I slept like a condemned criminal that night.

  The streets of Baronbridge, glistening like diamond under a midnight frost. Silent. So silent I could hear the blood surging in my veins as I ran.

  He was everywhere. At every street corner, in every market square: the tallest man I’d ever seen, a face wrought of pure silver steel, clad in a leather overcoat. He drove a carriage, his steed made of the lost limbs of every Forester unfortunate enough to survive their injury – a sickly patchwork of muscle and bone, flesh and sinew in the shape of a horse, hands and joints that used to belong to people. The uncanny biological noise it made as it galloped along the icy roads made my stomach heave.

  I hid from him, but he always found me.

  Into alleys, nooks, hideaways; darting through a bookstore and out the back door only to find him here, again, always again. The carriage rocking and tilting with speed as it veered towards me.

  So still I ran. The ice in the air choked me and froze me from the inside out yet still I ran. I couldn’t escape him. I’d never escape him. Always right behind me, always closing down. I ran till I stumbled on the cobbles and my legs gave out and I tumbled and sprawled on the ground, the visceral stampede a moment behind me. I closed my eyes and waited for the inevitable as it neared, neared, neared – and passed straight over me.

  I pulled myself up to my hands and knees, gasping for air. The carriage slowed not far away in a wide open space. The square which held the tent hospital, its sheet walls not as white as the snow draped over it. And the tallest man I’d ever seen descended from the carriage. Took one wrenching look at me. And ducked inside the canvas doorway.

  *

  I woke too early and still not early enough. Unstuck myself from my sheets and worked some feeling back into my tail through a sheen of tepid sweat. Left everything Kaspar had got me in the wardrobe and pulled on my old rough cloak and boots. Knew I’d go back to being cold again, but I wasn’t going to touch a thing he’d bought.

  The little cottage was perfect as always as I headed up the hill, its snow-blanketed foxglove garden somehow even more so. Not that I could stop and let the chill seep in. I forged upwards into the deep, bitter realms of woodland where the paths grew vague and the trees reclaimed what had always been theirs. Trudging through the snow, proper snow, deep snow. Snow so deep if you sat down to rest for too long, you’d never get back up again.

  Poor gripweed, didn’t stand a chance. I sawed through its frozen flesh and stuffed it into my old kit bag and grumbled with disappointment when the job was done. It stung my back with cold as I slung it over my shoulder, and I had to keep moving.

  The first hints of sun dripped through cotton clouds as I entered the Glade. The cold seeped out of my limbs like water dripping from icicles, and I picked my way across to the island in the centre of the bubbling pool. Out here I finally felt like I could breathe again, and under the yew tree already glittering with the nascent buds of a new year of growth, I slipped my kit bag to the bare grass and set about foraging my breakfast from the crowberry bush.

  I sat a while and ate. Just breathed and ate. Clouds undulated in a pale blue sky, and I tossed some berries over to a handful of crows which had fluttered down to the water’s edge. Tried cooing at them, but they didn’t answer back. That was fine, genuinely fine. I didn’t need that to feel okay. I didn’t need anything more than this, right here, right where I was. The world could do what it wanted to me – and by the spirits did it often – but it couldn’t take this away.

  This was it. I’d live in that little cottage with the foxgloves. Once Omen was well enough, we’d both live there and have a perfect life and everything would be alright. Finally, it would all be alright, and not just for a fleeting moment.

  *

  I insisted Robin take a break for his lunch as I slung the bag onto the scales. “Fifteen krull, same as always,” I said, not needing to check the dial but doing it anyway for his reassurance, and left it in the back room for him to dissect later. I’d come back to him with the apothecary in a lull, and only pointed one wheezing lady to a rose syrup linctus under Robin’s watchful eye before he was up on his feet again. He brushed me as we passed behind the counter, and I swear he lingered longer than he needed.

  I knew I should head back to the Institute and study, but if I saw Kaspar again it’d be bad news. If I didn’t see him again, it’d be bad news. It’d find me in the study hall or in my room or knowing my luck, even if I tried to hide from it in the stairwells or the grounds. But it wouldn’t find me in the apothecary…

  Box by box, bottle by bottle, I filled up the handcart the way I’d watched Robin do plenty of times. Saved him from having to do it when he was done for the day, and all the provisions were already distinctly set aside from the main stock in the back room. Organising things the way he did was totally strange to me: I’d been raised on a credo of ‘the spirits provide’ which generally amounted to ‘if you find what you needed, be thankful, and if not, make another or go without’. Never mind foreplanning, most Dreadfallers didn’t even bother with one planning.

  But what were those odd little symbols? Scrawled on the labels in pencil, and it connected up to the scribblings on the blackboard… somehow. I brushed my thumb over the etchings his hand had made. What was it for? But by this point in the week, even the thought of asking someone anything about themself struck fear deep into me.

