“Rendy, this is my sister, Solomaur,” Mary Sue said as she led Orenda to a woman standing in the middle of an orchard so large it seemed to stretch for miles.

The trees bore all sorts of different fruits, and didn’t seem to be arranged in any meaningful way, but that was because Orenda had no knowledge of agriculture, and had never tried to hide one plant among others. There was a method to the chaos, Orenda was just not trained to be able to spot it. There were several people, all Brigaddons and all decently young, walking around with long wooden poles hitting branches with them. The ground around them was littered with barrels, and when they struck a branch, it would cause fruit to drop, though not necessarily into the barrels. The children Orenda had met during the morning ran through the barrage of falling fruit, trying to catch it, but more often just scooping it up from the ground in their aprons until they were full, and then dumping them into a barrel. All of them sang while they worked, in snatches, the same song, and the overall effect was haunting. No one person made it through an entire verse. They weren’t singing a hymn, as the slaves had done while Orenda had driven past them, but rather a song about a man who had returned from war to find his wife had taken him for dead and remarried.

Orenda thought that a lot of Urillian songs were depressing.

“Hello,” Solomaur said, and Orenda thought she was probably around the same age as the boy who had attacked Gareth.

“My name is Solomaur, as well,” Orenda told her, “My middle name is. My first name is Orenda.”

“Neat,” Solomaur said, “People call me ‘Solo’. But I’m obviously not.” She motioned at the buzz of activity around her. “We’ve actually got most of the orchard cleared already, but what’s left needs to come in fast. We’ve got to clear it before the first snow falls or it won’t be worth having.”

“How does it all work?” Orenda asked her.

“I mean it’s not exactly surgery,” Solo shrugged and waved to Mary Sue as she began to walk back to the house. “Knock the fruit out of the trees. The kids’ll collect it and put it where it goes. The pretty ones to sell, the ugly ones to eat, and the unsalvageable ones to ferment. That’s always fun. I hope you’ve got a strong back, that reaching up and swinging takes a lot of out of you. Here.”

They had been walking as they spoke, and Solo had led her to a place where more of the long poles stood lined up against some sort of wooden shed. She handed one to Orenda and picked one up for herself. Orenda was shocked by how heavy it was.

“We clear out one area before we move on to the next,” Solo told her, “Don’t hit it as hard as you can. I mean, don’t break the pole or the branch. And don’t get hit. Some of that stuff falls pretty hard. Starfruit, especially, really packs a whallop.”

“But there are children running everywhere,” Orenda said as she looked at the tree.

“They got the good sense not to get hit,” Solo said and whacked a branch with her pole.

Orenda mimicked her, and though she was a little taller than Solo, she still had to reach above her head to make the motion properly.

It didn’t take long for the pain to set in. Her arms and her upper back began to ache, first with a slight throbbing that would go away if she rested for a minute, but then her abdominal muscles, injured and unused to hard work, joined in, and her torso began to feel like a vice, tight and difficult to loosen again. None of the Brigaddons seemed to be bothered as she was- they were all singing and laughing and occasionally yelling at children or each other, sometimes even throwing fruit at one another. The crisp autumn air smelled like the sweet sugar of the fruit, and Orenda worked until she would have to rest or die. She reminded herself that much of her weakness could probably be attributed to the blood she had recently lost, but she knew it was more than that. Her muscles were so unused, so out of shape, that as she leaned against the tree panting she feared she may throw up. The world around her felt hot though she knew it couldn’t be. Uril was chillingly cold in the autumn.

She just needed to catch her breath. Then she would be fine.

“Hi, Ms Orenda!” the little girl that Orenda recognized as either Angel or Alice said to her. She had nothing in her apron, but she reached down, scooped up a piece of starfruit, leaned against the tree beside Orenda and began to eat it.

“Hello,” Orenda told her, “What’s your name again? You and your sister look so similar.”

“I’m Alice!” the girl said, “And you look sick.”

“I’m unaccustomed to such hard work,” Orenda admitted.

