Scram limped his way into the tavern the next morning, feeling like warmed-over shit. It was barely dawn, the window still fogged over. The world beyond was a dusky pink, telling him the sun had not yet cleared the mountains.

  Avenna was warming herself with the embers of last night’s fire, a basket at her feet. He was fairly sure that basket had once held peat or turnips. Now it held a baby, wriggling in a blanket made of fur scraps. The basket rocked and shook; now and then, little peaks of fur rose from the flailing limbs beneath. On the other side of the hearth Grizzle had made himself a pallet out of his coat, and what looked like the bundle of old rags Scram kept beneath the bar. He could not tell if the spitty gurgles and occasional grunts were man or baby.

  Avenna stiffened when she saw him emerge from the hall. But as she took in the rest of him—slouched, sluggish, barely stitched together—her alarm thinned into something closer to pity. Or contempt. Either way, she stopped looking ready to bolt.

  Scram dragged a hand down his face, sandpapered by stubble and dry skin. He probably looked like something pried out of a grave. She did not look much better. Exhaustion hung heavy on her shoulders, announcing itself in her lank, unwashed hair and the dark circles under her eyes. He jerked a nod in acknowledgment. Avenna glanced at the infant and then back up. She opened her mouth to speak, but Scram sank onto his haunches and turned his focus to the cook stove.

  He had nothing to say to the girl, even less to a baby. Something ugly simmered in him at the sight of them: stale ale, guilt, and a childish sense of injustice, all tightening into one sour knot in his belly. Owen would be coming down soon—he’d left last night without letting Scram walk him back. He’d left, and when he came back, he’d be selling a part of himself to serve some fucking scheme that had nothing to do with them—a scheme they knew fuck all about—all because this girl had asked for their help.

  “That’s what helping fucking gets you,” he thought with a grunt, and dragged over the ash bucket.

  He normally enjoyed the start of his days at the outpost; the routine was soothing and simple. There were tasks to do and him—a body to do them. Today, however, his arms moved as if he were wearing weighted chains. The backs of his eyes ached, and the pressing tension that had settled over every breath since he’d heard those fucking bells seemed even heavier. He breathed through his teeth as he worked, feeling like a simmering kettle, steam building beneath his skin. He built the fire as if he were punishing it—jamming moss down too fast, cramming in kindling as though it might burn quicker under pressure.

  He had just closed the stove door as the moss caught and the new wood began to smoke—when the baby let out a shriek, startling him. It was a mere instant of noise—an experimental sound rather than a cry of need. But Avenna reared back, the terrified expression she had so often worn since he’d first laid eyes on her now turned toward the basket. It only eased when the next gurgle came, and the baby resumed her jerky movements beneath the furs. Still, Avenna carried a coiled stillness, as if the infant were a sleeping bear, and she a trespasser in its den—edging around it, careful never to turn her back.

  It was a strange reaction. Scram did not have much of an opinion on babies, having met few and cared for none, but he understood they were traditionally better received. Watching the pair, Scram realized Avenna had been scared of the baby since that first night. It had taken Taneah’s reprimand—perhaps a hint of compulsion he realized now in bitter hindsight—to stir her into taking the child when her will alone would not.

  That an infant frightened her more than Taneah’s displeasure was odd enough. Taneah was powerful, famously so. The papers had not exaggerated that one bit. Scram had bent to that strength like a reed in the wind, even at her weakest. But Avenna’s timidity, her bowing and scraping, seemed more…more obsequious than fearful. Scram knew the difference. Whether the girl’s servile tendencies were of her own choice and character or down to Taneah’s Curious magic, he could not say. Taneah had been run down when she’d used her gift on them. How long she could maintain it at full strength, how much she could control, and for how long—it remained to be seen.

  Scram hoped he never would. Let her leave this day and never fucking return.

  He rubbed at his temples, though it did nothing to ease his head or clear up what the fuck was going on. Hiding an unwanted bastard was one thing. He could admit that there were few places better to do it than the outskirts of civilization—and theirs was the furthest outpost. But hiring so many was a risk. Traveling so far, so rough, in such a condition was also a risk. Taneah didn’t strike him as a person who took many of those.

