Forged for Destiny

Book 1: Forged For Destiny

by Andrew Knighton

Genres: Fantasy; Fantasy action & adventure; Epic Fantasy

Synopsis

Raul has a destiny: claim his birthright as the last surviving heir of King Balbainus and lead his conquered people to freedom. 

The signs are all there—his birthmark, in the shape of Balbainus’ halfmoon and dagger sigil, the gemstone-hilted sword he found in his parents’ inn, and the sudden influx of illegal books featuring the late king’s lineage. Nevermind that his ma is a hidden scribe writing a play about Balbainus’ return, or that his da, a hardened warrior, has been training him to fight since he could stand. Or the fact that his sword doesn’t seem very old at all, he feels much more comfortable reading than fighting, and his birthmark is looking more and more like a burn scar…

As Raul leaves his simple village life to start a rebellion against the tyrannical Dunholmi government, he begins to wonder if his destiny is more someone else’s plan for a future he doesn’t want to be a part of. He’ll go along with things, for now, if only to prove that change can come from kindness instead of outright destruction. 

After all, destiny is what you make of it. 

Release date: April 15, 2025

Publisher: Orbit

Print pages: 432

Sample

Valens and Fabia ran down Broadgate, chainmail jangling and swords swinging, racing the flames toward the heart of Pavuno. Ashes swirled through the air, routed by the wind. The smell of smoke was everywhere, and when Valens opened his mouth to speak, he tasted burning buildings.

“Which way?” he asked as they passed a cracked statue of the goddess Avgar, each of her four arms pointing down a different road.

“Right.”

Behind them, there was an almighty crash, the third of the night, as the city walls gave way to the pressure of artillery stones.

When there had been one breach, they stood a chance of holding off the invaders from Dunholm. With enough good soldiers, enough shields and spears, enough of the dogged determination on which the Empire of Estis had been built, then maybe they could have held the line. It would have been a moment in which legends were forged, tales of heroism and sacrifice, great roaring verses full of inspiring bullshit. It would have been a night that lived in eternity.

Two breaches, though. Two breaches meant that the war was about to be lost and it was time for Prisca’s plan, however bitter that thought was.

Three breaches was probably too late, but what else was Valens meant to do, go back to the wall and die for a lost cause? He believed in courage. He believed in strength. He believed in standing by his comrades in their hour of need. He even believed in heroism. There was a time and a place to put your life on the line, to make the noble sacrifice for all that you held dear.

And then there was a time to run like wolves were on your tail.

People streamed through the streets. Some carried their children. Some carried sacks filled with their worldly goods. Some only had the clothes they stood in. One of them grabbed Valens by the arm. He could have wrenched free of those twig fingers, but her desperation brought him up short. Her eyes were red-rimmed, spittle flying from cracked lips.

“Please, protect us,” she screeched.

Valens stared. Didn’t she understand? They were past protecting anyone. Today was lost. Only Prisca’s plan gave him hope for tomorrow.

Fabia slapped the woman, the plates of her gauntlet leaving red ruts down a pale cheek.

“Stop fucking around.” Fabia grabbed Valens’s arm and dragged him after her.

Ahead, the stampeding crowd had stopped, panicked people clogging the street. Fabia thrust her way through. The smart ones got out of her way. The stupid ones got slammed aside by that gauntleted hand. Valens followed, and nobody was stupid enough to stand in his way.

They burst like a blade’s tip from the crowd to face a thin line of Dunholmi warriors, the points of their spears glinting. Calling their tabards royal blue seemed a lie when the dye had faded from years in the saddle, and the spears were cheap work from a mass armoury. But a cheap spear would skewer flesh as well as a fancy one, and those spears pointed at the crowd, which meant they pointed at Valens and Fabia.

Valens didn’t need Fabia’s shout to tell him to keep running toward the enemy. It wasn’t a matter of courage or recklessness; it was simply their best chance. Use surprise while they had it. Take on these six men and women instead of the thousands coming behind. Fight the foot levies instead of cavalry raised for the hunt.

The spear facing Valens rose. That was a mistake. He lowered his shoulders and swept his sword up, battering the spearpoint past his head. Another one hit his side, a bruising punch of an impact but not the searing pain that came with punctured armour. A swing of his blade knocked that strike away, then he was up close, putting his weight into a blow that split a Dunholmi’s chest with a crunch of bones and a spray of blood. He punched a warrior in the face and kept running, leaving the survivors. He wasn’t here to kill. He was here to live.

