The light had a gentleness to it that settles in the late afternoon.The kind of light that softened even the harshest of edges.

  Elin’s house sat bathing in the tender glow. The yard in front was packed earth, beaten flat by years of boots and barrows. By the childhood knees and footfalls of Caleb and Tomas. There were no lines drawn for their game. They didn’t need them. The low fence and hawthorn trees were suitable enough boundaries.

  Caleb tossed a stick over to Tomas, the second stick remaining in his other hand. They didn’t resemble small branches anymore, not really. Someone, mostly Caleb since Tomas had become bored halfway through, had shaved them smooth with a knife years ago. He had taken off the bark, rounded the ends, rubbed them with oil once, and then rubbed them again when the wood began to splinter in hands. There were no crossguards. No clever shaping. Just length and weight and the faint marking where sweat had soaked in from tired palms.

  Tomas picked one up and swung it in a wide arc.

  “You’ll never beat me,” he announced.

  Caleb took the other stick and tested it with a small, economical movement, wrist turning. The wood whooshed through the air. He looked at Tomas over the top of it.

  “Funny, I think I remember you saying the same thing last time, right before I won,” Caleb said.

  Tomas’s grin widened. Flour dust still clung to the edges of his hair from earlier, turning the chestnut hair into a pale halo when the sun caught it. His confidence was shameless.

  “Because I was winning,” Tomas said. “And then you cheated.”

  “I didn’t cheat,” Caleb replied.

  “You hit my wrist,” Tomas said indignantly. “That shouldn’t count as a point.”

  Caleb angled the stick’s end toward Tomas’s chest. “We’ve always agreed that if the stick hits your body, it’s a point. It’s still a touch. You lose.”

  “If these were real swords a hit like that wouldn’t hurt me,” Tomas said. “I could still wield a sword. It would simply be a flesh wound.”

  Caleb’s mouth twitched into a grin. “I’ve seen you scream from a lot less than a flesh wound.”

  Tomas set his feet and bounced once on his heels. “That’s it,” he said. “You have offended my honor! First touch. No crying. No running to your mother.”

  “No pretending you meant to lose,” Caleb said.

  “Oh, I’ll mean it,” Tomas promised, the smile never leaving his face. “Have at you!”

  They circled each other on the packed earth, sticks lifted. The yard smelled of dust and woodsmoke and cooked apples. Bees drifted over the herb patch beside the house, birds watched attentively from the trees.

  Tomas came in first, of course. A big, sweeping strike meant to look impressive. It was the sort of blow a bard would describe as heroic. Caleb stepped half a pace aside and let it pass. Tomas’s stick slicing empty air with a soft whoosh. He didn’t retreat. Not unless he had to. He just shifted, shoulders relaxed, and flicked his own stick forward.

  It connected with Tomas’s forearm.

  Tomas froze, staring at the point of contact as if the wood had insulted him.

  “That…” Tomas said slowly, “was not a real touch.”

  Caleb lowered his stick a fraction. “This again?”

  “Like I’ve said, a flesh wound wouldn’t stop me in a real fight,” Tomas declared.

  Caleb’s eyes stayed on him, steady as river stones. “You also left your side wide open”

  “I left it open on purpose,” Tomas said. “To lure you in.”

  “You lured me into winning?”

  “Just for this round…you cheat.”

  Caleb stepped back and smiled. “That’s one for me.”

  Tomas pointed his stick at Caleb. “You’re mine, like a fly in a spider’s web.”

  Caleb lifted his hand and motioned. The invitation was quiet, almost polite. It was also merciless.

  Tomas charged, accepting the challenge. He feinted left, swung right, then tried to dart in close and tap Caleb’s shoulder.

  Caleb pivoted and swung. The stick whiffed through air as Tomas leaped to the side.

  “Aha!” Tomas yelled, then lunged forward straight at his friend.

  Caleb slid to the side and swung to meet Tomas’s thigh.

  Tap.

  The two stood frozen, assessing the situation. While Caleb had managed to connect, Tomas had as well. The stick pressed against Caleb’s arm, right below the shoulder.

  Tomas clenched a fist and held it in the air triumphantly. “Ha! That’s a point to me!”

  “To you? We both landed,” Caleb said.

  “But my strike was better,” Tomas insisted. “Everyone knows a hit to the upper body is better than one to the lower.”

  Caleb tilted his head. “Since when?”

  “Since I decided it was,” Tomas replied.

  Caleb let out a huff of air. “Fine, I’ll give you the point. One sympathy point for Tomas.”

  They reset, moving again. Tomas tried to be clever now, and it made him worse. He started watching Caleb’s stick too closely instead of Caleb’s shoulders, started thinking too much rather than feeling.

  Caleb watched him. Patient. Attentive. Waiting for the moment Tomas shifted his weight.