  And then there was the matter of Elias. He had been too muddled by everything going on, too angry, too confused, and too drunk— he reluctantly acknowledged— to properly ask Owen about his brother.

  Scram had only met Elias once, and there was little softness between them. Elias was serious and austere, Owen a mess of sunny, puppy-like warmth and curiosity. But Elias had set the wheels in motion to expand the outpost on Owen’s behalf. He funded it from his own vast inheritance, campaigned for it, and granted stewardship to Owen—wild-minded and distracted as he was. Elias had ensured Scram could be a part of it—ensured he could stay by Owen’s side, despite what he’d done.

  Taneah had spoken his name like a weapon, one Owen had yielded to with barely a thought. “They are aligned,” he’d said, as if he and his very own blood were not. Scram did not know why. It was a question as murky as Taneah’s motives, from a man who was normally as transparent as glass.

  Owen had never mentioned a rift. Elias sent up supply shipments as reliably as the turn of the season, along with books and letters and bundles of old broadsheets to keep them updated on the civilized world. He sold the furs and other meager sundries they sent back for a rosy sum, and having no need of it, sent the profit along as well. The knot in his stomach tightened over the realization that Owen was tucking away secrets, that Scram, who felt like he knew every inch, every odd endearing mannerism, every wrinkled nose and sunny smile, had not known something Taneah Winterglade did.

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  Lost in thought, Scram didn’t realize he’d been frowning in her direction until Avenna caught him and flushed, turning her face away towards the hearth and pulling a heavy wool wrap around her shoulders as if he were some lech eyeing her across the bar. It was almost amusing how far off the mark that was.

  The only thing clear to Scram, at this point, was that Taneah held something over the girl too—blackmail being less a last resort and more a weapon of choice for the awful woman. Whatever Avenna had done, whatever heap of trouble she had wrought, must have been significant. Significant enough to agree to exile out in the frozen north with someone else’s child, bound to a horrible woman rather than serve a few miserable months in the Chainhouse or Indebted Service. It was also clear that though she had been brought as a wet nurse, she either didn’t care for, or was afraid of, her new charge.

  Scram ladled barrel water into a kettle and continued his observations. She’d turned her body away, but it was obvious the baby never left her awareness. She was mindful of every movement, every noise— not in the way of new mothers, or anxious caretakers—but as one would mind a caged monster. She flinched at every coo, every kick, every small breath the child made. She was in a room with two people she knew to be threats, and two more she could guess were—and yet the thing that scared her most was an infant, hours old. That was not his most pressing question from that night, however.

  “Why didn’t you let her die?” Scram set the kettle onto the stove.

  Avenna turned sharply, her eyes flicking to the basket.

  “No. Not the brat.” His voice was flat, cold. “Taneah. Mistress Winterglade.” His lip curled in disgust as he leaned against the bar. “You’d’ve been free of her then.”

  We would’ve, he didn’t say.

  Avenna swallowed, her hand moving to touch her chest, a small brush right over her heart. The kettle started to boil, the metal pinging. He let the question hang, heavy, for a few more beats and just as he went to turn away, she whispered.

  “I thought about it. I wasn’t sure if it would count. You hear all those stories—“ she shuddered. “Like the rhyme, Nell and the Waterhole. Do you know it?”

  Scram did. He’d joined in on drunken choruses of it from both sides of the bar, had mumbled it to himself on the darker nights, deep in drink and memories. Mainlanders had a different version.

  Owen had been fascinated the first time he’d heard Scram sing it, had pondered over the reasons for the slight modifications and the origins for hours, had asked every person he met for weeks to sing their version to add to his journal. Owen’s version was called The Binding of Nell. Another man’s had been Nell Just Watched. There were probably a dozen more written in there. The message was the same for all.

