The late afternoon had turned. Not cold yet, but the heat had bled out of the day, leaving the clean edge of autumn in the air. It was sharp with split wood and sap, and every now and then a gust sent a few dry leaves down like coins that weren’t worth picking up.

  The woodpile sat behind the mill where the ground stayed packed hard from traffic. A stump served as a chopping block; some places were scarred with old cuts while others were smooth from years of use. Caleb stood over it with his sleeves rolled to the elbow, shoulders damp beneath his tunic, hair sticking to his forehead.

  Lift. Set. Swing. Split.

  The rhythm made its own kind of quiet.

  Tomas leaned against the stack with his arms folded, watching like a man at a tournament. Flour still clung to the creases of his clothes, pale as ash at his cuffs. He had a twig in his mouth, chewing it for the pleasure of having something to do.

  "You're doing it wrong," he announced.

  Caleb didn't look up. He set another log, turned it so the grain faced true, and gripped the axe.

  "I'm splitting it," he said. "That's the whole point."

  "That's not the whole point," Tomas replied. "The point is to look impressive while you do it."

  "Says the man who hasn’t lifted the axe once today."

  Tomas pushed off from the pile with exaggerated reluctance, sauntered over, and took the axe. He tested its weight, nodded in approval, and set his feet too wide and his elbows too stiff.

  Caleb watched him, eyebrow cocked in amusement.

  Tomas lifted the axe. Too far. His shoulders went back, his balance followed, and then he brought it down with all the enthusiasm of a boy trying to impress a girl at a festival.

  The blade hit at a slant. The log jumped sideways. Tomas cursed as the handle jarred his hands.

  "That was the wood's fault, it’s clearly a bad piece," he said.

  "The wood didn't swing," Caleb replied.

  He stepped forward, eased the axe out with a practiced twist, set the log again. He swung with less force than Tomas had used and split it clean.

  Tomas watched the halves tumble apart. “My swing must have caused a split for you."

  “Right.”

  “Oh I’m Caleb and I’m better at everything,” Tomas said mockingly.

  "Not everything," Caleb said. "You're better at talking."

  "Well one of us has to be, otherwise everyone would think we’re dull." Tomas took up another log and dropped it onto the stump. "If I left it to you we'd sit in silence all day and die of it."

  Caleb smiled, small and unwilling.

  They worked for a time without speaking. Caleb's breathing stayed even, the kind of even that came from years of work that never cared whether you were tired. Tomas handed up logs he could have split himself, and pretended that was the plan.

  "So," Tomas said at last, as if it had only just occurred to him. "That knight that walked through."

  Caleb swung. Split. Slid the halves aside with his boot. "Bade? What about him?"

  "Gods, it’s like getting water from a stone," Tomas said. "No colors, no house, and no symbol on his shield. He looked more like a mercenary than a knight."

  "I’ve never met a mercenary, so I can’t say he was more like one than not."

  "I’ve never met one either," Tomas crossed his arms. "But that doesn’t mean he didn’t look like one. A knight should at least look like he’s bathed. You know, my father says you don't invite that kind of man in."

  "I don’t think Wardens are invited anywhere," Caleb said.

  Tomas's eyes widened theatrically. "Listen to you. Wardens. As if you were born in Highmarch with ink on your fingers."

  Caleb set another log. "He said he was one."

  "A man can say he's the Queen of Thalassar, doesn’t mean shite."

  Caleb paused with the axe half raised. "He didn't need anyone but Lord Bramblewick to believe him. As far as I know, he asked what he came to ask and then he left."

  Tomas chewed on that a moment. "Men like that are still trouble."

  "Maybe, but I don’t think he was," Caleb said. "Not everyone can put on a performance for you, Tomas."

  The words landed without force, but they landed. Tomas's mouth opened for a quip and then closed again. He scratched at the back of his neck, looking at the woodpile.

  "He have scars?" Tomas asked.

