"Alright, listen up." Nicole sat up straighter, clearing her throat like she was about to deliver a report to the Guild itself. "I spent two days walking half the roads around Northwind, so you two better appreciate this."
She unrolled a hand-marked parchment across the table, dense with notes in her own cramped handwriting.
"Given what you asked for, close enough to the city, decent land, reasonable price, there's basically three options."
Her finger landed on a spot near the city walls. "Closest ring. You can see the gates from your own front door. Problem is the price, fifty to a hundred gold an acre, and most of the good plots sold out years ago. Whatever's left, you're paying speculators a premium just to get in the door."
Gareth's jaw tightened slightly, but he let her keep going.
"Second option." Her finger slid outward. "Ten miles out, give or take. Cheaper, closer to forty gold an acre. Still a premium involved, but a smaller one, and there's actually land available."
"And the third?"
"Wasteland, past ten miles. Five to fifteen gold an acre depending on quality, some of it reclaimed farmland gone fallow, some of it never touched at all." She shrugged. "Cheapest by far. Also a full day's ride round trip if you're not on a fast horse."
"There's a couple more I didn't even bother pricing," she added. "Land near noble estates, that's asking for trouble, build a wall an inch too tall and suddenly some lord's steward is at your door about sightlines. And hillside or forest plots, cheap on paper, but the ground's a nightmare to build on."
Gareth turned it over. Stripped down, there wasn't really a choice at all. The close ring was priced out of reach for anything worth having. The far wasteland saved money but cost time they didn't have to spare, every trip back and forth eating half a day.
Which left the middle ground. Ten miles. Close enough to matter, far enough to breathe.
He glanced at Luna. She was already looking back at him, and they arrived at the same answer without either of them saying it out loud.
"Second option," he said.
He reached over and took her hand, thumb brushing absently across her knuckles, an easy, practiced gesture now after a month of this. Neither of them could point to the exact day it had shifted from careful to certain, somewhere between her taking his hand first without prompting, and the two of them standing back to back against a Tier-3 lizard that could have ended either of them if the other hadn't held the line.
Whatever it had been, it had settled into something real. Something that let them walk the streets of Northwind with her hand in the crook of his arm and neither of them thinking twice about who saw.
Marriage hadn't come up outright. Luna wanted things steady first, a foundation under them before building anything more permanent on top of it. He could respect that.
"Do you two ever stop," Nicole groaned, hands on her hips.
"You have the floor," Gareth said, entirely unbothered. "Go on."
"That's not, ugh." She threw her hands up. "Fine. Which plot, exactly? There's a dozen listings in that ring."
Gareth straightened, the humor dropping out of his voice. "Closest one to the city, best land quality we can afford. Set aside enough for living expenses, put the rest into the purchase."
"All of it?" Nicole blinked. "That's a lot of ground for three people."
"Three people now," he said. "Not forever. If this corps is worth building, it's going to outgrow three people fast, and a cramped plot bought cheap today just means buying it back at triple the price later, if the neighbors even agree to sell."
He pulled a blank sheet toward himself and sketched a rough grid with a few quick strokes.
"A base isn't just somewhere to sleep." He tapped one square. "Common hall here, somewhere people can drink and blow off steam without bothering anyone outside the walls. A guest lodge here, for clients and visiting family. Kitchen and mess hall, with land beside it for a garden and some livestock, so we're not making a supply run into the city every other day."
Another tap. "Bathhouse, somewhere to actually recover after a bad job instead of sitting in an inn room stewing in your own aches." A last tap, further out. "And eventually, if we can bring on an alchemist, a proper workshop. Cuts our potion costs to nearly nothing once it's running."
He circled the whole layout with one broad stroke.
"Buy enough now that we're not boxed in later. Land around a growing base gets snapped up fast once people notice something's being built. Better to own the room to grow than beg for it in five years."
Nicole's eyes had gone wide somewhere in the middle of that. "Oh. Oh, that's why you wanted the full survey, not just the cheapest plot."
"There it is."
Luna didn't say anything, but the look she gave him carried more weight than words would have. Something warmer than approval. Something that looked, if he was being honest with himself, a little like pride.
They set out the next morning in a rented carriage, an old driver at the reins who handled the horses with the unhurried confidence of someone who'd done this every day for thirty years. Nicole rode up front, calling out directions from her notes. Gareth and Luna sat in the back, watching the city give way to farmland, and the farmland give way to open country.
The sky ran high and clear, autumn light thinning out the shadows along the road. Yellowing leaves drifted loose from the branches overhead every so often, spinning down slow.
Luna leaned her head back against the carriage frame, eyes closed, hair catching the wind in loose strands against her cheek.
Gareth watched her for a moment, then shrugged out of his coat and settled it over her shoulders.
She didn't open her eyes, just reached over and found his hand, lacing her fingers through his without a word.
Up front, Nicole glanced back just in time to catch it, rolled her eyes with a small, private smile, and turned back around without saying anything at all.