Victor Rosevale stood at the Mosswood gate three hours past his relief and would not step down. His post was empty of purpose now. Sable had gone through this gate four days ago with a smile and a wave, and she had not come back. He had told himself he would find her before the week was out, marry her, and hang up his spear for good. The week was almost out. He had asked every rider, every merchant, every drunk stumbling from the tavern. No one had seen her past the eastern trees. The trail was cold, and each hour made it colder. His captain had told him to sleep. He had not slept. A shadow cut across the torchlight. Something heavy struck the gatepost above his head and clung there. Victor raised his lantern and saw the bird. Red feathers, bright as coals, folded against a body lean with muscle. A falcon. Her falcon. He knew it because Sable had fed the thing scraps at his boots once, laughing when it snapped at his glove. The falcon watched him with a yellow eye. A strip of leather was knotted to its leg. Victor's hands shook as he worked the knot free. The leather was cracked and stained dark at one edge. He unrolled it under the lantern. Three words, scratched with a burnt stick. East. River bend. Hurry. Her handwriting. Slanted, quick, the way she wrote lists on the back of his gauntlet when she was bored. He read it twice. The falcon shifted its weight and made a low sound in its throat, watching the road behind him as if expecting more. Victor pressed the leather flat against the gatepost. The stain at the edge was blood. Not much. Enough. He looked east into the dark where the road bent toward the storm belt and the country beyond it, country he had never walked in uniform or out of it. He unbuckled his gate keys and set them on the guardhouse bench. He took his spear from the wall. He took the small purse he had been saving to buy her a ring and slid it inside his coat. His hands were steady now. The cold in his gut had a direction. "Show me," he said to the falcon. The bird lifted from the post and beat once into the dark, then circled back, waiting. Victor stepped through his own gate for the first time in three years without permission and without looking back. Behind him, the torch guttered on an empty post. Ahead, the falcon's red wings caught the lantern light and pulled him east toward the river bend, toward Sable, toward whatever had made her bleed enough to send a bird instead of coming home.

Victor followed the falcon until the trees thinned and the ground sloped toward water. He could hear the river before he saw it. He could also hear his own breathing, ragged from three hours of running with a spear and no rest. Halfway down the slope he stopped and swore at himself. He had left the gate with his weapon and his coin purse and nothing else. No linen. No salve. No needle. Sable's message had said she was bleeding, and he had brought nothing to stop blood with. He crouched behind a fallen trunk and made himself think. The nearest healer was half a day back through Mosswood. If he turned around now, Sable might be dead before he returned. If he pushed on empty-handed, he would find her and watch her bleed out in his lap. Neither answer was one he could live with. He tore at his own coat. The lining was clean wool, thick enough to pack a wound. He cut a long strip with his belt knife, then another, and stuffed them inside his shirt against his skin to keep them dry. He cut the leather thong from his purse for a tourniquet. It was not medicine. It was cloth and a cord. It would have to be enough. He stood, and the ground under his boot shifted. What he had taken for a mossy boulder opened one eye. The eye was blue and the size of his fist. The rest of the shape resolved slow, scale under moss, a long ridged back, a tail curled around the base of a tree. A dragon, small as dragons went, green stone under a coat of living moss. It had been sleeping an arm's length from him. Victor did not raise the spear. He had heard tavern talk of the mossbacks in the eastern woods. They fed on deer and left men alone unless startled. He was already the thing that had startled it. The dragon lifted its head and sniffed the strips of wool at his chest. Its nostrils flared once. Then it turned its snout toward the river bend and made a low sound, almost a hum. The falcon circled overhead and cried back. Victor understood, or chose to. "You know where she is." The dragon stepped over the fallen trunk and moved downslope without waiting. Moss dropped from its flanks in soft clumps. Victor followed at a run, one hand pressed to the wool inside his shirt. The river bend opened below them through a gap in the pines. On the near bank, half in the shallows, a body lay in a cracked leather vest. Red hair. Not moving. Victor went down the slope in a slide of loose stones, spear forgotten in his other hand, the strips of his own coat pressed to his chest like a promise he had almost failed to keep.

