Lyra descended the last steps of the Cathedral and stood still for a moment. Valir stopped beside her, his gaze fixed on the square.
"I'll need to stay here a little longer," he said.
His voice was calm and low, careful not to disturb the peace of the place.
"I won't be long, but I can't pull you into this with me."
Lyra turned to look at him.
"Oh, of course. That's no problem."
He gave a slight nod, but he did not seem in any hurry to leave her alone. His gaze passed briefly over the square, as if he were calculating something, then shifted back toward the great arch of the Cathedral entrance.
She followed his gaze.
A woman was descending the steps from inside the Cathedral with a calm, steady stride, without the slightest hint of haste. And yet, there was something in the way she moved that immediately drew attention. Not because she demanded to be seen, but because she seemed entirely certain of the space she occupied.
Vienna.
Lyra recognized her before she had fully realized it.
She was tall and slender, with a straight back and the quiet severity of someone who had learned to carry responsibility without showing it off. Her blond hair was carefully tied back, leaving only a few soft strands around her face. Her white and pale blue uniform was clean, perfectly arranged, with gold details that caught the light discreetly. She embodied the discipline of the Headquarters perfectly.
But it was not only that.
It was her face, too. The cool, clear features. The calm in her eyes. That way, she looked at others without seeming either harsh or especially warm, but as if she were silently noting everything that mattered.
Valir turned toward her.
"Vienna."
She stopped in front of them and brought her fist to her chest in a brief, formal salute.
"Grand Master."
Her gaze shifted to Lyra. It was not aggressive. It was careful.
Valir made a small gesture with his hand.
"This is Lyra. The woman I told you about."
Vienna nodded slowly.
"A pleasure."
Her voice was clear, controlled.
"Likewise," Lyra replied.
Valir looked at both of them for a moment, then spoke again in that calm, practical tone he used when he had already decided something in his mind.
"Vienna will escort you through the city while I finish here. She'll show you the route around the square and the market. That way, you won't need to wander alone until I return."
Lyra's eyes widened slightly.
"I don't want to cause any trouble..."
"You're not," he said simply.
Then his gaze moved to Vienna for a moment, and she needed nothing more. Something had already passed between them without words. Lyra understood it, not because she saw it clearly, but because that silent understanding was exactly the kind of bond people gained after working together for years.
"I will escort her," Vienna said.
Valir nodded once. For a moment, his gaze remained on Lyra. There was a quiet interest in it.
"Don't get lost," he said at last.
The sentence was so light, so almost indifferent in tone, that Lyra needed a moment to realize it was probably the closest thing to humor she had heard from him so far.
"I'll try," she answered before thinking.
The corner of his mouth lifted almost imperceptibly. Then, he turned and climbed the Cathedral steps again, leaving them in the square.
Lyra watched him for a moment, until his figure disappeared once more into the half-light of the Cathedral.
When she turned back to Vienna, the woman was already looking at her.
Her gaze seemed to examine her. She looked at Lyra the way one might look at a new map before deciding whether it was accurate.
"If you have no preference," Vienna said, "we'll start from the market and circle the lower square. It is the usual route when we monitor movement near the center."
"No, I don't have a preference," Lyra said. "Whatever is best."
Vienna nodded once and began walking. Lyra followed her.
The city had a rhythm of its own, lively, bright, humane.
The market stalls were arranged in rows beneath colorful awnings that swelled lightly in the wind.
Wooden signs creaked lazily above shops and inns.
From a nearby bakery came the scent of warm bread, butter, and honey. From the restaurant farther down the street rose the aroma of thyme, roasted meat, and something spicy Lyra could not name.
The fountain at the center of the square shot water high into the air before it fell back down in a steady, almost hypnotic rhythm. Children ran around it, laughing, until a woman called something to them from an open window, and they scattered again without truly slowing down.
She had seen all of this before.
Through a screen.
Through quests.
In scenes and images that had once seemed beautiful in that distant, untouchable way things do when you know you do not belong inside them.
But now the air was real. The warmth of the stones was real. The voices, the smells, the light falling at an angle over the red rooftops and wooden beams of the houses. Allof it was real.
And that, perhaps, was the strangest thing of all.
At first, the silence between them was not exactly awkward.
It was simply new.
Vienna did not seem like the sort of person who spoke without reason.
Her steps were steady, neither too fast nor too slow, and her eyes swept over the street in an almost unconscious way. She noticed everything. The stalls. The passersby. A cart struggling to turn at the corner. A young man carrying far more crates than he should have been. Two children running far too close to a horse tied outside an inn.
Lyra glanced at her from the corner of her eye and tried to understand what she was seeing.
Vienna did not have Valir's obvious gravity. She did not fill the space in the same way. But there was something steady and sharp about her, like a well-honed blade that did not need to leave its sheath to remind you it existed.
"Do you like the city?" Vienna asked at last.
The question came so simply that Lyra needed a moment to answer.
"Yes," she said, then smiled faintly. "More than I probably should."
Vienna turned her gaze toward her for a moment.
"Why shouldn't you?"
Lyra opened her mouth and closed it again almost immediately.
"I just..." she said at last, searching for words that would not betray anything. "It's easy for me to feel familiar with it."
Vienna looked at her a little longer, then turned her attention forward again.
"That is not necessarily a bad thing."
They passed a fruit stall. Apples were stacked in neat rows, red and golden-green, and the woman selling them smiled at Vienna with familiarity.
"Good morning, Miss Vienna."
"Good morning, Mrs. Maren."
Vienna's tone did not soften much, and yet the exchange sounded so natural, so ordinary, that Lyra understood at once that the other woman was not only known at the Headquarters.
She was known in the city.
She was part of it.
"Everyone knows you," Lyra said without thinking.
Vienna did not seem impressed by the observation.
"The city is smaller than it appears to someone seeing it for the first time," she said. "People notice. They remember faces."
Lyra thought that she herself was probably one of the people the city would remember easily.
The stranger.
The woman who had appeared out of nowhere.
The woman who had bent over an injured knight in the courtyard.
The thought was not especially comforting.
Perhaps Vienna noticed the change in her expression, because she spoke again a little later, still in the same calm, measured way.
"You don't need to worry because people are looking at you."
Lyra turned toward her.
"In a city like Windstadt, everyone comments when something new appears. After a while, most of them return to their lives."
Lyra lowered her gaze to the cobblestones.
"Unless the new thing gives them a reason not to forget it."
"Correct," Vienna said.
Then, after a small pause, she added more quietly,
"But so far, the reason you have given them is a positive one."
Lyra slowly lifted her eyes to her.
Vienna was not looking at her.
She had stopped briefly at the edge of the street to let a cart full of flour sacks pass. Her face remained calm, almost stern in the noon light. But the sentence had been clear.
There was no warmth in it, but there was no coldness either.
In a way, it was Vienna's own form of kindness: precise and restrained.
They continued.
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Thank you for reading "Rookie of the Wind".
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