The manor house had three gates. He had Aduan and Cerdyn at the blackberry gate while Bran and Dajouth held the forest gate. Ōbhin, Smiles, and Fingers would guard the main one. He’d need twenty times this number to cover the wall in this fog.
“Well, at least if they do get over the wall, they’ll never find the manor house,” Smiles said with a glib tongue.
Fingers chuckled. “I couldn’t find my cock to hold it while I pissed.”
“I thought that was just the danger of gaining a ponderous belly,” Smiles answered.
“My belly isn’t ponderous.” Fingers smacked the front of his chainmail. It rattled. “It’s stout. I can still find my pecker. More than your wife can say about yours. Problem of havin’ a tiny one.”
Smiles threw back his head and laughed. Ōbhin snorted, the tension melting out of him. Armor jangled on the three of them as Fingers’s rumbling laughs joined them. Smiles ran a hand across the back of his head.
“My wife is a forgivin’ woman,” Smiles said. “But she must have found it. She’s pregnant. Missed her last two flows.”
Fingers’s laughter cut off as Ōbhin asked, “Why didn’t you say anything?”
“You never say nothin’ before she’s missed two of her flows,” Smiles said, his voice earnest. “You invite the Black to disrupt things.”
Ōbhin opened his mouth to congratulate his friend when red flashed on the eastern horizon, bleeding through the thick fog. A chilly tingle raced down Ōbhin’s spine, the words dying on his lips. He ran a dry tongue across the roof of his mouth.
“What darkling mischief is that?” demanded Fingers.
“Horrors wrought with obsidian,” answered Ōbhin.
*
Avena sat down on the base of the stairs, staring at the door. An hour had passed since Ōbhin had left. She could feel the night dragging on. The windows all had their curtains drawn tight, sealing the jewelchine light in the room. Not that she could have seen anything if she did draw back the drapes. Just fog.
She wanted it to be over. For Ust and Dje’awsa to just attack so her skin could stop feeling like it was being stretched taught over her muscles and bones. No one talked. Just paced. Dynoth and Glien drifted around the side of the stairs while the third gardener, Shamit, paced slow circles before the window to the right of the main doors. Miguil and Pharon stood close to each other.
Her eyes kept drifting to them. The two men shared glances and reassuring smiles. Their hands brushed and their fingers twitched like they wanted to clasp the others. She’d never seen how obvious their love was. They had to keep it hidden.
They must be too nervous to pretend indifference, she thought, watching as their fingers brushed again, almost entwining before they pulled away. They exchanged a glance that struck Avena’s memories. Chames used to smile like that.
Her first promised swam in her imagination, his handsome face, like a young Dualayn but lean, his lips full and strong, his chin and cheekbones sculpted from living marble. His eyes held joyful life.
Avena wanted to be angry at Miguil for her embarrassment, but she couldn’t muster even indignation at the two men aching to support the other. She felt suddenly so alone. A selfish pettiness rippled through her.
Shame followed. Why should she hate them? She’d never loved Miguil. She understood that now. Maybe Chames . . . She wanted to believe she’d loved him, but her feelings for Miguil were as thin as a layer of varnish over furniture. It didn’t take much to scratch through it. She’d almost died this night, so it seemed foolish to hate the pair for finding what she yearned for. Maybe she’d never possessed it. Maybe Chames had been her one chance for love. At least Miguil and Pharon had found it, even if they were both men.
That fact didn’t even seem to matter. They might not survive to see the morning.
She glanced at the door. She felt a renewed vigor in her. An eagerness for the fight to come so she could stand up and defend her new family. She wouldn’t stand by helpless like she had with Evane.
She wanted to go to the two men over there and express her joy that they had found someone to love. That they could love and didn’t have that emptiness in them. Smiles and Jilly had it. Dualayn had it with poor Bravine. Surely Kaylin had loved her husband to be so changed by his death.
Avena started to move towards the men when Jilly shouted from the top of the stairs. “There’s been another light!” Avena glanced at the maid in her dark dress, a heavy, brass candlestick clutched in her hand. “Something dark stalks the night!”
“We still have Elohm and His Colours with us,” Avena said. “Who knows, maybe He’ll unleash Reylis, Archon-Supreme. Maybe she’ll lead His devas to do battle with the darklings that walk the night.” Are you a darkling, Dje’awsa?
It seemed a foolish thought to Avena. Darklings were twisted creatures with spindly arms who bled shadows. They could jaunt through them, striking out of the darkness. But the Warding was intact. It had to be.
“Elohm, bathe us in your Colours so bright, no dark can stain them this night,” Pharon prayed. He held a prism clutched in his hand.
Avena bowed her head as his benediction echoed through the room.
*
“Wished they’d just come,” Fingers muttered.
It had been an hour since the last light. Dawn was only a few more hours away. It was the darkest point of the night, the farthest from sunset. Ōbhin had heard Laythins from the plateaus east of his home speak of the world shifting at strange angles in the hours before dawn. When the impossible became possible and things trapped beyond this reality could slip through.
Ōbhin tried to shake
