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Working together, instinctively adjusting to each other’s rhythms as we always had.

Tared returned with refilled water bottles, looking unwillingly hungry at the scents filling the house. Lyn trotted back inside minutes later and triumphantly declared she’d narrowed down our location enough to mark it on her maps, and also, why exactly were we not cooking more often at home?

Half the household would refuse every bite, Creon signed wryly.

I glanced at Lyn, who looked timid and tiny at the sight of his hand gestures, and then at Tared and Edored, who pretended not to be watching us with varying degrees of success. Behind the broken windows, the sky was slowly turning a peachy orange and pink. Naxi and Beyla would be back soon.

Did it matter? It might be better to do this with half a crowd around; at least that would send the message that none of us had anything to hide.

‘Creon?’ I said.

He looked up from stirring the lentil stew, eyes wary but wings lying loosely against his shoulders.

‘Can we teach Lyn the basics of our signs? Might be useful seeing as we won’t have too much parchment around in the woods.’

‘What?’ Edored said sharply.

I didn’t dare to glance at Tared, who was sitting on the windowsill, soaking up the last sunrays of the day. He’d gone motionless in the corner of my eye, even that shimmer of light around him no longer as vigorous as usual.

Creon merely turned around, leaving the stew to simmer by itself. If he was at all surprised by the suggestion, his slowly raised eyebrow didn’t show it.

‘If it’s not too much of a hassle?’ Lyn’s young voice was too high. ‘I … I was thinking …’

She didn’t finish her sentence – realising, presumably, that every single person in the room knew exactly what she had been thinking, and that any pretty lie she might utter for civility’s sake would not be remembered for longer than a minute anyway.

‘We could start with the alphabet?’ I suggested, blithely pretending not to notice the grim tension spreading through the room. ‘You’ll get that memorised within an evening, at least.’

You’re sure about this?Creon signed.

‘Why not?’

He shrugged.Tared might just try to cut off my fingers tomorrow.

‘Not if I’m around,’ I said, which was about the only response that wouldn’t immediately give away the topic of our discussion. ‘And I think we can all agree it would be impractical if we get attacked by dragons tomorrow and you have to go digging for parchment.’

Whatever the two alves behind me might have been planning to say, that eminently reasonable point shut them up. Creon shrugged again, a flicker of a smile around his lips that told me he knew exactly what I was doing.

Turning to Lyn, he signed,Take a seat.

‘That’s “take a seat”,’ I said and stepped towards the fire to take over Creon’s stirring work. He lowered himself onto the worn rug beside the hearth in the same moment, crossing his legs. ‘The first sign is “take”, but really, I think we use it for all vaguely related concepts, too. “Absorb” and “grab” and all of that. “Seat” is just … seat.’

‘Right,’ Lyn said, climbing into one of the two leather chairs with squinted eyes. ‘So it’s semantically compositional, this language of yours?’

‘Um,’ I said.

It is, Creon signed dryly.

I pulled a face. ‘Apparently it is.’

Tell her it’s mostly verb-initial. That should help, too.

‘You’re acting like we actually came up with a grammar,’ I said, turning back to our food to scrape some stubborn lentils from the bottom of the cauldron. Creon breathed a chuckle beside me. ‘He says it’s verb-initial, Lyn. I say you should use whatever word order your heart desires.’

‘Thanks,’ she said, a trace of nervous laughter in her voice. ‘I see you teach languages the same way you learn them.’

I sent her a glower over my shoulder. ‘Unnecessary.’

Not untrue, though, Creon signed.