Victor hit the shallows on his knees. Sable's face was pale under the smear of river mud. Her leg was the problem. A gash ran from her thigh to her knee, still leaking pink water into the current. He dragged her out of the river by the shoulders and laid her on the bank. She groaned. Alive. Barely. He pulled the wool strips from his shirt and pressed them to the wound. Blood soaked through the first strip before he could tie it. He stacked the second on top and cinched the leather thong above her knee. The wool went dark almost at once. He knew then it would not hold. The gash was too long and too deep, and his coat lining was already a wet rag in his hand. "Victor." Her voice was a scrape. Her brown eyes found him. "You came." "Shhh honey. I’m here. I need clean cloth. I don't have anything clean." She swallowed. Her hand moved to her vest and fumbled at a buckle. "Inside. Left pocket." He opened the flap. A folded square of oiled linen sat against a small tin. The linen was white. Clean. A flight kit, packed the way her father must have taught her. "Salve in the tin," she said. "Pack it. Then wrap." His hands shook. He made them stop. He peeled the soaked wool away and saw bone at the deep end of the cut. He spread the salve along the wound. He folded the linen into a pad and pressed it down. He tore the rest into strips and wrapped her thigh tight, then tighter, until the white stopped turning red. The mossy dragon watched from the treeline. It did not come closer. The falcon settled on a branch above them and folded its wings. Sable's breathing evened. Not safe. Steadier. "Who did this," he said. "Later." Her fingers closed on his wrist. Weak, but sure. "They're still out here. Two of them. They took my pack and left me for the river." Her eyes cut to the ridge above the bend. "They'll come back when they see the falcon circling." Victor looked at the ridge. Then at the spear he had dropped in the mud. Then at Sable, wrapped in the only clean cloth for a day's walk in any direction, unable to stand. "Honey, I move you." He slid an arm under her knees and lifted. She hissed but did not cry out. The dragon turned its head upslope, toward a cleft in the rocks he had not seen from the water. Cover. A place to set her down and wait with a spear pointed at the only path in. He carried her toward it. Behind him, the falcon lifted off the branch and climbed.

Victor set Sable down inside the rocky cleft and pressed his palm to her thigh. The linen was warm and wet again. Blood had soaked through the flight kit's clean wrap. Her skin had gone the color of river stone. He knew field wounds. This one would kill her before dawn without stronger medicine than a tin of salve. "Honey. Stay awake," he said. "Look at me." Her eyes drifted, then fixed on his face. "Pack the wound harder." "It's packed. It won't hold." He sniffled. "I need something else." The moss-covered dragon stepped into the mouth of the cleft. It watched him with a pale blue eye and turned its head south, down a narrow game trail he had not seen. It waited. When he did not move, it flicked its tail against the stone and turned its head again. "It wants me to follow," he said. "Then follow," Sable whispered. "I'll keep the spear." He put the spear in her hand and closed her fingers around the shaft. "If they come, you scream. I'll hear you." He kissed Sable and ran after the dragon. The trail dropped through fern and root for a hundred paces and opened into a hollow he would have walked past in daylight. A stone basin sat in the middle of it. Steam curled off the water in a thin white ribbon. The pond glowed from underneath, soft blue, the color of a lantern behind cloth. Cattails ringed the edge. Carved letters ran along the near stone. He could not read them, but the word for what this was sat plain in the water itself. He filled his canteen. He soaked a strip of the linen. He cupped a second handful and drank, because he could not carry her here in time and he needed his legs to hold. He ran back. Sable's eyes were half shut. He cut the soaked wrap away. He poured the glowing water over the wound in a slow line from thigh to knee. She arched off the stone and bit down on her own sleeve. The bleeding thinned. Then it stopped. The torn edges pulled toward each other like cloth drawn by a needle. Not healed. Closed enough to hold. He pressed the wet linen against the seam and wrapped it tight. Sable breathed. Real breath, deep in her chest. Color came back into her mouth. "Where did you find that," she said. "The dragon showed me." She laughed once, a dry sound, and let her head rest against the stone. "Then we owe it."

