Maybe Robin was being polite when he dismissed my worries of seeming distracted over the Felday in his store, but if I couldn’t believe him then what else could I believe in this world? Still, by the time it was just the two of us closing up again, I had my plan: pass or fail this forsaken exam, I’d still have eight weeks away from class until the greengrowth semester. One weekend to surreptitiously repatriate Omen in a daring midnight heist, bring him up to the Institute, and let him recover more thoroughly in the dorms safely away from the war front’s carriage, while I admit enough truth to him as I need to sate the questions. No one knew everyone in the Institute, new faces were always appearing and moving on, and in the spare room across from our dorm, Omen would have the company of the mechanical mystral’s clockwork calls. No substitute for Calico, sure. And would Grove and Holly agree to help me with it? I was pretty certain if I pointed out it was much better than the Kaspar situation, they’d lend a hand if I needed. They were good like that.

  I’d learned we had the eight weeks as a grace period to sort our affairs and move on, should anyone fail the exam. It put Omen in a far better place to walk and recover his strength now he was no longer reliant on medicine and treatment. And if by the end of the eight weeks, he still wanted to go and fight again, or I had to find a new place to be… We could sort that. I’d bought us some invaluable time. It was a foolproof plan and I felt proud of it, which in itself was a very strange sensation through my chest. My only worry was the war front carriage picking him out this week, before I got my chance.

  “The nurses tell me I’m doing good,” Omen said. His face was bright, and looked a little more healed than I remembered. Hopefully not too healed, not yet. He sat up strongly. “We have a new one who shows you exercises, and every afternoon she sees I’m doing them and says I’m doing well. Oh, and I walked every day this week, a couple of times with the group too. I told them about you, and how you kept coming back each Ressday.”

  A smile warmed my face. “Aw, glad to hear it. Keep up that walking and one day you’ll get all the way to the South Sea without stopping. They’ll write tavern songs about your story.”

  He turned a little, brushing it off. “For walking, huh. I was a champion fighter, once. Top in every tournament. The future captain of the town. I can do better than famous for walking…”

  “– But you couldn’t do that a month ago, could you? Every month, a bit more progress. Who knows what you’ll achieve in the future?”

  “Not what I was gonna,” he said tiredly. “Oldfield did tell me, by the way, half a year ago. The future captain bit. Wasn’t supposed to tell anyone, but I think I remember you’re good with secrets, Mori. You were always my one exception…” His eyes glazed and he refocused. “Wonder if the captain’s already picked out a replacement for his successor? My bet’s on Rebuke – she’s got presence.”

  I took a breath. Picked my battles. “What if we went out of here? Don’t you wanna see how pretty the city is? It’s beautiful out there in the snow. When you can’t see the shoddy Clearlander roads so much,” I said lightly, and it garnered half a wry smile from Omen. Felt good till I remembered the other half was still on some muddy field. “We could wander, just the two of us. Wanna go together?”

  “...Not really,” he said. “It’ll be busy out there in the daytime. Maybe later, I’ll wrap up and consider it.” I’d known him most of my life and he’d never wrapped up against the cold... “Hey, but if I could get myself to a tavern out there, that’ll be a pretty good motivator to keep myself walking and aiming higher, yeah? Get back to the noise with a few ales to ease the mind. Tell my tale of epic survival. Woo a few of the gals, maybe. I’ve missed that something mighty these past weeks.”

  “Right, yeah.” Well, if it got him moving… “There’s some on the street outside this town square. The ones to the left are probably five minutes away at a… usual speed.”

  “Then I’ll give myself a halfhundred,” he said with a sardonic grin. “I know you’re trying to help. I’m just not ready to be myself again, maybe. I’m working on it, up here,” he said, tapping his head with what remained of his hand, “and trying to listen to the nice things. If not the next captain then I don’t know what I’m gonna be, but I guess I’ll find out, right?” He reinforced the grin but he still didn’t look actually happy. “Wonder if he’s got any suggestions. With my health on the way up, I feel I’ll be seeing him again pretty soon.”

  Picking my battles was so damned hard. “Oldfield isn’t… good for you.”

  “Yeah, so you say, yet I was doing pretty damned well following him till an unforeseeable accident.” The stronger he got, the more unshakeable he seemed. I’d really hoped he’d learned something from being hurt, being here, but… “We’ve had the discussion and we disagree. You’ve got your way of doing things and that’s fine. I follow his, and it’s always been better for me. And for everyone else in our training groups.”

