>It had better be.
>Take a passive scan of the place as we follow the captain here.
>You follow the taciturn captain as she purposefully leads you into the fort, setting a pace that is neither slow nor fast.
>The interior of Isir's Cross could be likened to a warren, with stout but ungainly buildings jammed together at all angles, divided by dirt paths and small open courts adorned with training dummies or supply crates or a lone ornamental poplar in one case. Snatches of conversation and the smell of soup and ale streaming from one low building suggest a mess hall, canvas sacks overflowing another, some kind of storehouse. Rising out of a crag far to your left is the watch tower, surveying the maze below with a kind of stolid diligence. The whole affair would probably be a terrible fire hazard were it not built chiefly of stone, and likely warded against flame on top of that. Mismatched bands of stonework stand as testament to centuries of repairs and remodelling; it is obvious that no landscape artists were ever involved at any point of the process.
>You pass a scattered soldier as you walk, though few enough even at this time of day to make you suspect a smaller garrison than the place was built to house - not surprising, really. A couple of them pretend very obviously not to be curious about you as you pass by, while the lack of interest from the rest seems genuine enough. No one salutes their captain or tries very hard to give the impression they belong to a regimented fighting force instead of a bunch of idle groundskeepers tending ancient bricks - you imagine you don't warrant the demonstration - but no one interrupts you, either. And if Sekibanki is displeased by the pair of layabouts cracking dirty jokes while dangling their feet off the roof of the smithy, she shows no sign of it, although the woman remains vexingly difficult to read; she has managed to avoid saying much of anything on the walk while never quite refusing to reply. You still haven't gotten a good look at her face either, and that bugs you.
>In absence of conversation, you pay a little more attention to your other senses as you meander the fort. It isn't hiding stockpiles of gold and jewels, that's for sure, though you would have been staggered to discover it was. There are more than a handful of enchanted items about, but this is similarly unsurprising; even a small and relatively unimportant garrison would be expected to have its share of magical hardware and Val Razua is possibly the most plentiful source of such trinkets in the entire world. You think even Sekibanki's cloak is enchanted somehow. Nothing strikes your senses with anything near the force that Kumokirimaru did, though there is a lot more noise here - your trusty lifesaver had the benefit of being the one enchanted object in a whole cavern, as near as you could tell. With some time and your dowsing rods, you expect you could track down quite a few things of modest interest around the fort, but it would hardly be polite to do this in view of the commander; probably one earns fewer favors by Seeking inside a benefactor's household.
>Eventually you are led inside a squat barrel of a building, somewhere near the rear though not quite nestled against the cliffside, and then up a flight of creaky wooden stairs into an office of a sort, almost purely functional blandness save for a suit of probably-decorative armour - antique and heavy-looking plate in nearly the same black and red as the captain's own uniform. Curiously, the helmet is cradled in the armour's hands, rather than resting in the usual position.
>"So, what have you heard about this garden?" Sekibanki ask without further preamble.
