Lillia woke to cold ashes.
Not literally.
The fireplace in the inn's common room had burned down sometime before dawn, leaving only a faint red glow beneath the grey coals, but the smell had climbed the stairs and settled into the rented rooms.
Woodsmoke.
Cold stone.
Yesterday's festival.
For several seconds, Lillia stayed beneath the blankets.
Then the noise began.
Boots on stairs.
Harness buckles.
Someone shouting about missing feed sacks.
A wheelwright swearing at an axle.
Goldleaf employees preparing the caravan for another day.
Normal.
She closed her eyes again.
Something felt wrong.
Lillia opened them.
The room itself was fine.
Her traveling coat hung where she'd left it.
The silver moon bracelet from the festival rested beside the washbasin.
Her grimoire sat inside its reinforced leather case at the foot of the bed.
The case twitched.
Lillia pointed at it.
"No."
It stopped.
Mostly.
She sat up.
What was missing?
Then she realized.
No Miriel.
Miriel usually dozed on the opposite seat of the carriage before departure, wrapped in her cloak and pretending she hadn't been asleep whenever anyone noticed.
And Khan...
Lillia frowned.
By now, Khan should have been somewhere downstairs, insulting breakfast prices.
Or arguing over inventory.
Or staring at a ledger like it had personally offended him.
Or inexplicably selling something that had not belonged to him five minutes earlier.
Instead, nothing.
No tired voice.
No sarcastic comment.
No Miriel telling him he was unbearable.
No invisible entity provoking arguments nobody else could hear.
The absence was oddly loud.
Lillia swung her feet onto the floor.
The boards were cold.
Perhaps they had gone ahead.
Reasonable.
Perhaps Khan had found a market.
Extremely reasonable.
Perhaps Miriel had followed him to make sure he didn't sell structural components of the inn.
Also reasonable.
Lillia dressed.
Still, the feeling remained.
Small.
Unpleasant.
Hollow.
She disliked it immediately.
Ridiculous.
They had known one another for barely more than a week.
Before that, Khan had been an unknown young man trying to buy two seats aboard her carriage for an insultingly low price.
Miriel had been his hooded "assistant."
Lillia smiled faintly at the memory.
Assistant.
Even then Miriel had looked one insult away from murder.
Lillia had guessed runaway aristocrat almost immediately.
She still did.
The clothes had given it away.
Not because they were expensive.
Miriel's traveling cloak was deliberately plain.
But people born outside noble households rarely understood how much aristocracy lived in movement rather than fabric.
Miriel stood too straight.
Ate too carefully.
Held cups as though someone had once corrected the angle of her fingers.
She never reached across another person's place setting.
Never interrupted servants carrying trays.
Never sat with her back toward an open door unless forced.
Even her anger was educated.
Not loud.
Precise.
Royal, perhaps.
Or near enough.
Lillia had never asked.
She had decided early that Miriel would tell her when she was ready, and that until then, the polite thing was to keep pretending a girl with that posture could be anyone's assistant.
Khan, meanwhile, destroyed every attempt at classification.
He looked eighteen.
Spoke like a tired old accountant.
Claimed to be an artifact researcher.
Behaved like a seasoned merchant.
Read people like a professional negotiator.
Had no guild, no family name, no credentials and apparently no instinct for self-preservation whenever profit was involved.
He had arrived in Lillia's life wearing cheap clothes.
Then briefly upgraded to trousers visible from neighboring provinces.
Now he wore a cheap holed coin around his neck as though it were worth more than jewelry.
He was ridiculous.
So was Miriel.
Together they were worse.
Lillia had gotten used to it.
That was apparently the problem.
She opened her door.
The hallway was empty.
Miriel's door, two rooms down, stood slightly open.
The bed inside was made.
Lillia looked at that bed for longer than a made bed deserved.
Downstairs, Goldleaf employees moved through the common room carrying breakfast, ledgers, traveling chests and bundles of supplies.
Still no crimson hair.
Still no Khan.
The hollow feeling grew.
Lillia stopped near the railing.
Her hand closed around the wood.
What if they had left?
The thought arrived without warning.
Not gone to the market.
Left.
Perhaps Khan had finally made enough money to travel independently.
He had rented rooms for himself and Miriel yesterday.
That mattered to him.
