As the shadows grew long, the werewolves finished their work. It didn’t look like a grave so much as like a crater, but Thoko didn’t say anything. She was too grateful for the hard work they had done.

“Want us to put some bricks in?” a voice behind her asked.

Thoko jumped. She hadn’t even noticed how the rest of the workers had gotten off shift. Digger stood behind her. “We can do wood, too,” he offered. “Some salted planks, give it a bit of a proper shape.”

Thoko shook her head. “Thank you. We want him to be in the ground, though.The actual earth,” she added.

“Oh, we can do both,” Digger said. And before she could stop him, he walked off again.

“Right.” Eyal jumped into the hole and used his spade to mark the boundaries of the new grave, then struggled to get out again. He raised one of his big hands, full of dirt, as if to reach for Thoko’s arm and dropped it again. “Want to see what else you risked your life for?” he asked. “I’ll make sure Digger doesn’t get too excited. Isaak can show you around.”

“Yes!” Isaak called. He grinned at them. “Ye gotta go and see yer land, Thoko, Mrs. Banda. Come on!”

So Thoko let herself be led back into the main camp. Beyond the gate, Isaak swung left, to where the new homes were being erected, replacing the old barracks. “We decided to keep all the houses together,” he explained. “Makes it easier to protect them. Yer fields lay that way”—he pointed southwest, away from the river. “But here, this is your lot. I’m yer neighbour, over there.”

Thoko nodded silently. Her allotment was empty, except for a deep hole somewhat to the side that showed the foundations of Isaak’s unfinished house. So far, there was only a basement visible. She did see a couple of pipe-openings from the road, so far

“Going to have proper sanitation,” Isaak explained proudly. “None of that chamber pot business.”

Thoko smiled. “How fancy. Is that why you already started digging a basement for my place?”

“Nah, ye had a bit of an oak problem,” Isaak explained. “I mean we both had. Huge old tree, with a root that spread into my lot. So it had to go before we could begin construction. And just as we got the bloody taproot out, it tried to walk off. Bit of a last hurrah for the Rot.”

“Laurent chewed it down to splinters,” Anshel added.

“It’s a very nice size,” Yamikani said. “I didn’t think it would be so big. Will there be enough land left to have a decent field?”

“Oh yes,” Isaak said. “No worries, Mrs. Banda. The fields are actually a bit larger than we asked for.”

“Larger?”

Isaak nodded enthusiastically. “Yeah. See, Eyal, he went and talked to His Highness, only he was smart about it, did it while Lord Feleke was there. Greg’s older brother, I mean.”

Yamikani looked from Greg to Isaak, eyebrows arched in confusion. “How would that help?”

Isaak grinned. “No clue. But everyone knows that the Hero of Oldstone Castle keeps the duke straight. Especially when dealing, ye know, with werewolves and people like us.”

“David’s going to love that,” Greg muttered.

“It’s not wrong though, is it?” Thoko asked.

Greg grimaced. “It’s complicated.”

There was something he wasn’t telling her, but this probably wasn’t the moment to ask.

The bell rang to call the crews to dinner. Food still came from Nosson’s communal kitchen, but with the warm air, most people ate in front of the central hall, where a bunch of tables stood laid out under what looked like sails spanned from a central tree.

“Did you ever bring the tables back inside?” Greg asked. “Or did you just go ahead and eat outside ever since the queens attacked?”

“Mostly outside. It’s nice out here, isn’t it? And we sort of need the space inside.”

He didn’t elaborate what they needed the space for, but looking around, Thoko saw a lot more people with the same dark hair and eyes as Isaak. There were even some women and children, and she guessed that the Wayfarers needed more space for all their people to pray.

They found seats and had one of Nosson’s excellent dinners. Clearly, the crews had expanded the kitchen, allowing the cook to expand his dishes past one-pot stews. Today, it was a roast marinated in vinegar, with a choice of trimmings to go along, and just as Thoko was used to from working with the crew, fresh bread.

“Nosson really needs to open a restaurant,” Greg said, clearing his plate. He looked over to the kitchen, and Thoko knew without asking that he was thinking about getting seconds. He didn’t get up, though.

Thoko expected her mother to want to see the rooms they would be staying in, over at the roadhouse, but instead, Yamikani asked to see the surroundings of the camp.

“Would it be safe if it was just the two of us?” she asked, looking at Thoko.

“I wouldn’t,” Isaak said. “We haven’t had an issue in a while, but we also never got people walking around after dark on their own. Take Greg. Or any of the wolves, really.”

Thoko sighed when she saw her mother’s face, but Yamikani nodded, and agreed to let Greg come along. In silence, they walked out the new western gate, away from the river, towards the first fields. Thoko couldn’t feel or smell anything, but she noticed the way Greg kept staring north, towards the river, and her skin crawled.

She tried to pierce the dark herself, but couldn’t spot anything. “Something out there?” she finally asked.

“In the water,” Greg said quietly. “Coming down the river. Should be fine. We’re still under Laurent’s aegis here.”

