The walk from the office to the inner courtyard took less than three minutes and Hild said nothing during it.
Beorn did not fill the silence. He was used to walking with people who had something to work through, and he had learned that talking into that particular silence accomplished nothing except making the person work through it faster in the worse direction.
Aestrith moved on his other side with one crutch managing the uneven stone of the old corridors, and she also said nothing, which made the walk exactly as full of words as it needed to be.
The courtyard had the scent of cut herbs and flowers from the garden corner.
Beorn had stopped paying attention to it weeks ago.
For Hild, it was a rare sight in the Badlands. She looked toward the garden once when they came through the entrance, her eyes taking just a little longer on the flowers, taking stock of what was there before she decided how she felt about being in it.