Lillia had seen it in his face when the innkeeper set down those two brass keys, as if someone might ask for them back.
He wanted independence almost pathologically.
Perhaps traveling with Goldleaf had always been temporary.
Perhaps Fyr was where they separated.
Miriel would go with him.
Obviously.
They had arrived together.
Whatever strange arrangement existed between them had begun before Lillia.
She had always been the third seat in the carriage.
She had never minded.
She minded now.
The thought shouldn't have bothered her.
Yet it did.
More than it should.
Lillia stared down at the common room.
She imagined today's carriage.
Her seat.
The opposite bench.
Empty.
No Miriel falling asleep and denying it afterward.
No Khan correcting her father's sales assumptions.
No arguments about prices.
No explanations about machines that flew without magic.
No folded paper hitting her in the forehead.
No advanced economic system from a distant world.
Just the road.
And the grimoire.
And the long, polite silence she had traveled in for most of her life without ever noticing it was silence.
Her chest tightened.
"Oh."
There it was.
How irritating.
She missed them.
Before they had even gone anywhere.
Lillia Goldleaf, daughter of Erwin Goldleaf, had spent nineteen years surrounded by people.
Tutors.
Servants.
Guild employees.
Merchant children.
Minor nobles.
Academy candidates.
People liked her.
She liked people.
Friendship had never seemed especially complicated.
People smiled at her, and she smiled back, and somewhere behind every smile her father's name sat quietly, like a purse left open on a table.
She had never been sure how much of the liking was for her.
She had decided long ago that it didn't matter.
That was what sensible heiresses decided.
Khan had never once looked at her purse.
He had looked at her prices.
He had told her a bracelet was stamped silver and glass.
He had told her a ribbon was stupid at any price, and then carried it for her anyway.
Miriel had never wanted anything from her at all, except perhaps for Khan to stop talking, which Lillia found entirely reasonable.
Neither of them had smiled at her because of Goldleaf.
Somehow the possibility of two particular idiots disappearing down another road had carved an empty place into her morning.
That was new.
She did not appreciate new emotional liabilities before breakfast.
From her open room, the grimoire case thumped against the floor.
Lillia turned.
"No."
A muffled growl answered.
"You're not helping."
Then someone knocked on the open doorframe downstairs.
Three quick taps against wood.
Lillia looked down.
Khan stood at the entrance.
Relief escaped her before dignity could intervene.
A quiet breath.
Almost a sigh.
Her fingers loosened on the railing.
She immediately hated that he might have heard it.
Khan looked terrible.
Not injured.
Just morning.
His dark hair was a mess.
A paper bag hung beneath one arm.
The holed coin rested against his chest.
Behind him stood Miriel.
Technically.
Her eyes were mostly closed.
Her illusionist's headband sat slightly crooked.
Crimson hair spilled around her shoulders in complete rebellion against royal dignity.
She was holding the back of Khan's coat with one hand.
Apparently this was how she stayed attached to civilization while unconscious.
Khan glanced over his shoulder.
"Forward."
Miriel took two steps.
Eyes still closed.
Lillia stared.
Khan looked up at her.
His gaze went to her face.
Then, briefly, to her hand on the railing.
Then back to her face.
Something in his expression shifted, quick and quiet, like a number being written down in a ledger nobody else would see.
"You're awake."
Lillia descended the stairs.
"Obviously."
"You look surprised."
"I'm not."
"You sighed."
"I breathed."
"Emotionally."
Lillia stopped.
"That's not a thing."
"It was remarkably expressive breathing."
Miriel opened one violet eye.
"He's been like this since sunrise."
"Why are you awake?" Lillia asked her.
"I'm not."
Then her eye closed again.
Khan held up the paper bag.
"Breakfast."
Lillia looked at it.
"What were you doing?"
"Buying food."
"At dawn?"
"Cheaper."
Naturally.
Then, without looking at her, he added, "Also, this bag doesn't hold enough food for running away. You'd need at least two bags. And a horse. And Miriel would need to be conscious."
Lillia went very still.
He hadn't said what he'd seen.
He hadn't asked.
He had simply answered the question she had been asking the empty common room, and then made it sound like a complaint about logistics so she wouldn't have to admit she'd asked it.
"I wasn't worried," she said.
"I didn't say you were."
"You implied it."
