“ ’Course not.” Garrad sniffed. “What with bandits and all, much too risky.” He raised his walking stick and poked the leader’s stomach with it. “So you can get yourself back to your Amelie and stop bothering me with your nonsense.”
If there was any more conversation, Ree didn’t hear it. His eyes stung. His grandsons, he’d said. Not just Jem, but Ree. Jem looked like the family. Jem might be a gift of the gods. But Ree didn’t even look human. Ree wasn’t anyone’s gift.
After a while, he heard Garrad’s limping gait approach. “Them furs should be fine a while without turning. Come on in and get something to eat.” Garrad paused a moment, then added, “Son.”
Ree swallowed. He had to blink several times before he dared turn to look at the old man. Jem’s smile made it harder. “Thanks.” He swallowed again. “Granddad.”
Haven’s Own
Fiona Patton lives in rural Ontario, Canada, with her partner Tanya Huff, an ancient chihuahua, and a menagerie of cats. She has five heroic fantasy novels out with DAW Books:
,
,
, and
in the Branion Series and
, the first book in the Warriors of Estavia series.
, the second book in that series, is due out in September of this year. She has published thirty-odd short stories, most with Tekno.Books and DAW. She is currently working on the third book in the Warriors of Estavia series tentatively titled
.
There was no hint of smoke on the morning breeze. Standing in the window of the tiny back bedchamber he shared with three of his brothers, Hektor Dann of the Haven City Watch took a tentative breath of the crisp autumn air before staring out past the rows of tenements and shops to the blackened area at the far end of the street. A fire had swept through the crowded iron market a month ago, destroying many of the tents and stalls and killing half a dozen people, including Hektor’s own father, Sergeant Egan Dann. No one had known how the fire’d started but there were always rumors.
Reluctantly, his gaze turned to the roofs of Candler’s Row to the east. Iron Street and Candler’s Row had been at odds for years, with street fighting and vandalism breaking out every few months, but nothing like this had ever happened before. Angry mutterings of retaliation from the street’s more vocal hotheads had kept the watchhouse on full alert. Something was going to blow; everyone knew it. It was only a question of when.
As if on cue, a pounding on the door interrupted his thoughts.
“Move it, Hektor, or we’ll be late.” His oldest brother’s voice, the familiar impatient temper masking a more recent hint of barely controlled anger beneath it.
“I am movin’, Aiden.”
“Then move faster. The Captain wants us at the watchhouse early in case things get out of hand.”
“I know.”
“Then know faster.”
Aiden’s footsteps stomped down the hall and, with one last glance out the window, Hektor followed.
Avoiding the tottering charge of his three-year-old nephew, Egan, he made his way through the flat’s narrow hallway to the front room, accepting a cup of tea and a piece of bread and honey from his sister-in-law, Aiden’s wife, Sulia. Then, crossing to the main window, he bent down and kissed his mother on the top of the head.
Setting her embroidery to one side, she rose to straighten the collar of his blue and gray watchman’s uniform.
“Don’t forget today’s sweets day,” she reminded him, tucking a pennybit into his hand.
“I won’t.”
“Did Jakon and Raik remember to leave their money on the dresser before they went on shift last night?”
Hektor nodded. “I’ve got theirs an’ Aiden’s,” he answered, then frowned as Sulia handed him three pennybits, one each for her, Egan, and their youngest, Leila, who was just six months old.
“We’ve got plenty, Suli,” he offered. “You don’t have to put any in now.”
“Never you mind what I put in now,” she said sharply. “And don’t you let Aiden bully you into givin’ these back to me either. He paid the whole of the rent yesterday.”
“He did.”
As one, they glanced at the empty chair at the head of the kitchen table without speaking.
“You knew he would, Hektor,” Sulia said gently. “He’s the oldest. It’s his duty.”
“I didn’t know he would,” Hektor grumbled. Short-tempered and wild, Aiden had never been easy to get along with. Marriage and children had done little to change him, and since their father’s death, he’d been even more unpredictable. Aiden was also going to blow; it was also only a question of when. But hopefully it wouldn’t happen in front of the family.
Now, smoothing his own expression, Hektor turned and held his hand out to his only sister, Kasiath, sitting with their grandfather beside the small coal stove, blonde head and gray head bent over a bird tucked in a wooden box. She handed him a full penny with a serious expression that belied her thirteen years.
“Peachwing’s ailin’,” she said in answer to his questioning expression. “The herbalist is makin’ up a packet of medicines for her and one for Granther. Can you pick ’em up after your shift? We’d have asked Jakon and Raik, but they’re guardin’ the iron market rebuild first thing this mornin’,” she added quietly.
He nodded. “What’s wrong with her?” he asked, peering down at the bird.
“She misses her clutch. We moved ’em to the trainin’ coop yesterday.”
Beside her, their grandfather snorted. “I’ve told ye a thousan’ times, girl, birds don’t miss their littles when they leave. It’s mites.”
Kasiath just patted him on the arm. “Course they miss ’em, Granther,” she said. “They just don’t show it the same way people do. But she’s also got mites,” she agreed. “She’s s’posed to be lead messenger bird for the watchhouse next week,” she added, returning her attention to Hektor. “But she can’t ’less we get the mites cleared up.”
Hektor jiggled the money in his hand. “Can’t you pay the herbalist in eggs?” he asked. “Not from your messenger birds,” he added swiftly when both sister and grandfather gave him a dark look. “But your pigeons’ve gotta have few to spare?”
“Oh, aye, if you wants to go without your breakfast tomorrow,” his grandfather snapped.
“There are a few extra,” Kasiath allowed in a mollifying tone, “but we didn’t think you wanted to keep ’em at the watchhouse over your shift.”
“We didn’t think they’d still be there, is what she meant,” their grandfather snorted. “T’was different in my day. You could leave a fortune on the front step, and no one’d look twice at it. Nowadays, with your Da gone, there’s no order up there. Them greedy ba ...” He broke off at Kasiath’s reproachful look, hunkering down in his shawl with a barely audible mutter.
“I’ll get ’em,” Hektor promised, then turned with an attempt at a stern expression to his youngest brother, eleven-year-old Padreic.
The boy studiously kept his eyes on the pig’s bladder ball he was mending until Hektor coughed pointedly. “That’s all right, Hek,” he said without looking up. “I don’t need any sweets this month.”
“Don’t need?”
Padreic shrugged, then glanced up with a rueful expression. “I don’t have a pennybit,” he admitted.
“You got paid last week,” Hektor reminded him. “And I saw you put money on the mantle.”