  “His got you blown up to fucking pieces, Omen –”

  “If anything it was my own actions that got me in an unfortunate location,” he insisted. “Oldfield wasn’t to know. He’s only ever looked out for us and the town, and even you can admit he’s got a pretty impressive track record on the battlefield when you look at it.”

  “Everywhere he appears, someone always gets hurt right after! You can’t call that some magnificent tactical genius,” I found myself saying, and once I started I couldn’t stop – “Not so much lateral thinking but plenty of collateral thinking –” I knew as soon as the words left me, they weren’t right for this here, this now, and Omen’s battered face confirmed it.

  “Mori,” he said like a pejorative, “have you ever counted how many weeks, months, years of his life he volunteered up to run those camps, helping us get strong and brave and independent? A couple hundred weeks, maybe? It’s always like you act like you’re better than him cos you think you see another way outside his proven methods or whatever. Whatever personal grievance you have with him or his successes isn’t my problem.”

  A really childish part of me wanted to hiss at him and storm out. But this was Omen – I couldn’t. “Okay. It’s not about that. I think you’re better than him, for whatever it’s worth to you. Or it’s not worth anything to you. I dunno.” I shrugged lamely.

  “Hey,” he said, his tone instantly softening, “of course it’s worth something. Anything you say is always worth a lot to me. You were right about, um…” Omen’s face scrunched up in a flash of genuine pain. “Well he hasn’t visited me, has he?” He gestured vaguely around the curtained cubicle. The captain was known to be exceptional at his camouflage disguises but if he was somehow in here with us too, perhaps I’d have to change my mind on him wholesale. “Your company is worth a lot. Your words are worth a lot. But Oldfield’s a lot older than us, with a lot more experience at basically everything. Hey, you’re, like, second in command, in terms of who I’d go to for advice and support. And everyone in town knows me, so that’s big, yeah?” I’d neared his bed, knelt down, elbows on the mattress edges and my chin on the sheets. Resisting the urge to pick at my jaw in Omen’s presence. “You’re my Mori and you always gave me so much.”

  “I’m just worried.”

  “About what?”

  “I can’t tell you right now,” I said. “But hang on till next time I see you. Things will be better. I'll make sure of it.”

  He shuffled, his body coming close to me. A hand scooped gently under my chin and the subtle shock of the soft lips on my forehead sparked heat down my whole body, a heat even stronger than the cold smothering the place. I looked up at him, wide-eyed. “You keep giving so much. Trying to sort out other people’s business. How about you take some time off from busying over everyone else’s lives and give something back to yourself for once, yeah?”

  “Yeah…” I mumbled. I wanted to touch the spot he’d kissed me and I wanted nothing to ever disturb that place as long as I lived.

  I kept looking. In him, I saw a lifetime between us. Two lifetimes. One we’d already had and the one we were yet to have. We could make things better. He’d always shown me things could be made better. I wanted to tell him that, tell him all of it, tell him the love I had for him in whatever endless words it came, but his eyes went from me to the space behind me. “Hey, nurse,” he said like he'd been brought a free refill after finishing the first ale.

  “Exercises time again. Oh, you’ve a guest,” a voice replied as I picked myself up to my boots.

  “A friend,” Omen said. “A good friend.”

  I looked back at him and wanted to tell him all the things in my heart. When it was just us, when I could show him all the feelings I’d carried for him for so long. Ask him everything I needed and be really brave about the answers I didn’t know if I’d want to hear. This weekend. This weekend I’d do it. Provided the carriage didn’t come for him first. “I’ll… let you get on with what you need to do,” I said. “I should have really been studying anyway but I felt I needed to see you. To be around you awhile.” I shuffled past the nurse. “See you later,” I said.

  “Take care of yourself, Mori,” was the last thing I heard from him.

  *

  One more week.

  That’s all the pages said. All of them, every sentence, all the way through my transmutation theory notebook. One more week. One more week. One more week. One more week. One more blasted week –

  I slapped the book shut on my bed. Didn’t know why I suspected the exam would be on transmutation but given my damned luck these past few months, wouldn’t that just be so fitting? An exam I failed cos studying it bored the very soul clean out of me. Wasn’t the arcane supposed to be exhilarating? Powerful people doing magnificent things like the wizards and sorcerers in the storybooks? I’d found zero sign of that in this first semester and if I wanted any more of them, I’d have to get the boring stuff right, I guess. No studying! no passing. And unless you found the small stuff generally enthralling, like a certain Grove tinkering with the exact hues of a little slab of slate over there, excitement was in short supply. Maybe that’s why Field gave her all trying to invest us all into every smallest part.