  Tomas lunged, too eager.

  Caleb stepped inside the line and slapped the stick against Tomas’s ribs.

  Tomas dropped the stick and clutched at his ribs. “Ah bloody hell! Was that really necessary? Divines, I’ll be feeling that for a week.”

  Caleb shrugged. “Had to make sure you couldn’t argue it.”

  “No argument,” Tomas said. “Absolutely humiliating. The whole village will be talking.”

  Caleb glanced around. No one was watching but a few birds and a dog lying in the shade. The dog lifted its head briefly, then lowered it again, unimpressed.

  “They’ll write songs,” Tomas continued. “They’ll say Tomas Miller, the light of Appleford, was slain in single combat by Caleb the Gardener.”

  Caleb’s expression stayed mild. “You’re still breathing.”

  “Barely.”

  Tomas picked up his stick and they circled again. Tomas’s eyes narrowed, and something stubborn settled into him. He might not have Caleb’s quiet restraint, but he had a tenacity to him. Tomas didn’t like losing. He also didn’t like giving up. Those two things weren’t always the same.

  He feinted properly this time, drawing Caleb’s stick aside, and then stepped in with a quick, sudden flick. It thwacked against Caleb’s wrist.

  Tomas froze in triumph, his smile beaming bright.

  “Yes!” he shouted. “Yes! Did you see that? Perfect form! Perfect!”

  He turned in a tight circle, stick raised overhead like a banner. “I am the champion of Appleford! Bow before me, peasants!”

  Caleb rubbed his wrist, and his mouth curved. “I can’t believe you. After all of that complaining,” he said.

  Tomas propped the stick up on his shoulder and looked at Caleb smugly. “Either it doesn’t count, meaning your point from our last match doesn’t count. Or it does, and I have one point over you.”

  Caleb shook his head. “Fine. One point for one lucky touch.”

  “One magnificent touch,” Tomas corrected. “One quick, intelligent–”

  Caleb stepped forward and tapped Tomas lightly on the thigh, quick as thought.

  Tomas stopped mid-boast, eyes wide. “Not fair, I wasn’t ready.”

  Caleb lowered his stick, calm as ever. “You left your flank open.”

  Tomas stared at him for a long moment, then burst out laughing, helpless and loud and entirely himself. Caleb laughed too, quieter, but truel. For that small moment the yard only held dirt, the late sun, and two boys who had not yet learned the cost of growing into men.

  Tomas was in the middle of declaring himself undefeated for the remainder of the season when he stopped short.

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  His stick dipped. His grin faltered.

  Caleb noticed because Tomas almost never stopped talking of his own accord.

  “What?” Caleb asked.

  Tomas didn’t answer right away. His chin lifted instead, a small, unconscious gesture, toward the fields beyond the low fence. Caleb followed the line of it.

  Two figures moved there, slow and deliberate against the green and gold of the late afternoon. One taller, broader in the shoulders, his pace unhurried in a way that suggested time bent around him rather than the other way about. The second walked half a step behind, close enough to listen, far enough not to crowd.

  Alwin Bramblewick walked with his son, Owen, who had only returned a few days prior.

  They weren’t walking aimlessly. Alwin’s hand rose now and again, pointing and slicing the air in short, precise motions. He indicated the line of the orchard wall, the slope of the ground beyond it, the narrow track that led down toward the river. Each gesture was economical. This land was not scenic, it was his property.

  Owen watched where his father pointed. He nodded when spoken to. When Alwin stopped, Owen stopped. When Alwin moved again, Owen followed without hesitation.

  Caleb felt his grip tighten on the stick.

  Owen moved differently than he remembered. His back was straight in a way that came from correction rather than pride. His steps were measured, heel to toe, as if someone had once told him that how a man walked mattered even when no one was watching..

  Tomas broke the silence with a laugh. “Well I’ll be damned,” he said, bright and careless as ever. He jabbed his stick in Caleb’s direction. “That’s you if you bathed more.”

  Caleb didn’t answer.

  His stick lowered without him quite deciding to do it. His breath went shallow, then still. He watched the way Owen turned his head when Alwin spoke, attentive but not eager. Watched the way he placed his feet where Alwin paused, as if the ground itself had been marked for him.

  Owen’s boots were clean. Not new, but tended. The leather caught the light without showing dust. His hair was dark like Caleb’s, though washed and properly cut. His hands, visible when his sleeves shifted, were pale and unscarred. No nicks. No calluses earned from stones or tools. Hands that had held books, maybe, or reins. Hands that had not learned the language of blisters. Hands that had not been baked by long days in the sun.

  Tomas, oblivious as ever, snorted. “Look at them,” he said. “Like they’re sizing up each speck of dirt.”

  Caleb didn’t smile. “It’s his land, his right to do so,” he said quietly.

