Page 44 of The Sorcerer's Alpha

Sycamore described their travels since then, careful to elide any reference to his first heat or what had transpired between him and Marut. When he was done, Temur sat for a minute as if absorbing this information and then said, “You can’t cross the mountains until spring. I hope you’ll stay with us here in Twin Rams until the time comes for you to leave.”

Sycamore exhaled. “We hoped we might. Thank you. We’ll be grateful.”

“I’ll have to ask Bayarmaa for formal permission before I invite strangers to spend the winter in her village,” Temur said, his eyes creasing at the corners. “But I don’t imagine she’ll deny me.” He glanced at Marut. “He speaks no Sarnai?”

“Not one word,” Sycamore confirmed. He looked at Marut, scratching around the cat’s ears and studying Temur with the same watchful attention he gave to everything. “We would not like to be parted.”

“I see.” Temur looked between them. “Have you bonded?”

Sycamore shook his head, relieved that Temur had cut to the heart of the matter and that he wouldn’t have to explain. “I’ll say we have, if that’s easier. I know you have customs.”

“Don’t try that with me. The Chedai have customs also, and you’re breaking all of them if you’re dallying with him outside of marriage. But I won’t say anything about that.” Temur’s eyelids went hooded with the satisfaction of righteous judgment. Sycamore remembered this smugness and how it had infuriated him as a child, but now it only filled him with fondness. Temur was just the same.

“We will be married, as far as anyone here knows, and we’ll break no—” Sycamore paused, unsure of the word. The Sarnoy tongue came to him more readily with every encounter, but he had the vocabulary of a child. “No rules. We don’t wish to cause trouble.”

“I’m sure you don’t. Very well. I imagine we can find a tent for the two of you.” Temur regarded him. “Ah, Dhanu. I’ve thought of you often through the years. It gives me joy to see you again.”

Hearing Temur call him by the name he was born with struck Sycamore with the force of an arrow. No one had spoken that name to him in years—in so long that Sycamore had nearly forgotten it was once his. Temur had been the last, in fact, the morning he left Banuri.

Before he could master his emotions and manage some reply, the door opened again, letting in the matriarch. Marut rose to his feet, the cat cradled in his arms, to offer his chair to her. She flapped a hand at him but did sit as he relocated to a low stool.

“Have you done your catching up, then?” she said to Temur.

“Hardly, but I see we’re finished now nonetheless,” Temur said. “Sycamore, this is Bayarmaa, matriarch of Twin Rams and also my sister.”

Sycamore looked for a resemblance and found it in the shape of Bayarmaa’s nose and the color of her eyes. She looked back at him steadily. Her direct stare was Temur’s, too. Most Sarnoy didn’t hold eye contact in that way.

“Sycamore and his companion are traveling back to Chedi,” Temur said to her. “With your leave, they’ll stay here until the mountain passes open.”

“Hm,” Bayarmaaa said. Her gaze didn’t leave Sycamore. “His companion.”

“My husband,” Sycamore said, guilty and thrilled to hear himself say the word. He didn’t like to lie, but he would rather lie than be apart from Marut.

“Very well,” Bayarmaa said. “Be welcome, then.” She transferred her gaze to Temur. “They can have Gantulga’s old tent, if they can repair it, and I imagine they can. The wizard can help you teach Sarangerel. It will be good for her to know some Chedai magic.”

An order, not a request. Sycamore wasn’t opposed; he would rather have less idle time than more. “My husband would also be glad for some occupation.”

Bayarmaa’s face opened into an unexpected smile. “It’s true that men can’t be left idle. He carries a bow, does he shoot well?”

“Well enough,” Sycamore said. Marut had killed multiple deer; surely his skills with a bow were at least average. “And he traps and tracks.”

“Then he can teach the children,” Bayarmaa said. “Our best trapper married over the summer and left us, and our second best is a poor teacher.”

Sycamore didn’t know how Marut would feel about this assignment, but he thought of Marut’s gentle patience with Bunny and of the many carved figurines he had left with the children in Roan Horse, and decided Marut would at the very least not object. “That will suit him,” he said.

“Then we are in agreement,” Bayarmaa said. “Temur, why have you not fed them?”

* * *

Repairingthe tent took them two days. The lattice of wood supporting the roof had broken and fallen down, and rodents had nested where the wind had pushed back the felt covering, leaving a mess of fur and droppings. Sycamore’s magic could knit the wood back together and mend the felt wherever it was frayed or torn, but the rest of it they had to do by hand: raising the framework back into place, peeling back the felt to pull out one handful of nest matter at a time.

“Disgusting,” Sycamore said, with his fist full of soiled, rotting fur and an expression on his face like a cat who had accidentally set its paw in water. Marut could only smile at him, happier than he had known he could be as he perched on a tent roof at this frozen end of the world.

The furniture inside the tent was mostly in good repair, although Marut did evict a small family of mice from one of the chests. He and Sycamore dragged the mattress outside, emptied the stuffing, and replaced it with fresh hay. They took all the rugs outside, too, and beat them with sticks to shake out the dust. When all of that was done, and the stove was lit, and their belongings were emptied from their saddlebags into the storage chests, Marut looked around the tent and experienced a moment of blinding disorientation. He could almost forget that these months were nothing more than a temporary digression from their real lives. How easily he could let himself imagine this tent was their shared home.

“That will do it, don’t you think?” Sycamore asked, rising from his crouch by the wall where he had been working at mending a small hole in the felt. He dusted his hands off and studied the bronze statue on the altar that dominated the wall opposite the doorway. “This will be a good place to pass the winter.”

“Yes.” Marut joined him and touched his fingertips to the statue’s feet, as he had seen the Sarnoy do. “Warm. Let’s bathe tonight.”