Sable slept against the cleft wall. Her breath was steady now, but her face was gray, and when Victor lifted her shoulder to check the wrap, she did not wake. The wound held. The woman would not travel. Victor knew this the way he knew weather. She needed a roof, a fire, and three days off that leg. He had none of it. The two men who cut her would come back when they saw the falcon circle. He stepped to the mouth of the cleft and looked at the trail. Open ground in every direction. A blood smear on the stone behind him. He could not carry her fast, and he could not stay. The moss-covered dragon was still there. It sat on its haunches at the edge of the ferns, watching him with that pale blue eye. Wet leaves clung to its shoulders. It had not left since the spring. "I need somewhere to put her," Victor said. He felt foolish speaking to it. He said it anyway. "Somewhere they won't find her. A day. Maybe more." The dragon stood. It walked up to Victors and knelt down as if to offer its back for Sable. Victor’s eyes widened in surprise then smiled in gratitude. Victor wrapped Sable in his coat and lifted her gently into the dragon’s back. "Hold on, honey," he said. "One more move." He followed the dragon uphill. Victor laid Sable down on the leaves once they made it. He touched the water in the basin. Warm. He wet a cloth and pressed it to her mouth. She swallowed. Her eyes opened halfway. "Where are we." "A room the dragon knew about," he said. "You'll stay here until you can stand." "You'll stay too." "Of course my love." She found his hand. Her grip was thin but sure. "If they come up the trail, you don't fight two men alone. You wake me. You hear me, Victor." "I hear you honey. But I have a strong feeling that we have all the help we need." He replied as he smiled at the dragon. He kissed her forehead and settled her against the wall. He set the spear across his knees. Outside, the dragon curled at the lip of the hollow and laid its head on its forelegs, facing the trail.

Dawn came gray through the ferns. Victor had not slept. He watched Sable's face by the low light and saw the change he needed to see. Her cheeks had color again. Her lips were not blue. He pressed the back of his hand to her forehead. Warm, not hot. He let out a breath he had been holding since the river. She stirred and opened her eyes. They found him at once. "You look worse than me," Sable said. Her voice was dry but even. "You scared me, honey." "I know." She tried to sit up and winced. He caught her shoulder and eased her back. "Water," she said. He gave her the cloth again and she drank from it. "How long?" "One night. The wound closed. You're going to walk out of here." She studied him. "You didn't sleep." "I'll sleep when we're home." Outside, the dragon lifted its head. The moss on its shoulders shifted as the long neck turned toward the trail. Its ears pricked. A low sound came out of its chest, not a growl, more a warning hum. Victor was on his feet before he thought about it. He took the spear. "Stay flat," he told Sable. "Don't call out." He crouched at the lip of the hollow. Two men were coming up the slope. He knew them without ever seeing them. One carried Sable's pack on his shoulder. The other had a short blade in his hand and was watching the sky for the falcon. Victor set his feet to move. The dragon moved first. It came down the slope in three strides, faster than something that size should move. The man with the blade got his arm up. The dragon knocked him flat with its shoulder and pinned him under one clawed foot. The second man dropped the pack and ran. The dragon's tail swept low and took his legs out from under him. He hit the ground hard and did not get up. It was over in the time it took Victor to reach the trail. The dragon stood over the two men and looked at Victor with its pale blue eye. Waiting. Victor understood the question. He shook his head. "Just hold them," he said. "We'll tie them and leave them for the road." He walked back up to the hollow. Sable had pulled herself to the mouth of it, one hand braced on the stone. She had heard everything. "They won't come back this time," Victor said as he scooped her up into his arms. "No." She looked past him at the dragon, then at him. "So we can go home."

Victor turned back to the hollow with Sable in his arms. The dragon settled across the trail behind them, moss shifting on its shoulders as it lowered its head onto its forelegs. It watched the mouth of the hollow, not the slope. Victor felt the change in its posture before he understood it. Something inside the hollow had drawn its attention, not something outside. The spring was moving. The water that had closed Sable's wound now rose in a slow spiral above the basin. Steam curled off the surface. Then a woman lifted out of the pool to the waist, blonde hair sheeting water, aquamarine scales catching the gray light where her body met the pond. Victor set Sable down against the stone and put himself between them. He kept the spear low. "Put that down," the mermaid said. "I'm not the one you should be pointing it at." Her voice was light, almost cheerful. Her eyes were not. "Who are you?" "Marina. This pool feeds a river that feeds the sea. I feel every cut that closes in it." She looked at Sable. "Your girl used a lot of it." "She was dying." "I know. That's why I let it work." Marina rested her arms on the stone rim. "Now I need something back." Victor's grip tightened. "We don't have anything." "You have a road home. I need a message carried to the coast. One line, one name. Give me your word you'll carry it when you pass through Mosswood, and the dragon lets you walk out." Victor glanced at the dragon. It had not moved, but its pale blue eye was on him now. Waiting again. The same waiting as on the slope, when it had asked whether to kill the two men. He understood. The dragon was not his. It had been hers the whole time. Sable spoke from the stone behind him. "Take the deal, Victor." He lowered the spear. "What's the message?" Marina told him a name and a single sentence. He repeated both until she nodded. She did not explain who the name belonged to, or what the sentence meant. He did not ask. "Say it in the tavern at Mosswood. Someone there will hear it." She sank until only her eyes showed above the water. "Go straight home. Don't stop at the river bend." "Why?" "Because I said don't." The water closed over her. The dragon rose and stepped off the trail. The way out stood open. Victor lifted Sable again. She was lighter than she had been yesterday, or he was steadier. He walked past the dragon without looking at it. It did not follow. At the lip of the hollow he stopped. He now owed a debt to something he did not understand, and he had agreed on Sable's word as much as his own. He carried her down the slope toward Mosswood with the mermaid's sentence held in his mouth.