Fabia ran beside him. Blood trickled from a gash in her cheek. More dripped from her blade.

“Just like Tulabeck,” she said with a grin.

“We won at Tulabeck.”

“Apart from that.”

There was no movement in the Square of Artificers, just abandoned belongings and scattered bodies. On the far side, the Clockmakers’ Tower lay in ruins, its clockwork guts unwinding across cobbles, smashed open by an artillery stone. It broke Valens’s heart to see the tower like that. People died all the time, as expected, but a place like the tower, it was special. That sort of place made their brief lives brighter. Now it would never bring anyone joy with its blaring mechanical chime ever again.

Valens pointed down a side street. Through the screams and crashes, his ears had picked out hoofbeats, a sound that haunted infantry. Blue-clad cavalry dashed back and forth, looking for something to kill.

One of them pointed at him.

“Faster.” Valens sprinted across the square, heading for the long, narrow road that led out of the square to the Hill of Lost Names. Fabia could have outpaced him, but she didn’t, and stupid as it was, he was grateful.

But as they reached the entrance to the street, hoofbeats echoed around them, the first eager cavalryman racing into the square from behind. There were dozens of Dunholmi soldiers now, each on horseback, each carrying their own gleaming blade.

Valens stopped in the narrow way.

“One of us has to hold them.” He turned to face the oncoming rider. “You’re faster.”

“You’re stronger.” Fabia stood beside him, feet planted, blade raised.

“Fine, we’ll do this the hard way. Left or right?”

The cavalryman was almost on them, his sabre the icy pale curve of a midwinter moon.

“Left.”

The horse swerved. The cavalryman swung. Fabia’s sword was faster than Valens’s. She smashed the sabre aside, sliced through the man’s arm and into the neck of the horse. The poor beast gave a pained huff and stumbled three strides before it collapsed, slamming its rider into a wall.

“I won.” Fabia raised her sword as more cavalry trotted into view.

“You pushed him left. That’s cheating.”

“We don’t have time to argue about rules.”

They looked at each other, and a whole history passed between them. Days on the march and nights around the campfire; hangovers, blisters, and knife wounds; stories told, advice shared, promises kept and broken.

“I’m not leaving you to die,” he snarled.

“But you thought I’d leave you?”

Hooves clopped across the square, slowly at first but building to charge.

“One of us has to go.”

“And you lost the swing.” Fabia jerked her head. “So go.”

A weight like the fallen walls pressed down on Valens. If he left Fabia, he betrayed himself. If he didn’t, he betrayed her. It was no way to end a friendship.

Hoofbeats sounded louder and faster. No time to argue.

Valens placed a hand on his friend’s shoulder.

“Die well,” he murmured.

“Fuck off and save the day.”

Valens didn’t look back as he sprinted toward the Hill of Lost Names. Not for the crash of blades. Not for the first screaming horse or its rider bellowing in pain. Not for the order to fight harder, you bastards, there’s just one of her. Not as he turned the corner and lost his last chance to ever see Fabia again. Because if he looked back, then he would stop running, and both their deaths would be in vain.

Valens’s chest tightened as he ran up the steep street. The destruction hadn’t got this far yet. He was grateful for that. The shops on the Hill of Lost Names sold simple goods for simple people, plain things made to endure. He’d got his best bowl here, and the tankard he’d lost in a swamp the first bitter winter of the war. The brightly painted storefronts served people like him, not like the artisans on Sunrise Ridge, all working for people in the palace. These streets deserved to stand as long as possible.

He stopped for just a brief moment to catch his breath and turned to look behind him. From the top of the hill, he could see all the way across Pavuno, back to the fighting beneath the city walls, edges of steel glinting in the light of the attackers’ torches. There was fire as well, war’s constant companion. Flames rampaged through Shemside and Water Reach, the crowded timber houses of the poor flaring like tarred kindling. They marched up Emerald Hill, taking the mansions as slowly and steadily as an earl striding across the marshalling ground. They crept toward the Scholars’ Spire, sending its inhabitants into a chaotic flurry; essence might keep a quill sharp for years, and the signs might spell out a man’s fate, but armies carved a destiny of their own.

Valens rubbed his chest, armoured links clinking beneath his tabard. The temple of Laughing Loftus was gone, taking the bright panels that told Loftus’s story. The Darting Drake Pub as well, with Valens’s favourite table in the corner, and the notches in the wall from when Fabia learned knife throwing. Tellia’s bakery with all its sweet treats. The wooden cat statue at the junction of Soft Street. Maybe even Fender’s smithy. All gone to ash.

