Page 8

"The whole camp saw him claim you, Audrey. In the middle of the yard, in front of everyone." Hayden's voice drops to barely above a whisper, her gaze jumping briefly toward Borl before returning to me, guarded, as if she has been sitting on this warning for longer than she is comfortable admitting. "That's not nothing. That's not something you can quietly walk back from if it doesn't work out the way you're hoping. Vorka's faction watches every move you make. I've heard the way they talk about you when they think none of the human staff are listening."

"I'm always careful," I say it automatically, the same reassurance I always offer people, though even as the words leave my mouth I hear how thin they sound against the reality of a war-camp full of warriors who could break me in half without much effort at all. Hayden dabs a bit of amber-colored antiseptic along the edge of the bandage, and I watch the bottle in her hand, watch how carefully she measures out the smallest amount that will still do the job, and something in the gesture catches my attention the way conversation hadn't quite managed to.

"That's the last of it," I say, nodding toward the bottle as she caps it and sets it back on a shelf that holds far fewer supplies than I remember from my last visit two days ago. "Isn't it?" Hayden follows my gaze to the shelf, and her expression does something complicated, weariness and worry tangling together behind eyes that have clearly counted this particular inventory more times than she would like.

"We're running low on everything," she admits, her voice dropping lower still, pitched for me alone even though Borl gives no sign of listening. "Antiseptic, sutures, the good bandaging, even the willow bark for fever. What Ashfall had stockpiled before the winter set in was never meant to stretch this far, and the trade routes to the human settlements have slowed to almost nothing with the Iron Tusks pressing this hard on the borders."

"How bad is it, really?" I keep my voice steady, the same flat, practical tone I use for assessing any threat, because panic has not helped anyone in scraping by on too little.

"If we take heavy casualties in the next skirmish," she says, and I watch her force the words out plainly rather than softening them the way I know she wants to, "I won't have what I need to save them. Not all of them. I'll have to make choices I've spent my whole career trying to avoid making, choosing who gets what's left and who doesn't." The weight of that settles into me heavier than the throb still radiating up from my stitched arm, and I stay with it in the quiet of the infirmary, the soft grind of Borl's mortar the only sound filling the space. I think of the wounded warrior I helped press bandages against during the last probing attack, the fear in his eyes as much as the pain, and I think of Rogg standing over the dead afterward, his axe still dripping, the sheer scale of what stands between this camp and disaster suddenly feeling much larger than the argument over guards and escorts I have been nursing for days.

"What do you need?" I ask, already turning the question over into something I can actually act on, because sitting with dread has not once been useful to me the way action is. "Specifically. What's the shortest list of things that would matter most if the worst happens?" Hayden's brow furrows, surprised by the shift in my tone, but she answers readily enough, ticking items off on her fingers with practiced ease

"Clean bandaging in bulk. Anything with antiseptic properties, even crude alcohol, would help. Sutures, or wire fine enough to substitute. And more hands who know basic field triage, because right now it's me, Borl, and whoever I can talk into learning fast enough to be useful in the moment."

"I know basic triage," I say it without thinking too hard about the offer, because years of patching my own wounds and Leo's have taught me more than I probably give myself credit for. "And I know where some of the old trading routes run, places the settlements used to stockpile supplies before things got this bad out here. If there's anything worth salvaging along them, I can find it faster than most of your warriors, because I know how to read a ruin the way they know how to read a battlefield." Something shifts in Hayden's expression, relief threading through the exhaustion there, and she looks less like a woman drowning under an impossible task and more like she’s just been handed a rope.

"You'd do that, even with everything already sitting on your plate?"

"You kept Leo alive more winters than I can count on scraps and stubbornness alone," I say, and I mean it more plainly than I have let myself say most things since we arrived here. "I'm not about to let you run out of bandages while I'm sitting a few yards away doing nothing more useful than sharpening knives I don't need to sharpen twice a day." Hayden's mouth curves into something close to a real smile, tired but genuine, and she reaches over to squeeze my uninjured hand briefly before turning back to gather her instruments.