  Once the last few customers had been matched with their concoctions, Robin flipped the sign on the door and checked over the supplies on the cart. I leant against the display cabinet by the window and warmed up my smoothest voice. “Sure seems like the place is gonna be in good hands when it’s handed over to you.”

  He slowed a touch. “What makes you say that?”

  “You’re good with the customers and all the stock is sorted well. Gave me no trouble to load up your cart. Even if I couldn’t figure out your symbols.”

  “Oh, yeah, I find it makes it quicker for me to do that.”

  I flexed a hand. “I like you too much to put you through the indignity of having to tell me, so… You can’t read, can you?”

  He whirled, eyes wide. “Don’t tell anyone. Please. It was hard enough to get here from where I came from and I really don’t wanna have to, uh…”

  “By the good earth, of course not! Spirits alive, Robin, I was trying to lead it to offering to help teach you.” He blinked at me, and I saw something far deeper inside him. “And I won’t ask why you instinctively assumed the worst right off the top of the pile. That’s your own business.”

  “...Thanks,” he said. “It’s been tough for me lately. By lately I mean,” he added with the kind of sigh that rocked the shoulders, “the last couple decades. Once I could walk, it was downhill from there.”

  “Forester families, right? Snake pits for the soul. You can escape them but you can’t run from the poison they left inside you.” I smiled gently and he smiled back, out from under his hood. “You’ve got something really good here. I’m glad you found it.”

  “Oh, yeah, Sterling really kinda saved me back then. It’s nice but I worry it won’t keep me safe from a conscription drive if one starts up – I keep hearing chatter about that war, and yeah, I’m worried. Worried… But I worried before I started working here too so that’s not new.” He eyed me from across the room so intensely I felt it like fingertips on my face. “You got into the arcane studies at the castle up on the hill, right?”

  I squinted. “I don’t think I told you that.”

  “Oh. I’m observant, uh. Yeah. I had to learn to be. So sometimes I forget if I know something about someone because they told me it, or I worked it out. I didn’t mean to overstep.”

  He’d shrunk a little and though the conversation had got away from me, I couldn’t bear him feeling bad. I closed the space between us and posed before him. “Now I’m curious. How did you know?”

  “Well…” His fist drew in tight around an empty medicine bottle and I reached for it, a little concerned he’d shatter the thing, and just before I could ease it from him, his eyes lifted and met mine. He looked back down. Handed it to me. Swallowed deeply. “You promise it’s okay for me to say?” I nodded. “Well, so you seem quite independent but like you’re looking for something bigger. From the way you help, but you do it on your own terms. Also, you take on new stuff quickly, but you don’t seem to want to take charge of anything or be strong about stuff. And you’re one of the only Foresters I’ve seen around who started something new in the city after the war broke out. You probably thought you’re safe from it by getting into whatever they do way far up at the castle, hoping it’d offer you a line of defence if recruitment came knocking.”

  Robin was standing up properly again by this point, and I gave him a little smirk. “Smart, aren’t ya?” I said and he squeaked like a floorboard. “It’s weird. I feel like I don’t want people to notice me, to know anything about me, apart from a few people I’ve got close to. And generally, they don’t. Not in a way I’d want anyway. But you?” If I reached out, I could have stroked his cheek. It took more resolve than I knew I had in me to resist it. “I like it from you.”

  This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  I looked at him, then at the shop, then back to him. “We’re all done here, aren’t we?”

  “Mostly. I need to lock a few things away, check the safe, put the lights out, and then yeah, I’m going to my apartment earlier thanks to your help. Why?”

  “Wanna go somewhere nicer? A restaurant?”

  His face skittered through a kaleidoscope of emotions in an instant. “Yeah, uh, I would, but I, erm, don’t really think I can pay for that at the moment.”

  “I’ll cover it,” I said with an ease I had no right to.

  “I thought you’d said you were new in the city and trying to manage basic expenses?”

  I chewed my lip. “You really do notice stuff, huh. Maybe back then, but I’ve got it covered,” I said while visions of Kaspar swooped through my mind, the almighty payment he’d made for me, and the fact right now we were about a dozen imperfect words away from an actual honest-to-spirits fist fight. My guts churned. I didn’t wanna think about him while I had Robin here, not for a moment. “I’ve got it covered.”

  *

  Such a lovely thing it was for us both to have such affordable taste in dining. Barely one stray barstool away from a tavern and with a door that blocked about as much draught as a fishing net, but hey, we’d spotted a table we could share in the corner. I glanced down at his hand as we wove between the other diners. I had to pull myself back from it. He asked the waitress for barley tea so I got the same, and she left us with a single battered sheet to order from and strode away peculiarly. “She walks like she can’t wait to get back in a pair of ice skates,” said Robin.

