Annie nodded and looked back at Mab with wide eyes.
"Plums!" she mouthed excitedly.
Mab couldn't help but smile back at her as they followed Verity inside.
Chapter 20
The main doors opened into a corridor wide enough for four orcs to walk abreast. Torchlight and the cooler glow of daylight shone through narrow windows cut high in the stone. The floor was smooth granite, worn in paths where generations of feet had traced the same routes. The air was warm, and Mab remembered what Varek had said about hot springs running beneath the mountain.
Verity walked fast for someone with short legs. She pointed as she went.
"Great Hall, through there. That's where meals happen, meetings happen, anything formal happens. Healer's quarters down that corridor. Thessaly runs it. She'll want to look at all three of you." A turn to the right, up a set of steps carved directly into the rock. "Second floor. East corridor. Children's rooms are here."
She stopped at a door. Heavy wood, iron-banded, with a latch that lifted from both sides. Verity pushed it open.
The room was small and clean. Two cots with straw mattresses covered in wool blankets. A chest at the foot of each. A window, narrow but real, letting in a bar of gray mountain light. A basin on a shelf. A rug on the stone floor, woven in dark reds and browns, thick enough that Annie immediately stepped onto it and pressed her toes in.
"This is ours?" Tibbs said. He was standing in the doorway, the spotted puppy squirming against his chest.
"Yours. Both of you." Verity pulled the door back to show the bolt. Heavy iron, sliding into a bracket set deep in the frame. "It locks from inside. Nobody comes in without your say."
Tibbs tested the bolt. Slid it home. Slid it back. Tested it again.
Annie was already sitting on the far cot, bouncing. "Can the puppies sleep in here?"
"That," Verity said, "is between you and the puppies."
"And Brownie," Annie said. "She makes the decisions."
Verity looked at Mab, letting her decide what came next.
"Get settled," Mab said to them. "Unpack. I'll come find you before the evening meal."
Tibbs nodded. Annie was already pulling the blanket off the second cot to construct some kind of nest on the floor. The puppy wriggled out of Tibbs's grip, dropped to the rug, and began sniffing the corners of the room with single-minded intensity.
Mab stepped into the corridor and Verity pulled the door shut behind them.
"They seem like good children," Verity said quietly.
"They are."
"Targesh will want a formal welcome for them in the hall. All three of you. Probably tonight at supper, if you're up for it." Verity started walking again, slower this time. "The welcome is important. It's the clan acknowledging that you're here by right,not by sufferance. Different from sanctuary, different from a bond. It's the first step."
Mab filed this away. It sat next to the promise Varek had made at the holding: their names, spoken before the clan.
Verity led her down a corridor that branched left from the main passage.
"Captains' quarters. Varek's is the last one." Verity stopped at a door. "I haven't been inside. That's his space. But he told Korah to have it opened and aired for you, so." She shrugged. "Go in when you're ready."
Mab put her hand on the latch but didn't lift it.
"Verity."
"Hmm?"
Mab turned the question over before she let it out. "How did you come to be here? Were you..." There wasn't a soft word for it. "Taken? Like me?"
Verity tilted her head. The quill behind her ear slipped, threatening to fall, and she caught it without looking. "No. Nothing like that." A pause that was not empty. "I came as an archivist on assignment from the Royal Archives."