  Tomas glanced at him. “What?”

  “It’s his by right.” Caleb said.

  Tomas waved a hand. “Only because men give him and his the right.”

  Caleb watched as Alwin stopped near the edge of the orchard and spoke at greater length. Owen listened, head inclined, eyes on the ground his father indicated. When Alwin stepped aside, Owen moved into the space without being told, as if he already knew where he was meant to stand.

  Ownership, Caleb thought. Must be nice.

  Tomas squinted. “Still though,” he said. “You could pass for him from here. Same hair. Same look. If you put on a clean tunic and stopped scowling so much, I might bow to you by mistake.”

  “I don’t scowl,” Caleb said.

  “I’m sorry. You don’t scowl, you brood,” Tomas corrected.

  Caleb huffed a quiet breath. “You talk too much.”

  “Well now you are scowling.”

  Before Caleb could answer, the door behind them creaked.

  The smell reached him first. Apples, baked soft and sweet, spices sharp in the air, a hint of honey underneath. It cut cleanly through the tension like a knife through butter.

  Elin stepped out with a shallow dish in both hands, steam rising in thin curls. She took in the scene. The sticks in the dirt, Tomas grinning, Caleb following the scent in the air, the figures in the field beyond.

  “Well?” she said. “Have you killed each other yet?”

  Tomas straightened at once. “Only in spirit,” he said cheerfully. “I’m winning.”

  Caleb opened his mouth to protest, then closed it again.

  Tomas leaned closer to the dish, eyes lighting up. “Divines, that smells delicious.”

  Elin angled the dish away from his reaching fingers. “Not yet,” she said. “This is for sharing, you and your father.”

  Tomas made a face. “It’s not fair to expect me to share something that good.” Then, because he had never learned when not to speak, he added, nodding toward the field, “You know, Mistress Elin, if I didn’t know better, I’d swear you had two sons out here.”

  Caleb felt something twist low in his chest.

  Elin didn’t look at the field. She didn’t look at Caleb either. She met Tomas’s gaze calmly, the way she did when a knife slipped or a pot cracked.

  “Take it home while it’s still warm,” she said, and held the dish out.

  The moment passed, deflated not by denial but by redirection. Tomas blinked, then laughed, taking an apple and blowing on it before biting in with exaggerated care.

  “Well,” he said around a mouthful, “if I’m going to be accused of mistaking gardeners for lords, I should probably leave before I embarrass myself further.”

  He scooped up the dish of baked apples and tucked them under his arm. “For my father,” he added, as if that excused everything.

  Elin inclined her head. “Give him my regards.”

  Tomas turned back to Caleb, tossing him the stick. “Better luck next time.”

  Caleb managed a small smile. “I don’t need luck to beat you.”

  “That’s the right attitude,” Tomas said. “Say it enough times and maybe you’ll believe it.”

  He backed away, still grinning, then turned and rambled down the lane. He whistled a jovial tune. Caleb watched until he was gone.

  Alwin and Owen had moved on from the field, their figures already receding into the ordered lines of Appleford.

  “Go wash your hands,” Elin said gently. “Supper soon.”

  Caleb nodded, but his eyes stayed on the place where Owen had been, the mirror already slipping out of view.

  When Tomas’s whistling finally faded down the lane, the yard seemed to exhale.

  The sticks lay where they’d been dropped, crossed in the dust like a pair of thrown bones. Caleb could still feel the vibration of the last tap in his wrist, the easy heat of exertion cooling under his skin. The late light had begun to thin. Shadows stretched longer from the hawthorns, from the fence posts, from the corner of his home where the stones held the day’s warmth.

  Elin picked up one of the sticks and leaned it against the wall with the other. She was used to making order out of whatever boys unceremoniously left behind. Then she wiped her hands on her apron, more out of habit than necessity.

  Caleb stood in the yard a moment longer than he needed to. His eyes kept drifting back toward the fields, toward the line of orchard where Alwin and Owen had walked. They were gone now. The land looked the same as it had an hour ago. That was the trouble with it. It never changed, even though the people on it did.

  Elin followed his gaze without turning her head.

  “He’s been home three days,” Caleb said at last.

  Elin nodded once. “Aye.”

  Caleb’s mouth worked, words lining up and then refusing to come out in the order he wanted. He tried again, casual. “Tomas says foolish things.”

  Elin’s eyes flicked to him. Not sharp or unkind. Just present. “Tomas says many things. Some foolish. Some true.”

  He managed a small shrug. “He said…I looked like him.”

  Elin didn’t look away this time. She studied Caleb the way she studied a bruised apple before cutting around the rot. “You do,” she said.

  Two simple words. They shouldn’t have impacted him as much as they did.

  Caleb let out a breath through his nose, half a laugh without humor. “It seems strange. I hadn’t really considered it.”