  I didn’t have Grove’s meticulous eye and I didn’t have Holly’s endless joy. They were here to make big things of themselves and they were sure doing it. Why was I here?

  Maybe it was time I admitted it was true: this life here wasn’t what I wanted, and it really was just an escape from what I feared. Robin’s insights had shown me that. Omen’s concerns had shown me that. Probably Kaspar too if I’d paid enough attention lately to remember anything he’d said to me. Blood broke from the inside of my cheek and it stung my tongue. I didn’t belong here and everyone knew it. Whatever. I was here now, and the Forester in me wasn’t gonna leave without giving it one hell of a fight. My fingers found the cover of my evocation notebook. I just needed to study a little more…

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  One more week.

  One more week.

  One more week.

  One more week.

  One –

  I snapped it closed and tossed it down my sheets and laid my head back and tried to get some rest.

  *

  And in the dream there was Omen, and he was tipping back the bottle. Meditatively swilling the contents like always before gulping half straight down. I’d known him to pause after that, usually, but here in his eyes was a determination. A sense of duty, the kind that shone out when he followed Oldfield’s orders. He finished a bottle, finished another. Found a third, drank that down. He was slowing, his hands unsteady, but he wasn’t stopping. Why wasn’t he stopping? His hand reached for another bottle and he fumbled with the cork, his claws aiming for the soft material but missing once, twice. Finally prising it open. Draining it, slipping from his grip, clattering onto the floor as he grasped numbly for another on fingertips that glanced without purchase yet still he forced himself on. Why wasn’t he stopping…?

  I woke in a dark room. Holly and Grove had their bedcurtains shut, and the dream felt so real I’d instinctively checked for Omen in the shadows too. By the clock, almost a hundred till midnight. Yet I couldn’t shake the feeling…

  I’d dreamed about him in a hospital bed, and later found him in one. I’d dreamed about a carriage with its impossibly tall driver, and later found those both. I didn’t know what was happening but I knew in equal parts I didn’t like it and still I couldn’t ignore it. I grumbled, rubbed my eyes till the room came into focus, tried to find my boots by the side of the bed and instead found I’d fallen asleep with them still on. Grumbled again. Hey, it wouldn’t be the first time I’d fished Omen out of a tavern late at night after a few too many drinks. And if my mind was making it all up, I’d look like a fool in front of the room, but that was nothing new.

  *

  The chill bit at my arms like a bear and I wished I’d been wearing Kaspar’s robe or the gloves he bought me. Rubbed my hands hard into each other and slid onto the hill road. My breath puffed thick before my face but thankfully that went away quickly: the streetlamps petered out after the castle gatehouse, the road down ensnared in near-complete dark. I think I interrupted a family of rats skittering across the icy cobbles but I couldn’t stop for them. Needed to keep moving. If the dream was right, I needed to save Omen from those endless tavern bottles.

  Into the city. Baronbridge buzzed late into the night, but so did a mosquito stuck in your room. Cowl over my head for once for the warmth rather than disguise, I searched through the streets, generally heading toward the tent hospital. If I didn’t find him, that was for the best, but if he was out here, I’d sure find him. He couldn’t have got far, for better or worse. Where would he be? Where any good Forester would be – where it was loud, light, and overflowing with cheer and merry. One place caught my eye, down by the corner, lit up like a bonfire. The repugnant stench of cheap booze oozed down the street.

