“I’ll be on that carriage out of here sooner than sparrows on a sunny day…” Omen avowed from his bed. “Got people to see. Things to do. A war needs winning.” He pushed out his famous smile, so cracked and blistered I had to hold myself on the chair to keep the shudder from showing. “Hey, Mori, who’s shovelling the streets in Dreadfall now we’re all elsewhere?”

  “I haven’t been up there in a while,” was the best I could give him.

  “Not even as a messenger? Huh. Used to be us, eh. Snow squad. Me, you, Thorn, Envy, Avarice, Decay and Detritus, Vitriol… the whole gang. Wow, haven’t seen most of them in a few months. Bet they’re doing awesome. You remember how we’d barely let a flake hit the ground before we shovelled it away?”

  I remembered how I’d put my name down for it just to be around him, that much was true. “You didn’t let up the entire deepfrost. It was… impressive.”

  “Bah, a leader’s nothing without their team working hard behind them. It’s the Forester kind of hard work that made the difference for our people surviving those first few years of exile after the Clearing. And if you’re working hard, you’re a fine Forester.” His smile faltered, but he forced it back. “Not long until I’m back and able to work again, and then I’ll make up for all the time I’ve cost. Once I’m on that carriage out of here.”

  All his talk of the carriage dredged up nebulous dream-memories I didn’t wanna have. My claws itched to find something to pull at on my face, and I stuck them onto a loose thread on the corner of Omen’s sheets instead. I was about to ask where he was going to go first, but I knew the answer to that phrasing and I didn’t like it. “What do you wanna see first?”

  Omen’s face wandered like he’d stumbled over his own thoughts. “My… family, I guess. Of course my family. Oleander and Laurel promised me they’d miss me every day until I was back, and I think my parents would feel similar. I… think I’d like to spend a night there. Just one. Just to talk and catch up, and then I’d have to go back to the war front. Naturally. But I could excuse one night. I think.”

  “Should you send a message so they can prepare?” I asked, and I realised: “Do they even know what happened to you?”

  He shook his head so firmly he groaned and lifted a ginger, still-half-bandaged hand to his neck. “None of that. Once I’m able to get out of here, I’ll get to them and tell them myself. Tell them it happened only a week ago and it was nothing serious, just a few scratches.” My grimace must’ve shown a little too much. “It’s plenty bad enough that you know,” Omen insisted.

  “Why’s it so bad?” I tried softly. “Not that I’d tell anyone anyway.”

  Omen looked at me like I’d kicked his cat. “This isn’t who I am,” he said. “This is…” He craned his neck off the pillow, scanned down his covered body. “Someone else. I dunno. Not me. Once I’m me again, I’ll figure things out. I’ve always been strong enough to get past anything and this is just one more thing to fight through. But I’ll win. I always win. I’ll be back to me, with a few more scars to show off in the tavern, and then it’s only whatever stories I wanna tell of it. Oh, man, taverns – haven’t been in one in so long. I miss it. The energy, the noise, the camaraderie, the drinking. Life of any neighbourhood – the best place to be. My ears miss it, y’know – or whatever I have left of them. Here, it’s just deathly quiet the whole day.” Outside of his small, curtained-off room, someone coughed. Nothing else. “I’ll be joining walking groups so soon, and then into the carriage, and then who knows? Nothing can stop me after that.”

  “I don’t think anything would dare try,” I said. I’d unthreaded an entire segment of the cover and cursed myself silently to stop. I didn’t want to. It took Omen’s rough hand on my wrist again to finally quell the itch in my fingers. “Thanks,” I muttered. “You’re real good with that.”

  He snorted loudly, too loudly. “Nice to know I’m still good for something!”

  For a moment my gaze lingered on the way his hand held me. Cradled me. Surely only a platonic assistance, a friend helping a friend, but… could it ever be more? Could it ever be more again? It was his sniffle that shook me out of it. “Omen? You’re –”

  “Could you say it again, please?” he asked. Blinking hard, looking away, urging the damp from welling his eyes. Omen only ever said please when he really meant it.

