VII. Behind the Garden Shed

Tobin followed the smell through the garden like a man following music he was not supposed to hear.

It slipped between the rows of green things and flowering things, curling beneath the honest scents of damp soil, crushed stems, sun-warmed leaves, and whatever herbs Chef Emberhand probably knew by name. The garden sat tucked against the service side of the waystation, half useful and half beautiful, with vegetable beds laid in careful lines and bright flowers placed where guests might glimpse them from the right window and think the world was better managed than it was.

The smell was behind all of that.

Loud, but not careless.

A secret with smoke on it.

Tobin moved past a row of beans, around a stack of empty planting crates, and toward a little shed set back from the main path. It was weathered gray, roof patched twice, door hanging a little crooked, and surrounded by tools that had clearly been used by someone who knew where everything belonged and still preferred a bit of mess for comfort.

Behind the shed, a man sat on an overturned bucket with one boot stretched out and the other planted in the dirt. He had a joint pinched between two fingers, his head tilted back against the shed wall, looking like he had discovered the only quiet corner in the entire Crown Road Waystation and intended to defend it with patience.

Their eyes met.

Tobin froze.

The gardener did not.

He lifted two fingers in a lazy wave.

“Either come over or stop standing there like a guilty scarecrow.”

Tobin looked back toward the Waystation, then toward the gardener, then at the smoke curling from his hand.

This was a bad idea.

This was also the first thing all morning that had smelled like a good idea.

He stepped behind the shed.

The man looked him up and down with calm amusement. He was older than Tobin, but not old. Maybe late twenties, maybe thirty, with sun-browned skin, relaxed shoulders, and the kind of easy expression that suggested he had already decided most emergencies were only emergencies because people insisted on hurrying.

“Harlan,” the man said. “Garden work, mostly. Herb beds, trimming, pretending flowers have opinions worth respecting. You must be the new one.”

Tobin blinked. “Does everyone know that already?”

“Everyone who pays attention.”

“That feels worse than everyone knowing.”

“It is.” Harlan took a slow pull from the joint, held it a moment, then let it drift out to the side. He looked Tobin up and down again, this time with a smirk. “Must be your first day. Did you get your work allowance from the old man?”

Tobin stared at him in disbelief.

The stranger not only knew he was new, but somehow already seemed to know exactly what kind of morning he had been having.

“Yes,” Tobin said. “He did. I’m supposed to get my uniform and work tools, but I’m not sure what tools exactly I need yet.”

Harlan chuckled.

“Well, I’ll let you join for a coin.”

He motioned the joint toward Tobin.

Tobin looked at it with an honesty he probably should have hidden better, then touched the small pouch at his belt.

“Silas said I’d need receipts,” he said. “Every coin accounted for.”

Harlan laughed outright at that.

“Of course he did.” He leaned back against the shed wall and pointed lazily with the joint. “The neck cloth only costs a coin at the shop, and you can always find a free one in Lost and Found behind Maribel’s office if you know how to ask nicely. There. Receipt solved.”

Tobin hesitated for one last moment.

This was foolish.

This was irresponsible.

This was probably the best idea he had heard all day.

He untied the little pouch, fished out a single coin, and handed it over.

Harlan took it, tucked it away somewhere in his coat, and passed him the joint.

Tobin took a long drag.

For one second the whole morning vanished behind the pull of smoke and warmth and memory. He held it in, letting the feeling spread through his chest, settle behind his eyes, and carry him just a little bit away from the waystation, the stairs, the kitchen, the pressure, the whole impossible first day of it all.

Then he exhaled slowly.

Harlan watched him and lowered his voice almost to a whisper.

“Just breathe, kid. Everything’ll be chill as long as you stay chill about it.”

Tobin took another breath, this one easier.

That helped more than he wanted to admit.

They stayed there a while, passing the joint back and forth in the little hidden corner behind the shed while the waystation carried on without them. Tobin asked questions, and Harlan answered the way relaxed men answered things: half advice, half opinion, and just enough truth tucked inside the jokes to matter.

“What’s life actually like here?” Tobin asked after a while.

“At the waystation?”

Tobin gave him a flat look.

“No. Behind the shed.”

Harlan grinned and pointed at him with two fingers.

“You’ll do fine if you learn when not to say half of what you think.”

“I’ve received similar reviews already.”