  A sprawl of chairs and tables littered the cobbles outside and with chilly hands on the surrounding rail, I skirted around, scanning for his face. Froze for a moment, shook my head. Forced myself to picture his new face, and tried again. Where was he, where was he…

  A great bellowing erupted from the doors, flinging them wide through sheer force of sound alone. My heart and stomach flipped places. Built like a marble statue and twice as imposing, Captain Oldfield staggered forth, stein victoriously aloft, his other arm snaked around the shoulders of a slighter man. Disharmoniously howling the last lyrics to a song I really didn’t wanna remember. I doubted they could do all that to her in one night anyway. His eyes went as wide as I’d ever seen and I shrank back into my cloak. “Two of them in one evening!” he brayed. “Brooksy, wouldya believe that?” The man beside him wheezed and slipped out of the embrace to collapse into an empty chair, probably empty more through fortunate coincidence than design. “You go get ‘em, Brooksy…”

  “I know you’re seeing double but there’s only one of me,” I said flatly, “and I’m looking –”

  “Oakley!” he clamoured, a mighty finger wavering roughly in my direction. “No, wait, fuck me, wait a moment… That was your brother. Silent little oddball. Always stealing my coins. You were…” A spark lit his eyes. “Oakley also?”

  “Yes, that’s me. I really –”

  “Mad world,” he declared with mesmeric aplomb. “Who in all the hells would give two brothers the same name. Must’ve been confusing for you at home, no?” My claws dug deep in the palms of my hands. I hated him so much. I had to figure out how to get what I needed and disappear. “Wait, wait… How did you get here? War’s been on three months! Had a fierce bet with Hawthorn you would’ve croaked long ago. Ah, Croakley, we called ya, and how we laughed… And looking less beat up than Halestrom to boot! Who’da thought it!”

  “Listen to me!” I demanded, my teeth bared. “Where’s –”

  “Here, didn't that Halestrom look a pile o’ horseshit, eh, Brooksy?” The captain prodded at the slight man in the chair, who made no effort to reply or even pretend to be conscious. “Swore I heard the boy got blasted into mulch coupla’ months back and yet ‘ere he was, up an’ walking like the spirits themselves done a miracle on him. Maybe it’s somethin’ in these city streets. Built like a Marshman’s manor, aye they are, but they’re like honey for, uh…” His gaze fixed back on me. “What sorta things eat honey?”

  “Where did Halestrom go?” I snapped.

  His face coagulated like week-old soup. “Eh, lemme see…” He raised a firm hand to his marbled brow, strayed down to his thick moustache. Pincered a stray hair from it. “After getting blown to smither… smitherings? Carted out of there a bag o’ bones – or so I heard. No use to me no more so why’d I waste the time on him? Turns up here just earlier and gives me the shock of the week. Looked a fright – they should’ve left him in the dirt. No, he’ll never be a sliver of what he was…” He leaned heavily on the rail, the metal complaining indignantly. “The strong die on the field or the strong come home upright. He’s a good boy – he knows that. Said he’d set it right. Hurled a mighty string o’ curses at me, did he! Shoulda stopped in smitherings when he got blown to ‘em and he knows that. Aye, he’s a good lad...”

  I took a couple of careful steps back, eyes fixed on the hulking figure before me. Awful things cascaded in my mind and this man, this captain, this monster – he had no care in him whatsoever. Omen had been here. He’d been here… The bleakest part of me urged me where he’d gone after. I had to make myself go to him. Somehow. As Oldfield slunk back onto the shoulder of the other slumped in the chair, he set the other man’s hat square on his head, a pair of barmaids emerging to collect the steins. “Blown to smitherings!” he rumbled. ”And it isn’t even the best way to get blown! Right, ladies?” And laughed mightily at his own sour joke.

  *

  I called his name as soon as I ducked into the hospital, the tent flaps down for the night, and if they were meant to keep out the cold, they were doing nothing of the sort. Called it again. Louder, louder! It felt so wrong in the aching, creaking, wheezing silence of the hospital but I didn’t care. I really didn’t fucking care.

  “Omen?”

  “Omen?”

  “Omen?”

  He wasn’t in his bed. A nurse hadn’t seen him all night. “Omen? Omen?”

  The hospital had grown so large since I’d last looked around its entirety. How many hundreds had been through its beds? Had they reached a thousand yet? Scores of beds blurred by. Countless bodies in limbo. The only other nurse in the halls caught my face and returned a puzzled frown: she recognised me but not remotely at this hour. She didn’t need to know why I was here. I knew, and I couldn’t stop for her.

  “Omen?”

  “Omen?”

  “Omen?”

  The dream drifted back to me like an illness you hoped you’d recovered from. What the hell was he drinking if he hadn’t been in the tavern?!

  All at once, I knew.

