This Beast Tamer Has So Many Questions

A week later, the sheep were ready to leave for the Sagittarius frontier.

Elias kept only a handful back—ten Dream sheep, one of each kind he had catalogued, so that the realm would never want for a particular flavor of good night’s sleep, and a single Nightmare sheep besides. The one that had made his nightmare. He could not quite have explained why he kept that one specifically. It felt wrong to send it away, after where it had taken him and how gently it had brought him back.

The rest—the great donated flock of dreams and nightmares both—were gathered and made ready for the journey.

And because a thousand sheep given away still left a thousand-shaped hole in his plans, Elias simply bought a thousand more.

He had the method down to a rhythm now.

The new sheep took the Mental-attribute concoction and woke with Dream Visitor as the others had; he sorted them through the dream papers and watched them choose, the bright ones reaching for joy and the darker fifth nosing toward the nightmares, each sheep sorting itself toward the future it was meant for. It was, by now, almost soothing work—a thing he could do with his hands while his mind wandered.

He was leaving the laboratory, wiping ink from his fingers, when he found Seraphina waiting for him outside.

She was not one to loiter without reason, so Elias led her to the table in the flowers, and they sat, and he waited for her to find her words.

“I’ve thought it through,” she said at last. “Properly, the way you told me to. And I’d like to contract a Nightmare sheep.”

Elias hadn’t expected that, but he didn’t interrupt.

“It fits,” she went on, in her quiet, careful way. “Monarch potential. Mystic—Nightmare. It’s a Mystic-attribute beast, which means my talent can actually take it, and make it strong. And it would be… useful. On the frontline of Sagittarius, against the things that live in the dreaming dark.” She paused, and something steadier and more private came into her voice. “My parents served there. I’ve been circling it for years without ever going. I think I’d like to follow them. To stand where they stood.”

Then the steadiness faltered, just slightly.

“But I’m your guardian,” she said, and there was guilt in it now. “I swore to protect you. Would it—would it be all right for me to leave? Even for a while?”

“Seraphina.” Elias said it gently, but firmly enough that she looked up. “That’s nonsense, and I mean that kindly.”

“You’re not chained to me. None of you are. The contract binds you to my safety, not to my doorstep—you’re free to go where you want, to live your own lives. I’d be a poor sort of person to swear to protect, if the price of it was that you never got to do anything that mattered to you.” He smiled. “And as it happens, you wouldn’t even be going alone.”

She tilted her head.

“I’m sending Cassian with the sheep,” Elias said. “Or trying to. Someone should oversee the donation firsthand—make sure the sheep settle, that nothing goes wrong with creatures the frontier’s never handled before. And the soldiers should see their commander, see for themselves that he’s well. So you’d be traveling with him. You can go together.”

The relief that crossed her face was quiet, but it was real.

So Elias took her to choose.

He had set the nightmare-inclined sheep a little apart from the others, and he led Seraphina among them and asked her to take her time. “Touch each one,” he said. “Feel for the one that feels right. A contract should be recognition, remember—you told me that yourself. You’ll know.”

She moved through them slowly, gravely, the way she did everything—kneeling to lay a hand on one dark, soft head and then another, quiet and unhurried, letting each sheep regard her with their green eyes. Most blinked at her and went back to dozing. But at one, near the end, she went still.

It was an unremarkable sheep to look at, no darker or softer than its fellows. But Seraphina rested her hand on it and did not move on, and after a long moment she said, simply, “This one.”

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She formed the contract there on the spot, in the grass, with no ceremony at all—and when it settled, the smallest of smiles touched her face, the private kind that Elias had learned to treasure because of how rarely it appeared.

“Hello,” she murmured to the sheep, gathering it up into her arms.

It bawed contentedly and tucked its head beneath her chin.

Elias handed her a stack of the nightmare papers to feed it. “It’ll need a hundred of these for the third step,” he said. “And the last step after that—the dreaming part—you can do yourselves, once you understand each other. You’ll manage it better than I could. It’s yours now.”

Seraphina nodded, holding the sheep close, and looked—for once—entirely certain of something.

