Chapter Text
The warmth of the interior immediately washes over Caleb as he enters the shop, bringing the wet, Zadash snow with him on his boots. He tries to clap the feeling back into his hands. No sooner has he started to unwind his scarf then a cheery voice calls out from the back, “Hello there and welcome to the Invulnerable— oh! It’s you! Welcome back.”
“Guten Morgen, Enchanter.” Caleb cannot help but smile. There is always something comforting about Pumat Sol and his soft face, softer looking fur. “Is Prime in?”
“Just a mo’.” The Pumat simulacrum disappears in the back room once more.
Caleb stomps the weather off as best he can on the welcome mat, though winter is slow to release its grasp. He takes a moment to survey the interior. Peacetime has been good for Pumat’s stores, he notes. The once depleted shelves and displays are bustling with a kaleidoscope of imaginative items. Untippable wine glasses, rain-repelling cloth, a jar full of multi-colored beans, an exquisitely polished mirror, and a rack overstuffed with outwear of various colors and magics. Another Cloak of Billowing has replaced the one they bought and never used. Oops.
Pumat Prime shuffles out from the back. His work spectacles are still pulled over his eyes and they blink owlishly at Caleb before Pumat seems to remember to push them up into his crop of curls and waves sheepishly. His face and fur are no less soft than his copy’s but his smiles are smaller and his shoulders stiffer now that he’s been drawn from the comfort of his back room. Caleb can relate. He repeats his greeting.
“Ah, yes hello. What can I do you for, mister wizard, sir? More ink and paper?”
“Ja, always. But I was also rather hoping I could commission you for a special project.” Caleb pulls out his notes and spreads them on the table.
Pumat leafs through the papers and hums and haws over the proposal. Meanwhile Caleb’s eyes keep flicking over to the cloak rack. The one on the end is deepest purple and lined with fur. The wool is thick. Warm. Elegant…no, don’t be silly. He has no need of paltry gifts.
“Well, I can’t say I’ve ever attempted one this complicated, but it should work. In theory. You’ve done half of the equation for me!”
Caleb turns away from the cloaks. “Wunderbar. And what will that set me back?”
They go through the motions of haggling. Caleb pays full price for several healing potions to assuage his guilt when Pumat quotes him a ludicrously low estimate and requests his own enchanted bag to boot. It still feels strange to slip the money over the counter so freely. There was a time when every copper was precious, each coin was the key to safety, food, and most of all magic. But what use are his adventuring gains if not to spend them? His eyes flicker over to the cloak once more.
“If you’re interested I have a little something in the back that might tide you over while I work on this baby,” Pumat taps the papers. He calls for Pumat Two who brings a black box out of the back and sets a single pair of sending stones on the counter.
Caleb considers the coins still in his purse. He doesn’t need them, but it would probably be wise. He regrets not bargaining for the potions.
“How much?”
“Ah, well, seeing as their commissioner is, ahem, unavailable now, they’re yours. No charge.” Pumat’s not inconsiderable weight shifts from side to side. “It was a real brave thing. What you and your friends did. With, you know, the…Scourgers.” He whispers the word like the boogeyman they are.
A cold nausea settles into Caleb’s belly. He blinks. Swallows. Counts his inhales and exhales. Of course Pumat has heard of the trial. He’s an annex to the Assembly. Did he—? How much—? When did he know? These are the questions that have haunted Caleb all the long weeks of the arraignment, sentencing, and beyond. For professors, assistants, annexes, researchers. Is this an apology? Pity? Guilt? The wondering may be worse than the true answer; that doesn’t stop the worry.
Caleb accepts the sending stones, tries not to think about Trent Ikithon standing where he stands now and ordering them. “Danke, my friend.”
He takes the first opportunity for a subject change he can find. Caleb nods at the rack. “That cloak on the end. What sort of item is that?”