  I’d only ever ran this fast in the training camps entirely against my volition and every single time, it was to try to catch up to him, to reach him at the finish line, and every single time I arrived keeled over and winded and panting and on my knees on the cold bare ground in front of him. And here he was, as he always was, now with the bottles strewn around him, at least six or seven but I couldn’t look at them because in this dark hospital store room, he glowed. Omen glowed again. And his glow was dimming.

  “Omen?” I gasped. I’d got the wrong bottles. I’d failed him. If only I’d known – if only I’d known – I called loudly for a nurse again and again the best I could on breathless lungs – but at least I was breathing. I rolled Omen from his side to his back and I couldn’t feel his chest moving. “Omen?”

  His eyes rolled around the room, passed over me like I wasn’t even there. “Omen!” No use.

  I snatched one of the bottles. The boswellia anodyne medicine. The strong stuff Robin had ordered in bulk with the apothecary profits out of his gold-hearted care to keep the patients here as comfortable as could be managed. The stuff from which you only needed a few drops before the effects deepened beyond reliable safety. Oh, Omen… I didn’t know how to fix this – I realised with a choking panic. I didn’t have the first idea how to fix this and the tears sprung to my eyes as I knew I didn’t know how I could save him. His form undulated and he heaved onto his side and retched weakly, like his body was too numb to clear itself of what he’d done. Of what Oldfield’s words had done.

  “Omen…” My fists were tight and I hadn’t felt like I was angry at him but the words spilling out were, “You were doing so good. Why’ve you done this? Omen… You were making things of yourself. Gonna be so good. Not perfect, but still good, Omen – we’re gonna make such good things.”

  He grumbled lethargically, a convulsion shuddering through him, and I grabbed at his hand and squeezed it tight for all the blasted good it would do. Yelled again for a nurse but my hoarse throat choked it out till I could barely breathe either. I gasped in air and looked down at his chest, sweating through his shirt and almost frozen motionless, and felt wretched about myself. “He doesn’t care for you! He doesn’t care for anyone who can’t help him right here, right now!” Omen gurgled a reply and shuddered again, and I couldn’t make it out but gave it my best stab: “Don’t you dare say that! If it’s even true you’ll never be as good as him then it’s only cos you’re better than him and always have been!”

  The shakes in his body were getting weaker and a horrific sting in my gut told me that wasn’t for good reasons. He mumbled something else and I couldn’t even guess by now and I could barely see him through the tears but I wasn’t letting go of his hand for the world, cold and clammy as it was. Yelled for a nurse till my ribs stabbed at my lungs. “You listened to him and you did it again. You gave your soul to him, Omen, and he used it like a fucking doormat. Threw it away when it got a little damaged. To anyone else, you’re a tapestry – magnificent, beautiful, a work of art. Even a little damaged you’re still so good. Stuff can still be good, Omen…” I gripped his cold hand tight and this time it was me shaking. “Please. It can still be good. Please”

  His fingers twitched. I laced mine between his, gripping with strength he wouldn’t return. “You were always my hope, Omen, and a lot of other people’s too. You gave me so much hope through the years that things could be better and I loved you for it. Every year I’ve known you. Every damned day. I should have told you. I’m sorry I was never brave enough. If I’d been more like you…” I gulped deep. I couldn’t save him. He was falling weaker, falling forever now, and I couldn’t save him. I couldn’t fix this. “You mean more than you know to so many people, and none of us say all the nice things we should. Maybe that’s why the awful little things hit so hard. There’s a future for you, Omen, and I know it’s not what you wanted – I know, I know – but there are always good things if you can find them. If you can make them. The good life we could make together. No, wait, no…” I had to cup his cheek as his head drifted to the side, keeping his face out of the frozen cobbles. “Please don’t leave me, Omen. It’d be such a good life.” His hand went limp in mine. “I don’t know if I can do it on my own, this life thing. Please don’t leave… Omen…”

  His shakes were gone now. Breath too. Gazing softly up, so gentle he could be in a dream, or maybe a memory. One where we were six years old again and I’m over his body again, cradling him, willing him awake again, wracked with the all-consuming dread that Oldfield killed him.

  Only this time, he actually did.

  This time, he’s not waking up.

  You’re a monster, Oldfield. Not for what you are, but because of who you choose to be.

  The light in Omen faded away, his glow dwindling out. I wanted to scream. I wanted to cry more. None of it came. Instead I cradled him on the floor, hunched as pathetically as it was protectively, holding him tighter than I’d ever done before until I finally heard footsteps behind me.