Owen awoke alone in a dark cave of humid, rosemary-scented warmth to the sound of his name.

  "Owen? You in there?"

  Owen recognized Torbin’s cracking voice, an edge of pleading in the question, as if he’d been asking for a while . A soft tapping followed.

  Owen shuffled out of the cave of furs with great reluctance. Roland’s bedding was sackcloth coarse, but it smelled of woody rosemary and cloudberry seed oil and was still body-warm.

  He’d tried the concoction once, curious if it would tame the fine wisps of his curls the way it smoothed over Roland’s bushing locs. Owen had spent hours watching him tend to them—thick hands rolling and rubbing tight coils into shape each week by the tavern’s hearth, in mud-soaked tents, in cramped, dingy inns. A slow, deliberate ritual. A quiet intimacy. Owen had ended up looking like a slicked-up beaver—Roland’s words—and it had taken two baths to scrub it out.

  "Owen? Scram said to fetch you." Torbin knocked again. Owen startled.

  "Good morning, Torbin," Owen sang back.

  Outside the warm cocoon, the room was brittle with cold. He needed to see to the pipes. "You may tell Roland I’m awake."

  "Yes. Thank you. I will," The boy sounded so relieved, Owen wondered how long he’d been knocking. "’Said to tell you my Ma came down."

  Message delivered, the boy scampered away. After a final indulgent huff, face pressed into the very spot where Roland’s head had rested, Owen followed.

  Even by the meandering, weather-dependent, timekeeping of the outpost, Maribelle and Haystack had arrived hours later than expected. A battered pot of weak ale sat on the bar, near empty, and only a few black-crusted ends of bread and crumbs of hard cheese remained on the serving plank. The room was empty of Edgewards though he could see dark figures through the window.

  Haystack heaved stacks of bundled furs and leathers into the room from the door at the back, grumbling under his breath with each one. At the bar, Torbin was arranging them to Maribelle’s exacting instruction and looking more harassed than usual.

  “Fluff them, boy,” Maribelle scolded. She had spread a rough mat across the bar, laying out knife sheaths and small pouches with practiced precision. “Why would someone wan’ta glove don’t even look warm?”

  Haystack draped a collection of fur-lined cloaks across the bar, the pelts shimmering in the firelight. The pair of beaver-fur gloves lay next to several hats, trimmed with mink and rabbit, already arranged in tight little rows, and Owen presumed—adequately fluffed.

  “People wan’ta bit o’ warmth for their travels, not mangy scraps all bunched up like they've been tossed to the dogs.”

  Maribelle Hollis was built like a whip, a solid frame of bone and stretched leather skin, with thin, spindling limbs that lashed out to pinch ears and flick foreheads. She was always dressed head to toe in her family wares, a menagerie of pelts and leathers and fur trims that cloaked her form and smelled perennially of acrid willow smoke and rendered fat. She lit up when Owen came in.

  “Feathers and ice, if it isn’t the man after me own job!” Maribelle said. Owen frowned at the furs, confused.

  “Ah, er—while I do find the alchemical process rather fascinating, I don’t think I have the stomach for—“ Owen stammered.

  “She means the baby,” Roland said. He kicked a stool with his boot and nodded for Owen to sit.

  “Oh! Well, I don’t quite recall—“ Owen started, sliding onto it. Roland slammed a bowl of pottage in front of him with a sharp look, cutting him off mid-sentence.

  “Cute little pup that one,” Maribelle went on. “Already got her color in. Healthy lungs. Tongue too, not a spot of white!”

  “You’ve seen her?” Owen asked, looking up. Roland pressed a spoon into his hand.

  “Bit of a surprise,” Maribelle laughed, a jovial cackle that reminded Owen of crunching spring leaves. “Haystack said Roland told him ta fetch me down with haste, said we had visitors, so I figured, might as well take an opportunity when the wind blows me one and had him bring some of the season with me. I wasn’t expectin’ a babe.”

  Stolen novel; please report.

  “Neither were we,” Roland muttered and slid onto a stool next to Owen. His face was drawn with worry, the frown etched in.

  “And the mother?” Owen asked. Maribelle’s smile slipped into a scowl.

  “Her man told me right off,” Maribelle said. “Can’t say I blame her, last thing I’d want is some strange bear woman asking ta peek ‘tween my legs after all that.” Maribelle shrugged. “ ‘Sides, if the mum is birth sick enough ta die, nothin’ for me to do anyway.”

  It was said with a coarse matter-of-factness that startled Owen. Maribelle continued on.

  “I set eyes on the nurse though.”

  “Avenna?” He asked. Maribelle nodded.

  “Babe had a strong suckle going. Good tits on that one, she should fatten right up.”

  Owen went red to the tips of his ears with a shocking quickness. Roland coughed. Several things suddenly made a bit more sense.