“From Serelle?”

“And Chef Emberhand.”

Harlan winced. “Same day?”

“Same morning.”

“You poor bastard.”

Tobin took another drag and handed the joint back.

Harlan rested his head against the shed and looked out toward the garden.

“Life here’s simple, if you don’t confuse simple with easy. Learn the paths. Learn who actually knows things. Drink water. Eat when you can. Never stand in front of a wagon. Never trust a guest who begins with ‘I’m not complaining, but.’ Never touch Chef’s food. Never fold linen where Vaelis can see it unless you want to experience disappointment as a weapon. And if Rowan tells you something smells wrong, believe him before your nose catches up.”

“That is a lot of never.”

“It’s a large building.”

Tobin nodded slowly, feeling the edge of the day loosen around him.

That was the thing, really. The way everything unclenched just enough to make the world manageable again. The building was still big. Chef Emberhand was still angry. Serelle still had teeth behind the smile. The left-handed torches were still nowhere to be found. But it all seemed a little less determined to kill him now.

Eventually the joint burned low between them.

Tobin looked back toward the waystation rising above the garden beds.

“I’m supposed to find left-handed torches.”

Harlan’s face did something interesting.

First it went still.

Then amused.

Then carefully unhelpful.

“Ah.”

“You know about those?”

“I know about many things that do not make sense.”

“And the Red Door Supply Closet?”

Harlan laughed, then soft and genuine, shaking his head as he pinched the last of the joint out against a flat stone near his boot.

“Some things around here don’t make sense, but they still have to be done.”

“That is not an answer.”

“It is a very old answer.”

“I’ve been told first floor, wagon shed, and fourth floor.”

“Then wherever the last attendant told you to go is where you should go next.”

“That also feels like not an answer.”

“It is the only one I’m giving.” Harlan pushed himself up from the bucket and brushed dust from his hands. “But if you last the week, meet me behind the shed by the rear staff entrance.”

Tobin looked up at him.

“You offering guidance?”

“I’m offering perspective. Guidance sounds like work.”

Tobin snorted softly.

“Thanks, Harlan.”

“For what?”

Tobin considered.

“The joint. The advice. The lie that any of this is simple.”

Harlan grinned.

“That part’s free after the first coin.”

Tobin said his goodbyes and headed back toward the inside of the waystation, toward the rear service entrance, toward the stairs, and toward the fourth floor where, hopefully, he might finally find these left-handed torches and the supposed Red Door Supply Closet.

Or whatever this task really was.

VIII. Walk With Purpose

Tobin came back from behind the shed by way of the herb patch, moving with the careful confidence of a man who believed he was sneaking and the loose-footed honesty of a man who absolutely was not.

The herbs brushed at his boots and ankles as he slipped between them: sharp green sprigs, low purple flowers, broad leaves with silver fuzz along the edges, and one plant that smelled so fiercely of pepper it made his nose twitch. The joint had not made the world strange, exactly. The world had already been strange. It had made the strangeness less aggressive about it. The waystation still towered above him. The task still waited. Chef Emberhand still existed somewhere above and behind him with flying knives and opinions about torches. But the tight knot behind Tobin’s ribs had loosened enough that he could breathe around it.

He cut through the Kitchen Garden, trying not to step on anything that looked expensive, edible, or likely to be missed by someone with a clipboard. Rows of vegetables stretched in neat little armies. Beans climbed poles. Cabbages crouched like green heads. Something red and round hung from a vine, watching him with what felt like judgment. Tobin gave it a respectful distance.

He emerged near the well where Rowan had given him water earlier.

Good. Known place. Familiar place. Just need to get to the rear entrance beyond that. Simple.

The problem with simple was that it kept attracting witnesses.

Rowan stood near the well with another man, both of them turned slightly toward the service yard as if discussing something practical and unpleasant. Rowan saw Tobin at the exact moment Tobin was trying very hard to look like a person who had simply appeared from the garden for normal work-related reasons. The other man looked over too.

Tobin pretended not to notice them. This was made difficult by the fact that he had absolutely noticed them.

He focused instead on the road between the garden and the rear entrance. Wagons had already tried to kill him once today. He looked left. He looked right. Then left again, because the second look had felt too quick.

“Tobin, right?”

Tobin jumped hard enough that his satchel bumped against his side.