  Caleb swung. "Several, from what I could see. Probably more that I couldn’t."

  Tomas stared at him. "You looked that close?"

  Caleb didn't answer.

  Tomas's grin returned, slower this time. "All right," he said. "What else?"

  Caleb kept working. "He didn't make me feel small for saying no," he said. "Then I said yes anyway."

  "What? Did he bed you?"

  Caleb reached down and chucked a piece of scrap wood at his laughing friend. “Shove that straight up your arse!”

  “Yours is still sore, from what it sounds like.”

  Caleb glowered at him for a moment before speaking. "He asked for an apple. I said it wasn’t mine to give, but I ended up giving him one anyway."

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  Tomas was quiet a moment. That, for Tomas, was its own kind of statement. When he spoke again his voice had lost most of its performance. "You liked him."

  "I didn't say that."

  "You didn't have to."

  Caleb set the axe down and flexed his fingers. The calluses along his palms tugged, the honest ache of a day's work already settling in his shoulders. He said nothing. But he didn't deny it either.

  Tomas let it go, which was generous of him.

  They ended up on the stump when the job was done, neither quite ready to go back to being told what to do. The air had cooled enough that sweat on Caleb's neck had begun to tighten. Tomas drank from the water skin first, tilted it high, wiped his mouth, and sighed as if he'd crossed a desert.

  "There," he said. "Work. Completed."

  "You handed me logs," Caleb said.

  "Leadership," Tomas replied.

  Caleb took the skin and drank more carefully. The water tasted of leather and river. He could still smell sap on his hands.

  The sun was lowering behind the line of trees, making the mill wheel glint and then go dull again as the shadows lengthened. A good day, mostly. The kind that settled itself into the body without argument.

  "Festival's end of the week," Tomas said, grinning already. "I can almost taste it."

  "You can taste ale from here?"

  "Real ale. Not the watered down swill my father gives me." Tomas leaned forward, elbows on his knees. "I'm winning the archery this year."

  Caleb raised an eyebrow. "You're entering the archery this year?"

  "I'm winning it."

  "You shot three arrows last week."

  "And two hit the target."

  "One hit Berrin's fence."

  "That fence was asking for it." Tomas waved a hand. "Anyway, archery's not the point. There's the bonfire. There's meat on spits. Pies. There are girls, Caleb."

  Caleb looked out toward the road.

  Tomas nudged his boot. "Don't play stone-faced with me. I've counted the times you've stared at Daisy Forester this season."

  "I don't stare."

  "You try not to stare. Which is worse, because everyone sees it."

  Caleb's ears warmed. He picked at a splinter on the stump.

  Tomas watched him. "You could just talk to her."

  "I talk to her."

  "You’ve said good morning, or good day," Tomas said. "That's not the same thing."

  Caleb shrugged. "I'll dance with her. Maybe."

  Tomas let the silence sit for exactly one beat. "Maybe," he repeated.

  "Don't."

  "I'm not doing anything," Tomas said, and smiled like he was.

  Caleb exhaled. "She won't remember me by spring. She'll be dancing with someone else."

  "Maybe," Tomas said. "Or maybe she's waiting to see if you'll do something besides look at her over the top of a basket."

  Caleb said nothing.

  "Just dance with her," Tomas said. "It doesn't have to mean anything. It's a festival."

  Caleb looked at him. "Everything means something."

  “Then make something of it! Bloody hell, you won’t know unless you try.”

  Tomas held his gaze, then leaned back and let it pass. He turned his face toward the sky. "I'll take over the mill someday," he said, casual as breathing. "Father pretends he'll live forever. He won't. No one does. He'll give it to me and I'll run it better. Bigger wheel. Better stones."

  Caleb looked over at him. "You've thought about it."

  "You have to think about something." A pause. "Might as well be something that's yours. I can talk big about traveling with a caravan or sailing the seas, but you and I both know I’ll be here. Appleford’s stuck with me."