"I implied a horse."
Miriel, still mostly asleep, patted Lillia's arm twice as she shuffled past.
As if she had heard everything.
Perhaps she had.
The hollow feeling inside Lillia vanished so quickly that its absence embarrassed her.
They hadn't left.
They had gone to buy discounted breakfast.
Of course they had.
Lillia looked at Khan.
Then at Miriel hanging from his coat.
Something settled.
Warm.
Certain.
Precious.
That word surprised her.
But it fit.
Friends.
Not useful acquaintances.
Not interesting traveling companions.
Friends.
Khan had become one somewhere between insulting her grimoire and turning her father's failed dairy contract into a business.
Miriel had become one somewhere between silently threatening to kill him and laughing beside her beneath festival lanterns.
Lillia had not noticed the moment either happened.
Perhaps that was how it worked.
Annoying.
She disliked processes without clear transaction dates.
Khan reached into the bag.
He passed her a warm pastry.
Then, after a pause, a small paper twist of roasted chestnuts.
Lillia stared at the chestnuts.
She had bought them at the festival.
She had not thought anyone was paying attention.
"Those were on sale," Khan said.
"At dawn?"
"Particularly at dawn."
The chestnut vendor had packed up before midnight.
Lillia had watched him do it.
She said nothing.
She held the paper twist very carefully, as though it were worth more than the bracelet.
Khan looked at her.
"You look strange."
"I'm thinking."
"Risky."
Lillia ignored him.
An idea had already started forming.
That was another Goldleaf habit.
Emotional realization.
Immediate contractual response.
Her father would be proud.
Probably horrified.
Both were acceptable.
"When we reach Oakhaven," she said, "I'm attending the Arcane Academy."
Khan bit into his breakfast.
"I assumed rich people eventually attended something expensive."
Lillia frowned.
"It is one of the finest magical institutions on the continent."
"So definitely expensive."
"Yes."
Miriel finally opened both eyes.
"You're already enrolled?"
"My admission was approved months ago."
Khan chewed.
Then he looked at her properly.
Long enough that Lillia knew he had heard the part she hadn't said.
Oakhaven was where the caravan ended.
Where the road stopped carrying all three of them in one direction.
"Congratulations," he said.
Lillia blinked.
The sincerity slipped by so quickly she almost missed it.
He had said it gently.
Not the way people congratulated a Goldleaf.
The way someone congratulated a friend about to walk through a gate alone.
Then he added, "Try not to buy the academy."
There he was.
She smiled.
It came out steadier than she felt.
"I'll need attendants."
Khan stopped chewing.
Miriel became slightly more awake.
Lillia continued.
"Personal servants are permitted. Students from major families usually bring at least one."
Khan stared at her.
"No."
She had not even made the offer yet.
"I haven't finished."
"I know where this is going."
"You don't."
"You used the word servant while looking at me."
Miriel looked between them.
Then slowly smiled.
Lillia pointed at Khan.
"Personal servant."
"No."
"Paid."
Khan paused.
Very small.
But visible.
Lillia saw it.
There you are.
"Salary," she continued.
Khan swallowed.
"How much?"
Miriel turned toward him.
"You refused unusually quickly for someone who changed his mind in three seconds."
"I requested information."
"You requested salary."
"Salary is information."
Lillia felt better already.
Then, a moment later, she felt something else.
Something that sat under the relief like a stone under water.
She was doing it.
The thing everyone had always done to her.
She was holding out money so that people would stay.
She had never in her life known how to say please don't go.
She only knew how to say here are the terms.
Lillia kept her smile exactly where it was.
Merchants learned that early.
"You would have lodging inside the academy district."
Khan's attention sharpened.
"Meals?"
"Covered."
"Private room?"
"Yes."
"Working hours?"
Lillia hesitated.
Khan's eyes narrowed.
"Working hours."
"Flexible."
"That means terrible."
"It means flexible."
"It means the employer has failed to define boundaries."
Miriel leaned against the stair rail.
Her eyes were closing again.
"I think he likes the offer."
"I do not."
"You have the money face."
"This is employment due diligence."
Lillia clasped her hands behind her back.
So nobody would see them.
"You wouldn't actually need to behave like a conventional servant."
"Define actually."
"You accompany me. Help manage purchases. Review contracts if I ask. Assist with unusual artifacts."
