Fionn's grip had grown stronger, still fit inside Torven's palm but not like before, warm despite the morning cold. He kept pulling ahead, then catching himself, humming the tune Moira had sung last night, a small smile on his lips.Fionn's grip had grown stronger, still fit inside Torven's palm but not like before, warm despite the morning cold. He kept pulling ahead, then catching himself, humming the tune Moira had sung last night, a small smile on his lips.
"Will we shoot at the targets today?" Fionn asked, looking up. "The big ones? Like you told me about?"
"Maybe. Depends on Osric."
"I practiced the hold. Mama showed me with the broom handle." He demonstrated with his free hand, fingers curling. "Like this?"
"Close enough. You'll see when you get there."
Fionn's smile widened. He hummed again, pulling ahead, eager.
They passed Old Kerra's home where ash bread baked in the morning hearth. Heat rose from the open doorway, carrying the smell, bitter and acrid, coating the back of the throat like smoke you could eat. A woman passing turned her head away from it, pulled her scarf across her nose.
Fionn breathed it in, deep, and his face eased.
Voices carried from ahead, boys at the training circle already, shouting, boots on dirt.
The watchtower rose against overcast sky, built from dragon vertebrae, highest point in their quarter, marking where Edge-dweller territory ended. Wind moved through the bones, a low whistle. Other boys climbed it together, voices carrying down, racing each other higher. Fionn always sat below, alone, face tilted back. Not watching them. Watching the sky beyond.
He looked up at it now, his steps slowing, hand pulling against Torven's palm. Torven kept walking and the hand came forward again. Their breath hung visible, small white puffs keeping time with Fionn's steps.
The training circle lay ahead, packed earth worn smooth by generations, smelling of dust and old sweat, leather and iron. Old chains hung bolted to stone posts at the edges, rusted now, too thick to be useful for anything left. He had learned here. Now Fionn, in the ochre shirt Moira had made for his birthday yesterday, too big still, with room to grow.
Six winters old now. Ten more to go.
Torven let the thought pass, focusing on the hand in his, that smile.
At the circle's edge, Torven held on. Just for a moment. Then he let go.
Fionn looked back. "Da?"
Then he walked toward the other boys alone. Eight boys waited in the circle, shoving each other, kicking dust. One stared past the circle, face slack.
Two women on the north side leaned close. One tipped her chin toward Fionn. The other's lips shaped words that didn't carry.
Torven's eyes stayed on his son.
Fionn stopped a few paces away. "Hi."
Most of them didn't look back. One boy—Colm, in his dragon-scale vest, too tight to button now—raised his hand in a small wave.
Fionn stepped closer. "I'm Fionn. It's my first—"
"We know who you are," another Boneholder boy muttered. Niels. He stepped between them, turned his back. The others followed, blocking Colm from view.
Fionn stood straight, face open, smile gone.
Dust drifted where the boys had been kicking. Cold crept deeper, past cloak, past skin. Parents clustered at the edges, Boneholders to the north side, Edge-dwellers to the south, silence between them.
Osric stood at the circle's center, grey-bearded and thick through the shoulders, arms crossed. Beside him stood Renn, younger, leaner, demonstrating the hold on a practice crossbow, twenty-two now, the boy Torven had pulled from dragon fire.
Torven watched Fionn. The other boys. Osric. Anywhere but Renn. Renn found him anyway, met his eyes for a breath, then studied the ground.
"Formation!" Osric called. "Dragon line. You know it."
The boys shuffled into a V-shape—or tried to. Boots scuffing dirt, breaths coming faster. Fionn moved toward the front, toward the point. A shoulder caught him—one of the Boneholder boys, not Colm—shoving past, eyes fixed ahead. Fionn stumbled back, found himself at the southern edge, among the Edge-dweller boys. None of them looked at him. He made himself smaller.
Torven started forward before he caught himself.
"Weight forward. You're stopping a charge. Plant your feet. Brace."
Fionn among them, trying to copy the others, feet too close together, shoulders hunched.
"When I call hold, you hold. When I call loose, you loose together. Discipline keeps you alive."
A boy near the front—Denn, maybe seven—raised his hand. "When do we learn deer?" Another voice picked it up, eager. "Yeah, deer!" The eagerness died when Osric looked at him.
"We are dragon hunters." The words echoed off stone. "Practice crossbows. Line up."
"Hold!" Osric's fist rose. Eight boys froze, some better than others, Fionn half a beat late.
Renn handed out the weapons, wood and iron, lighter than the real thing. Fionn took his, small fingers closing around the stock, cold iron pressing against his palms.