  “Ah.”

  “Told ‘er I’d send down my old sling, and some of the clothes I got set back from when Thora was a pup. Up to my hip now that one, she’ll be tall like her da’.” Haystack grumbled again, no doubt recognizing that he would be ferrying these items back on her behalf.

  Maribelle continued with her updates. Alric was out in the woods, she’d send him down a visit when he returned. Nordon was with him, of course, could sooner separate the stars from the sky than pry that boy from his papa. On and on she went, a pleasant cadence of consonants and vowels that slipped into and over each other. Owen sank into the rhythm of the retellings, his mind snagging on certain sounds, the ebb and lilt of her speech. The way her tongue caught on the T’s, and lengthened the E’s, the occasional burst of spring leaf laughter.

  “You two,” Lazrin’s voice cut into the melody like a snapped string. Roland tensed next to him, and Owen’s own startled jerk near tipped the pottage. Lazrin ignored Maribelle’s glare and motioned at them. “She’s asking for you.”

  Owen wiped his mouth on the collar of his shirt and stood. Roland was harder to shift. After a few silent moments of exchanged glares and Torbin’s uncomfortable twitching, he finally stood. Curiosity triumphed over stubbornness, Owen figured. Owen smiled at him, a reassurance, but the frown was cut in deep today. Roland’s gaze flicked past the smile to the waiting Lazrin.

  Upstairs, the birthing room was set for tea.

  Roland and Owen could only blink at the contrast from the doorway. The bedding had been replaced—the graying whites and browns of linen and wool, the patchy fur hides, now covered by bottle green and midnight blue silks and brocades. There was no sign of the horsehair-stuffed mattress beneath this new finery. Even the table had been swapped out, replaced with a deep cherry wood piece, polished to a high luster, its thin, curving spindles gleaming where before there had been rough-hewn oak and sapling stumps. The tea service, a lovely set, the delicate cream porcelain painted with spiraling green leaves and tiny bursts of bluebells, looked more suited to the new additions. But the rest of the room—the moth-eaten wool curtains, the dust-coated glass—cast a shadow over the fresh opulence, as if the room itself had yet to catch up.

  The woman sipping tea at the cherry wood table seemed worlds apart from the desperate, sweating wraith of the night before as well. Her curls swept gracefully up from a powdered face, her skin glowing with a luster that caught the light, and her lips—plush and full—formed around a cup so delicate that the tea appeared as a dark mass swirling within. There was no sign of the weariness from the night before. She was perhaps a shade paler than seemed usual, her eyes a bit more drawn, but everything else— from the tucks and folds of her dress to the hanging jewels draped across her chest—was impeccably arranged, perfect in every way.

  “Sit,” she commanded. The teacup was set soundlessly on its saucer. Owen folded himself into the chair across from her without hesitation. Roland jerked, the barest spasm, but remained standing.

  Taneah’s lip quirked. After a moment she shrugged and took another dainty sip of the tea. The silence plucked at Owen’s skin, made him shift in the chair, his hands rubbing at the tops of his legs. It felt heavier in this room, thick with tension and unease. He wanted to leave.

  There was no sign of the baby, which was disappointing. Owen wanted to see her, finding within his chest a strange envy that Maribelle had already done so, a pressing curiosity to see how she fared this morning. It was an unfamiliar anxiety and he shifted, trying to focus.

  “The babe is doing well?” Owen blurted. The scowl was brief, but it twisted the carefully arranged portrait of her face the same.

  “Avenna will tell me if there is something amiss,” Taneah dismissed. “That is not why I asked you here, however.”

  “You didn’t ask at all,” Roland said.

  “And you guaranteed exclusive use of these rooms. Yet last night you both took it upon yourselves to enter my bedchamber and involve yourself in my personal affairs on the whims of one over dramatic simpleton. Sit. Down.”

  Roland’s knees buckled, and he dropped into the chair with an ungainly lurch—like a marionette caught mid-cut from its strings. Owen’s eyes widened. Roland’s face was a thundercloud, a primal fury that curled his lip and bared his teeth.

  Taneah tutted and raised the teapot to fill her cup. Bone-white lace gloves, intricate and gleaming. The kind he had dirtied, torn, hidden beneath cushions and between book pages, pressed under his thigh to keep from sight. They didn’t belong here. Not in this room, not in his outpost. Their wrongness prickled at his skin—an itch, an urge to tear them away. How dare she-how could she-how-

  Roland’s hand was hot, pressing solid and sure against his thigh. Owen tore his eyes from the lace. They fell instead on her smile, a wolfish satisfaction in the glint of her teeth.

  “Better.” She nodded in approval and, with a pair of tiny silver tongs, dropped a sugar cube into the cup with a plop.