Owen had never held an infant before. Not a human one anyway. Creatures were always being born around the outpost, so he supposed he could not say he had never held a baby in the whole of his life. He’d held plenty: slick, wet lambs tottering from his arms on shaking limbs; wrinkled little logs of brown and pink piglets, soft and squeaking in his palms come spring; little balls of warm skin snuffling into his chest when he visited Barnard during whelping season.

  He wasn’t quite sure how he had come to be holding this particular baby, but like the croaking lambs and squeaking pigs, it was pleasant enough, so he didn’t mind overmuch.

  This particular baby didn’t seem to mind him either. She wiggled in his arms, testing new limbs, her face twisting between expressions as if discovering things like cheeks and eyebrows and tiny dimpled chins — but she didn’t cry. After that first primal screech, she had only made the quaintest of gurgles and tentative coos. It must be strange to be an infant, Owen thought — one moment nothing, and then shunted, feet first, into an entirely new world. He adjusted the blankets around her again, her feet and fists determined to fight free.

  “-in my fucking place.” Roland was not shouting — he rarely did — but he was not pleased. His naturally deep baritone was wire-taut, matching the tension of his shoulders, the clench of his fists.

  Owen tugged his attention from the baby as she punched at the fabric enclosing her arms, wondering if he should intervene. It was caught an instant later by the turn of her head, a little honk emitting from her as she nosed into the front of his shirt. Owen laughed a little and shifted his arms to let her burrow further.

  “-settlers designated and dispatched—” the Bondsmage was saying, every word rang with malicious glee. Owen’s eyes flicked up to see a sneering smugness on an already unpleasant face, a piece of parchment being waved about like a banner.

  Before he could ask, the baby had kicked a foot free. Owen tutted and went to setting it to rights, working to tuck in the ends of the cloth. He was curious how long it would take her to free it. If that’s what she was even trying to do. Owen wasn’t entirely sure how much babies knew. Human ones, that is. Some animals stood and walked away from their mothers in hours — survival written into their bones. Strange that humans needed so long to find their footing. Owen was not well studied in natural philosophy and had only ever spent a passing amount of time with children, Maribelle’s mostly, and nearly none with babies.

  “When do children start to walk?” Owen asked.

  The infant’s mother — Mistress Winterglade, Taneah Winterglade, Owen remembered after a blank moment — paused, but in the end ignored him and finished her thought.

  “-to discuss further. But not tonight. I am tired.” She waved a hand dismissively. “Lazrin. See them out.”

  The Bondsmage, Lazrin, swept to the door, opening it wide with grotesque childish joy — a cruel pettiness that made Owen’s skin crawl. The baby increased her burrowing, trying to wedge her head between Owen’s arm and chest. It tickled, and he huffed a laugh, easing away. The miniature grunts and snuffles increased in pitch, grew more frantic, her mouth drawing in the fabric of his shirt with desperate little sips.

  “Oh!” Owen shifted her again, and with a gentle smile at Taneah, he lifted the warm bundle toward her mother. “Ah — I think this little one might be hungry?”

  Taneah reared back, her lip curling in poised distaste — as if the baby were a dead rat Owen had thrust at her. His chest tightened.

  Owen brought the baby back to his chest, confused. She was ramping up to an urgent cry now. The room dimmed as a candle went out.

  “No. Avenna. The child.”

  Avenna — apparently the name of the young lady who had come for their help earlier — did not move. She looked more terrified now than she had in the tavern below, her gaze fixed on the smoke drifting to the ceiling, the wick recently snuffed.

  “Avenna,” Mistress Winterglade’s voice sharpened. Avenna startled and, with a determined nod, rushed forward, reaching out to Owen with reluctant arms. She didn’t meet his gaze — or the baby’s. The grunts sharpened as Owen passed her over.

  His arms felt suddenly light. The fading warmth lingered like winter’s breath — thin and aching and new. Owen’s hand hovered for a moment before settling back to his side, empty.