Rowan had walked up beside him with the other man following at an easier pace. Rowan’s face held the same calm, work-worn amusement as before, but his eyes were sharper now.

“What are you doing out here?” Rowan asked. “Didn’t I send you back inside near half an hour ago?”

Tobin opened his mouth.

Nothing useful arrived.

“Yes,” he said, which was true and therefore dangerous because it required more words. “I mean, I was. I did. I went. Inside. Mostly.”

Rowan’s eyebrow rose.

The other man stopped beside him. He was older than Rowan, broad in the shoulders, with weathered hands, a practical coat, and the kind of face that looked as if it had spent years listening to buildings complain. His hair had begun giving way to gray, and there was a small bunch of dried stems tucked through one of the loops on his belt, as casual as another man might carry a knife.

Tobin looked from Rowan to the stranger, then back to Rowan.

“I got turned around,” Tobin said.

That was not entirely false. He had been turned around morally, geographically, and possibly professionally.

“Turned around,” Rowan repeated.

“Yes. Ended up near the front side. Thought it better to come back around through the rear instead of marching through the guest entrance again looking like…” Tobin glanced down at himself. “This.”

Rowan studied him for a moment.

The older man gave a small nod, as if Tobin had accidentally said something sensible.

“Smart,” the man said. “Image is everything here. Guests forgive less than they claim and remember more than they should.”

Tobin straightened a little.

“Thank you, sir.”

The man offered his hand. “Edrin Holt. Director of Facilities.”

Tobin took it. Edrin’s grip was firm, but not crushing. Practical. Like a man testing whether a hinge held.

“Tobin. Assistant to the Waystation Attendants.”

“So I hear.” Edrin looked him over, not unkindly. “First day treating you well?”

Tobin considered the question.

There were several possible answers.

I have been accused of loitering, counted by an old man, warned by a woman with teeth in her smile, introduced to chamber pots, passed through a wall, threatened by a wizard-chef, sent after imaginary torches, and bribed into a garden smoke break by a man behind a shed.

“Doing good,” Tobin said.

Rowan made a small sound that might have been a cough, if coughs could be amused.

“Mostly,” Tobin added. “Just trying to find these left-handed torches Chef Emberhand tasked me with finding.”

Edrin chuckled, low and warm.

“Ah. Chef.”

“Yes, sir.”

“He can be intimidating.”

Tobin thought of the fire pit roaring high enough to make his eyebrows reconsider their future.

“A bit.”

“But as long as you do not change his food, season his food, touch his food, question his food, breathe too boldly near his food, or imply that food is merely something people eat, he will not hurt you.”

Tobin waited.

Edrin smiled faintly.

“Probably.”

“Comforting,” Tobin said.

“It was meant to be.” Edrin glanced toward the waystation. “Best be off, then. I think you will find the Red Door Supply Closet on the fourth floor.”

Tobin stared at him for half a breath.

Fourth floor again.

That made two.

Two was almost a pattern.

Or a trap wearing a pattern’s coat.

“Thank you, sir.”

Rowan gave him a look that said walk with purpose without bothering to say it aloud.

Tobin looked both ways, waited for a wagon loaded with feed sacks to rattle past, then crossed the road quickly and reached the entrance near the Old Wash Hall without being flattened. A victory. Small, but honest.

Inside, the back hall greeted him with damp stone, old soap, lye, and the ghostly reminder that the waystation was beautiful only because other parts of it were not. The smell was still bad, but not as bad as before. Or maybe Tobin was changing. That seemed worse. No man wanted to become comfortable around the chamber pot return before lunch on his first day.

He moved through the hallway and found the service stair.

Fourth floor.

He started upward.

IX. Mirror of Standards

The stairwell was narrow, practical, and just steep enough to make him aware of every breath. By the time he passed the second-floor landing, the smell of Chef Emberhand’s kitchen pressed through the walls again: roasted meat, hot iron, herbs, bread, and authority. Tobin did not stop. He kept going.

Third floor.

As he reached the landing, he heard someone being corrected.

Not shouted at.

Corrected.

That was somehow worse.

The voice came from the room just outside the service stair, calm and precise and sharp enough to cut cloth without wrinkling it.

“No. Again.”

A quieter voice answered, too low for Tobin to catch.