  I blinked. “That’s exactly what it is. Wow.” He smiled bashfully, pushed a hand under his cowl and scrunched it through his hair. “Is that a thing you can do?”

  “See the old guy sitting alone over there?” he asked and glanced around, then nodded. “He’s eating like he’s sharing the plate with a ghost on the other chair, but they’re a vegetarian and he’s embarrassed about not remembering.”

  I put my elbows on the table and leaned in. “Do more.”

  “Those three kids by the window. See them? They’re hanging by their parents’ table like raccoons who figured the easiest way to feed themselves is to disguise themselves as children, and after several months of success they’re all in various stages of a crisis of identity.” I grinned at him – I totally saw what he meant. “And the fiddler by the fountain on the way here? He played it like he was struggling to keep hold of a cat who was desperately trying to get back to the ground again.”

  I furtively checked over my shoulders. The room chattered like a babbling stream, and most people were doing something of note. “What about the lady with the glasses?”

  “Oh, her? Hmm. She’s slurping her soup so loud it’s like she’s trying to suck the metal clean off the spoon.”

  “It’s a talent you’ve got there,” I said as the waitress set two barley teas on the table. Really, it was a lot more than a talent. Felt like he saw people on a far deeper level than anyone I’d ever met and I found myself fascinated with how much attention he invested in the finest nuances I’d barely noticed on my own.

  “It’s being observant. Not like I had a choice given what I came from.” He took a sip of his.

  “It’s a really cool skill, or at least I think so. And now you can use it for stuff you actually want to.” I took a sip too and instantly pulled back. Was his not as scalding hot as this, or…? “It’s great being able to live a life that’s finally your own but no one tells you how frantic it’s gonna be. Now you can use the skills you’ve learned purely for your own interests, but if you can’t make something work just right, it falls apart quicker than you’d believe. One missed deadline and you’re running like a hunted animal.”

  “Have you missed any deadlines?” he asked and I grimaced. His face froze. “Sorry, was that too forward?”

  I scratched the table with a claw. “No, it’s just… not something I want to think about if I can help it. Don’t like the feeling of running away. Reminds me of bad times.”

  “It’s rough, right?” He sipped again. “You seem like someone who cares too much.”

  “I don’t wanna –”

  “I think I’m the same,” he said. Thumbed the rim of his cup. “For half my life, High Contempt was all I knew, and I think it finally struck me I didn’t belong there the night after I’d got dragged into a game of… Worm Squash.”

  “...What’s that?”

  “Uh, what it sounds like. A group of you walk through town and whoever spots a worm on the ground tosses it up into the air, yells ‘worm squash’, and the winner is whoever squashes it under their boot. Repeat until bored. I was pushed into playing and I… I couldn’t. I shut myself away. I cried twice that night over it. Once for the worms and once for me.” I chewed my lip and tapped the table slowly. “Oh, sorry. I probably shouldn’t have said all that, especially before food. I’m nervous.”

  “It’s alright – just sounded like you had more.”

  He glanced away. Rubbed a hand against his face. “I’m not sure I should say it right now. It wouldn’t be proper.”

  “Well… I’m from Dreadfall.” I looked around, but everyone else was merrily engrossed in their own dealings. Still didn’t make me want to take my hood down, and I knew Robin’s wasn’t gonna move. “It sounds about the same. My escape was my little brother and all the places we talked about leaving to, as soon as we were able. Miles was his name.” I pronounced it slow so Robin could hear it. “As the last war ended, a horde of Marshman raiders from some stinking Marsh village found our town and ransacked the place. We’d been supplied with makeshift explosives filled with shrapnel but it wasn’t enough. Not nearly enough. A couple hundred didn’t make it to the next morning, probably a fifth of the town, and we couldn’t find Miles anywhere, so I… left. I couldn’t cope. Said goodbye for the final time to the room we’d shared and took what I could carry out into the first snows of the season. Didn’t know how I was gonna survive but by that point, y’know, I think I really didn’t care if I would.” I bit into my cheek, knew I’d said plenty more than I’d intended. But Robin looked at me with a genuinely visceral concern. So I took a deep breath and decided if I’d got this far into the first time I’d ever told another person this story, I at least had to have the decency to finish it. “My escape was gone. Any hopes for the future were ruined. That was it. I walk into the forest: that’s all I had. You’ve gotta know as well as I do that if you go out foraging once the snow’s thick and you sit down to rest for too long, you won’t ever get back up. That was…” I propped an elbow on the table, let my head fall onto my hand and rubbed at my eye. Caught the tear before it showed. “That was the plan.” I didn’t get to the other eye in time and I knew Robin noticed. “One very long, freezing night later, my numb ears heard the chirps of a bird I swore should’ve been long migrated by now. Barely realised I’d woken up and I honestly couldn’t tell you how I did or even why. But high in the branches sat a mystral, and we both stared at each other a while. Looked as lost as I did. I was so cold my body wouldn’t even move right, but I knew we had seeds and grains at home, so I set out half dragging myself back down to the town. I called her Calico, and I fed her every morning for the rest of the deepfrost. And every deepfrost since.”

