Sixteen

"You want to what, " Ninos asked, dropping the reins he was cleaning. He stared at his mother.

"We want to come with you," she said in a tone that expressed concern for his hearing.

He left the reins where they had fallen. Probably weren't going to finish getting cleaned now, but thankfully Torch wasn't picky about his clothes. "You want to just drop everything, pack up, and travel with me to Corlock to see a house that could, for all I know, be full of holes and wildlife, right as winter is coming? We're leaving in the morning, Mother. That's not enough time to close up the house."

She made dismissive noises and took the abandoned chore from him to do herself. "The house will be just fine; I've got people happy to look after it in exchange for their visiting kin borrowing it for a place to sleep. Nothing we haven't done before when we've had to travel. You could use help with this big, fancy house of yours, and I like seeing you again after so long."

He looked across the room to where his father and Sinn were being suspiciously quiet as they played cards. "You can't just be going along with this."

His father gave him a look. "Oh, yes, like your pretty boy here doesn't obey your every whim and wild decision. I know who keeps my house warm and inviting, boy, and you are much like her despite living somewhere else your entire life. She wants to go, we're going. Your brother has already packed up the whole house, or near enough. He was bouncing off the walls so much I told him to go spend time with his friends, say goodbye and everything, since we don't know when we'll be back."

"Are you sure?" he asked his mother.

"Of course I am. When did you ever know me to do something I wasn't sure of?"

"I don't really remember," Ninos replied, then added with a smile, "but I'm learning fast."

He was also ignoring his father's comment about Sinn, and Sinn's stupid smirking face. "That's a huge decision to just suddenly up and make."

"We want to spend more time with you, get to know the son we didn't get to raise," she said firmly. "Unless you don't want us there, which I would understand completely and bear no grudge or hurt for, we want to come."

"Of course I'd love to have you, though you'll enjoy it less if we wind up sleeping in the stable until the house is fit."

"My old bones won't love it, but they've been through worse," she said. "Let's have dinner and get some rest, then and we'll leave at first light. Assuming my other son ever comes home."

"You sent him out to socialize, my love," Ovander replied dryly. "He talks even more than you, which is remarkable."

"Shush your mouth," she said tartly. "Not me always apprised of the village gossip is it, Lord of the Tavern?"

He grinned shamelessly as he rose to start getting the roast and soup on the table. By the time the table was set, Genn came busting through the door, only barely avoiding slamming it closed again at a tart reprimand from his long-suffering mother. "Ninos! Did you hear? Did they tell you? We're coming with you!"

"I was indeed just told," Ninos replied with a smile. "I hope you won't miss your friends too much."

Genn scoffed with the wisdom of a fourteen-year-old. "Half of them are going elsewhere, too, and if I'm going to be buried in snow at least it'll be somewhere new and interesting rather than dusting this place five hundred times."

Trina rolled her eyes.

Ninos hid a grin in a bite of soup. Going to be a busy house.

Better than a quiet one, though it does limit the number of surfaces I can fuck you across.

I will leave you in the snow if you don't stop that right now! He shot Sinn a glare for good measure, but only got an unrepentant grin in return. "You're a brat."

"The brattiest of them all," Sinn said loftily.

Trina gave them an amused look. "You never said, Sinn, what you did before the two of you met."

"I never learned one particular trade," Sinn said. "My parents were paper makers, but I did odd jobs around the village and that continued into my adult life. Foraging, hunting, delivering, stitching…whatever someone needed help with, I did. You'd be surprised how often people just need someone to fill in gaps."

"How intriguing. Little bit of everything. Well, let's get your bed made up one last time, hmm? We've packed everything we need and bought a small cart from Nesk since he's selling off so much; we'll take along plenty to have at your house until you're settled proper."

"I appreciate it, Mother."

Once everyone was in bed and the house was quiet, Ninos stoked the fire to last the rest of the night and laid down draped across Sinn. "That was a turn I was not expecting."

"Really?" Sinn chuckled. "I wasn't surprised at all. They clearly feel bad for not seeing you for most of your life, and now they have the chance to spend an entire season with you and help you fix up your beautiful new home? I don't know a single decent parent who wouldn't take that chance." He carded his fingers through Ninos's curls. He really should have put them up for the night, but he'd been so tired he'd forgotten and then he'd been too lazy. "Gonna be strange not having you as a raven for the trip."

He yawned and settled more comfortably and fell asleep to Sinn's heartbeat and soft humming.

"—up, lay-about."

"Mmf," Ninos replied, and tried to roll over to go back to sleep. He was warm and cozy, why should he have to move?

"Everyone is waiting on you," his mother said, clearly amused. "Time to get up, I'm afraid."

Ninos peeled his eyes open. "What?"

