considerably heavier than the one she'd just handed over, and held it out to her.

She stopped walking.

"What," she said, "is that."

"Coins."

She took it, weight settling into her palm heavier than she expected, and loosened the drawstring to look inside. Gold. A lot of gold, mixed with silver and a good handful of copper besides, and she went quiet for a second doing the math in her head.

"This is," she started, then stopped, recounting. "This is at least five times what we just gave away. Maybe more."

"Carriages," he said. "Loot bodies."

"You've had this the whole time." She stared up at him. "I thought you were broke. I've been rationing meat portions in my head for two days thinking we were about to be homeless in a city that eats people like us for breakfast, and you've had a small fortune sitting in that bag this entire time."

He shrugged, unbothered, and kept walking.

She caught up and grabbed his arm, pulling him to a stop, and before he could ask why, she'd wrapped both arms around him instead, face pressed briefly against his chest.

"I keep underestimating you," she said, muffled, "and I really need to stop doing that. Everyone looks at you and sees muscle and growling and thinks that's the whole picture, and I do it too, even after everything, and it's not fair to you."

He didn't say anything, just let her stay there a moment before she pulled back, tucking the pouch away into her own belt with a small, satisfied huff.

"Alright," she said. "Maybe we can afford dinner after all."