Valens turned back, the destruction hastening his need to see the plan through. He followed the last of the road onto a cobbled square in front of the foundlings’ home. No one else was up here, in a dead end above dying streets. The dry ache of smoke made Valens’s eyes run. Angry at his own weakness, he swept the tears away and strode to the door.

It had been a temple once, its carved stones honouring a god whose age had passed. A feathered head leered down from above a heavy oak door, which Valens hammered on with the pommel of his sword, the banging resounding across the hillside. A string of snail shells rattled against the wood.

Candlelight flickered in a window above the door.

“Open up, in the name of King Cataldo and Queen Junia!” Valens bellowed, hammering once more. “Open up or I’ll break it down.”

The door opened and a woman looked out. She was dressed in simple, patched clothes, her head wrapped in a fraying woollen scarf. She stared up at Valens, as most people did when they first met him.

“Are you here to kill us?” she asked in a hoarse croak.

“Of course not.” He ran a hand across the stubble of his head, embarrassed at having scared this innocent woman. He tugged at his tabard. “Imperial legions, see? I’m here for a baby.”

“Which one?”

“A healthy one.”

She frowned. “I don’t understand.”

“And I don’t have time.”

Valens pushed her aside as gently as he could. She stumbled, then hurried after him as he strode down the stone hall that had once been a nave. His footsteps and her fearful panting echoed from the vaulted ceiling.

Valens had never seen so many silent children. They watched him wide-eyed from bunks stacked three high, ragged blankets pulled up to their necks. The oldest were near the entrance, the young and the sickly further back, like Prisca had told him. He needed someone healthy, but he also needed them to be young, so he kept walking.

The eyes of the children followed him. Those of their guardians too, this trembling pseudo-priesthood, men and women with poor prospects or good intentions who had committed their lives to looking after the lost. Right now, they seemed lost themselves, but Valens wasn’t here to show them the way. Fabia’s final words rang in his ears. She’d told him to save the day. He wasn’t going to be held back by dead weight.

The babies were in rocking cots at the end of the hall. Every one of them had a snail shell on a string around their neck, a desperate charm of protection, weak magic for the poor. A man stood in front of them, clutching a broom handle. His shoulders were shaking, skin ashen, but he stood his ground, the sort of humble hero who dies to save the infant saviour.

“I won’t let you sell them into slavery,” the man said, the broom handle wobbling as he raised it like a sword.

“Me, a slaver?” Valens snorted. “Slavers won’t be here for three days, maybe four. They don’t come until it’s safe.” He nodded to the cots. “I’m here to save one of these kids.”

“Really?” The man laughed. “Oh, thank you. Who are you here for?”

Valens stepped past him and looked into the cots. There hadn’t been many children in his life. He’d never known his family, and his taste in bed partners meant that he wasn’t going to make one by accident. Raising a family wasn’t something you did while you were still fighting, not if you had any compassion for those you might leave behind, and these days, the people whose towns they passed through hid kids away rather than bring them to see the soldiers. He knew which end of a baby was which, but he hadn’t a clue how to pick between them.

“This one.” He pointed at one of the quieter bundles of wrinkled flesh and crumpled blankets. “Is she healthy?”

“Aquina?” The man smiled indulgently. “She suffers from some colic, poor thing, but—”

“What about this one?” Valens bent over the next crib and the kid inside started crying. “No, not them. Who’s next?”

He needed to pick fast. Smart invaders would secure the lower streets first, but there were always some who got carried away with looting. It might be an hour before they arrived, it might be only minutes, and either way he needed to be gone.

“What is this?” The woman from the door stared at Valens, creases carved as deeply into her face as into the gargoyles looking down from the pillars.

“He’s looking for someone,” the man explained. “Is it your son, sir? Your daughter perhaps?”

“If we know the sex, we can help,” the woman said.

“A girl would be better.” Valens walked down the line. “But they need to be healthy and strong.”

He peered at the children. Perhaps one was a soldier’s kid, left behind by people he knew. Enough warriors had died this past year to fill a dozen foundlings’ homes, and finding a warrior’s child would honour the people he’d lost. More likely they’d grow up strong and brave too, taking after their parents. That would help with the plan.

“I still don’t understand,” the man said.