  _______________________

  As soon as they reached the landing, Roland heaved him toward the bar to face a bowl of stew. The Edgewards slept on around them, undisturbed by the evening’s excitement. Roland picked up the spoon — or rather, prodded at it, as if testing a trap spring. Then, seemingly satisfied, he picked it up to examine it.

  “Go ahead and eat. You must be famished,” Owen encouraged. “I know you let the rooms, but I could—”

  “What happened?” Roland asked after another moment of turning the spoon over in his hands. “Upstairs.”

  “Upstairs?" Owen echoed, glancing at the ceiling. "Er... quite a bit?”

  Roland huffed, then seized Owen’s shoulders and settled him onto the stool, bringing their heights level. His hands were hot, the dark brown of his eyes moving over Owen’s face as if searching for something beneath it.

  “Tell me everything that happened from the moment you went up those stairs,” he said.

  “I—”

  Owen was no stranger to missing time. The walk down from his shop to the outpost proper was not one he could describe with any confidence, despite taking the same route each day for well over two years now. Entire afternoons had vanished — sitting down to puzzle out a quandary with the sun slanting through one window, only to find it setting through another when he looked up again.

  “It all happened rather fast,” he started, trying to piece it together. Roland, ever patient, waited. Owen remembered the woman, Avenna, coming down the stairs. Remembered Roland snapping into action — as if the years they had spent here meant nothing — once again tasked with herding Owen into waiting secret carriages or shutting him behind closed doors at the slightest whisper of suspicion.

  “I went upstairs, and Mistress Winterglade was—”

  Roland was shaking him. His broad hands pushed Owen’s hair back from his forehead, cupping his cheeks with steady pressure. His face blurred and sharpened in Owen’s vision. He blinked, and something whispered along his cheek. He reached up. His finger came away wet.

  “Am I crying?” he asked, staring down at the smudged tear in wonder. He touched his face and felt more damp evidence. Roland seemed to sag when he spoke, his hands lightly squeezing.

  “You just stopped,” Roland rasped. His forehead pressed against Owen’s, brief and searing, before he pulled back.

  “Stopped what?” Owen asked, breathless.

  “You just stopped,” Roland snapped. “Stopped moving. Stopped blinking. It was like you were — I don't know — fucking stuck.” Roland ran a hand through his hair and scowled at the bowl of stew.

  “More of their fucking schemes,” he muttered, kicking sharply at the side of the sleeping Edgeward on the ground. The man’s body shifted from the force, but he slept on.

  “Roland!” Owen barked, the full weight of his station behind it. “Come with me.”

  He let Owen come to him, to run calming hands down his broad arms — little licks of energy sparking beneath his skin — and guide him past the cookstove into the back rooms. He reminded Owen of a child, once soothed from ill dreams, being returned to bed. Roland would surely hate the comparison, but Owen found something achingly sweet in his quiet acquiescence — in the power of guiding this moose of a man with only the gentlest of pressure.

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  The original designs had meant the space to serve as a suite for the innkeep’s family — separate, but close enough to tend any trouble. Roland called that a waste of good storage. Two of the rooms had long since been given over to crates and barrels, the hanging bodies of dried fish and onion bulbs. The man himself had taken up in what had once been designated as a washroom.

  Restoring the room wouldn’t be difficult. Roland had added only a bed piled with thick furs and a trunk for his clothes, which he kept in the heavy copper tub. There were no pictures. No odd scraps of paper. A few books, which Owen suspected were only there because he had forgotten them in the tavern, and a set of clothes hung to dry from the eaves.

  Owen led them both to the bed, and Roland sat backward onto it with a sigh, already propping one booted foot to knead at his ankle under his brace. Owen sat on the bed’s edge and slapped his hands away to start working at the straps. For a few moments, there was only the sound of their breaths, white clouds puffing out from the cold.

  “You should let me revive the charge so you can sleep tonight. I forgot with all the commotion,” Owen said.

  Roland shook his head, watching Owen’s hands as they slipped the leather free and started on the locks.

  "Tomorrow, then."

  "As if you'll remember."

  “Why don’t you tell me what happened,” Owen said, finally unlocking the last clasp.