Khan stared at her.
"Still pretending I'm an artifact researcher?"
"At this point, I feel obligated."
Khan glanced at a patch of empty air beside her.
His lips moved without sound.
His eye twitched.
Lillia continued, unable to see why.
"You'd have access to Oakhaven markets, academy libraries, merchant districts and my family's business network."
Khan went still.
That was the real offer.
Lillia knew it.
Miriel seemed to know it too.
Possibly the invisible menace knew it.
Oakhaven markets.
Libraries.
Connections.
Information.
Khan's four favorite food groups.
"And Miriel?" he asked.
He asked it immediately.
Not as a condition.
As if there had never been a version of the question that didn't include her.
Lillia looked at her.
Miriel was fully awake now.
Mostly because her name had entered a contract.
"She can come too."
Miriel blinked.
"As a servant?"
Lillia considered the supposed assistant standing before her.
Regal posture.
Impossible beauty.
Mana capacity Lillia had never been able to properly gauge.
The word servant became increasingly ridiculous.
"Personal attendant."
Miriel narrowed her eyes.
"That sounds like servant with embroidery."
Khan nodded.
"Correct."
Lillia sighed.
"Companion, then."
"The academy permits companions?" Miriel asked.
"Within household registrations, yes."
Khan looked interested again.
"Registration."
Lillia immediately understood.
Documents.
Identity.
Legitimacy.
Things Khan and Miriel conspicuously lacked.
Her offer had just become more valuable.
The merchant part of her noted that with satisfaction.
The rest of her felt slightly ashamed of how glad it was.
"If you join my household staff," she said carefully, "Goldleaf can register both of you under my personal retinue."
Silence.
Khan stopped moving entirely.
Miriel's expression sharpened.
Lillia realized she had struck something important.
"You'd have legal residence in Oakhaven while I'm enrolled."
Khan set his pastry down.
Now the joke was gone.
"Documents?"
"Yes."
"What kind?"
"Household identification. Temporary metropolitan residency. Academy-associated access permits depending on role."
Miriel looked at Khan.
Lillia saw something pass between them.
Calculation.
Risk.
Possibility.
She had seen that look before.
Between her father and his oldest partners.
People who had been through something together and no longer needed to say it out loud.
Lillia stood a step outside it.
She told herself that was fine.
Khan's expression became distant. Lillia tried to read what had changed.
Money face.
But different.
This wasn't his usual interest in profit.
This looked like infrastructure.
As far as she knew, he had no established identity here.
No family name he would give.
No papers.
No profession anyone could verify.
Oakhaven was opportunity, but opportunity behind gates required names that systems recognized.
Goldleaf could provide that.
Lillia smiled slightly.
She had him.
Probably.
Then Khan looked up.
Not at the offer.
At her.
He held her gaze for a moment, and she had the uncomfortable feeling that he had just read the whole contract, including the clauses she had not written down.
He did not mention them.
He picked his pastry back up.
"Salary?" Khan repeated.
There it was.
"Sixteen gold."
Khan's eyebrows rose.
"Monthly?"
"Monthly."
"Plus room and food?"
"Yes."
"Travel?"
"Household expense when related to my duties."
"Personal commercial activities?"
Lillia paused.
"What personal commercial activities?"
Khan stared.
She sighed.
"Permitted outside assigned duties, provided they don't conflict with Goldleaf interests."
"Define conflict."
"You are exhausting."
"Contracts should survive exhaustion."
Her father absolutely would like him.
Possibly enough to steal him.
Lillia decided to negotiate quickly.
"You retain your existing condensed milk profit share."
"Obviously."
"Academy breaks are your own time."
"Good."
"You help me avoid terrible purchases."
"Full-time position."
Lillia ignored that.
"And occasionally examine artifacts."
Khan glanced up toward Lillia's open door.
A muffled growl drifted down the stairs.
"That requires hazard pay."
"Fine."
Lillia blinked.
Khan blinked.
Apparently, neither of them had expected her to agree immediately.
Miriel laughed.
Lillia folded her arms.
Too quickly.
She had agreed too quickly, and they had both seen it.
"So?"
Khan looked at her.
Then at Miriel.
Then toward the open inn door where Goldleaf workers moved through the cold morning. Lillia could almost see him weighing the offer.