  Robin ventured an arm towards me, leaned in, tentatively brushed his sleeve on my cheek. A single tear stain on the fabric as he drew it away. “Oh, that’s so terrible, Morgan. Truly. I’m so glad you’re here now.”

  “Yeah, well the Forest will mess anyone up.” I compelled my lips into a smile. “I want you to know you don’t have to keep worrying about being ‘proper’ around me. I guess you’ve been pushed away for stuff, but I’d never do that to you, Robin.” He smiled back, and I ran a hand over the scruffy menu. “Maybe we should order before we talk ourselves into pieces.”

  *

  Food came and food went. I had some braised vegetables or something. Didn’t really matter. Only got in the way of talking with Robin. I was impressed with his tenacity, drawn in by his compassion, and enthralled by the way he talked about the world. It was like getting to know someone with a whole nother sense you’d never even heard of before. And when I shared parts of myself in return, it didn’t feel like he listened to me to reply, but like he listened to understand me. Not that he probably needed it the way he saw things, but it made me feel like I was filled with warm marshmallows and padded out with downy feathers anyway.

  It was only after the plates had been taken and I’d paid with the gripweed coins that I realised I hadn’t had that trepidation, the meandering around things I wanted to say. I’d said them and Robin had nodded and said things back. It felt good, and I glanced at his hands again. Still too soon, I told myself. Too soon…

  A pack of Clearlander women came in after us, and their voices flitted over the general hubbub all evening. Having a wonderful and carefree time the likes of which I could barely fathom. I must have glanced at them again, because when I brought my head back to the table, Robin was still looking. “Most of the Clearlander women seem to do it,” he said. “Oh, the pigments and powders on their faces, I mean.”

  “What about it?”

  “Seems fun, doesn’t it?”

  I looked back another time. “Not sure I’ve ever thought much about it.”

  “We made some trips here when I was still living in Contempt, and it always seemed like a fun thing to do. To make yourself sparkly, to tint your skin and make your nails a different colour. I snuck away and bought some in secret, and it took a week of being back home till I risked trying it. I, uh, didn’t even want my sisters in the house, just in case.”

  “Yeah, I think I can see why.” I leaned in a little so we didn’t have to raise our voices as much. “How was it?”

  “Good. For the first quarterhundred. We only have a mirror in the kitchen, so that’s where I did it, and I’d say I did it well for my first time.” His face was bright, but he was kneading his fingers into the palm of his other hand. “I didn’t know what would work for my skin colour so I picked some gold for my eyes and a bit of purple, kinda like your own hands. I had a similar gold for my nails when the door clicked and I froze like a deer.” My stomach dropped as hard as if I’d been living it myself. “My father needed a hammer. So he rifled through the drawers, and I hid but he heard me, and he always wanted me to come along and learn how to build things like him. I couldn’t avoid showing myself. We, uh, met face-to-face in the hall and I swear he almost had a heart attack.”

  “I’m so sorry. I hope he wasn’t too tough on you.”

  He was quiet for a moment. The restaurant rambled on but it was a mere blurry background around us. “I didn’t give him the chance. I knew what was coming. I took everything I could fit from my room into my carry case and left, hopping on a cart heading out of town. Anywhere else was good enough. I was out of Contempt before he’d recovered enough to speak. Found myself in Baronbridge and it took a – a few weeks, a… very rough few weeks, but I found a place that was hiring and would accept me. Miss Sterling took me in. She paid my first month’s rent in a little apartment on top of my wages. That was about a year and a half ago and, uh, I think I’m doing okay.”

  “Sounds like it, even after all you’ve been through.” I leaned across and my resistance broke, and I let my finger brush over his. “It’s late and we should probably get going. We’ll be busy tomorrow, yeah? And if you live alone, then no one’s warmed the place up for the night yet, right?” I traced a circle on the back of his hand. Looked over at him. But he was still focused on our hands. “Such a shame to go back to a place so cold, so empty.”

  “It might not be proper but, uh, would you like to join me for the night?”

  “Spirits, I thought you’d never ask,” I said and beamed. He met my eyes, and a sparkling blush had filled his cheeks. “Wanna get gone?”