* * *

“Well,” said the chap at the planning department, whose name was Rankin, as he unrolled the plans. He was new—Iona didn’t remember meeting him before—and seemed slightly overwhelmed by the scale of the latest round of projects, including the one they were here to discuss.

Iona’s proposed design for the new forestry office was one of the most ambitious she had ever submitted, but she had not created it out of hubris. Rather, her intention had been to fit a large building into an already crowded part of town while causing the least possible upheaval. Her innovative concept meant that an adjacent residential block could be preserved, so there would be no need to turf people out of their homes and move them to one of the new estates in the suburbs.

“We’re all very impressed,” said Rankin, clamping the plans to the display board behind him. “Everyone’s very excited about the design. Very excited.”

“Great.”

“We all love what you’ve done. It’s so bold.”

“I’m glad.”

“The king especially. He was knocked out when he saw it.”

“Gosh.”

“He did have just one note for you.”

Iona nodded. “Sure. What?”

“He’d like it to be bigger.”

Iona looked from Rankin to the plans and back again. “Bigger in what way?”

“Just generally bigger. I think it’s a mark of how excited he is about it.”

“Well—” Iona began. “Do you mean taller?”

Now came Rankin’s turn to glance at the plans. “Yes. Well. He didn’t say.”

“Broader? More capacity?”

“Um . . .”

“All of those things?”

“Yes. All of them. I haven’t spoken to him personally, you understand.”

“No.”

“I don’t enjoy that honor. But he wrote this on the edge.” Rankin pointed at the king’s scrawled note on the corner of the plans. Iona stood, walked over to the board, and squinted at the comment. Indeed, that was the king’s sole instruction: the building should be bigger. And then there was a smiley face.

Iona straightened up. “Well, making it taller, with this design, putting more weight on the struts . . . I’m not sure it would work. I don’t think it’d be safe.”

“Oh.”

“So we’d have to make the whole thing broader as well, but—”

“Excellent. Do that then.”

“But that would mean thicker struts, so you’d be looking at extending the whole thing down this side.” Iona ran her finger along one edge of the diagram.

“We can accommodate that. The king is keen to accelerate the building program.”

“Oh good,” Iona said, although she couldn’t remember a time when they hadn’t been accelerating the building program. “But what about the residential block?”

“That’s alright, we’ll demolish it.”

“Right. I did sort of design the whole thing so that wouldn’t be necessary. That was the whole idea.”

“That’s really considerate of you,” said Rankin without any sarcasm at all. “But we don’t mind. It’s quite old anyway.”

* * *

After the meeting Iona returned to her office to wait for Alyssa, although she was by no means certain she would turn up. They’d parted ways last night on an uneasy note and maybe Iona had scared her off. Iona felt surprised by how keen she was to see and speak to Alyssa again. The young woman understood nothing about architecture but Iona felt increasingly certain she understood other things.