  “Uh… Sometimes my claws need to pick at something. Even if it hurts. Sometimes, especially if it hurts. Feels bad but stopping feels worse. I struggle to make myself stop but the way you do that, your hand on my wrist, it feels like a kind of magic. It works. I don’t know why. I struggle, and what you do is really good at helping me.”

  Omen sniffed again. “Thanks. It’s really nice to hear that. Real nice, yeah. I… I think I should sleep now. I’m tired and sleep might be good for me.”

  “The nurse thought you’d slept all of this morning –”

  “More is better, right?” Sniffed again. Stared firmly at me. I stood and made to leave, my hand glancing over the back of the chair. Still warmed from his embrace. “Thanks. Appreciate ya, buddy.”

  “Any time, Omen. Hope each day helps you feel a little better.”

  “I’m feeling fine,” he insisted.

  I couldn’t do much more for him. Not right now. So I gave him his privacy because hey, his dignity was one of the few parts of him apparently as strong as ever, and I let him have his own space as I ventured away through the flimsy canvas walls of the hospital.

  If he remembered the snow squad, surely he remembered the night of his eighteenth?

  *

  “It’s a courtesy,” said the nurse as she folded the sheets and piled them up. I helped with a few but I wasn’t half as fast as her. “Sister Hazel knows more than me, but since the war front can’t spare any funds to support our efforts at the hospital, they’ve been sending a carriage to collect the patients once they’re well enough to leave. I was on early shift last week and the man who does it arrives before daybreak, even comes in and helps check the patients over too. Very sweet of him. Saw him a couple of times... yeah... Kept talking about how they’re committed to taking the healed where they need to go next in their lives. Very considerate, he is. Very nice. Very tall," she followed, her voice drifting like blossom on the breeze. "Uh, I’m back on earlies tomorrow so I should be seeing him again. One can hope.”

  The author's content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  My gut churned. “Sure is really kind of them to do that. It sounds…”

  “Wonderful, in my books. Honestly, it’s a sure sour place to get stuck in, here. Hate for any of the patients to have to stay a day longer than they really need to.” She finished hers, and I plodded through my last few and added them to the pile. “You’re a little star,” the nurse said brightly, and wheeled the trolley away down the hall.

  *

  That afternoon, I did five things. I returned to the Institute, that magnificently haggard lump of rock halfway up the hill face which seemed to have generated its own entire fresh branch of transmutation specifically to turn esteemed professors of the arcane into parrots who only knew the word “exam”. On which note, I took the plant I’d finally bought up to Field’s office and since she wasn’t in, left it by the doorstep. Didn’t leave a note – she was cleverer than me, figured it’d be fine. I had the Ooh warm the dorm room before shucking off my cloak, glad to finally start feeling my fingertips again, knowing too well how everything Kaspar bought for me would’ve kept me much warmer. Ignored them all, lodged deep in the closet. They’d be fine there – getting forced back into the closet never did me any lasting harm, right? Right? But his clothes being so close to my space couldn’t be helping me either right now, so with gritted teeth and white knuckles I dragged them out and tossed them into the spare room right across the hall, the one where I’d spent my first night. And as I was leaving, the clock struck the top of the hundred with a trill of mystral chirps. Couldn’t help wondering how Calico was doing, alone through deepfrost for the first time in several years.

  What if she hadn’t been there? What if I hadn’t heard her? Where would we be right now? Would either of us still be right now?

  I thought of her for a while, and everyone else still left in that town. Omen’s family, no idea he’d been hurt and nor how badly. My own family, now consisting of two habitual drunks and two empty beds. Sunder’s folks, Scorn’s, other faces I’d once known. A lifetime wrapped through the roads and the pathways once bustling, now likely half-used and caked thick in snow. Like Omen had said, who was gonna keep them clear now?

  I did five things that afternoon. The window grew dark and a wind picked up and my roommates returned. I did not get myself to study.

  *

  Omen always told you more than his words said. Robin had mentioned something like that, and I really saw how true it was. How much people give away when they’re not looking. But I wasn’t as good at it as Robin – not that I ever hoped to be, knowing where his had come from – and yet still my gut churned. For what the nurse had told me as well. Because it was such an oddly, uncharacteristically kind thing of the warmongering Foresters to do, to offer a carriage out of the hospital to wherever the healed patients wanted to go next. No roads could cope with the sheer slopes between the Wrevon Valley and Saint Emeric’s Pass where the first military station was always stamped onto the landscape, so with the obvious answer gone, what in all the hells were they up to?!