“You don’t need to.” Valens’s voice rose. He didn’t have time to waste, but he didn’t know how to choose. “Just find me a healthy one.”

Two babies started crying, which set more of them off. Soon, it seemed the whole world was wailing. Fitting for the night’s business, but no help.

A door rattled. Valens spun around, sword raised, ready to fight his way out. Shutters rattled too, then subsided. It was the wind.

That was when he spotted a child wrapped in a yellow blanket, mouth open to laugh instead of to cry, one hand gripping tight on the edge of the cot.

“This one.” Valens scooped the kid up. He half expected them to burst into tears, but instead they giggled and pressed one soft hand against his wrist, while the other clutched the string that held their snail shell. “What’s their name?”

“That’s Raul.”

“I’m taking Raul.” He should have just walked away then, but the fear and confusion in the guardians’ eyes caught a weakness in him, the sort of stupid, soft sensation that could get a person killed, or that could get them to show kindness. “He’ll be safe. He’ll have a good life. I promise.”

“What about the others?” the woman said. “Can you take them?”

“Can you take us all?” The man’s trembling gave way to a bold burst of hope. “The older children can carry the younger ones, if you show us a safe way.”

“Only this one.” Valens settled the kid against his chest, holding it close with one arm. With the other, he pointed his sword at the adults. “Any of you follow me, you’ll regret it.”

He felt like a shit. He was a shit. But sometimes it took a shit to save the day. He’d have known that even if Prisca hadn’t told him.

He strode back down the echoing chamber. They called after him, children and adults alike, high voices lost in the hollow vastness left by a lost god. He didn’t listen, just strode out the door and away.

It was easier leaving the hill than approaching it, heading into the side of town away from the fighting. Smart people had left the city or were keeping their heads down, and the others hadn’t reached that breaking point of panic where they’d form a desperate, running mob of fear and selfishness. He jogged alone through the night-draped streets, sword in one hand and baby in the other, down the Hill of Lost Names and upslope again, toward the gaping gorge known as Rack’s Scar.

Valens stopped two streets before the Scar, sheltering behind a wagon. Warriors in blue lurked by the near end of the bridge. He noted without surprise the bodies of a few Estis men at their feet. A narrow bridge above a gorge only needed a few defenders, but when news came that the walls were falling, half of them would have run to save the city or save their skins, leaving the rest disordered and distracted. It didn’t take a diviner to predict what would come next.

In his arms, the baby kicked and gurgled. It tried to take hold of his finger, but he shook it off.

“You’d better be bloody worth it,” he said. “Though I don’t see how you could.”

The warriors roamed around the few bodies along the route to the bridge. Some of them were looting. Others stabbed the corpses with their spears, just in case. There wasn’t much nobility in battle, even less in cleaning up after. Valens didn’t eye those bodies in outrage, or to memorise their faces so he could avenge them. He looked in case he saw one in particular. If he did, then all was truly lost.

“It’s all right, I’m here.”

Valens whirled around, sword pointing at the source of the voice. Fortunately for both of them, Prisca had stayed a few steps back, a slender, unarmed figure in a city full of war.

“I saw that one coming,” she said, head tilting to one side. “Where’s Fabia?”

“It’s just me.”

“Oh. My condolences.”

It was an inadequate word, spoken with inadequate feeling, but it threatened to unleash a tide within Valens. He’d known Fabia since they were naive teenagers, standing in line with battered shields and their first blunt infantry axes. They’d trained together, marched together, bled and killed together, held each other up as their homeland collapsed. Losing her was like losing a limb. But grief wasn’t something a warrior showed in public; certainly not in front of a royal minister. Valens had a job to do and he wouldn’t shame Fabia’s memory by letting feelings get in the way of that.

“You’re late,” he said, his voice flat as lead off a temple roof. He looked Prisca right in the eye. He expected her to put him in his place, to remind him that she was a minister and he a lowly warrior, to show him that some part of the empire remained.

“It’s hard to find a precision blacksmith at the best of times,” she said. “You try getting work done while the city’s an inferno.”

Valens frowned and shifted his weight. The baby squirmed. “It’s your plan. Maybe you should have prepared.”

“I needed more information. I still do, but I’ve worked with what I know.”