"I said rise and shine, dove. Everything is packed and ready, we just need to stow your bedding and get you up and going and we'll be ready to leave."

"What!" Ninos scrambled to his feet, shoving his hopelessly tangled hair from his face. "Why did you just let me sleep?"

She scoffed. "You looked like you could use it. Come on, then. Get washed and dressed, I'll fold these blankets and add them to the cart."

"Um. All right." Ninos shuffled off to obey, pissing and washing and dressing before meeting everyone else by the small cart filled with all their goods, with Serenade and Meadow hitched to it. Serenade brightened to see him, immediately demanding attention, after which Meadow too obviously needed some of his own.

"You should have woken me to help pack," he groused as Sinn came up for a morning kiss.

"You were tossing and turning a lot, so I told them to let you sleep. You never sleep enough when we're on the road, and who knows what'll happen when we finally reach Corlock."

Ninos gave a small laugh. "Funny to think we'll soon be at our destination, after all this time."

"Everyone ready?" Ovander asked, climbing up to sit on the driver's bench of the cart. "Genn?"

"Ready!" Genn said, clambering up to sit next to him.

Trina climbed into the cart itself, where they'd made her a soft, cozy little nook to travel in comfort. Hopefully the cart wouldn't be too jarring.

"I'll ride in front," Sinn said, "keep watch as best I can. You cover the rear. I'm sure this will be an uneventful trip given it's just three days along a well-traveled, wide-open road, but always better to be safe."

He'd feel better if Sinn could keep watch from the sky, but there was simply no way he could explain to his parents—or anyone else—that his lover was a spirit of mischief.

The day was beautiful, cold without being miserably frigid, with little to no wind. They were still well ahead of the snow, and there were no clouds on the horizon. All in all, a wonderful start.

"So what do you think the house will look like?" Genn asked when they stopped for lunch, sitting on cushions on a cluster of rocks and old stumps to avoid the cold ground, not bothering to start a fire no matter how nice the warmth would be. The further they pushed, the sooner they'd reach their destination, and as the road was straight, they could even travel in the dark for a couple of hours so long as the weather held.

"Not sure, honestly. Wintry couldn't tell me anything about it, and Brandor didn't speak of it much. There were simply too many painful memories for him to talk about his family very often, or at all, really. But it's old, been in the family a long time. I'd imagine it's a decent sized house, maybe three or four bedrooms. I'm just hoping the kitchen is serviceable and there's enough firewood to hold us a few days."

"There's always someone with more wood than they can use," Sinn said. "We'll secure it one way or another. We have food aplenty for two weeks."

No matter how much they prepared, and talked about being prepared, there were still too many things that could go wrong, even on such a short trip. There was no point in dwelling, however, and gods willing the trip would be peaceful.

They rode the rest of the day and well into the night, following mage lights along the road that barely even curved most of the time, stopping only when the horses needed food and rest. Adding a few more mage lights to help, they got necessities out, a fire started, and Trina made dinner while the rest of them tended the horses and set up the beds.

"I'll be back shortly," Sinn said. "I want to take a quick look around." He slipped away before anyone could reply, taking a single mage light with him—that he didn't need, but it would look a lot stranger if he ventured off into the dark without it.

Ovander frowned. "That doesn't seem wise."

"He'll be all right, and after the first time we got jumped he has been especially vigilant. You could argue until the end of the world and he still would not change his mind."

"Fair enough" Ovander. He sat down on his bedroll, boots set aside, and accepted the steaming cup of tea Trina handed him.

Genn sprawled on his bed with a groan. "I'm tired."

Ninos chuckled. "It only gets worse, the first few days. By the time you start to get used to it, we'll be in Corlock. It was a good week before I settled into a rhythm traveling to Shadowfell, and closer to two before my body stopped aching all the time. It got even worse once we reached the mountains." He shuddered at the memory. "Never doing that again, believe me."

"What happened?" Trina asked. "You didn't say much before, telling us about your journey, but it's clear something terrible happened."

"I almost died, is the short version. If not for Sinn, I would have died and it's unlikely anyone would have found me. Thank you for the tea."

Though they poked and prodded a bit, he didn't elaborate. Leaving aside he didn't want to relive a terrible memory, there was no convincing way to explain how Sinn saved him that wouldn't reveal more than they wanted.

By the time Sinn returned, dinner was ready, and they all ate quickly, eager to get beneath warm blankets and escape the cold for a few hours—too few hours—before continuing the trek. They were pushing hard to shave as much of the trip off as they could, as the longer they were out the greater the chances of being caught by foul weather.