  “Things that don’t make any sense,” Roland sighed, relaxing a bit as Owen shifted the brace off and, with quick rubs, worked at where it had dug into his skin above the top edge of his boot. He started working on the boot next.

  “Be more specific,” Owen said.

  It was several more quiet moments — nothing but breaths and the rasp of leather on cloth as he worked it sideways off Roland’s foot. It was more difficult than usual. It fell to the floor with a dull thunk. Roland’s ankle was warm through his stockings, swollen. Owen pressed at it, half relief and half impatience, and Roland hissed but did not move away.

  “The bowl,” Roland said, voice flat. “It was empty. Then it was full. And the spoon — gone.” He ran a hand over his face. “Like it had never been there. Come downstairs, spoons back again. And outside, when I went to get Haystack-shit,” Roland sat up. “He’s gone up to fetch Maribelle,” Roland said. “And Barnard.”

  “Shouldn’t cause any harm if Maribelle takes a peek at them,” Owen said. “She won’t mind waiting for dawn if they get here early, but Haystack will take his time in the dark.”

  “Don’t I fuckin' know it.” Roland finally shifted his foot out of Owen’s grasp and leaned forward, resting his elbows on his thighs.

  “I can’t explain—” He took a breath and shook his head. “I don’t know what the fuck happened outside, but something is going on. That girl, not the mother—”

  “Avenna?” Owen said.

  Roland nodded.

  “She was covered in blood, more blood than anyone living could have lost, but now she’s clean as fresh snow.”

  Owen frowned. He did remember that. He had thought her a shade at first, some haunting vision of past brutality come to visit them in the night.

  “Maybe it only looked worse in the moment?" Owen suggested, doubt threading through his voice.

  “And you can’t even speak plain about what happened.”

  Owen went to open his mouth, but Roland’s large hand snapped out and clamped across his face with firm pressure.

  “Don’t try again,” he bit out.

  He pulled his hand back, and the tingle of his touch remained for a heartbeat. Owen wanted to chase it but snapped his fingers for the other boot instead. Roland rolled his eyes but shifted, tugging it off and handing it over.

  “Perhaps it was Cookie’s stew?” Owen tried again. “On the skin or perhaps the vapors? Like when I forgot and left the flue closed and—”

  “I know what I saw,” Roland bit out. “I know what I heard. I know that you sat there like a propped-up corpse after trying to put words to it, and I know I don’t want this shit anywhere near us.”

  “They’ll be on their way soon,” Owen said weakly, unsure of how to reassure him. This was not something he had experience with. Roland had never needed such before.

  Roland laughed, a harsh, bitter thing.

  “Knew you weren’t paying attention, too busy cooing at that—that—”

  “Infant?” Owen suggested, a warning winding its way in. “Baby?”

  “As you say,” Roland said. “I didn’t mean—”

  “I’m sure you did not.” Owen stood, deftly dodging Roland’s swipe to tug him back. He took a deep, steadying breath. Now was not the time to be sensitive over old wounds.

  “You’re not wrong,” He said finally.

  “So the baby is—”

  “Gifted? Blessed? Touched by the Gods?” Owen wrinkled his nose at the last. “I suspect so. I can’t sense if someone is, not unless they have some visual indicator that lets everyone know. But she didn’t stir a bit—” He wiggled his fingers, a little arc of lightning traveling from forefinger to thumb. “Not a flinch.”

  “It’s not as strong as you think.” Roland reached up and flicked at the arc. It branched out from the stream, dancing in the air until it barely brushed his fingernail. Owen pulled it back.

  “Lots of people don’t notice. Or mind.”

  “True,” Owen bit his lip, pondering. “Maribelle’s girl thinks it’s funny when she hugs my leg. Still though, there’s something. And there’s also, as you pointed out, the bowl, and every time I try to think about her birth it just… slips away.”

  “Your memory is shit,” Roland pointed out. “And I told you not to try again.”

  “Also true. Both.”

  Owen’s bones ached, every joint felt locked up, and exhaustion was creeping in on field mouse feet.

  Roland must have felt similar. He grunted and threw himself back on the bed, letting out a gusty sigh as he stretched out along it, closing his eyes.

