The fighting was the easy part. What came after, harvesting fangs, draining silk glands, sorting the good shells from the cracked ones, took most of the afternoon.
Nicole did the cutting, grumbling the entire time. Gareth sorted. Luna bagged everything into neat, labeled parcels, working faster than either of them.
"Why is the cutting always my job," Nicole muttered, wrist deep in spider carcass.
"Seniority," Gareth said, not looking up.
"You've been in this city a week longer than me, tops."
"A week of experience is still experience, Deputy."
"Lord Commander," she shot back, dry as sand, "you're really leaning into this title."
Luna's mouth twitched at the corner, and her hands, Gareth noticed, moved a little faster whenever the two of them started in on each other.
By the time they climbed back out into daylight, the sun was already low, painting the sky the color of a dying ember over the tree line. They made it back to Northwind well after dark, sold the haul at the Guild counter, and split the reward three ways over dinner at a cheap tavern near the Drunken Fox.
It was there, somewhere between the second round of food and Nicole's third retelling of the spider fight (already exaggerated well past what actually happened), that Luna brought it up.
"We should think about a base."
Gareth looked up from his plate. "A base."
"Somewhere that's ours. Not a rented room in someone else's inn." She turned her cup slowly between two fingers, not quite looking at him. "Cultivation needs quiet. Storage needs security. And if the corps grows past the three of us, an inn room stops being an option entirely."
"I like the sound of that," Nicole said around a mouthful of bread. "Does it come with a yard? I've always wanted a yard."
"For what, exactly?" Luna asked, deadpan.
"Flowers. Obviously."
Luna gave her a look that suggested she thought this was a genuinely strange priority for someone who spent her mornings cutting spider silk glands, but said nothing.
Gareth turned it over. She wasn't wrong. An inn worked fine for now, but it put them under someone else's roof, someone else's schedule, someone else's eyes. If the corps was going anywhere, they'd need ground of their own eventually, might as well start looking before it became urgent.
"Not in the city," he said finally.
"Why not?" Luna asked.
"Land inside the walls is spoken for or priced like it. Even if we found something, we'd be boxed in by city rules on top of everything else, what we can build, how loud we can be, who's allowed to notice what we're doing." He shrugged. "Outside the walls, we'd actually have room to breathe. Somewhere close enough to reach the Guild without half a day's ride, but far enough that we're not living under a magnifying glass."
Luna considered that, then nodded slowly. "Somewhere near water would help. Or a tree line. Cultivation goes easier in a place with some natural vitality to it."
"And a yard," Nicole said again, more firmly this time.
"We'll find you a yard," Gareth said, mostly to end the conversation, and Nicole beamed like she'd won something.
Luna caught his eye over the table, the faintest hint of amusement there, gone as quickly as it came.
"I'll ask around the Guild," she said. "There are usually a few plots and abandoned holdings listed, mercenaries who quit the trade or didn't survive long enough to keep paying land tax."
"I'll cover that end too. Between the two of us we should turn up something in a week or so." Gareth leaned back. "Whatever we find, we split the cost the same way we split the take. Fair's fair."
"Obviously," Nicole said, like this had never been in question, though she'd clearly been bracing for an argument about it a moment ago.
They stayed at the table long past the point where the food had gone cold, talking through what a base might actually need, defenses, storage, room to grow. Luna, it turned out, had a sharper read on Northwind's undercurrents than her quiet manner suggested, which mercenary crews to avoid, which merchant houses played fair, which parts of the surrounding countryside had a reputation for trouble after dark. Nicole, for her part, seemed to know every shopkeeper, tavern owner, and rumor-monger within the city walls by first name.
Gareth sat back and let them talk, occasionally steering the conversation, mostly just listening.
Not a bad start, he thought. Not a bad start at all.