After dinner, he checked the horses one more time, set up the mage lights to form a loose ring around the camp, then crawled into his bed. Normally when they traveled, Sinn slept on his chest, and it was more than a little strange to sleep entirely alone, as it wasn't wise to cuddle together out here when they could need to move quickly at any moment.

Thankfully, after such a long, hard day, sleep came easy, and after months of traveling he woke up again without effort. Funny how he struggled to wake up warm and comfortable in his parents' house, but out here he reflexively woke up immediately alert.

"Good morning," Sinn said quietly, kissing him softly. "I'll go check everything out." He kissed Ninos again, then slipped into the woods and a moment later a raven burst from the canopy.

He got breakfast going and packed up his and Sinn's bedrolls, and by the time Sinn returned everyone was packed and ready to go, eating a breakfast of oats and reconstituted dried fruit as they traveled.

All clear ahead, but there are some clouds far to the north that I don't like the look of.

Of course we couldn't travel without incident.

I found somewhere we can shelter a few hours south, only a short distance off the road.

All right.

He kept silent about it for the time being, as there was no good way to say, 'I know the weather looks great now but my lover turned into a raven and saw problems we can't so we'll have to take shelter soon.'

Sinn's amusement rolled through his mind.

They rode on uneventfully for hours, until Sinn signaled that it was time to stop.

"Halt!"

His father stopped the wagon, and his mother looked up from her knitting. "What is it?" his father asked.

"The weather is going to take a nasty turn, we need to find shelter, and Sinn scouted a suitable location earlier."

"He's been with us all day," his mother said. "How could he have done that? What in the world is going on with you two?"

Before Ninos could reply, Genn said, "Sinn can turn into a bird. A giant black bird, like a crow. That's how he does it."

"What!" Ninos flinched. Nearby, Sinn looked ashen and ready to bolt. He reached out and grabbed his hand, held it fast. "It's all right, no one will hurt you. I won't let that happen."

Genn looked hurt. "Why would we hurt him?"

"How did you find out?" Ninos bit out.

"I saw him—accidentally. I wasn't like spying on him or anything," Genn added hastily. "I saw a huge black bird while I was gathering the last of the berries for the season. I've never seen a bird so big. I thought it was some sort of overgrown crow. Then he changed into Sinn, and I ran away. How did you learn to do that kind of magic?"

"There is no magic like that," his mother said, holding a hand to her throat. "Only gods can do that."

"No, I assure you more than gods can alter their shape," Ninos said. "It's a secret. Nobody is supposed to know Sinn can do that kind of magic. You can't tell anyone."

"We don't want to hurt him, lad," Ovander said gruffly. "I'm sorry you have reason to think we might. We'll keep your secret. Can you really change? That sounds so unreal."

Sinn tugged his hand free of Ninos's grasp.

"You don't have to," Ninos said.

"They know, not much point in pretending further." He slid off the horse—and then suddenly was a raven once more, cawing loudly before settling on Ninos's shoulder where he belonged.

"That's the bird! Like a giant crow!"

"A raven," Ovander said. "Same family as crows, I think."

Trina gasped. "How divine!"

"Nothing divine," Ninos replied dryly. "He's way too much of a brat for that. I'll tell you more once we're safe. For now, we really need to get to shelter. Please."

"Of course," his mother said. "I promise we're on your side, Ninos, Sinn. You're our son and, presumably, our son-in-law?"

At that, Sinn let out a series of delighted noises, caws and ticks and more, feathery butt wriggling happily.

"How did we skip from revealing Sinn's secret to discussing marriage? Everybody be quiet and let's get moving." He rolled his eyes as they all laughed, secretly relieved that everything had gone so well, and followed Sinn as he sprung into the air to guide them.

The shelter proved to be a strange little hollow made from two large trees that had grown into and around each other, creating a sort of cave. The ground below was lichen, and mushrooms grew in the nooks and crannies of the woven together branches.

They left the horses beneath the shelter of another large tree, covered in blankets for the night, and emptied the cart before upturning it so the inside would stray dry while the weather came down.

When they were finally all settled, tea in hand and soup cooking, Ninos retold the story of how he and Sinn met, this time leaving out only the grislier details of his fall. His mother looked near to passing out by the time he was done, his father looked quite grim, and Genn looked like he wanted to see it turned into an exciting play. "What a tale!"

"What a nightmare," Trina said. "I cannot believe you survived. Thank you, Sinn. If you had not saved him, it's likely we never would have even known what happened. A spirit…mercy of the divine."

"We will keep your secret, and guard it fiercely," Ovander said. "I am sorry again that you thought you could not trust us."

"I didn't mean—"

"No, that's not on you. That is on us. But you can trust us, both of you. All we want is your happiness, Ninos, and by default Sinn's happiness. Now let's eat and get some rest, because the rest of this journey is going to be long and difficult."