"I'll talk to Borl about which routes might still be viable. In the meantime, don't strain that arm. I'd rather not be re-stitching it in three days because you decided a torn seam was an acceptable trade for proving a point." I promise her I won't, though we both know it is the kind of promise that depends entirely on what the next few days demand of me, and I leave the infirmary with the bandage tight against my forearm and Hayden's list of shortages sitting heavy in my mind, one more weight added to a growing pile I did not expect to be carrying when Hayden first told me to swallow my pride and seek shelter behind these walls.

Outside, the cold hits differently than it did an hour ago, sharper somehow, though I know the temperature has not actually changed, only my awareness of everything riding on it. I make my way back toward Rogg's dwelling, running in my head every ruin within a day's walk that might still hold something worth scavenging, every route that might let me slip out with a small enough party to avoid drawing Grol's attention while still bringing back enough to matter. It is the kind of problem I know how to solve, concrete and physical, and I let myself sink into the planning of it rather than the fear underneath, because fear never helped me find a single bandage or a single vial of antiseptic in years of looking.

I think, too, of what Hayden said about Vorka's faction watching my every move, and I turn the warning over carefully as I walk, weighing how much of it to carry forward into whatever conversation I inevitably have with Rogg tonight. He has already made his position on Vorka clear enough to the entire camp. But knowing that his faction watches me, patient and waiting for weakness to show itself, is a different kind of knowledge than simply hearing him declare me his mate in the cold morning air. I decide, by the time I reach the dwelling's door, that it is a warning worth keeping close and quiet a while longer, at least until I understand exactly how much weight it deserves.

12

ROGG

The council meeting has left a knot of tension between my shoulders that the walk home does nothing to loosen; Vorka's arguments about doubled watches and dwindling stores circle in my head even as I duck through my own doorway into the relative quiet of the dwelling. The fire has burned down to a steady bed of coals, casting the room in warm, low light, and for a time I simply stand in the doorway and let the ordinary shape of the evening settle over me — Leo crouched near the hearth working at something with fierce, small concentration, Audrey seated near the entrance with a whetstone and a row of hunting knives laid out in front of her in careful order.

Leo does not look up when I enter, too absorbed in whatever project has claimed his attention, and when I cross closer I see it is an arrow shaft, snapped clean somewhere near the fletching, the boy attempting to bind the pieces back together with a clumsy wrap of twine that will not hold through a single draw of a bow, let alone a real shot. His small brow is furrowed in concentration, his tongue caught between his teeth. It reminds me, absurdly, of the focus warriors bring to sharpening a blade before battle.

Audrey does not look up either, though I notice the careful way her attention tracks my movement without her head ever turning, the same watchfulness she brings to everything, a perimeter she keeps around herself even when nothing in the room presents an obvious threat. The silence between us has settled into something less hostile than it was those first few nights, though it's not anything I would call comfortable, and I find myself grateful, tonight of all nights, for a silence that does not demand immediate conversation. I lower myself onto the fur near Leo without a word, and he glances up at me then, startled out of his concentration, his eyes wary in the way they still are around me more often than I would like. I hold out a hand, palm up, a wordless request, and after a moment's hesitation he places the broken shaft into it, along with the tangled mess of twine he had been attempting to use.

"This will not hold," I tell him, keeping my voice low and even, the same register I use for young warriors learning their first real weapon rather than for a boy who still flinches slightly whenever I speak too near him. "But it can be mended properly, if you want to learn how." He nods, quick and eager despite the wariness, and I reach into the pouch at my belt for the small kit of tools I keep there, drawing out a raven feather I salvaged from a bird taken near the wall to the east last week, its vane still glossy and intact. I show him first how to trim the feather down to the proper length, the careful angle of the cut that will let it catch the air correctly rather than fighting against it, and his small fingers fumble with the knife I hand him, too large for his grip, until I close my hand gently over his and guide the motion myself.