“Yeah,” Alice said with her mouth full, “Elves can’t work. They’re weak. You should sit down.”

“It isn’t because I’m an elf!” Orenda corrected, “I used to do quite hard work, when I was younger, with heavy metals dug out of the ground. I had to clean and separate them for smelting. They were much heavier than this pole. I’m out of shape because I’ve taken no exercise for quite some time. If you don’t exercise you get out of shape. That’s just the way of the world.”

“I know,” Alice said, which Orenda thought was a lie or she wouldn’t have suggested a racial component. “My parents said that all the time. My dad especially. Daddy always said you couldn’t let yourself get out of shape because you might have to fight for your life.”

“He was probably right,” Orenda said, “He seems as if he would know. I’ve been told he used to fight.”

“My momma used to fight too,” Alice said, “They were both really strong. She used to be an assassin.”

“Really?” Orenda asked with interest.

“Yup,” Alice said, and seemed not to think this was particularly noteworthy or worth elaborating on. She looked up to see the interest in Orenda’s eyes and continued, “We’re not supposed to talk about because people are looking for us.”

“People are looking for all of us,” Orenda agreed. “But you seem well hidden.”

“People are looking for you?” Alice said, “I thought people were just looking for humans. Are you a bunny too?”

“No,” Orenda said, “I’m a criminal. I suppose… at the end of the day… that I’m a pirate.”

“Neat!” The girl said and walked away to throw the core into a barrel.

“Why did you do that?” Orenda asked, “Isn’t that garbage?”

“No!” The girl said as if Orenda was stupid, “You have to save all the starfruit. You have to keep the seeds. And the core.”

“Why?” Orenda asked.

“Because we need it,” Alice said, “It’s important.”

“Right,” Orenda said, “Well, I suppose we should get back to work.”

Orenda felt as if she were made of clockwork as night fell. She handed her pole back to Solomaur and filed toward the house with everyone else, stiff and sore. Her joints protested every move she made, and she didn’t understand how that wasn’t the case for the Brigaddons. She knew that she was out of shape, but the work had been hard, and they had worked from the time the sun rose, whereas she had only worked half that time. Yet they still seemed full of energy, joking and laughing, some even shoving each other or singing half-remembered nursery rhymes.

They went in through the servant’s entrance into the kitchen, and the smell made Orenda’s mouth water. There had been set out more cornbread, yellow and soft, alongside several platters of roasted root vegetables coated in some sort of sauce and smelling of tangy, earthy spices.

At least the others agreed with her on one thing. They were starving.

Sokomaur stood on the counter where the food was laid out with a bandanna over her hair, dishing it out. On the counter behind her, however, Orenda saw that there were several pies and a cake laid out. Deserts were rare for the working class- Orenda couldn’t remember having one before she had gone to the academy, and she was startled to see them.

“You eat your food first,” Solo told her as they moved down the line to get their plates.

“I made that cake for y’all,” Soko told Orenda, “I want you to take a piece down to Uncle Gary. He’s still in rough shape. Y’all can’t have those pies; they’re full of starfruit.”

“Oh,” Orenda said, “You didn’t have to do anything special for us. I’m sure we’ll all eat whatever’s in front of us. It smells delicious. And I’m starving.”

“I’m making tea, too, you just go sit down,” Soko told her. “You look wore plum out, but you get used to it. We’ll get you a real bed tonight.”

“That would be nice,” Orenda said, and jerked her head to the doorway. Barbra Allen had just come in, shoving her way past people and through the crowd.

“Y’all move!” She screamed, “Get out the way!”

Orenda watched as Draco squeezed himself through the doorway and began to flitter across the room looking for somewhere to land. Orenda prayed that he wouldn’t try to alight on her, because she wasn’t sure she was strong enough to support both of them, but of course he did.

“Good news and bad news,” He told Orenda as she clutched the counter for support.

“Did you find Bella?” Orenda asked.

“Yup,” He said, “And she’s being returned to us. By Commander Agalon.”