“No,” the first voice said. “A fold is not a surrender. It is a statement. This statement says you were tired, careless, or privately angry at the sheet. Which is it?”

Tobin paused with one hand on the stair rail.

He should keep going.

Fourth floor. Red Door. Left-handed torches. Chef Emberhand. Fire.

But the open doorway was right there, and the voice had the kind of control that pulled curiosity toward it like a hook.

Tobin leaned just enough to look around the corner.

Then he rubbed both eyes with the heel of one hand.

Once.

Twice.

No change.

“What,” he whispered, “did Harlan give me?”

In the room beyond, a figure stood beside a linen cart and a half-made bed, holding a folded sheet between long, precise fingers. They wore the standard Waystation uniform, but on them it looked less issued and more judged into obedience. Their skin was pale with faint patterns running across the face, neck, and hands like mycelium beneath glass. Reflective eyes caught the room’s light in a way human eyes did not. Long ears, elegant and pointed, tucked beneath a red mushroom cap that grew from the scalp itself and sloped back over the head and neck like a natural hood, bright red with pale speckling like something from a forest tale told by someone who had actually seen the forest answer back.

They were not delicate.

That was Tobin’s first clear thought after the shock.

Strange, yes. Beautiful in a severe and unsettling way, yes. But not delicate. They stood like a ruler laid against a crooked line, composed entirely of measurement and consequence.

The person beside the cart, a maid by the look of the apron and guilty posture, held another sheet and looked as if she would rather face a guard inspection.

The mushroom-capped figure smoothed one hand along the folded linen, then stopped at a corner.

“Drath,” they murmured.

The maid winced.

Tobin stood in the doorway and stared.

He had heard stories, of course. Everyone had heard stories. Other things that lived out in the wide parts of the world. Old things. Living walking plants. Stone-people with families in the mountain roads. Riverkin in the marsh and waterways. Mushroom folk too, although the storyteller had been drinking.

But stories were one thing.

A person with a red cap growing from their head inspecting bed linens like the fate of the realm depended on corners was another.

The figure turned.

Their reflective eyes found him immediately.

Tobin’s spine straightened before the rest of him had agreed.

They looked him up and down with calm, devastating accuracy.

“You do not look like you belong here,” they said. “Who are you?”

Right.

Real, then.

Not Harlan’s fault.

Probably.

“Tobin,” he said, then cleared his throat because the first attempt had come out too thin. “Tobin. Assistant to the Waystation Attendants.”

Their expression changed at once.

Not softened, exactly. It became pleased in the way a perfectly closed drawer might be pleased.

“Ah. Tobin.” They set the folded sheet down with ceremonial disappointment and stepped toward him. “Vaelis Mirvoss. Rooms Attendant. Thalenfolk.”

The word landed between them with the weight of something older than the room.

“Thalenfolk,” Tobin repeated carefully.

Vaelis’s reflective eyes narrowed by the smallest degree.

“Yes. If that is an issue, you may leave now.”

There was no raised voice. No threat. No visible anger, really. But the sentence carried such clean intensity that Tobin felt it pass through several layers of him before stopping somewhere near his boots.

“No,” he said quickly. “No issue. I only— I’ve never met— I mean, not that meeting is— I just didn’t know—”

Stop. Stop digging a hole.

“I have no problem,” Tobin finished.

Vaelis watched him for another breath.

Then they smiled.

It was not warm the way Maribel’s smile had been. It was sharper. More formal. Like approval granted in writing.

“Good,” they said. “Then follow me. We have much work to do, and your training has just begun.”

They swept past him toward the service stair.

Tobin turned after them. “Actually, I’m already—”

Vaelis continued up the stairs.

“Rooms are the breath of hospitality,” they said, not looking back. “Guests forgive a poor road if the bed is clean. They forgive a delayed meal if the basin is filled. They do not forgive if the blanket smells of cellar dew rather than fresh lavender. Comfort is not softness. Comfort is control.”

“I understand, but Chef Emberhand—”

“Chef Emberhand controls food,” Vaelis said. “I control rest. Both are holy in different ways, though his produces more shouting.”

Tobin followed because apparently every superior in this building had learned the same trick: begin walking and let his legs handle the argument.

They reached the fourth floor.