Pumat clears his throat and accepts the hard pivot. “Oh, that there I call a ‘Cloak of Resistance’, sort of a new experiment. Don’t get to do it much with textiles. Little bit of protective lining, little bit of magic. I can imbue it with any sort of element you like. Buyer’s choice.” Elegant and useful. He could—
“Hm, not today I think.” Caleb collects his wares, bundles them into his new haversack, simple canvas brown. “Pumats.” He flees back into the cold as four identical voices call out their goodbyes.
Caleb’s feet carry him five whole blocks before his breath evens out and his heart stops racing. His country embraces him and haunts him at the same time. The icy cobblestones rise up to meet every step. Here, boy became man. Here, he danced. Here, he wept. Here, he returned. Here, he triumphed. Here, the rot still grows. Locked in the deepest dungeon and still, everywhere, the stench of Ikithon follows him. Figuratively and literally it seems. Caleb clocked the tail two blocks ago.
He could teleport away, back home to Rexxentrum. But Caleb has a feeling this shadow would find him there as well.
He purchases two mulled ciders from a cart, tosses a spare copper in the tip tin. The curls of steam waft behind him as he steps into a narrow walk between shops. When Eadwulf lumbers out of the shadows less like a cat and more like a bear he accepts the second cup without a word.
Wulf’s dark hair has been freshly shorn recently, in the same simple style. Clean shaven. Although no razor, no matter how sharp, has ever been able to banish the perpetual shadow of stubble around his mouth and jaw. He looks much as he did on the stand. Calm, measured, steady. Every bit the reliable witness that Caleb could never be.
He looks good. Although usually that is Wulf’s line. Caleb says it anyway.
“You did not accept the position.” Straight to the point then, both question and statement.
“No, I did not.”
“Did you think that we would not follow you?”
For one so large, Wulf’s voice can be so soft. The lullaby of it pulls at Caleb’s ear. In the bitter air his sleeves are long, coat cuffs buttoned up to the wrist, and broad hands in leather gloves so well broken in that they look like a second skin. For just a moment Caleb can forget the maze of inky black that distinguishes one set of scars from the other. That the hands wrapped around rapidly cooling cider are over a decade younger, wrapped around a blade, voice still whispering in his ear.
“What if I do it wrong?”
“Here.” Bren had said. Hand on wrist, blade digging into stomach, tip between organs. “Don’t remove the blade. One motion. I can take it.” He did. And then Astrid and Wulf. Inflicting and surviving in turn. Hungering for more even as newly grown flesh ached.
The scars on their arms are starker, but some wounds are deeper. Neither visible under layers of wool in the nation that cradled and beat them equally.
“I was afraid that you would.” Caleb takes another sip of cider. Wulf mimics the motion.
“You are leaving.” This one is not a question.
Caleb considers before conceding that yes. Yes he is. For now. He does not say where. He does not say when.
"There was a time when there were no secrets between us."
Caleb has no response to that.
"You should go soon. He does not have much time left."
The sudden strike nips at his heart like an asp, pain and ice and terror in his chest. And then sorrow at precisely who caused it. He schools his face into indifference. “Is that a threat?”
"It will be no secret to your Shadowhand that he will not be Shadowhand much longer."
If he leaves now he will only confirm that Wulf has found a weak spot. But there is no point hiding it; he already knows. They never even took to the floor and already Caleb is tired of this dance. He downs the rest of the cider, wipes the traces from his beard. He steps from the alley. Eadwulf does not.
“Bren,” Wulf tries one last time.
“Tell Astrid congratulations from me.”
Wulf does not stop him as he weaves through the sparse crowd braving the winter sleet and back onto the cobblestone street. The winter wind that cut to his bones earlier feels welcome now, chasing away nostalgia and buzz. It fills his lungs, clears his head, carries his feet back down the way he came. Without even a thought his feet find themselves at the Invulnerable Vagrant once more.
“Oh!” Pumat says. Either Two or Three, he cannot be sure. “Back so soon? Everything to your liking?”
Caleb points to the Cloak of Resistance. “I think I shall take that one afterall.”