Pathways by Mercedes Lackey

Author:Mercedes Lackey
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: DAW
Published: 2017-12-05T05:00:00+00:00

Cobblestones

Fiona Patton

Fog was not common in Haven, and it had been an unusually foggy spring. The more religious citizens of Valdemar’s capital city took it as a sign of flood, famine, plague, fire, or some other imminent catastrophe; the merchant class treated it as a trade-disrupting personal insult by Nature; and the working poor faced it as one more unwelcome challenge to lives already stretched near the breaking point.

The Watch, however, welcomed it. Most citizens, religious or otherwise, tended to stay indoors when they couldn’t see their hands in front of their faces. That meant most of those hands were not getting into the kind of mischief that led to full cells and exciting shifts.

Tucked up beside his sister Kassie’s pigeon coops on the roof of their tenement building, a two-month-old twin boy in each arm, Sergeant Hektor Dann of the Haven City Watch allowed that he had plenty of excitement these days without adding angry blacksmiths, suspicious shop owners, drunken students, and perennial pick-pockets loudly protesting that they’d only just found the purse lying on the pavement. Stretching out his back, he peered blearily at what would have been a maze of city streets if he could have seen them and thought about the day to come.

The sun was coming up, and the quality of the fog was, if not thinning, then at least lightening. It would soon be time to return downstairs, give his children over to their mother, and spend another long day without them. He hadn’t reckoned on missing them so much during Ismy’s pregnancy, but now he understood the haggard smile he’d often seen on his father’s face. He loved his boys, but they never seemed to sleep.

Edzel stirred fretfully in his left arm, and Hektor bounced him gently to settle him. The twins took it in turns to be colicky, and today was Eddie’s turn. In his right arm, Ronald snuffled in his sleep. The twins also took it in turns to be croupy, and it looked like it was about to be Ronnie’s turn at that. Both boys had already developed a healthy set of lungs and a clear opinion on when to use them, but at least up here on the roof, they wouldn’t be disturbing anyone except Kassie’s pigeons. And they’d seen it all before. Hektor remembered his father carrying his four younger siblings up here. Sometimes he had followed them, sitting with his back against the stairway wall, listening to his da’s deep, rumbling voice as he’d sung first Jakon and Raik, then Kassie, then Paddy, back to sleep. Later, Aiden had carried Egan and Leila up here. Now with Thomar and Peston, new twin boys of his own, he and Hektor either passed on the stairs or shared the roof duty together, standing, looking out at the slumbering city and murmuring the songs their father had sung to them. He imagined their other siblings would do the same when it came time for them to start families.

“It’s gonna get awfully crowded up here,” Hektor noted.

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