Prisca jerked her head, sharp features reminding Valens of a hawk. He followed her along the street toward a burning building, probably set alight by the infantrymen on the bridge. Her ministerial robes were gone, replaced with hard-wearing trousers and tunic, a tinker’s pack strapped across her shoulders. Out of sight of the bridge, she set the pack down and drew a slender iron rod. On its end was a flattened piece the size of a small coin, shaped like a half moon with a dagger through it. Holding the other end wrapped in cloth, Prisca thrust the branding iron into the building’s flames.

“Bare her arm,” she said. “The shoulder would be best.”

“It’s a boy, not a girl.”

“Not ideal, but it’ll do.”

“You just said healthy, you didn’t say—”

“I know what I said, but the words that free us at dawn can chain us at dusk. Not that I’d expect you to know your classics.”

“I know chains.” Having unwrapped the kid, Valens held it out, clutching the tiny pink body between his calloused hands. “There.”

Prisca took the snail shell from around the baby’s neck, drew the brand from the fire, and pressed its glowing end against bare flesh. There was a hiss, a stink of burning meat, and the kid started thrashing about, screaming at the top of its lungs.

“He even sounds like King Cataldo,” Prisca said. “Wrap him up. I’ll tend the wound later.”

Valens flung the blanket around the wailing child and picked up his sword. “The soldiers at the bridge will have heard that.”

He strode around the building, while Prisca wormed her way into the straps of her pack. Sure enough, warriors were heading their way, spears in hand and curious looks on their faces. In the flickering red light from the fire, it was hard to make out the colour of their tabards, and they squinted at Valens, trying to judge the same thing on him.

Now was a time for confidence, not cunning. Valens strode straight toward the warriors.

“Look what I found!” He grinned and held up the kid with one hand. “Looks like someone’s growing up Dunholmi!”

The soldiers cheered. The closest one lowered her spear. Valens took the opportunity to charge, carving her open with a swing of his blade.

Spears were a great weapon in a battle, with a bit of distance and your mates around you, a wall of points to skewer anyone who approached. But this wasn’t a battle, and Valens was already close.

He lopped off another warrior’s arm at the wrist, left a third with blood spraying from the ruined side of his neck. The others backed off, shouting at him, shouting at each other, shouting for help from an army half a city away.

Valens ran through the gap where they had been. Prisca followed, her pack thudding and clanking. One more guard lowered his spear at the end of the bridge, then saw the size of Valens and thought better of it. He jumped clear, and the fugitives ran onto the bridge.

Rack’s Scar was a void in the earth, a gaping chasm darker than night. There was no echo from the two sets of footsteps, just the roar of the river far below. Even the baby’s cries became tiny as they were swallowed by emptiness.

Valens slowed to let Prisca overtake him, just in case. There was no sound of pursuit, but cavalry could come fast. The baby he held was important, but they could find another if they had to. Valens himself was just the muscle: silent, steadfast, solid but replaceable. Prisca, though, she was special. Only she could hold the plan together in her head.

That was why he had said yes, when she came to him and Fabia with whispers of one last hope; why he gave up his duty to die on the walls; why he forced himself to flee as the kingdom fell.

Prisca drew her arm back and flung the branding iron. It spun through the night, catching the edge of the firelight, before disappearing into the bottomless shadow of the Scar.

They stopped at the far side of the bridge. There was no one around, just an abandoned tent and the blackened circle of a firepit. No one stood in their way, and no one was following them.

Valens looked back across Rack’s Scar at the ruin of Pavuno, his heart heavy, his muscles aching from a long day of fighting and a long night of fleeing. Trees flanked this side of the gorge, and he leaned against one for support. The sky above the city was yellow and grey, fading out of the darkness of night. The trees stood as black silhouettes against its light, each one a stark sentinel.

“We’ll die like heroes, or we’ll triumph like them,” Fabia had said, but Valens knew better: heroes lived forever in saga and song; the likes of Valens and Fabia were forgotten the day their bodies went cold.

Prisca wriggled her shoulders, settling the pack into place.

“Come,” she said. “We need to be halfway to the hills by nightfall.”

“It’s barely sunrise.”

“Then it’s going to be a long day.”

Valens wiped his sword on a clump of grass, sheathed it, then shifted the baby to that arm. It had stopped crying, and instead gurgled as it pounded him with tiny fists and feet. Looked like it was a fighter.

“Do you want me to take that?” Prisca asked.

Valens brought his hand around, ready to pass the warm bundle to her. A smaller hand wrapped around one of his fingers, like it was clinging to life itself. The baby looked up with vacant eyes and made a noise he didn’t understand. It was so weak and useless, a stupid thing to rest the fate of a kingdom on. So pathetic.

