Turn 4 of 7

Ask Ilde about the three nights she came to the garden after Compline

"Ilde," you say. The corridor is emptying around you — Breta's footsteps receding toward the refectory, the rustle of habits fading — but the garden door is shut and Ilde stands with her back to it, and for a moment the two of you are alone in the thin morning light.

"You've been coming to the garden after Compline. Three nights."

She does not flinch. She does not ask how you know. She looks at you the way she looks at a branch that has canker — assessing the extent of the damage before deciding where to cut. Her hands stay at her sides, palms open, and the empty leather loop on her belt is level with your eyes.

"Yes," she says. "Three nights."

The word sits between you. She does not elaborate, does not rush to fill the silence, and you recognize the discipline of it — Ilde has never wasted a word or a pruning cut in all the years you have known her. The corridor smells of candle smoke and cold stone, and through the garden door you can hear the first birdsong of the morning, thin and bright against the quiet.

"What were you doing?" you ask. You keep your voice level, but the question is not soft. You have earned the right to ask it — you and Ilde are the two who tend this tree, the two whose hands know every bough and every graft, and what happens in the garden at night is yours to know.

Ilde's gaze drops to the empty knife loop on her belt. She touches it with two fingers, a gesture so automatic it seems involuntary — the way one touches a pocket where a familiar weight should be. Her mouth tightens, and for the first time you see something other than composure in her face. It is not guilt. It is the careful expression of someone choosing, very precisely, what to say next.

"I was checking the grafts on the south bough," she says. "The ones I set in March. They are not taking well — the sap is slow and the binding is too tight, and if I do not loosen them before the heat comes, the bark will grow over the cord and the branch will strangle." She pauses.

"I went at night because the sap pressure is lowest after dark, and because I did not want to explain why I was fussing over grafts that failing. Pride, I suppose. I did not want anyone to know they were failing."

Her eyes come back to yours. They are tired and clear and hold no defiance.

"I did not take the fruit," she says. "You can see the grafts yourself — they are on the south bough, third branch from the trunk. The binding is loosened. I was there three nights, and I did not touch a single fruit. But my knife is not here because I left it. I left it leaning against the trunk the third night, and when I went back at dawn yesterday to collect it, it was gone."

She holds your gaze. Behind her, through the crack in the garden door, you can see the tree — its branches heavy with pale gold, the three empty stems bright against the morning sky. Someone took Ilde's knife from the trunk. Someone who knew where she left it, and who came to the garden after she had gone.

"You think someone used my knife," Ilde says, and it is not a question.