Vanya watched everything the way a student of faces reads a class. She noted the small bright look in one woman's eye when she painted the pepper-water across Liora's shoulder; she saw the old man who smiled without sound as he kitted the cords. The Luna's contentment was a study in thin lines: she took pleasure in the efficient response to her order and in the ripple of power that made small people feel big for an hour.
Night made the courtyard strange. The torches cast long triangles where faces could hide, and the air carried that peculiar hush that followed sanctioned spectacle. Liora was quiet while the cold pulled small shudders across her limbs. She would not allow herself the collapse of feeling that would make her hungry for an audience's pity. The ropes were again tightened to keep her in the upright posture; Vanya liked the posture because it made a statement—obedience corded like a plant into a stake.
Elira approached with the careful gait of someone who had learned to read the map of the palace by the hollows of shadow. She stopped a few feet away and lowered herself to set the pot within reach. Her hands wanted to touch Liora's wrist, to check for pulse and warmth, but she kept them close to the bowl as if to do otherwise would be to invite the guards' eyes. She inhaled once, bringing in the courtyard's scents, pepper and smoke and wood and let the moment settle.
"Tell me where the cloak is," Liora said, and the voice was thin but exact. The cloak's description was a small file for Elira to carry: dark, silver braid, leaf-shaped clasp, collar softened by frequent use, patch near the hem where a rain stub had been stitched. Liora added smaller markers—how the silver thread frayed at one corner, the faint patch of wax at the collar from a candle she had placed too close in winter. These were the kind of details that survive theft and memory.
Elira's throat tightened. She had shelled out tiny favors before dropped herbs into a pocket here, a wrapped loaf into the hands of a woman who had needed it. Now she would cross an angle of risk that could unravel more than the neat stitches at the edge of society. She found her courage the way one finds a small stone, slipping it into a pocket and deciding to keep it.
"What will you do if I do not find it?" she asked, the question soft enough to be swallowed by the night.
Liora's eyes fixed on the younger woman. "Then go away," she said. "Leave me to them. But if you bring it, if you hide it and return, bring it folded and warm then the cloak will be the thing that remembers me. Not them. Promise me."
Nyssa watched the exchange with a face that had become a map of inward storm. A part of her wanted to scoop Elira into the protective world of the healer's hut and hide the cloak herself. That impulse died in the shape of a decision, choices are heavy and Nyssa had made hers. There would be no shelter for this cloak: it would have to be fought for in stealth and quick feet.
Elira rose. The cloak's description lay like a talisman in her mind now, each detail a step in a road she must walk. She bowed her head to Liora for a single long breath and then stepped away, the pot and skin balanced against her hip. The night swallowed her figure in long folds, and the courtyard's hush settled again.
Liora watched the path where Elira had gone until the sound of slippers ceased. Her muscles ached under the rope; the pepper's sting had cooled to an angry bloom across the skin. She breathed slow and deliberate and kept tally of sounds: a step on the far walkway, the distant clink of a cup, a hush of a voice passing under the eaves. Each small sound was now a marker that pinched the night into portions. Each portion might be an hour; each hour brought her closer to whatever return Elira could make.