“So it won’t be safe, once he leaves?” Yamikani asked.

“I think I’d be changing shape now, if it was just me, out here with you,” Greg said. “I do think I would be able to handle it. But I’m not sad that I won’t have to.”

“I was speaking about the future,” Yamikani said. “If Thoko were to move here. She wouldn’t be able to take an evening stroll on her own? Would she have to keep her children in sight at all times? Would it even be safe to have children out here? I suppose I don’t understand why Mr. Levi wanted to settle down here, of all places. Surely, the battle fought here would buy them land in the heartlands? Around Deeshire, perhaps?”

Thoko rolled her eyes. “What would I want at Deeshire?”

“What do you want to do here?” Yamikani shot back. “It sounded a lot better when you described it. There’s nothing here, nothing!”

She spread her arms. “The river is still rotten, and the young man, Isaak, he said it himself that they don’t have the resources to cleanse the land. Are you going to eat corn that was grown on Rot? Will your children? Or will they all be werewolves?”

She shot Greg a glance.

“Is this really what you risked your life for?”

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“Yes,” Thoko said. She tried to look at it with her mother’s eyes, but couldn’t. To her, the land was beautiful. Perfect. Much better than Deeshire, one of the most conservative areas in the north, and worse, a centre of the Mithran Church on Loegrion. What opportunity was there for someone like her? None.

“I’m not scared,” she said, because she had no idea how to win her mother over. If all the help of Isaak and Eyal and their family—and Greg’s family—hadn’t done it, what could she say?

“I know you aren’t,” her mother sighed. “I just sometimes wish you were.”

“What good would that do?” Thoko grumbled. “What good has being scared ever done?”

“It keeps you alive, dear.”

“Greg has been keeping me alive just fine, mum.”

She expected another biting remark regarding Morgulon and the cubs, but for once, her mother didn’t bring up the issue of what she considered Greg’s infidelity. Thoko would have been lying if she had claimed that it hadn’t bothered her at all, but she had seen Greg with Morgulon, had watched them the past few months, and there was just nothing going on between them. Just a chance encounter. And she was glad, extremely glad, that Greg had that ability to resist many of the elder werewolves. It might have landed him with unexpected children, but it had also gotten him out of the mountains alive, not just once, but twice.

Instead, Yamikani brought up another old argument: “And how long will he be hanging around to protect you?”

As if he would run off any moment. If he were that kind of person, he’d have left her ages ago, not now that she finally had property to her name.

“Thoko doesn’t need my protection,” Greg said, before she could come up with an answer. “I’m not going to be made a liar and promise that I’ll never leave her, because I cannot choose where I go. Not while there’s a war raging and David may need another ambassador to the werewolves in the mountains. But if I leave, it won’t be because I wanted to go. And as long as Thoko stays here, she’ll be safe. Either because of werewolves protecting the Camp, or thanks to the measures Eyal and his crew have taken. Given the foes we’re facing, I cannot imagine a safer place than here. No army will simply march up to this camp. Deeshire, on the other hand? I wouldn’t want to be stuck there should the Valoise manage to cross the White Torrent. Or land anywhere between King’s Haven and Deggan.”

Thoko saw her mother shudder. “Do you think the Valoise will cross the river?”

Greg stared up into the deep purple sky. Behind them, in the east, the gibbous moon was rising. Funny how that made her feel safer these days.

“I don’t know,” Greg finally said. “I don’t know what’s going to happen next.”

“Will you marry my daughter?”

“Mum,” Thoko groaned, but Greg wasn’t thrown by the question.

“I would like to. I legally can’t, since I’m not really human. But there are werewolves here who appear to own their own land. So if marriage becomes an option, and if she’ll have me, then yes, I do want to marry Thoko.”

“What about children? Would it even be safe for Thoko to bear werewolf children?”

Thoko buried her face in her hands but there was no stopping Yamikani now. She had waited a year to ask these questions. Two years almost. And oh, her mother was looking forward to some grandchildren.

“Oh, they wouldn’t be werewolves. Apparently, it depends on the mother. So if Thoko and I were to have children, they’d be entirely human.”

“Is that something you know, or some fancy theory by the learned men at Deva University? I heard there haven’t been werewolf children in a century?”

“Huh? Oh no, Morgulon was born a werewolf. And she’s like, maybe forty? Probably younger. Somewhere between thirty-five and forty. I think her mother was born a werewolf, too. I know she mentioned her father was a human. But we’re very certain about this theory, because Dale has a family. Three kids, two from after he was bitten, all of them human.”

“Dale. Is he here at the Camp?”

Greg shook his head. “He’s our current ambassador to the wolves in the mountains.”

“And his family?”

Greg shrugged. “Some village west of Northwold. I don’t remember the name.”

Yamikani accepted that with a nod. “You didn’t say if you would want to have children,” she came back to her original point.

“I wouldn’t mind a son or another daughter,” Greg said. “I don’t know if Thoko would like to be a mother though.” He glanced over at her. “That’s like the only thing we never really talked about.”