“It’s all right,” Valens mumbled, pulling the yellow blanket tighter around the baby. “I’ll look after him.”

“You’ll never beat me, old man!” Raul swung his sword in a short, direct arc. There was a crack as Valens’s sword came up, wooden blade colliding with wooden blade.

“Harder,” Valens said. “Strike like you mean it.”

Raul went in again, high then low, trying to use Valens’s own tricks against him. The sound of the blow reverberated from the steep hills.

“I said harder, not smarter. You’re eighteen years old, a man in his prime. I should feel it when you hit.”

Raul took a deep breath, blew blond hair out of his eyes, and took another swing. Again, there was a thwack of wood on wood.

“Gods’ piss, lad, would you hold back like this against bandits?”

“They’re not my da.” Raul lowered his sword and looked sheepishly at Valens. “I’d feel terrible if I knocked your teeth out.”

Valens laughed, briefly. It was a rumbling sound, to match a body that could have been made of boulders, as vast and weather-worn as any crag.

“Like you could hurt me.” He turned away and his bare shoulders rose as he took a deep breath.

Raul knew that move as well as any in the fight. He’d first seen it when he was eight years old and lambing season forced Valens to tell him where babies came from. It wasn’t explaining sex that made his da so uncomfortable. It was the bit after, about how he hadn’t made Raul that way, how sometimes families came together differently.

He was sad, though Raul didn’t know why.

Raul wanted to wrap an arm around his da’s shoulders, but Valens was taller even than Raul and much wider—those shoulders took a lot of wrapping. Instead, he placed a hand against the side of his da’s shaved head, felt the stubble and the scars as he drew that head down to touch his own. After a few heartbeats, just like always, Valens’s expression softened into a smile.

“I’m proud of you, lad.” Valens ruffled Raul’s hair, almost knocking him over. “Prouder of you than of anything else I’ve done.” He raised his sword. “Another round?”

Raul brushed his fringe out of his eyes and weighed the sword in his hand. He was lucky to have Valens, a proper hero who could teach him how to fight. Tallo’s ma had died fighting in Earl Buscenti’s company, and Ernestine’s da liked to pretend, but no one had scars like Valens, or that way of talking about war where the whole bar fell silent, hooked on his words. No one else was learning to fight like Raul was, and he could happily have spent the whole day like this.

But Prisca counted on him to be responsible when Valens got distracted.

“We should open the inn,” Raul said. “The morning’s half gone.”

Valens glanced up at the sky, then nodded.

“You’re right, lad.” He took the wooden swords and wrapped them carefully in an old yellow blanket. “Come on.”

Now that they’d stopped fighting, Raul felt the spring morning’s chill. He pulled on his shirt, covering his wiry body and the half-moon birthmark on his upper arm, then pulled his woollen tunic over that. It wasn’t a long walk home, but Valens had taught him to take his comfort where he could.

As they approached the tavern, greasy black smoke was trickling from the brewhouse out back, a simple but sturdy wooden building with clay pipes protruding from the roof, like a hundred others in the Winding Vales.

“Look, Prisca’s home.” Raul smiled. “I thought she was down the valley.”

“She came in late last night.”

“You could have told me.”

Valens got that frown again, like the muscles in his forehead were trying to drag something from his brain.

“You know now.”

“Do you want me to open up while you say hello?”

Raul knew that his parents weren’t together in the way most couples were. It wasn’t like Tanna’s parents, who lived in different houses and had families of their own, or Jero’s parents, who screamed drunkenly at each other on festival nights. Valens and Prisca were friendly, they worked together well, and they shared a home. They just didn’t share a bed, or the sort of affection that went beyond friends. They were partners in the business of raising Raul, not two halves of a couple.

“You go see her,” Valens said. “I’ll open up.”

“Are you sure?”

“Lad, you’re as subtle as a rat with a mouth full of cheese. Go say hello to your ma, find out what she’s brought back this time.”

Raul ran to the brewhouse door and slid back the heavy bolt with a thunk. The charm above the door shook, needles tapping against a used horseshoe that kept roaming spirits from the vats.

“Is that you, Raul?” Prisca called out.

“It’s me!”

“Come on up, then.”

He scrambled up the ladder hidden behind the big barrels at the back, to the loft that was Prisca’s special space. Here, smaller vats brewed things beyond beer. Pristine sheets of newly made paper hung from lengths of twine along one wall, and