Fionn's grip tightened. Released. Tightened again. His shoulders crept toward his ears. He glanced at the boy beside him, adjusted his hands to match, then shifted them when he moved.
Osric walked the line, correcting holds, adjusting stances. He reached Fionn, paused. Fionn's hands white-knuckled, tension running through his arms.
He moved on without comment.
Three places down, Colm lifted his crossbow. Boneholder family, friendlier than his parents once were. He raised the weapon smoothly, no hesitation, no strain, sighted down the bolt groove and released the mechanism with a clean snap. The practice bolt struck the target dead center. "Good." Osric nodded. "Again." Colm reloaded. Easy movements, certain. Two winters at the crossbow already, and it showed in every motion.
Fionn was still trying to steady his hold.
Torven stood among the other parents. His fingers interlaced. Squeezed. He made himself loosen them.
"Loose!" Osric called. Mechanisms snapped and bolts flew. Most hit somewhere on the targets, mounted high where the chains once stopped, angled down like something diving, out of habit now. Colm's struck center. Fionn's bolt wobbled off the groove, struck dirt three paces short. Dust puffed where it landed.
No one said anything.
Osric was already calling for reload.
Torven's hands hung at his sides. Chill seeping through his cloak. He'd stopped moving.
He could cross to Fionn. Steady his hands. Show him how.
He stayed where he was.
Colm stopped moving, head toward Fionn. His eyes tracked Fionn's hands, the way they couldn't settle, the way Fionn kept shifting his weight. While the other boys reloaded, Colm set down his practice weapon and crossed the circle.
He was carrying something else now, his real crossbow, dragon bone pale as old snow, smooth where the practice weapons were rough. Just that, and Fionn.
Colm stopped beside Fionn, held out the weapon. "Try mine."
Fionn's face lit up. "Really?"
"It's easier," Colm said. "Better balance. You'll see."
Niels's lip curled and Denn stepped back. Torven could cross the circle. Could call out. Could stop this before—
He didn't move.
Four winters of not asking. Not testing. Not wanting to know. Now you'll know. Not like this. Not in front of everyone. But his feet wouldn't move. Waiting.
Fionn's hand hovered over the crossbow. His fingers curled, then opened. He looked to the circle's edge, toward the parents, toward Torven.
Torven didn't move.
Fionn took it.
His fingers traced the pale stock. The bone was smooth. Cold. Fionn's whole body locked.
The color left his face. His grip tightened, knuckles white, and a sound came from him, low, not quite pain.
He didn't let go.
Ten seconds. His arms shook. His gaze locked on Torven across the circle and held.
Twenty seconds. Sweat ran into his eyes. He blinked it away. His lips moved without sound.
Thirty seconds.
His fingers sprang open.
The crossbow hit dirt. Fionn dropped beside it, palms pressed to his chest, the ochre shirt—Moira's shirt—grinding into the ground.
No one moved.
Then, close enough to hear—
"—never a Talan. Bones are all we have, and he can't even—"
Last night's smile came back to him. Fionn by candlelight. He buried it. Made himself still.
Then Renn did.
He crossed the circle, putting himself between Fionn and the other boys, his back to Fionn now. "Back to positions." His voice cut through. "Formation drill. Now."
The boys scattered toward the targets. Renn's eyes touched Fionn—brief, careful—then moved on. His attention never reached Torven.
Niels opened his mouth. "Green."
"Shut up." Colm. Still standing beside Fionn, picking up his crossbow.
Torven looked anywhere but his son. His hands refused to unclench.
Fionn was standing now, unsteady, his voice wobbling. "I tried to hold it. I did." He looked to Torven. Nothing. He looked down, blinking fast. "My wrists hurt."
Colm tilted his head. He followed the glance, found Torven standing apart from the other parents, then back to Fionn. "Does that happen a lot?"
Fionn shook his head. "Just today."
The silence lengthened between them. Osric called formations again, Renn demonstrating something, the other boys falling back into drill, mechanisms clicking, boots on earth, voices layering over each other while cold seeped into his bones.
Colm shifted his crossbow. "See you tomorrow?"
Fionn's face brightened, just a little. "Yeah. Tomorrow, I'll—"
Three horn blasts. From the gates.
The sound was the same. His hands remembered what he'd carried through those gates, what the horns meant.
The boys broke toward them, toward the hunters. Colm hesitated, then followed.
Fionn walked alone. Torven followed. Behind. Apart.
Afternoon light slanted through the open gates. Dragon-skull jaw gaped wide, frost gathered in the empty eye sockets like the settlement itself was watching. The air hung grey and still, cold despite the sun.