  “The girl, Avenna, has been dispatched as a settler for the outpost,” Roland said. “That’s what you missed. Fucking mandate. They claim they are merely ‘acting as escort.’”

  His tone told Owen all he needed to know about his feelings on the veracity of that claim.

  “Taneah Winterglade acting as mere escort? Seems unlikely.”

  “Better chance of me joining back up with those twats than that being the truth.”

  “How disappointing,” Owen teased. “You look so fetching in gold.”

  Scram gestured rudely but did not open his eyes.

  “You’re exhausted. I’m exhausted. We’ll work it out in the morning. Do you think Haystack’s bed is clean?” Owen asked.

  “Not a chance in fuck. Why?”

  This time he did crack an eye, peering at Owen in good-natured suspicion.

  “I know you won’t let me go up on my own, and I’ll not have you walking all the way up and back after the evening we just had.” Owen sniffed.

  “So you can occasionally stir a thought outside of the damned pipes.”

  Owen leaned over to jab sharply at Roland’s side, but he caught his wrist instead, reclosing his eyes. He tugged gently.

  “Just sleep here,” he gruffed, tugging again. “If you kip out in Haystack’s grubby little nest, you’ll get fleas.”

  Owen sat down, kicking off his boots. He wouldn’t lie to himself — this was what he’d hoped for. “And then you won’t notice until you’ve scratched yourself bald, and Barnard and I will have to dip you in the river like the dogs.”

  Boots removed, Owen let himself lie down. It was a small bed, a washroom-turned-bedroom-sized bed, and Roland was a broad man, Owen a very long one. He gingerly arranged himself until Roland, perhaps impatient, perhaps overtired, grabbed him by the waist and half-flung him over his body, the curve of Owen’s side pressed over his front, their legs braided. He tugged the mass of furs and cloth over them, a little cocoon of warmth.

  “Fuck off to sleep,” he said.

  Owen was sure his face was burning in the dark. Roland’s warmth pressed into his side, steady and grounding. This was not the first time they had shared a bed; it was not even the hundredth, but it always made his stomach squirm, made his toes curl in a giddy sort of anticipation — as if he were a child, getting away with something under Nanny’s ever-watchful eye, never mind that he was several decades removed from childhood and she had passed on some years ago.

  “It won’t bother you?” Owen asked, biting his lip.

  “Stop,” Roland murmured, already sleep-thick and slowed. He gave Owen a gentle jiggle in reprimand. “Sleep. We still have to deal with this shit in the morning.”

  “Do you think fleas would be affected?” Owen asked. “They jump a lot, I think. Maybe they wouldn’t notice.”

  “You’ll find out if you keep yapping,” Roland murmured, half of it almost lost in the trail of his voice petering out.

  “I delivered a baby today,” Owen said with no small amount of awe. “I believe I did anyway.”

  “Don’t. Think. About. It.” Roland gave a little kick. “Sleep.”

  “I liked her,” Owen said. “The baby, I mean. They are very small — babies. And very… pink.”

  “That’s it, it’s the barn for you.” Roland made a show of heaving him out of their cave.

  “Sorry,” Owen whispered, allowing himself the indulgence of brushing the side of his hand across the soft down of Roland’s beard.

  “I’ll be quiet.”

  Roland’s responding grunt seemed doubtful and so faint it was likely the last he’d say for the night.

  Owen, however, was thrumming, too livened to follow. He enjoyed a few moments of listening to Roland’s deep, even breaths, feeling the heat of him down the line of his body, and then turned himself to the problem of his memory.

  The last thing he remembered was climbing the stairs. The first: the sensation of wiping pinched dark eyes, his body overwhelmed by some foreign exhilaration, his eyes prickling with tears even as laughter left his mouth.

  The rest was as fathomless as the Gap, a yawning void. Even this was strange. The missing pieces of his memory didn’t feel lost in the usual way. Owen was used to the sense of time passing — blurred but present — even when he couldn’t recall the details. But this… this felt like a dreamless night, a single blink from sleep to waking with nothing in between.