Victor came down out of the eastern trees at dusk with Sable in his arms. The Mosswood gate stood open and unmanned. He did not stop to think about who should have been standing where he used to stand. He carried her through the lanes to their small house at the edge of town, unlatched the door with his elbow, and laid her on the bed. She was awake but pale. He propped her bad leg on a folded blanket and pulled the quilt to her waist. The closed wound looked like a pink seam under the bandage. Clean. Holding. "Thank you so much baby. Water please," she said. He brought a cup from the pitcher and held it while she drank. Her free hand found his wrist and stayed there. "You have to go," she said. "The tavern." "I know. I’ll be back my love." He kissed her lips. Sable nodded once and closed her eyes. Her fingers slid off his wrist. He banked the fire, set the bolt on the door from the inside of the back window, and left through it. The tavern sat two lanes over, its loft window lit yellow above the sloped shingles. Green and red shutters framed the lower windows. He had walked past it a hundred times in uniform. Tonight he wore road dirt and a spear he left leaning outside the door. Inside, the room was full. Farmers at the long tables. A card game near the hearth. He did not know who he was looking for. Marina had not told him. He had a name and a line, and a room of strangers. He stepped up onto the bench by the door so his voice would carry. Heads turned. He said the name clearly, once. Then he said the sentence. The room did not go quiet the way he expected. Most people looked at him, decided he was drunk or mad, and looked away. Cards resumed. A woman laughed at something at her own table. But at the far end of the bar, a man in a dark coat set down his cup, stood up, and walked out through the side door without paying. He did not look at Victor as he passed. He did not need to. He pushed back out into the lane and picked up his spear. The man in the dark coat was already gone between the houses, moving toward the gate Victor used to guard. Victor turned the other way, toward home where his wife sleeps. He had paid the mermaid.

Victor walked back through the lanes with the spear on his shoulder. The man in the dark coat was somebody else's problem now. His problem was in a bed two lanes over, and he had left her alone longer than he wanted. He came in through the back window the way he had left. The bolt was still set on the front door. The fire he had banked still glowed. He stood in the doorway of the small room and looked at her. Sable had pushed the quilt down to her hip. Her red hair was flat on one side from the pillow. Her cheeks had color in them again. Not the gray he had carried down from the river. Not the wax of the shelter. Real color. He exhaled for what felt like the first time in a week. He leaned the spear against the wall by the door. He unlaced his boots and set them under the bench. He pulled the road shirt over his head. The cloth smelled like river and smoke and the sweat of four days. He dropped it on the floor. His belt followed. He washed his face and hands in the basin until the water went brown, then changed it and washed again. When he lifted the quilt, Sable opened her eyes. "You paid her," she said. "I paid her." "Come here." He slid in beside her. He was careful of her leg. She turned her face into his shoulder and put a hand flat on his chest, over the ribs. Her fingers were warm. Not the cold he had held in the shallows. Warm. "You're shaking," she said. "I know." "Stop." He laughed once, quiet, and it did stop after a minute. He listened to her breathe. He listened to the house. No boots in the lane. No knock. Just the fire settling and a dog somewhere down the row. "I'm done," he said. "The gate. All of it. I'm not going back." She was quiet a moment. Her thumb moved once against his skin. "Good," she said. "Sleep." He meant to answer. He meant to say he would tell the captain in the morning, that he would find honest work, that he would build them a life that did not depend on a spear at a gate. He meant to say he had deserted four days ago and that word would reach the castle before the week was out and they would come to the door for him. He did not say any of it. Her breathing had already evened out. His body finally gave up the road.