Hunters moved through in V-shape formation, the dragon formation, the point-and-wings they'd drilled into boys this morning for creatures that no longer flew. Gregor at the apex, dragon-scale pauldron catching light, crossbow across his back, each step measured. Behind him came Ferne, Grey-beard, five others spreading wide to form the wings. Synchronized, rehearsed, the same formation their fathers had used and their fathers before that.
Behind the Boneholder hunters, four Iron-knives pulled the sleds, twice as many as last season. Shoulders slumped, faces weathered, clothes stained, carrying knives that had seen too much.
The Boneholders walked in formation. Dragon scale bright, cloaks unstained, crossbows unused.
The boys pressed forward, watching. Fionn among them now, swept up in the movement toward the gates.
Behind the hunters, sleds built for dragon weight. Iron runners scarred, frames reinforced to carry tons, centers hollowed and blood-dark from severed dragon heads where deer and boar now lay, too small for the space, ribs showing through hide on some, blood dried brown and crusted. One boar festering green at the shoulder. Rabbits in clusters, hanging from the rails.
Flies gathered anyway. The smell hit, rot beginning, meat already spoiling.
The crowd was gathering, filling the square, moving toward the gates. Boneholders to one side, Edge-dwellers the other, the space between them careful and maintained.
Gregor raised his fist. "Hold!" The formation stopped, perfectly synchronized, boots hitting stone together.
Fionn's weight shifted. Forward. Onto the balls of his feet, shoulders dropping, body remembering what it had learned this morning. Stopping a charge. He caught himself, straightened. But his hands had moved, rising slightly, fingers curling, reaching for the stock that wasn't there.
Twenty paces back, the moment froze. His son in the hunter's stance, feet planted, weight settled, palms open.
The crowd kept coming, sixty, eighty, a hundred people flowing from doorways and alleys. Boneholders pressed toward the front, jostling for position. Edge-dwellers kept to the back, some already drifting toward the southern paths.
"Present!" Gregor called.
Eight crossbows lifted as one. Military precision for deer that hadn't fought back.
The crowd slowed, eyes on the weapons, then on the sleds. Someone near the front stopped counting.
"Honor the fallen!" Gregor's voice carried across stone.
No response. The hunters held position. One beat. Two. Then Orm—thick through the chest, dragon-bone bracers on his forearms—beat his fist against his chest plate twice. Dragon scale ringing hollow. Another hunter whooped. The formation broke, grinning, clapping shoulders, triumph for seven deer. Seven deer. Two boar. A week-long hunt in the frozen north for this. And they were celebrating.
The crowd didn't cheer.
For a moment the square held still, the crowd silent as the hunters passed through the gates, sleds scraping iron on stone, all eyes on the meat, lips moving without sound.
Seven deer. Two boar. Three hundred mouths.
A child's voice, small. "Is that all?" Hushed immediately. But the question hung there.
The Boneholders surged forward. Not toward the hunters, toward the meat. Bodies packed tight, breath and sweat mixing with dust, positioning, angling for the distribution that would come. The strong near the front, the old falling back, the weak pressed to the edges. An old woman stumbled, two men shoved past her, someone's elbow caught a child's face. No apology.
At the back of the square, Edge-dwellers stood with arms crossed. A woman shook her head, small, quiet, and turned toward the southern gate. Others followed.
The boys scattered, eager for the front. Fionn didn't follow.
Fionn stood at the crowd's edge. He looked down at his palms. Empty. Then up at the hunters, at Varn's fist still raised, at the shapes on the sleds that were too small, wrong, deer where dragon heads should have been.
He didn't clap.
The crowd pushed closer. Fionn got jostled, an elbow in his back, sharp and careless, small, easy to miss in the press of bodies. He stumbled, caught himself. No one noticed, no one reached out.
He couldn't cross to him.
Wind cut through the square. The crowd blurred. Only Fionn staying sharp, face tight, standing small, unmoving.
She'd come for him. She always came.
He let her handle it.
The crowd thickened between them. More people, more bodies, more distance. Sound dimmed, the crowd's noise muffled, like hearing through water.
Then movement from the south side, someone pushing through the press, moving against the current toward where Fionn stood alone.
Moira.
She crossed the square, hands stained from morning work, hair coming loose. People stepped aside without thinking, made space for the tanner's wife, for Fionn's mother.
She reached Fionn. His face turned up to her, relief breaking through the blankness. "Come help me with the hides," she said. Quiet. Just to him. Her fingers closed around his small ones. His body loosened.
She gave the crowd her back and walked, unhurried, certain, leading him away from all of it.