Oakhaven ahead.
Academy.
Markets.
Libraries.
Documents.
Housing.
Money.
Connections.
A suspiciously excellent package.
Khan's gaze drifted toward a patch of empty air.
"Personal assistant," he muttered at it.
A pause, as if he were listening.
"Better."
Then his face darkened.
"Do not add artifact researcher."
Khan closed his eyes.
Lillia watched him silently argue with whatever haunted him.
Miriel waited.
Lillia waited too.
She was holding her breath again.
She made herself stop.
Finally he opened his eyes.
"One condition."
Lillia smiled.
"Only one?"
"I reserve the right to refuse stupid errands."
"No."
"Then we're negotiating."
She laughed.
There it was again.
That easy feeling.
The one whose absence had frightened her fifteen minutes earlier.
She extended her hand.
It was almost steady.
Khan looked at it.
Not formal contract parchment.
Not yet.
Just agreement before paperwork.
"You realize," he said, "hiring me is probably a terrible idea."
Lillia smiled.
"I bought a book with teeth."
"Fair."
He shook her hand.
His grip was warm.
He did not let go as quickly as a handshake required.
Then Lillia looked at Miriel.
Miriel glanced between them.
"What exactly would I be doing?"
Lillia thought.
"Keeping him alive?"
Khan looked offended.
Miriel considered it.
"That does appear to require labor."
"Traitor."
Miriel smiled.
Then placed her hand over theirs.
"Temporary."
Khan looked at her.
"Everything is temporary."
The words came out lightly.
But Lillia noticed something beneath them.
An old bruise, pressed by accident.
She did not know where he had gotten it.
She only knew she recognized the shape.
She squeezed their hands once before releasing them.
"Then we'll renew."
Khan stared at her.
Miriel blinked.
Lillia smiled as though she hadn't said anything important.
Merchant habit.
Never let the other party see how much you want the deal.
Unfortunately, Khan was looking at her too closely.
His expression softened.
Only slightly.
"That's terrible negotiation."
"Why?"
"You revealed attachment."
Lillia felt her face warm.
Miriel's eyes brightened.
Khan smiled.
There.
He knew.
Lillia lifted her chin.
"Then consider it strategic transparency."
"That's not a thing."
"It is now."
Miriel laughed.
Khan reached for the paper bag.
While Miriel was still laughing, he leaned slightly toward Lillia.
His voice was low enough that it was meant only for her.
"You didn't need the salary, you know."
Lillia looked at him.
"What?"
"To keep us."
Her throat closed.
For a moment, she could not think of a single clever thing.
Khan straightened.
His face had already returned to its usual expression of tired commercial suspicion.
"I'm still taking it," he added, at normal volume. "Sixteen gold is sixteen gold."
Lillia let out a breath that was almost a laugh.
Almost something else.
"Of course you are."
"Hazard pay too."
"Of course."
"In writing."
"Khan."
"Contracts should survive sentiment."
She looked away so he wouldn't see her eyes.
He looked away at the same moment, out of courtesy, so she wouldn't have to.
She noticed that too.
Outside, someone shouted that the lead wagons were ready.
The caravan was moving again.
Toward Oakhaven.
Toward the Arcane Academy.
Toward whatever terrible decisions waited there.
Lillia picked up the pastry Khan had abandoned and took a bite.
He stared.
"That was mine."
"Employment tax."
"You haven't hired me yet."
"Advance collection."
Khan looked appalled.
Miriel took the other half from Lillia.
Khan stared at both of them.
Then he sighed, reached into the paper bag and pulled out another pastry.
Untouched.
Still warm.
Lillia looked at it.
Then at the bag.
He had bought one extra.
Before anyone had asked for anything.
Before there had been any contract at all.
"Inventory buffer," Khan said, to no one in particular.
Khan glanced at the empty air again.
His expression suggested it had supplied another unwelcome opinion.
Khan sighed.
"Internet Explorer."
"Update my résumé."
Lillia had no idea what that meant.
But Khan was still there.
Miriel was still there.
The chestnuts were still warm in her hand.
And the hollow place inside her chest was gone.
In its place was something heavier.
Something that would hurt considerably more to lose.
She decided, quite deliberately, not to mind.
For the first time that morning, Lillia Goldleaf felt entirely awake.