Page 75 of The Sorcerer's Alpha
He stopped on the bank to watch them unnoticed: Marut jogging along, turning back again and again to watch Yuvan, his face creased with his smile; and Yuvan wedged into his seat, so swaddled in blankets that nothing was visible of him but his fat, gleeful face. Marut turned at length and came back toward where Sycamore stood, and then he saw Sycamore there and waved.
“Ba-ba-ba-ba!” Yuvan called, which was possibly his name for Sycamore but also the predominant thing he said. Marut claimed that meant he was talking about Sycamore all the time, which Sycamore found charming but unlikely.
Sycamore clambered over the uneven ice along the bank and walked out onto the river, shuffling his feet along so he wouldn’t slip. Marut was breathing hard, smiling, happy as he always was these days. He leaned down to kiss Sycamore, and then Sycamore dropped into a crouch and ran his hand over Yuvan’s blanket-covered head.
“Are you having fun, my dumpling?” Sycamore asked him as Yuvan hooted with excitement. “What a good papa you have to take you out in this weather.”
“Says the man also out in this weather,” Marut said.
Sycamore grinned up at him. “I’m checking the ice, as I’ve been assigned to. You’re only out here to have fun.”
“Yuvan likes it,” Marut said, dignified as though Sycamore hadn’t seen him laughing and running like a boy. Sycamore lifted Yuvan in his arms and stood to kiss Marut again, because he couldn’t help himself.
“I should take him home,” Marut said after they broke apart. “We’ve been out for a while.”
Sycamore kissed the dear plump swell of Yuvan’s cheek, cold to the touch of his lips. “All right. I won’t be long.” He passed Yuvan into Marut’s arms. “You’re going with papa, sweet boy. I’ll be home very soon to play with you.”
Yuvan fussed at being taken away from Sycamore, as he always did, but Marut got him bundled back into the sled and they went back toward the village. Sycamore squatted there on the ice and pressed his bare hand to the surface, just for a moment, to check that all was well. Nothing had changed from the day before. He checked farther, all the way up the river to its source in the hills far to the southeast. In the other direction, the ice was solid downstream to where the Chono emptied into Black Ewe Lake in the west. All was well.
He stood and tucked his hand back inside his sleeve. The wind spoke of the coming weather, sharp with the scent of snow. The birds that had been so active earlier in the day were quiet now, hunkering down for the storm. Sycamore turned and followed the tracks of the sled all the way back to their tent.
Yuvan was practicing his walking along the edge of the bed, but when Sycamore came through the door he dropped down and crawled over at a rapid pace, and pulled himself up on Sycamore’s coat. “Ba-ba-ba,” he said, bouncing in place, and well, maybe Marut was right.
“Yes, baba is home,” he said to Yuvan, lifting him up and setting him on one hip, and giving him a loud kiss on his round cheek. Sycamore couldn’t resist those cheeks, so fat and soft. “Are you walking yet? No? Soon, I think.”
“Any day now,” Marut said from where he was sitting beside the stove cleaning the quail.
Sycamore kissed Yuvan again. He had spent most of his pregnancy feeling ambivalent about the prospect of a baby, but after almost a year with Yuvan, his love had expanded to fill every corner of his heart. He hadn’t expected the joy Yuvan brought to his life.
Marut was watching him. “We could have another.”
“No,” Sycamore said firmly, then softened at Marut’s expression and said, “Give me a year.”
“Agreed,” Marut said at once.
Sycamore narrowed his eyes, craning his neck backward to avoid Yuvan’s curious fingers trying prod at his nostrils. “I think you’re mostly excited aboutmakinga second baby.”
“I wouldn’t say that’s true,” Marut said after just enough of a pause that Sycamore knew he wasn’t entirely off the mark.
He lowered Yuvan to the floor and held his chubby hand for his favorite activity of tottering in circles around the stove. “We can revisit this subject next winter.”
Marut smiled at him, plucking feathers from a bird, leaning over when Yuvan drew near enough to kiss his head in passing. “Would Temur like one of these quail?”
“Yes. I meant to ask you. I’ll take Yuvan there later.”
“And then the storm.” Marut pulled out another feather. “We’ll have to be very entertaining to keep Yuvan amused until it blows past.”
Sycamore groaned. Yuvan wanted to be outside every minute he was awake, and if he wasn’t outside, he wanted to be holding Sycamore’s hand to walk. “Let’s pray it’s a quick storm.”
“Once you would have prayed for it to last many days so we could have an excuse to stay in our bed.” Marut’s eyes creased as he watched Yuvan’s uncertain stepping. “Do you have regrets?”
He was teasing and went back to his quail without waiting for a reply, but Sycamore found himself considering the question anyway as he walked around and around with Yuvan. They had given Yuvan a Chedoy name and spoke Chedoy to him at home, but he would be Sarnoy in truth: raised among the Sarnoy with their customs and their foods, learning their festivals and their yearly rhythm of traveling with the herds.
Sycamore did still miss Chedi and probably always would. He badly missed the food; he would give anything for some hot flatbread stuffed with cheese. He missed the earth there, the way it had spoken to him. He missed the jokes he could make in Chedoy that only Marut understood now. But he had become Sarnoy, too: this was his home. His family was here. His two great loves. No, he had no regrets.
Marut glanced up again, likely sensing something through the bond. “Is something wrong?”
“No.” Sycamore gave Yuvan’s plump hand a gentle squeeze. “I’m only thinking of what we might name our second baby.”
“I’ll think on that while it snows,” Marut said.
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