Fionn followed. His free hand brushed his shirt, checking the stains, maybe, or just needing something to hold. He glanced back once, toward the sleds, the formations, the hunters, then forward again. Following his mother.
They disappeared into the paths between buildings. Gone. Torven stood at the crowd's edge. Alone.
While she led their son away.
The world came back slowly. Sound first, the noise of distribution and complaint and bargaining. Then color, the dirt and grey and dried blood. Then cold. He'd been standing too long, hadn't he?
The crowd surged toward the sleds, distribution starting, voices rising. Someone shouting about portions, about fairness, about not enough.
He should find them. Moira had Fionn now, safe, away from this.
Instead, he watched.
Watched the crowd close around deer and rotting boar. Watched the hunters separate, their celebration fading now that the performance was done and the reality remained. A week-long hunt for this. For meat that would last days, not weeks. Boneholder portions.
The sleds stood empty now, iron frames built for weight they'd never carry again. The afternoon tasted like ash.
The distribution ended in the usual scatter, families carrying portions home. Torven stood where he always stood, apart, not in line.
Ferne passed without slowing. Cloth pressed into his palm, quick and familiar. Bones through the fabric. Gristle. He held the bundle close.
He walked the long way, past the storage houses with their dragon-spine frames, past the well where water pooled in cracks between stones. The sun hung low, casting everything in brass and shadow. His boots knew the way to her.
The tanning racks came into view first, stretched hides catching the slant light like sails, some pale and new, others dark with oak-bark stain. Then the smell, sharp and chemical, the kind that settled in your throat and stayed. Tannin. Wet leather. Something earthy underneath, like turned soil after rain.
Moira stood at the largest rack, blade in hand, working a hide with long steady strokes. The ochre shirt beside her stopped him cold. Fionn sat cross-legged in the dirt, sorting leather scraps into piles. His hands careful, holding each piece up to the fading light, turning it, deciding. The shirt Moira had made him yesterday, darker now where sweat and dirt had pressed through the wool.
Torven stepped into the shadow of the storage house. Stopped. Moira's blade in rhythm—pull, lift, pull—peeling membrane from hide in translucent strips. Her shoulders rolled with the motion. The blade never wavered.
Fionn held up a piece of leather, palm-sized, edges curled, surface cracked in a web pattern. Moira glanced at it, tilted her hand toward the scrap pile. He set it down without question and reached for the next piece.
The evening pressed close around them, the chemical smell, the last warmth bleeding from the sky, the quiet scrape of blade on hide. Torven's portion grew heavy in his hands. He should go home. Put the meat away. Start a fire against the coming cold.
He didn't move.
Fionn finished sorting the last piece, the salvage pile, and sat back on his heels. No tightness in his face now, shoulders loose, hands sure on the leather scraps.
Moira wiped the blade on her apron and studied the hide. Nearly clean now, pale and supple where the membrane had been, ready for the next stage. She reached into her work satchel and pulled out a small clay pot. The hide glue inside would be cold by now, thick as mud.
She held it out to Fionn. Fionn closed both hands around the clay without hesitation. The pot disappeared between his palms.
The meat portion slipped in Torven's grip. He caught it. His fingers had gone bloodless around the cloth.
Moira returned to the hide, checking edges, finding spots she'd missed, working them clean. The blade scraped, lifted, scraped again. Thirty seconds passed. Forty. Fionn's hands stayed closed around the pot, still and quiet.
No fever-flush on his cheeks. No trembling. No wrongness at all.
Just warmth, constant, like the sun had concentrated itself in his small palms.
Moira set down the blade and held out her hand. Fionn returned the pot to her. She pried off the lid. The glue inside had softened, no longer solid, moving when she tilted the clay. She tested it with her finger, nodded once, set it beside the hide, and went back to work.
The ground tilted under Torven's feet.
Moira hummed low and tuneless. The sound drifted across the racks, barely more than breath.
Fionn eased. The last of this morning's tension bled out of him. The small smile from before training—gone all day—was back.
Moira set down the scraping blade and picked up a smaller one, the finishing knife, its edge worn bright from years of use. She held it out to Fionn. His eyes widened, shoulders lifting. She dipped her chin. Fionn scrambled up, taking the blade with both hands like it mattered. Like she'd given him something more than steel.
She shifted to make room beside her at the rack.
His legs ached with stillness.
She guided his grip—fingers here, thumb there, wrist straight not bent, speaking close to his ear as she angled the blade against the hide's surface.
Fionn's first stroke bunched the membrane instead of cutting it, skipping across the surface. Moira leaned close, her hand covering his, gentle on the adjustment. The second stroke caught, peeling a clean strip from the hide, thin and translucent, curling away from the blade like old skin. Fionn's hands stilled, then moved again, surer.