The public guest hall stretched ahead, quieter than the lower floors but not empty. The air smelled of clean linen, beeswax, baked bread, dried flowers, and the faint closed-room scent of travelers’ belongings. Vaelis moved straight down the hall toward the guest stair side, their stride smooth and exact, their red cap bright beneath the softer upper-floor light.

The first set of doors they passed were closed. Heavy doors. Official-looking doors. Guard-sturdy. Tobin glanced at them and wondered if those were the kind of doors that got a man corrected by spear if he guessed wrong.

The second set stood open.

On the left, maids moved through a larger room lined with multiple beds and guard gear set in ordered places. Royal Guard guest barracks, Tobin guessed, based on the armor stands, weapon racks, and the fact that every blanket looked like it had been bullied into square corners. On the right, another maid worked in a standard chamber, smoothing a bed while a wash basin sat ready on a small stand. Vaelis’s head turned just enough to inspect both rooms as they passed.

“Left bed, third corner,” Vaelis said without slowing.

A maid inside the barracks flinched and immediately returned to the bed.

Tobin almost missed a step.

They had not even gone inside.

Vaelis noticed everything.

He fell half a pace behind, staring through the open doors, and had to hurry to catch up when Vaelis opened another door near the hall. This room looked like it had once been a sitting area. A desk stood near the window. Shelves held linen records, room cards, scent jars, spare keys, small folded cloth samples, and stacks of notes arranged so neatly they seemed afraid of disappointing their owner. A chair faced the desk. Tobin suspected it was where people sat to learn what they had done wrong.

Vaelis sat behind the desk.

Only then did Tobin finally get enough space in the conversation to force words through.

“Chef Emberhand gave me a task,” he said. “Before I came up here. He told me to stay on it until it was done and not let anyone distract me. I’m supposed to find left-handed torches. He said they’re stored somewhere, and everyone keeps telling me to look behind the Red Door Supply Closet, but no one seems to agree where that is.”

Vaelis went still.

Not dramatically. Not like Chef Emberhand and his roaring fire.

Still like a needle stopping over a flaw in cloth.

“Drath,” they said.

Tobin blinked.

“Drath?”

Vaelis looked at him.

“Thalren for shit.”

“Oh.”

The sensible thing would have been to stop there.

Tobin did not.

“Thalren?”

Something in Vaelis’s face tightened. Not rage. Not embarrassment. Irritation refined into a single polished edge.

“Drathen ulvren, nae quor.”

Tobin stared at them.

Vaelis inhaled once through the nose.

“It means this is a shitty mess, and now there are questions.”

“Ah,” Tobin said.

That did explain the tone.

Vaelis rested their long fingers on the desk, fingertips aligned with unnatural care.

“Mirvoss is Thalren as well,” they said, perhaps because Tobin’s face had not yet settled into anything intelligent. “Mirror of Standards.”

Tobin glanced around the office. The folded cloth samples. The records. The perfect stacks. The scent jars set in careful rows.

“That seems… fitting.”

“It is meant to be.” Vaelis’s gaze sharpened. “When you are done with this trivial pursuit, return to me for work. You will need training in room readiness, linen movement, bathing preparation, and how not to destroy folded order with human hands.”

“My hands are not—”

Vaelis looked at his hands.

Tobin stopped.

“My hands will be trained,” he said.

“Better.” Vaelis leaned back slightly, and when they spoke next, the words came with the flat stiffness of something repeated many times and enjoyed not at all. “The left-handed torches are in the Red Door Supply Closet.”

Tobin waited.

Vaelis waited back.

“Do you know where that is?” Tobin asked.

Vaelis’s expression did not change, but the room somehow grew less welcoming.

“I do not know where she is,” they said. “And I do not have time for this stupidity anymore. Leave me.”

“Yes. Of course. Thank you.”

Vaelis had already turned to a stack of linen records, one long finger tracing a line of script as if Tobin had been filed away with the other errors of the day.

He stepped out of the office and closed the door carefully behind him.

Not too hard.

For a moment, he stood in the fourth-floor hall with clean linen and baked bread in the air, distant maids moving in open rooms, and the muffled life of the waystation breathing around him.

Left-handed torches.

Red Door Supply Closet.

She.

Tobin frowned.

Why had Vaelis said she?

And why, with every new answer, did he feel less like a man completing an important task and more like the center of a very elaborate joke designed by people with far too much time on their hands?