Months passed. No soldiers came to the door. Victor learned later that the captain had struck his name from the rolls without a hunt, glad to be rid of a guard who talked too much. Victor took work at the castle kitchens hauling crates and mending carts. The pay was smaller. The hours ended before dark. He came home to the timbered house each night and found Sable on her feet a little longer than the day before. Her leg had almost mended. She still favored it on the stairs, but she walked the lane to the market and back without the cane. She hung her flight vest on the peg by the door again. She said she would be in the sky by spring. Victor believed her. That night he banked the fire and climbed the narrow stairs. Sable sat up in bed brushing her red hair out with her fingers. She had pushed the goggles off the bedside table and onto the quilt. He picked them up and set them on the chest. "Come here," she said. He came. He kissed her once, careful, the way he had kissed her every night since the river. She caught the back of his neck and kissed him again, not careful. He laughed against her mouth. "The leg," he said. "The leg is fine." "Sable." "Victor." She pulled him down. "I am telling you it is fine." He let her. He was careful anyway, out of habit, and she knocked his hand off her thigh and put it back higher. The quilt slid to the floor. The fire in the grate downstairs settled with a soft crack. He kissed the scar on her leg. He kissed her hip. She said his name once, quiet, and then not quiet. After, he lay on his back and she lay across his chest. Her hair stuck to his collarbone. His heart was still loud in his ears. He thought about a child. He had not said the word. Neither had she. But he had not reached for anything to stop it, and she had not asked him to, and they both knew. "If it takes," he said. "If it takes." "I want it to." She was quiet a moment. Her thumb moved once against his ribs, the way it had the night he came back from the tavern. "Then we try again tomorrow," she said. "And the day after." He stared at the ceiling beams. He had spent four years standing at a gate for a castle that had already forgotten his name. He had a house with a steep roof and a woman on his chest and a leg that had healed under his hands. He had asked for a child out loud. "Sleep," she said. He did.

Morning light came through the small windows of the timbered house. Victor woke to the sound of Sable on the stairs. She was going down, not up, and she was not favoring the leg. He listened to her step on each board. Even. Steady. He got up and pulled on his shirt. She stood at the hearth stirring the pot. She had her flight vest on over her nightshirt. The goggles sat on her forehead again, the way she used to wear them before the river. "Try it, honey" he said. "Try what." "Walk across the room." She set the spoon down. She crossed the kitchen to the door and back. No limp. No hand on the table for balance. She turned in place and grinned at him. "Told you," she said. He knelt and pushed her nightshirt up past her knee. The scar was a pale line now, thin as a thread. He pressed the muscle around it. She did not flinch. "Does it ache at night?" "No." "On the stairs?" "Baby. It’s healed." She smiled. He stayed kneeling. He had carried her out of the river with that leg open to the bone. He had watched spring water close the wound under his hands. He had counted her steps for months. He stood. He kissed her lips. "Go easy on it please," he said. "One more week before you climb anything." "One week." "I promise." She caught his collar before he could pull back. "But it is healed. Say it." "It is healed." She let him go and turned back to the pot. He watched her from the doorway. She moved around the kitchen the way she used to move around anything, quick and sure. She reached for the salt on the high shelf without stretching for it. She bent to the fire without holding the mantel. He went out to split wood. The air was cold. He set a log on the block and swung. The axe bit clean. He worked through the pile and did not stop until his shirt was wet through. When he came back in she was at the table with a strip of leather in her hands. She was oiling it. He knew the strip. It was from her vest, the shoulder seam that had cracked in the river. "Spring," she said, without looking up. "Spring." "I mean it this time." "I know you do." She looked up then. Her hands stilled on the leather. "Victor." She waited until he met her eyes. "I'm late." He set the axe against the wall. He crossed the room and sat down across from her. He put his hand flat on the table between them, palm up. She put hers in it. "How late," he said. "Two weeks." He closed his hand around hers. The kitchen was quiet. The fire cracked once in the grate. "Then you are not climbing anything," he said. She laughed. She did not take her hand back.