She touched his shoulder once, then handed him another section of hide. Let him work it himself.
Fionn bent close to the leather, tongue caught between his teeth in concentration. Steel worked, careful and slow. Strip by strip, the membrane came free. Some strokes clean, some bunched, but each one better than the last.
Moira returned to her own section. They worked in parallel, her strokes long and practiced, his short and careful. The scraping sounds layered over each other. Her humming resumed, weaving between the blade-work like a third voice.
The last heat bled from the air. Torven's fingers had gone numb around the cloth.
She reached for the next hide. Her fingers brushed Fionn's as he handed her the glue pot. She squeezed once, brief and deliberate, her hand around his small one. Then she let go and returned to the work.
The humming held, his strokes even now, and the evening deepened around them.
Fionn's hands around that pot. Thirty seconds. Forty. Moira taking it back. The glue inside softened. How many times? He'd lost feeling in his hands. He couldn't remember when. How many pots, how many hides, how many evenings while he stood in training circles watching for wrongness he refused to name?
The fumes thickened as Moira spread glue into a fresh hide, pressing it thin with practiced strokes. Fionn sneezed, small and sudden, and her hand found his chin by instinct, turning his face from the fumes. He went back to scraping.
Torven's skin felt too tight. Over his ribs. His shoulders. Like he'd grown since morning.
Moira's rhythm broke, subtle, a fraction slower, the blade lifting higher before the next stroke, and then she stilled, set down the knife, straightened.
The shadow had turned cold and damp against Torven's back. He hadn't moved. Couldn't remember deciding not to.
Her head turned toward the shadows.
She didn't say anything. Didn't acknowledge him. Just looked at Fionn working beside her, his small hands careful on the knife, his face serious with concentration.
"Fionn. Take the usable pile inside. Stack it by the door."
Fionn looked up. His eyes tracked toward the shadows, then back to his mother. "Okay." He set down the blade with care, laying it on the rack's edge exactly where she'd want it, and gathered the sorted leather into his arms. The pile came up to his chin. He walked toward home, the ochre shirt visible in the failing light until the storage house walls swallowed him.
Moira picked up her blade and turned back to the hide.
Waited.
Torven stepped out of the shadow.
The chemical smell thickened as he approached. Tannin, wet leather, the iron tang of scraped membrane. Her territory. Her rules.
Moira didn't turn around, her blade moving against the hide in long even strokes, unchanged. She'd sensed him watching. Had sent Fionn away. He stopped three paces behind her, close enough to see the tension in her shoulders, the stiffness that hadn't been there when Fionn worked beside her. The scraping continued. Once. Twice.
"You were watching."
Not a question.
"Yes."
True enough.
"How long?"
He studied the ground at his feet.
The blade stopped and she set it down, turning to face him.
Evening light caught the tannin stains on her fingers, deep in the creases. Her right hand trembled the way it always did after long hours, but her eyes didn't waver.
"The shirt I made him. It's stained."
"He fell."
"Don't."
Silence.
She studied him. The same look she gave hides before the blade.
"I've watched you pull away from him."
He couldn't meet her eyes. His gaze fell to her throat, the river-glass hanging there. Clouded now, green gone grey. The cord shortened twice, retied in careful knots. Four winters. He hadn't noticed.
"I know he's different. I've known since you carried him through those gates." She picked up the blade, turned it in her hands. "The warmth in him. The way he watches the sky. All of it."
The blade caught the last of the light. Cold seeped through his cloak, the portion heavy in his hands.
"He's my son." Flat. Final.
She was waiting.
That first night. The Council. What they'd decided.
He set the portion on the rack's edge.
"Today at training. Colm offered Fionn a crossbow. Dragon bone."
Moira's hands stilled.
"He couldn't hold it. Thirty seconds before his hands gave out. He dropped it in front of everyone."
She set the blade down. Carefully.
"All these years." She looked at him. "And this is what you were afraid of?"
Tell her no.
"Yes."
Moira searched his face. The same way she'd searched it that first night.
"Is that all?"
He met her eyes. "That's all." Three heartbeats. Four.
She turned back to the hide. "Alright." The blade found the leather again.
"We'll figure it out."
He stood watching her work, the way her shoulders had drawn in, the scraping even and patient, the same sound that had filled the evening when Fionn worked beside her.
Tell her.
But he looked at her back, still bent over the hide, still working, still believing she had years ahead of her, that she could figure it out. And the words stuck.
He picked up the portion and walked toward home.
Behind him, steel bit into leather.
Later.