"Slow," I tell him. "A rushed cut ruins the feather. A careful one lasts through a dozen shots." He works with painstaking concentration under my guidance, and I find myself falling into the quiet rhythm of teaching him, warming a small dab of pine pitch over a coal at the edge of the fire until it goes soft and dark, then showing him how to press the trimmed vane into place along the shaft, holding it steady while the pitch cools and sets. It is slow, careful work, the kind that requires patience I did not expect to find so easily tonight, given the argument still simmering somewhere behind my thoughts from the council chamber. But something in the simple, focused task of fletching an arrow beside my son settles the tension in my shoulders more thoroughly than an hour of pacing ever could.

"Like this?" Leo asks, holding the shaft up for my inspection, the fletching slightly crooked but recognizably correct in its shape, a vast improvement over the tangled twine he started with.

"Exactly like that." I take the shaft from him and turn it slowly in the firelight, checking the set of the pitch, the angle of the vane, and find myself genuinely pleased with the small, careful work of his hands. "You have a steadier grip than most warriors twice your age when they first pick up a blade." His face lights with a pride so pure it catches me in the chest, and for a beat, the wariness that usually sits behind his eyes when he looks at me recedes into simple, uncomplicated delight, a boy pleased with his own small accomplishment and the rare approval of a father he has known for only a handful of days. I find myself wanting, fiercely and without warning, to spend every evening for the rest of his childhood earning exactly this look from him, over arrows or axes or whatever else the years ahead decide to put in front of us.

It is only when I glance up, still holding the mended shaft, that I notice Audrey has gone still, her whetstone paused mid-stroke against the blade in her hand, her eyes fixed on the two of us with an expression I cannot immediately place. It is not the wariness I have grown used to seeing there, not the sharp, defensive readiness she carries into most of our conversations. It is something quieter, something that sits closer to stillness than to any emotion I have learned to name in her yet, and I hold her gaze across the firelit room, uncertain what she is thinking but unwilling to look away first and risk breaking whatever fragile thing is passing silently between us.

"You're good with him," she says, her voice low, almost reluctant, as though it costs her something to admit aloud.

"He is easy to be good with." I set the mended shaft aside carefully, out of reach of the fire, and study her before I continue. "He listens. He is patient with his own mistakes in ways I was not at his age. That is your doing, I suspect, more than any instinct of mine." Something changes in her eyes, surprise sparking before she can smooth it away, as though she had braced herself for a different kind of response, some claim staked or credit taken rather than credit offered.

"I didn't have much choice but to teach him patience," she says eventually, returning her attention to the blade in her hands, though her strokes with the whetstone have slowed, less purposeful than they were a few minutes ago. "Impatience gets you killed out there, faster than almost anything else."

"Then you taught him well." I glance back down at Leo, who has already reached for another broken shaft from the small pile beside him, eager to repeat the lesson now that he has the shape of it in his hands, and something in the quiet, ordinary domesticity of the moment settles over the room, which feels entirely unlike the tense standoffs that have defined most of our evenings since Audrey and Leo first walked through my gate.

The dwelling around us, sparse stone and salvaged furs and the low crackle of a dying fire, feels less like my own private territory grudgingly shared with strangers and more like something else completely, a space the three of us are, however cautiously, beginning to hold in common. I do not name the feeling aloud. Some truths settle better when they are simply allowed to sit, unspoken, in the quiet space between a father, a son, and the woman watching them both with an expression I am only beginning to learn how to read.

Later, once Leo has worn himself out on a third and fourth arrow, each one steadier than the last, I carry him to the furs near the hearth myself, his small body gone heavy and loose with sleep before I have even finished settling him, one hand still curled loosely as though it expects to find the wooden bird there even in dreams. When I straighten again, Audrey is watching me from her seat near the entrance, her knives set aside, the whetstone forgotten on the floor beside her.