Sable stayed at the table with the strip of leather in her hands. Victor did not let go of her fingers. The word between them was small and huge at once. Late. Two weeks late. He looked at her stomach under the flight vest, then at her face. "You are sure," he said. "I am sure." He stood up. He came around the table and knelt by her chair. He put both hands on her hips and pressed his forehead to her belly through the vest. She smelled like oil and wood smoke. He breathed in and did not move for a long moment. "Victor." She set the leather down. Her hand went into his hair. "Breathe, honey." "I am breathing." "You are shaking." He was. He pulled back enough to look up at her. Her brown eyes were steady on him the way they had been in the river shallows, when she had told him about the two men, calm and quiet while she stood there, resolute. "A baby," he said. "A baby." He laughed once, low. He kissed her belly through the leather. He kissed her hip. He stood and lifted her out of the chair and set her on the edge of the table. She let him. He put his hands on her face and kissed her mouth. "No climbing," he said against her lips. "You said that already." "No flying." "Victor." "No lifting the pot off the fire. No stairs without the rail. No going to the well alone." She laughed and caught his wrists. "You cannot keep me in a box for nine months." "Watch me." She pulled him closer by the collar. She kissed him slow. She kissed his jaw and the corner of his mouth and then his mouth again. His hands stilled on her waist. When she pulled back he was smirking at her, the corner of his mouth crooked, purple eyes half shut. "There he is," she said. "There who is." "The boy at the gate. The one who forgot his post when I smiled at him." "He is done with the gate." "I know." He put his hand flat on her stomach. He kept it there.

Victor kept his hand on Sable's stomach a long moment after the kitchen went quiet. Then he moved. He banked the fire. He pulled the wool blanket off the bench and set it around her shoulders. He filled the kettle without asking. She watched him with a small crooked smile and let him work. By the next week he had a routine. He rose before dawn and walked to the castle kitchens. He scrubbed pots and hauled sacks and kept his head down so no old face from the gate would catch him. He took every extra shift the cook offered. He came home with flour on his sleeves and coin knotted in a rag inside his boot. He emptied the rag into a tin under the floorboard by the hearth. The tin was heavier every Friday. He brought Sable things. A jar of honey. Wool socks. A wedge of soft cheese from the dairy stall. He carried the water himself from the well and would not let her lift the bucket up the step. When she reached for the pot he moved her hand aside and lifted it for her. She rolled her eyes and let him. "You are going to wear yourself out," she said one night. She sat by the fire in the timber-framed house they shared, feet up on a stool, one hand flat on the small round of her belly. "You worked fourteen hours." "I am fine." "You are not fine. You are gray." "I am saving." He knelt and pulled off her boots. "For the baby. For after." "After what." "After I am done at the kitchens. A shop. A stall at the market. Something quiet. Something they cannot take." He set the boots by the fire. "I want you to have the baby in a house that is paid for. I want the midwife paid before she walks in the door." Sable was quiet. Then she caught his wrist. "Thank you." "For what." "For all of it. I thank God for you and all we have every night.” On the sixth week the midwife came. Seraphina was the elf friend Sable had chosen, silver hair braided back, green eyes steady, a layered dress that never seemed to catch the dust of the road. She set her satchel on the table and washed her hands in the basin without being asked. "Sit," she said to Sable. To Victor she said, "You may stay." He stayed. He watched her hands move over Sable's belly, careful, sure. She listened. She counted. She asked three questions and no more. "Well?" Victor said. Seraphina straightened. "The child is strong. She is strong." He let out a breath he had been holding for weeks. Then Seraphina looked at him. Her voice dropped a note. "There is one thing. Not for today. But you should sit down when I tell you." Victor sat.

Seraphina waited until Victor sat before she spoke. She kept her hands folded on the table. She did not soften it. She told him the baby was turned in a way that could go wrong late, and that Sable would need quiet weeks near the end, and a midwife within a shout of the door. She said it was fixable if he was careful. Then she looked at him a long moment and said one more thing. "You are going to be no use to her if you fall over first." Victor blinked. "I am fine." "You are gray under the eyes. Your hands shook when you sat down." Seraphina's voice stayed even. "I have seen fathers work themselves sick before the child is born. Then the mother nurses two patients. Do not be that man." Sable watched him from the bench. She did not speak. She let the elf's words land. "I am saving," Victor said. "I have to." "Save slower," Seraphina said. "Sleep. Eat a full meal. Sit down in your own house for one evening." She picked up her satchel. "That is my instruction. Treat it like the rest." She left. The door shut. The house was quiet except for the fire. Sable stood. She crossed to him and took the tin from the shelf where he thought she had not seen it. She set it on the table between them. "She is right," Sable said. "I have three more shifts this week." "Drop one." "Sable." "Drop one." She sat on the bench beside him. She put her hand flat on his chest. "I did not almost die in a river so you could work yourself into the ground in a kitchen. Drop one shift. Eat with me tomorrow. Sleep past dawn once." He looked at her hand. He looked at the tin. The coins inside had a weight he could feel from here. He thought of the midwife's warning, of Sable needing him steady at the end. "One shift," he said. "One to start." "All right." She leaned in and kissed him. It was not the quick kind. She held his face and kissed him slow, and he felt the tight thing in his shoulders let go for the first time in weeks. When she pulled back she kept her forehead against his. "Good," she said.