  They sat with that.

  "And you?" Tomas said.

  Caleb's gaze went past the mill, past the roofs, past the line of fields that marked the edge of Appleford.

  "The road," he said.

  Tomas didn't laugh. "You always say that."

  "I know."

  "What's on it that isn't here?"

  Caleb turned the question over. "I don’t know, and that’s the problem. I don't know what other places look like," he said. "Not really. I can listen to the travelers and merchants we get that pass through once every cycle of the moon, but it’s not the same. I want to know places that smell different in Spring. I’ve never seen a mountain or any body of water bigger than that river right there. Do you know there are places where water goes as far as the eye can see? There are places where the mill and that big house that Lord Bramblewick sits in are dwarfed by buildings that are made of white stone or gilded and are older than this whole town. There are places where men and women paint themselves. Places so big that people don’t even know your business as you walk down the road. I want to know whether they're anything like here. I want to know if I’d like them better if they’re nothing like here."

  Tomas was quiet.

  "Appleford isn't bad," Caleb said. "I'm not saying it is."

  "But it's small."

  "It's very small."

  Tomas looked at him sideways. "You could just leave. Any day."

  "Could I?"

  The question sat between them. Tomas opened his mouth, then closed it again. He rubbed his jaw, which wasn't his favorite work.

  "Aye," he said. "You could. I’d miss you. Your mum would miss you. But if it made you happy…"

  Caleb nodded. But it didn't sound like agreement, and Tomas heard the difference.

  He slapped his hands on his thighs and stood. "Right," he said, loudly. "Festival first. I'm going to drink real ale and dance until I'm ashamed of myself and win the archery and you're going to dance with Daisy Forester without cowering in fear."

  Caleb stood, shoulders cracking faintly as he stretched. "You won't win the archery."

  "Watch me," Tomas said, and grinned like he already had.

  Caleb set the axe where it belonged. The last light had dipped now, shadows pooling in the yard's corners. Tomas clapped him once on the shoulder, already turning away, already humming something shapeless.

  "See you tomorrow," he said.

  "Aye," Caleb replied.

  Tomas moved off toward the mill. His voice carried for a moment, singing some half built tune, and then the distance swallowed it.

  Caleb started home.

  The path cut along the edge of the orchard, familiar as his own hands. Dusk had settled in by degrees. The last light clung to the higher branches, dull gold thinning into darkness.

  He slowed without deciding to.

  The usual sounds had thinned. No birds settling in the branches. No insects low in the grass. Even the breeze had stopped, as if it had found somewhere else to be.

  He stepped off the path.

  The stag stood between the trees, pale against the gathering dark. Its coat was unusually white and held the last of the light in a way the bark and leaves did not, as if it had been cut from a different hour and a different world and placed there. Its antlers rose high, each point clean and sharp. It was not grazing.

  It was watching him.

  Caleb stopped.

  He did not reach for anything. Did not speak. Even his breathing settled, shallow and quiet, as though something in him understood that sound did not belong here.

  The stag did not startle. It held him the way a man might hold a thought he had not yet decided to act on.

  Time stretched. Longer. Thinner.

  Caleb became aware of small things. The weight of his boots on the ground. Some wood sap still tacky on his fingers. The way the light caught along one antler's edge, then faded as the sun slipped further down.

  He did not step closer. He did not step away. He had never seen anything like the fairy tale beast before him.

  The stag shifted first. Not a flinch. A single deliberate turn of the head, the body following, smooth and unhurried. It stepped once between the trees. Then again. The pale shape slipped behind a trunk.

  Gone.

  No crash of branches. No rush through leaves. Just absence.

  Caleb stood a moment longer. The orchard returned in pieces; a stir of wind, the distant creak of wood from the road, another apple falling softly somewhere below.

  He let out a breath.

  Then he stepped back onto the path, and walked toward the light coming from his home’s window, and did not look back.