Convincing Cassian was harder.

“My place is here,” the commander said, when Elias first raised it. “I swore to guard you. I won’t abandon that to play courier for a flock of sheep.”

“You wouldn’t be abandoning anything,” Elias said. “It’s a few weeks. The realm is the safest place for me; Oliver’s outside holding the whole world off, and I’ll have several bodyguards you had arranged. I think I can survive you taking a trip.”

Cassian was unmoved. So Elias stopped arguing the logistics and tried the truth instead.

“Your soldiers need to see you,” he said quietly. “You’ve been gone from the frontier for months. They’re holding a line in the worst place in the empire, and the man they draw their strength from has vanished. Let them see you’re well. Let them see the commander himself bringing them something that will save their minds. That’s worth more than you standing in my flowers for three weeks.” He paused. “Please. For them, if not for me.”

That, finally, was the thing Cassian could not argue with.

He was silent a long moment. Then he exhaled, something between surrender and reluctant agreement. “I’ll come back,” he said, “as soon as it’s done. The moment the sheep are settled, and the soldiers are seen to, I return. Understand?”

“Wouldn’t have it any other way,” Elias said, and meant it.

A few days later, the two of them left.

They did not leave empty-handed. Sebastian saw to that personally.

He had appeared at dawn with a small army of Butler Pigs behind him, each bearing a parcel, and presented the lot to the two departing travelers with the gravity of a man outfitting an expedition. There were hampers of food enough for the whole journey and then some—honey bread still warm from the kitchen, fruit from Briar’s vines, neat packets of things that would keep, and a flask of tea pressed specifically into Seraphina’s hands with a quiet, knowing bow, because the head butler had not failed to notice how she took it.

“The frontier is no excuse for poor meals, Commander,” Sebastian informed Cassian, with the firm courtesy he reserved for people he had decided to look after whether they liked it or not. “You will eat properly. Miss Seraphina as well.”

Cassian looked down at the mountain of provisions, then at the dignified pig who had assembled it, and something in his stern expression softened. “…Thank you, Sebastian.”

“It is my pleasure, sir. Safe travels to you both.”

• • •

Oliver had already begun preparing for the next storm. The Sleep Sheep would go public eventually, as all of Elias’s discoveries did, and a creature that could grant true rest, cultivation in your sleep, and—quietly—a weapon for the frontiers would set off a frenzy to rival the ravens. Oliver seemed almost gleeful at the prospect. He had a war to fight on paper, and he loved his work.

And then Iris came to find Elias, with a decision of her own.

“I’d like to contract a Blood Crystal Butterfly,” she said.

Elias considered it, pleased. It was a good fit for her—he could see her reasoning before she gave it. “Illusion, Blood, and Fighting,” he said. “Three attributes.”

“Three,” Iris agreed. “It’s nothing like Briar, I know—eight is a different world. But most beasts have one attribute, or two at the most. Three is already generous, and for my talent, three elements working off each other in a single contract is… very good. And it’s not as though I haven’t the contract slots to spare.” She smiled. “Briar spoiled my expectations, I think. But three is plenty.”

“Three is excellent,” Elias said. “And a Blood Crystal Butterfly is a beautiful, deadly thing besides. It suits you better than you might admit.”

So he got to work, the way he always did—gladly.

He bought a ten thousand Crystal Butterfly eggs, and began the long, familiar process of guiding their evolution, using Iris’s own blood in the early steps the way he had once used his own for Valentine—so that when the time came, she could contract the very finest butterfly among the thousand, one grown from the start in tune with her. It would take time. It always did. But Elias had never minded the time; the work itself was the joy of it.

And through all of it—the sheep and the butterflies, the partings and the new beginnings—Rowan was having the time of his life.

He had no grand decisions to make and no interest in making any. He simply spent his days out in the meadow with Taka wheeling overhead, both heads squabbling cheerfully, and the whole gleaming flock of Lucky Ravens swirling around him in games that grew more elaborate by the week. He was, by a wide margin, the least complicated person in the realm. And watching him laugh in a storm of golden wings, Elias thought that might be its own kind of wisdom.