Victor dropped the shift the next morning. He told the kitchen master he was needed at home. The man grunted and marked the slate. Victor walked back through the gate with the sun still low and the coin pouch a little lighter. Sable was awake when he came in. She had the fire going and a pan on the coals. She looked at him and raised an eyebrow. "You are early," she said. "I am done for the day." She smiled and pushed a plate at him. Eggs, bread, a wedge of hard cheese. He sat and ate all of it. He had not finished a full plate in weeks. When he was done she took the plate away and set a mug of water in his hand. "Drink that. Then sit." He drank it. He sat. The days that followed settled into something he had forgotten. He worked one shift instead of two. He came home while the light was still good. He ate what Sable put in front of him and did not argue. At night he lay in the bed beside her instead of on the bench by the fire. Her belly pressed against his side under the blanket. He slept without waking. Seraphina came on the fourth day to check on Sable. The elf midwife set her satchel down and put her hands on Sable's stomach with the same quiet care she always used. She listened. She pressed. She asked Sable three questions and got three short answers. Then she looked at Victor. She looked at him a long time. "Better," Seraphina said. "Your color is back. Keep doing what you are doing." "The baby?" "Still turned. But strong. Sable is strong." She picked up her satchel. "Two more weeks of this and you will both be ready." She left. Sable crossed the room and sat down in his lap on the bench. She was heavier than she used to be and she did not care. She put her arms around his neck. "See," she said. "I see." "Say it." "You were right." She grinned. She kissed him. He held her there and felt the shape of the child between them.

Two weeks passed the way Seraphina said they would. Victor kept his one shift at the castle kitchens and came home while the sun was still up. Sable moved slower now. She rested in the afternoons with her hand on her belly. Victor watched her sleep and counted the days. On the morning of the fourteenth day, someone knocked. Victor opened the door. Seraphina stood there with her satchel and a second bag he had not seen before. Her silver hair was pulled back. Her green eyes went past him to Sable at the table. "Sit," Seraphina said to Sable. "On the bed. I want to feel her again before I say anything." Sable went to the bed without a word. Victor stayed by the door. He gripped the frame. Seraphina set her hands on Sable's stomach and pressed slow around the sides. She moved her palms lower. She closed her eyes. Victor watched her face. He had learned to read it. When the baby was turned wrong she frowned at the corner of her mouth. She was not frowning now. Seraphina opened her eyes. She pressed once more, low and firm. Then she looked up. "She turned," Seraphina said. Victor did not move. "Say that again." "The baby is head down. She turned in the last few days." Seraphina lifted her hands and wiped them on a cloth from her satchel. "You can birth her here." Sable put both hands over her belly and smiled big. Victor crossed the room and sat down on the bed beside Sable. He put his hand on top of hers. He could not speak for a moment. Then he looked at Seraphina. "What do you need from us." "Clean water. Clean cloth. Someone to fetch me the moment her pains start." Seraphina looked at him hard. "That someone is you. Do not go far from this house. Not for coin. Not for anything." "I will not." He said firmly. Seraphina nodded. She picked up her satchel. At the door she stopped. "One more thing. If a stranger comes asking after you, do not open the door. Sable cannot travel now." Victor's hand tightened on Sable's. "Who is asking." "I heard a name at the gate this morning. Yours. A man in castle colors was asking after a blonde soldier who left his post." She met his eyes. "He was told nothing. But he will ask again." She left. Victor sat with Sable's hand under his. The baby was right. The birth was days away. And a soldier was in Mosswood asking for Victor, but he wouldn’t dare leave his wife’s side.