  “It’s not so strange,” Elin replied. “There are ways you look alike, and ways you don’t. That’s just the manner of things.”

  Caleb shifted his weight. The packed earth crunched softly under his boot. “Do you think other people see it?”

  Elin’s mouth softened into a smile. “People see what they want to see.”

  She walked inside and came out with another dish of baked apples. The steam had thinned, but the sweetness still rose with the spice. She held it out to him.

  “Eat,” she said.

  “I’m not hungry,” Caleb lied.

  Elin gave him an expectant look. “You’re always hungry.”

  He took an apple and bit into it. The flesh was soft and hot, syrupy with honey and its own cooked sweetness. For a moment it was just taste and heat and the faint sting of spice at the back of his throat.

  Elin watched him chew, then said, quietly, “Tomas doesn’t mean harm.”

  “I know,” Caleb said, mouth full. He swallowed. “He just…says what he sees.”

  Elin’s gaze went back to the fields. “That’s a kind of courage,” she murmured. “And a kind of foolishness. Sometimes they’re on in the same.”

  Caleb held the apple in both hands, sticky juice on his fingers. “When you look at me, do you see Owen or do you see…dad?” he said, choosing the word like stepping over a threshold.

  Elin didn’t answer right away. The evening had begun to settle in earnest now, the air cooling fast as the sun went down. Elin set the dish down on the wall and wiped her hands again, slower this time.

  “I see a boy,” she said. “My boy. A son that I’ve raised from before he could speak to one that asks too many questions.”

  “That’s not what I asked,” Caleb said, then immediately softened it. “Sorry. I didn’t mean–”

  Elin lifted a hand, stopping him. “You did mean it. It’s all right.”

  Caleb took another bite, smaller. “You don’t talk about father much. What did he look like? How did he carry himself?” he asked.

  The word “father” came out before he could catch it. It hung between them.

  Elin’s face didn’t change. If anything, it became more still. “You favor him. Your hair, your nose, the set of your shoulders. I’d say you have my eyes though,” she said. “He was…a careful man.”

  Caleb blinked. “Careful?”

  Elin nodded. “Like a man crossing ice.”

  Caleb stared at the apple in his hands as if it might explain something. “Was he…good?” he asked. “I mean. Was he kind?”

  Elin’s breath left her slowly. “He was a knight, so I suppose that counts for something. He was kind when he could afford it,” she said. “And careful when he couldn’t.”

  “That sounds like you didn’t like him,” Caleb said, and hated himself for the sharpness of it.

  “I thought I knew him better than I really did,” she replied.

  Caleb looked away. The orchard beyond the fence was turning dark in patches, the leaves catching the last light like dull coins.

  Elin’s voice softened. “He was observant,” she said. “Not in the way lads are observant when they stare at girls. In the way a man watches people, watches weather, watches the world go by.”

  Caleb’s fingers tightened on the apple. “How did he die?” he asked.

  Elin’s mouth pressed thin. “When did I say he was dead?”

  Caleb swallowed. “I…I just thought–but what happened?”

  Elin leaned her hip against the wall, facing him now. “Like a young man I know, he wanted more. A life where he could be more,” she said, counting on her fingers without raising them. “A wife that wasn’t a foolish young woman. A roof that didn’t leak.”

  Caleb frowned. “I’m sorry I brought it up.”

  “You have nothing to be sorry about, child,” she said. “You have a right to know. It explains why your head’s in the clouds more often than not. Why you look past what’s in front of you. Why you go still when riders pass. Why you still haven’t grown out of wielding some stick like a sword.”

  Caleb’s ears went hot. “You noticed all of that?”

  “A mother notices everything,” Elin said. “Even what she pretends not to.” She paused for a moment before continuing. “I know Appleford isn’t the ideal place for a young man, and this isn’t the ideal life. But it’s a good place to raise a young boy, a safe place. I know we’ve never had much, but we’ve never wanted for much either. Give it a few years and you’ll be well and grown enough to make your own way, if you still want. Just know that you’ll always have a home here, with me.”

  Caleb let out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding as the knot in his chest started rising.

  Elin’s voice went gentler. “You should be careful,” she said. “Wanting is loud, it draws attention. And attention…” She paused, as if weighing the words the way her father’s hands might once have weighed coin. “Attention has consequences.”

  Caleb looked past her shoulder toward the fields. Alwin and Owen were nowhere to be seen now. The orchard lay in its neat rows, indifferent as ever. Elin picked up the dish of baked apples and nodded toward the door.

  “Come inside now,” she said. “It’ll be cold soon. You can’t grow on an empty stomach.”

  Caleb followed, wiping his sticky hands on his trousers like a boy again. The door creaked as it always did when he stepped through. And for a moment, there was nowhere else he wanted to be.