  I ruminated. I’d always thought that was such a tactile word, ever since I’d first read it and a few pages later, figured out what it actually meant. Said it once to Kaspar and he’d corrected my pronunciation like always, but it didn’t dampen my affection for chewing over your thoughts the way a cow would on grass. So I ruminated. Stars meandered outside the window and the wind picked up a little more yet still I couldn’t sleep. It nagged at me. Too important to forget. I couldn’t define it, couldn’t name it, but it nagged.

  At the faintest glimmer of light on the horizon, I grabbed my cloak and left for the city.

  *

  My body dragged and my eyes drooped but my mind had bitten down like a rabid wolf and wasn’t letting go. Almost slipped twice coming down the icy hill road, and finally managed on my third attempt. Snared the cloak close around me but I shivered in the snapping breeze anyway.

  There. Emerging from the gateway of Franzi’s Square trotted a mighty horse, far taller than me, pulling a veritable stagecoach. Some numb alarm from the depths of my mind urged me into the shadows and I held my breath as it trundled past – whatever they were doing, I was far too close for my own good and couldn’t get pulled in. Didn’t know if I could get myself out again. Couldn’t let the driver see me. The driver…? The carriage wheeled past my hiding spot, the man in the driver’s seat taller than anyone I’d ever seen. A visceral spike of dread shot through me: an icicle speared at my heart.

  It was dark through the windows of the carriage. I didn’t want to see inside.

  In the desolate daybreak streets the stagecoach rolled onwards, turning at the fountain and parading through the avenues. I kept back as far as I could, letting it slip out of sight for a few blessed peaceful moments before forcing myself on. I had to know, I had to know. What the hell were they doing with the patients? The tallest man drove the carriage down the centre of each road but with the attitude that he would’ve done just the same at the busiest time of day too. Where was he going with them all?

  Onwards, onwards, up through the city past places I’d never seen before. A merchant’s parkway and the empty echoes of a smithing neighbourhood. The cold bit deeper into my bones and I forged through. Onwards, ever onwards. Sky glowing, shadows congealing. My heart pounded and I wanted to keel over.

  The stagecoach squoze through a gateway barely wide enough, a hiss of water filtering through, and I kept to the wooden post. Still no one else around. Up ahead a shard of light sliced slow through an open yard backed by the high city walls and the carriage drew to a stop. My breath caught. The driver clicked the reins and descended on the far side. Stopped. Still. Like he was waiting. Waiting for… something.

  Me?

  I pulled silently back from the post and froze completely. He couldn’t know I was here. No matter what they were doing, I couldn’t get pulled in. Did I risk more than I’d already chanced? So cold and yet still I could feel the sweat on my skin. Equally, I couldn’t run away. I had to know what he was waiting for.

  I crept the barest eye around the post. Carriage still there. Door still shut. Silhouettes of bodies in the dark windows. Driver on the edge of the yard, far over by the water’s edge. Appeared to be beckoning something in through a narrow break in the high walls. He caught a tossed rope. A barge? Was that what it was on the water beyond the yard?

  A barge on the river at the top end of the city. The river all the way to the sea, flowing down from Saint Emeric’s Pass. A carriage full of the Foresters finally able to leave the tent hospital.

  If you’re able to stand, you’re able to fight.

  *

  If I was Omen, I could’ve done it. Strong enough and brave enough and irrevocably convinced whatever I did, it would somehow work out right in the end. If I was Omen, I could have ran in there and stopped it. But then would Omen even want to stop it?

  I was me. Barely that. Try as I might and as often as I did, I never saved anyone else. I was exhausted, drained, fatigued, cold, miserable, aching, alone, and outright terrified. Today, I could only do so much. I could only fight so many battles. Visions of rushing in and somehow figuring a way to fix this, all of this, rushed through my mind, chased off by visions of me being snagged by the scruff and tossed onto the barge too. Today, I was going to save myself and call that good enough. Which sounded far better than running away, even if it looked exactly the same.