Sable's pains started in the gray hour before dawn. She shook Victor's shoulder and told him plainly. He was up before his feet found the floor. He pulled on his boots, kissed her forehead, and ran for Seraphina. The elf midwife opened her door on the second knock. She was already dressed, satchel over her shoulder, silver hair braided down her back. She did not ask questions. She only said, "How close together." "Short," Victor said. "Sharp. She said to hurry." "Then hurry." They went back together through the empty street. Victor kept looking sideways at doorways for castle colors. He saw none. Inside the house Sable was on her side on the bed, one hand fisted in the blanket. Her red hair stuck to her forehead. She looked up and gave him a hard, small smile. "Told you," Sable said. "Today." Seraphina set her bag down and washed her hands in the basin. "Water on the fire. Cloth from the second bag. Victor, sit where she can see you. Do not stand behind me." He obeyed. He sat by the head of the bed and gave Sable his hand. She took it and did not let go through the next pain. She squeezed until his knuckles went white. She did not cry out. She breathed through her teeth the way she used to breathe steering into wind. The hours stretched. Seraphina spoke in short, even instructions. Push here. Wait. Not yet. Now. She kept her voice level even when Sable's grip broke sweat on Victor's palm. Victor wiped Sable's face with a cloth and told her she was strong. He told her the baby was coming. He told her he was not moving from this bed. The sun was high when Seraphina said, "Once more." Sable bore down. She made a sound low in her chest. Then a thinner sound answered it, a small hard cry from Seraphina's hands. "A girl," Seraphina said. She cleaned the baby quickly and laid her on Sable's chest. Victor leaned in. The baby had a red face and a full head of dark hair and tiny fists already working the air. Her eyes opened for a second. They were dark and steady. Sable was crying and laughing at once. "Look at her," she said. "Victor. Look." "I see her." His voice broke on it. He put one hand on Sable's hair and one finger under the baby's palm. The baby closed her fingers around it. Seraphina worked quietly at the foot of the bed. When she was done she washed her hands again and picked up her satchel. At the door she stopped and looked back at Victor. "I figured out who the man that was looking for you was. He was your boss at the Castle. He was wondering if you could pick some extra shifts up, but I told him to wait because you just had your baby.”

Seraphina's words stayed with Victor after she left. His old boss wanted him back on shifts. The baby was one day old. Sable was still bleeding under the blanket. He looked at the cradle he had built by the wall and felt his jaw set. He waited until Sable slept. Then he took his coat off the peg and went out. He kept to the alleys and walked the long way to the castle, where fireflies drifted around the mossy stone walls and the ivy on the towers. The lantern above the arched door was already lit. He knocked at the kitchen entrance instead of the gate. A boy let him in. His old boss was at the long table, sleeves rolled, sorting a crate of onions. He was a wide man with a burned forearm and a voice that carried through stone. He looked up and stopped sorting. "Rosevale." He set an onion down. "About time. I need you tomorrow at four. And the night after." "No, sir." The boy in the corner went still. His boss looked at him for a long moment. "No?" "My wife had our daughter yesterday," Victor said. "She's still weak. The baby needs feeding through the night. I'm not leaving that house at four in the morning for onions." "You work here because I let you work here." His boss's voice dropped. "You know what I know." Victor knew. His boss knew he had deserted the gate. His boss had kept it quiet and paid him half wages for it. Victor put both hands on the table. "You've had your price out of me for months," Victor said. "I've come when you called. I've taken the shifts no one wanted. I'm asking for two weeks. After that I'll work what you set. But you don't send for me again while my wife is in bed. You wait until I come to you." His boss stared. Victor did not look away. He had stood a gate through wind and rain. He could stand this table. "Two weeks," his boss said finally. "Then you're back on the rota. Full nights." "Two weeks," Victor said. "And you send no one to my door. Not a runner. Not a soldier. If Seraphina brings word, I'll come." His boss picked up the onion again. "Get out of my kitchen, Rosevale." Victor walked home under the drifting lights around the castle walls. His hands were shaking, but only from the cold. He had bought his family two weeks. He had also made a promise he would have to keep, and his boss now owned the shape of the months ahead. Sable was awake when he came in. The baby was at her breast. She looked up. "Where did you go?" "To settle something," he said. He sat on the edge of the bed. "We have two weeks. Just us." She smiled big and threw her arms around Victor’s neck as she said in relief, “Oh baby, thank you!”