  There had been one night, tired from travel and tipsy from drink, Owen curled into his side in a narrow inn bed, a dozen strangers dozing around them. He’d been a pleasant buzzing heat, reading from the journal in his lovely, lilting voice. Scram had laughed over the high falsetto when he spoke Nell Carroway’s lines, had clenched his fist to keep from stroking glinting golden curls just a few inches from his hand.

  “Nell Carroway, with lips so fine,

  Spoke the charm and drew the line.

  “Live or die, I’ll hold you fast”—

  He never dreamed he’d breathe his last.”

  “Down he sank into the freezing black,

  And Nell just watched, a step held back.

  “He was no good,” she said. “He lied! He stole!”

  So she let him drown in that silent hole.

  But bonds don’t break when hearts go cold,

  And spelled promise always turns to magic old.

  It scorched her throat to bitter dust—

  She choked on ash and broken trust.

  Now children hush when magic takes its claim,

  It brought Nell Carroway to the depths of shame.”

  As if he’d spoken it aloud, Avenna recited the last line—hers nowhere near as sweetly sung.

  “And if you bind, then bind them true. For silence burns the bondsworn too.”

  For some, it was a reminder to keep your word—a children’s rhyme to teach the value of a promise. For Scram, it was a warning, a reminder of the true cost the bonds wrought. It seemed she knew that too. Avenna’s gaze had gone far away, looking past him.

  “I could feel it—“ her hand clutched at her chest now, dug into the fabric. Probably where her mark was, if he had to guess. He knew that feeling well. He’d felt it many times—when his own bonds flared like iron from a forge, when the marks twisted as if alive beneath the skin, a caution and a leash in one. “-I watched her bleeding. I knew she was dying, and I didn’t move. And then my mark—” she closed her eyes and swallowed. “So I ran for help.”

  “Strong bind then.” Scram tilted his head towards her chest. She pulled the wrap tighter. “Can only feel the big ones.” She turned her head away, more or less confirming his suspicion.

  The baby let out a squeal. Avenna leapt to her feet, nearly tripping over Grizzle and stumbling into the open embers in her haste to get away. Grizzle snuffled at being struck, but Scram knew from experience that nothing short of calamity would rouse the man after any night he’d gone so far into his flask he’d sleep indoors.

  “Careful there.” Scram raised an eyebrow. “Tell me what that’s about,” he said, gesturing to the basket and the distance she’d put between herself and it.

  “She’s a Curiosity,” Avenna whispered, pitching her voice as if the infant would overhear and take offense.

  “You’re traveling with two of the fuckers,” Scram pointed out. “The Span’s crawling with 'em. Can’t toss a stone without hitting one.” He thought of Owen. “Mainland too, though they’re a bit fancier.”

  Avenna sounded Bridgeborn to his ear. She should be well used to Curiosities; The Span was practically run on the abilities of its gifted citizens. Owen had a whole other journal filled with facts and figures on higher Curious birth rates on The Span, the variety and presentation of their gifts, and other things that had consumed his wild mind on that topic for a brief spell until he’d moved on to something else—calligraphy, perhaps, or mountain cats.

  “She’s different,” Avenna insisted. She crossed the room, casting a glance over her shoulder. The baby didn’t seem to mind her absence. The basket still shifted on occasion; her noises were subdued and calm.

  “She’s a baby,” Scram said, Owen’s words in his mouth. He remembered how he’d felt at her birth—the fire reflected in eerie, fathomless eyes. The whole night had been surreal, like the world had tilted and they’d only held on by their fingertips.

  He looked to the bowl and the spoon. He’d washed them, meant to put them with the rest—but instead, he set them alone on a shelf. So far, they remained empty, no refilling stew, no oddly behaved steam. They had neither moved nor disappeared again. Perhaps he had imagined it. Perhaps Owen was right and it had been vapors or exhaustion.

  Avenna shook her head. The wool wrap fell to the floor. Her face was earnest in its terror, her whisper barely audible—even across the counter. But it echoed in his ears like a shout.

  “She’s a demon.”