“And what about the two that you already have. Will you be raising them?”

“I hope I’ll be allowed to.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Greg ducked his head. “Morgulon is an elder werewolf. If she doesn’t want me to, I’m not getting close to the girls. It’ll be a decade before I’ll be able to fight her on that. Right now she doesn’t seem to mind, but if she decides to take them away…” He sighed. “I don’t know how the future will look like, Mrs. Banda. I do know that I’d like to spend it with Thoko and my daughters.”

“And if you have to choose between one or the other?”

“Ancestors, mum, how is he supposed to answer that?”

“I suppose that would depend on the circumstances,” Greg said.

Which was really no answer at all, but Thoko kept her mouth shut. She couldn’t wait for this whole conversation to be over.

At the same time, she was glad that Greg was here, and not just to keep the Rot away. At least this way her mother finally got to say all the things she would never voice while Imani was around.

“Duke Stuard gave Thoko’s name to the Inquisition.”

Greg tilted his head in that way werewolves used to prompt someone to elaborate. Thoko could tell it took him a second to remember that the gesture was meaningless to her mother.

“He did, yes,” Greg said after a second.

“And Isaak said your brother ensured the Wayfarers got their land?” Yamikani went on.

“No. No, David didn’t need to push the duke to give the agreed upon reward to Eyal and his men. There’s no way, at this point in the game, that Duke Stuard would risk being known as someone who doesn’t keep his word.”

“So Isaak was just wrong about that?” Yamikani asked. “Or why didn’t your brother stop the duke from ratting my daughter out to the Inquisition?”

“Not entirely wrong.” Greg buried his hands in his pockets.

“So why didn’t he?”

“How could David have known the Inquisition would come to call on the duke?” Greg asked back. “Asides, he didn’t have nearly as much influence back then.”

“What changed?”

Greg sighed deeply. “Everything, Mrs. Banda. Everything changed when Bishop Boyen was driven out of Eoforwic, and when Morgulon destroyed that human sacrifice on the solstice, and certainly after Oldstone Castle. There were a grand total of three werewolves working for the duke back when he handed Thoko over, if you don’t include me. Today, David’s got a literal army at his beck and call.

“He would have,” Greg went on. “If he had known, David would have stepped in to protect Thoko. And he will, if the need should arise again and he’s in a position to do so. So would anyone else in my family. Hells, so would Morgulon.”

Yamikani mulled his words over. Before she said anything more, they reached the edge of the fields and also—probably not by coincidence—the limits of Laurent’s aegis. It was nearly dark, too. Thoko gripped Greg’s hand when the faint pressure around her temples started to set in, and the uncomfortable sensation went away again. Still.

“We should turn around,” Greg voiced what Thoko was thinking.

“Do we need to go straight back?” Yamikani asked.

Greg stopped and stretched his neck, staring into the pitchblack forest ahead. Thoko could hear him sniff softly. “There’s nothing out here to see, is there?” he said finally. “If you really want to circle the fields, I’d ask you to turn around.”

“Whatever for?” Yamikani asked.

“His clothes don’t transform with him, mum,” Thoko pointed out. She let go of his hand and demonstratively turned her back on him. Her mother slowly followed suit. Thoko could hear clothes rustle, and then felt a brief surge of second-hand excitement as he changed forms. She was getting better at sensing the magic, and Greg was only halfway through his transformation when she turned.

Yamikani took a shocked step backwards. “Morgulon is a lot more elegant,” she commented.

“Yes, well, she is an elder,” Thoko pointed out as she collected the boots and clothes Greg had dropped. She had to suppress the sudden urge to inhale the scent on his shirt. Instead, she wrapped his belt around the fabric and then tied the shoelaces together and connected both. Greg stood still as she balanced the boots to the right and left of his neck, with the clothes sitting on his back, just like during previous travels.

She could feel her mother’s eyes boring into her back. It made her fingers curl into the thick fur on Greg’s shoulder. He turned to look at her, pawing the ground with one front paw, lowering the shoulder on her side.

“Oh,” Thoko said. “I’ll walk, don’t worry.”

Greg gave a full-body shrug, and set out down the path that led south and around the fields. It was only a narrow dirt trail, clearly, people rarely ventured this far. In the presence of the giant wolf, there was no hint of the Rot, but Thoko could see that his hackles were slightly raised. It wasn’t full fight-or-flight, and Thoko didn’t think it was something he was aware of.

But clearly, he smelled something in the dark.

They walked in silence. Thoko let one hand rest on Greg’s shoulder, for comfort and to easier find her way in the dark. Greg’s eyes reflected the moonlight.

“Your uncle will be here tomorrow,” Yamikani said, just as Thoko began to wonder what else her mother had wanted to discuss. “He will be here for the burial. Perhaps, you might want to speak to him. Both of you. I will be talking to him, too.”

She glanced at Greg. “If you are serious about marrying my daughter, that is.”