Interlude: The Settling Pond
The adrenaline did not last.
It bled out of Callis somewhere between the Weeping Mother’s Shrine and the edge of the market district, leaving a hollow numbness in its wake. The iron boar-sword at his hip, an instrument of survival two hours ago, now felt like a piece of heavy scrap dragging his posture downward.
He didn't want to go back to the common room or see the other adventurers drinking ale and boasting about the Green March. Elowen Valehart had stripped the romance from the city in three sentences.
You are playing dress-up. But your eyes are still bright. You still think this is a story where you win. She was right. The realization was a cold weight in his chest. He wasn't a hardened killer. He was a boy in borrowed armor, walking in the boots of dead men, relying entirely on luck and the mercy of women who took pity on him. He felt like a fraud.
He wandered away from the main thoroughfares, his feet carrying him aimlessly toward the quieter perimeter of the town until he ended up at the settling pond behind the Ash Forge. It was a wide, still basin used by the smiths for cooling large ironworks, bordered by a steep bank of packed earth and frost-killed reeds. The roar of the district was muffled here by the heavy timber backs of the workshops.
Callis stopped at the top of the bank to watch the two women sitting on the edge of the wooden dock jutting out into the water: Mara and Yselle.
They were a study in contrasts in the dim afternoon light. Mara wore domestic wool and a clean apron, a woven basket resting beside her hip. Yselle had her canvas trousers rolled up to her knees, her bare legs dangling over the dark water as she scrubbed the soot from her arms with a stiff brush and a cake of lye soap. They were talking quietly, falling into the comfortable rhythm of two women who had known each other for years.
Callis stood frozen, unsure if he should retreat, but Yselle heard him first. She didn't turn her head, but her shoulders shifted.
"If you're going to stand there brooding, Vale, you might as well come down and make yourself useful," she called out, her rough voice carrying easily over the still water.
Mara turned, her dark eyes locking onto him instantly. She didn't offer a witty greeting. She simply looked at his slumping shoulders, the drawn exhaustion in his face, and the pristine white bandage wrapped tightly around his left forearm.
"Come here," she said softly.
Callis descended the bank, his boots feeling heavy against the packed earth. He walked onto the wooden planks and stood before them, feeling like a child called before his elders.
"Sit down, Callis," Mara ordered, the tone leaving no room for a request.
He obeyed, sinking onto the rough planks beside her. The moment his weight settled, the last of his carefully constructed posture collapsed. He hunched forward, resting his elbows on his knees and burying his face in his uninjured hand.
Mara shifted closer. She didn't ask what happened. She reached out to pull his head directly onto her shoulder.
Callis went willingly, closing his eyes and pressing his face into the soft wool of her dress. She smelled of yeast and rosemary layered over the banked warmth of the tavern hearth. She wrapped one arm around his back, holding him securely against her side.
"Brush-stalker," Callis mumbled into her shoulder, his voice thick. "It dropped out of a tree. I killed it. But it caught my arm."
Mara’s hand came up, her rough fingers running slowly through his dark hair. "You went to the shrine," she noted, smelling the sharp, bitter tang of the salt-root beneath the linen.
"I met Elowen," Callis whispered, the confession hanging heavy in the cool air.
Above him, Yselle stopped scrubbing her arms and tossed the brush into a wooden bucket with a wet clatter. "Ah," she grunted. "That explains it. You look like someone kicked your dog and told you the gods aren't real."
"She told me I was playing dress-up," Callis said, the shame of it burning in his throat. "She told me I was pretending. Her husband died doing what I'm doing, and she looked at me like I was a fool who just hasn't realized he's a corpse yet."
Mara pressed a firm kiss against his temple.
"Elowen carries a different kind of weight, sweetling," Mara murmured, her voice a comforting hum against his ear. "She is out of hope. She looks at the March and only sees the thing that ate her life."
"She's right, though," Callis said miserably. "I don't know what I'm doing. I'm just a boy with an expensive sword."
"You're a boy who survived a brush-stalker drop," Yselle corrected sharply.
She stood up, dripping wet, and walked over to grab Callis by the back of the neck. Her grip was rough and dominant, refusing to let him hide in Mara's shoulder. She squeezed the muscles at the base of his neck, her thumb digging in with grounding pressure.
"Look at me," Yselle commanded.
Callis lifted his head as Yselle glared down at him, her pale eyes flashing.
"Elowen is grief," Yselle said, her voice a low growl. "Grief makes you cold. It makes you still. You are alive. Your blood is hot, and you are sitting here whining about feeling like a fraud." She shook his neck slightly, delivering a rough physical correction. "I didn't waste my time, my wax, my oil, and my bench on a boy who is going to wilt because a widow told him the truth. Did the armor hold?"
"Yes," Callis breathed, his voice barely carrying over the water.
"Did the blade cut?"
"Yes," he replied, meeting her fierce gaze.
"Did you come back on your own two feet?"
"Yes," he said, feeling the truth of the word settle into his bones.
"Then the dress-up is working," Yselle said flatly, releasing his neck. Her thumb roughly stroked the line of his jaw for a second before she pulled away. "You want to be a man out here? Stop waiting to feel like one. Just do the work. The feeling catches up eventually."
Callis stared up at her. He sat caught between them, and some battered part of him finally understood.
Mara was hearth heat: bread in his hand and wool against his cheek, offering a place to shiver until the worst of it passed. She reached into her basket, pulled out a thick heel of soft bread and a piece of sharp cheese, and pressed it directly into his good hand.
"Eat," Mara said softly, her thumb brushing a smear of dirt from his cheek. "You've been burning energy all day. Let me take care of you."
Yselle was forge heat: pressure at the back of his neck and iron in her voice, issuing the demand that he stop confusing fear with failure.
"He needs to eat, and then he needs to sleep," Yselle agreed, sitting back down on the edge of the dock so her thigh pressed warmly against his right side while Mara anchored his left. "And tomorrow, he needs to take a smarter contract."
Callis took a bite of the bread, letting the rich taste ground him. He sat there in the fading light, with wet canvas and lye soap on one side, yeast and rosemary on the other. He felt handled and completely safe. He didn't have to be the heroic adventurer right now. He didn't have to carry the weight of Elowen's shrine-cold grief. He just had to sit quietly between two women who knew how to keep a man from coming apart. For their own very different reasons, neither of them intended to let him break.
"Thank you," Callis murmured around the bread.
Yselle leaned back on her hands and looked out over the dark water. "Don't thank us. Just don't die. You owe me coin."
Mara laughed softly, a rich, warm sound, and tucked him closer beneath her arm. "Finish your food, Callis. Then I'm taking you home."
Yselle’s mouth twisted. "Of course you are," she muttered.
Mara glanced over Callis’s bowed head and caught the shape of the words before Yselle could hide them. Not anger. Not quite. Something lonelier. Mara kept her arm around Callis, her dark eyes resting on Yselle’s profile as the silence stretched across the settling pond, recognizing a door she might eventually need to open.