Felicity lifted the courtyard latch herself. It opened onto long tables under a row of old grape arbors, where a woman with a gray braid was trying to fit two flowerpots over her hands. Felicity could think of several reasons to do that, and all of them involved having a child.
"Before you ask, my grandson bet me a pear I couldn't clap in these," the woman said. "Would one of you ladies mind getting the left one off before he comes back?"
Rose twisted the pot while Felicity held the woman's wrist. It came loose with a sucking sound, and the three of them laughed so hard the second pot fell off on its own. By the time Mara had introduced them to Elin and Jo, Rose had taken a seat without first checking what waited behind it.
Damien had stayed outside the gate with the family. When Felicity looked over, he was helping Frost fish the end of his shoelace out of a knot. Nobody at the tables seemed especially interested in how many men she'd brought to town. Elin wanted to know how Rose kept slugs off her vines. Jo had saved a pot of tea and wanted somebody to drink it before she had to serve it cold again.
Rose picked up one of the grape leaves Elin had brought in from the garden. Something had eaten a neat little hole in the middle of it. She turned it over and found a fat green caterpillar almost exactly the color of the underside. It went straight for her finger. Elin tipped it into a flowerpot and set it aside to show the children later.
"You mean you've lived with things coming up through the floor to eat people and you're still going to fuss about whether the bugs get a nice retirement?" Rose asked.
"My grandson's got one in a jar that he expects to turn into a butterfly," Mara said. "It crawled out sometime before breakfast, and I'd like a decent chance of putting it back before he comes home."
Rose laughed. In Tidehaven a woman who'd seen her vines move would have wanted to know what she did with them in a fight. Here she'd gotten a cup of tea and a grub owed a good home. She took a second cup for Felicity and tipped it a little too far pouring, because she'd glanced out at the snake who was still helping that little boy with his shoe. "Your fellow's been out there a while," she said quietly. Felicity looked out and felt the pleasure of that word catch her just below the ribs.
"Could you show me where the kindergarten is?" Felicity asked. "I promised my two a look, and I'm about one more wrong turn away from giving them a lovely tour of your drains."
Mara took them through the courtyard and across a narrow street. The old storage hall had little paper birds hanging inside its windows, and somebody had painted a handprint on the door at a height a cub could reach. Luna put her palm over it. Frost preferred to stand where he could see who came in after them.
Tommy crouched beside him. "From one to ten, how worried are we? I usually try to be about as worried as the smartest person in the room."
Frost showed him three fingers. His sister had stopped to stare at the painted flowers and been overtaken by a much smaller boy in a hurry to hang his coat up. The boy came back and showed Luna which pegs were free. Frost curled one finger down and let Tommy see his new figure. Felicity was glad nobody told him he'd been silly to start at three.
Mrs. Dalloway, the teacher, explained that grown-ups waited at that door for her to bring their children out. "Who comes for you two?"
"Mummy," Frost said. He looked up at Felicity. "What if you get sick?"
"We'll give her Victor and Voss's names too. She'll know who to look for, and you'll know who's allowed to come get you." Felicity crouched beside him. "Today I'll stay right by that wall until you tell me you're finished."
A girl on a thick mat waved Luna over. In under a minute her daughter had learned the girl's name, told her about her magic and accepted an offer to learn how to fall off a low box. Frost declined the same offer. Mrs. Dalloway said he could watch and went straight back to the lesson.
A second teacher sat on the end of the mat with her legs crossed. She had the girl show Luna how to tuck her chin, then let them both land across her lap and tip her over. Luna came up giggling, her hair full of scraps from the paper birds. She picked out one blue feather and put it on the window ledge to take home to Victor. Felicity liked the sight of her daughter's hands with nothing more serious to do than smooth out a bend in a paper feather.
Tommy squeezed into a chair beside him. One leg split, his backside hit the floor, and twenty children discovered the real purpose of kindergarten at the very same time.
"Did you hurt anything?" Frost asked him.
"I liked those pants," Tommy admitted, holding a crayon tin over the fresh tear. "Would you mind sitting here until somebody brings me my jacket?"
Frost sat with him while Luna took two more turns. When the jacket came, he put down the crayon he'd been using and asked Mrs. Dalloway if he could try the box after all. He landed on his bottom, blinked at his feet and got back in line. Beside Felicity, Victor took her hand. She'd been fine up until then, but for some reason watching that little boy go back for a second turn nearly did her in.
When a runner came for Victor, Frost was busy showing Tommy how to land. When class let out, Felicity peeled both drawings off a patch of spilled glue. Frost had gotten the green crayon he'd wanted. The skinny green thing in his picture was either a tree or a man in torn pants. She was keeping it either way.
A little boy lingered by the door to ask Tommy what he taught. Tommy still had his jacket tied around his middle to cover the damage. He said he was considering a move into school furniture repair. The boy nodded with great respect, and Felicity decided it might be worth bringing him back to meet somebody who could get him a little wood glue.
On the walk home Luna had a leaf in one hand and the paper feather in the other. When she caught up with Voss she tucked the feather into his shirt pocket. "That's for Dad," she explained. "If he asks why I didn't keep it myself, can you tell him my pockets are full of school?" Voss took charge of the delivery with a straight face. Felicity would trust that man with a dying wish or half a piece of blue paper and expect him to remember either one.
Victor came back at supper with an offer from the commander. Snow Team could help plan the city's defense and still choose its own assignments. The commander had seen the horse brothers train and asked after Rose as well. "He wanted to know if you were spoken for," Victor told her. "I said you'd speak for yourself."
"And here I was hoping we could get half a cow for me," Rose said. "What did he actually want?"
"He'll have to ask you. I only agreed to listen to the offer about the team."
Felicity passed her husband the dish of potatoes and asked if he could actually see it working. He took a while over the answer. On the road, he said, a man could watch where another fighter planted his feet before trusting him at his back. Here they had to figure out what happened when an officer up on a wall and the people down at the gate saw two different things.
"You'd like a name on that map who'd listen to the people at the gate," she said.
"I'd like the people at the gate to have the sense to speak up," Victor answered. He glanced over at Rose, who'd been perfectly willing to speak up the day he met her and had gotten considerably louder since. This time the tiger didn't have a joke ready.
Over the next two days Felicity walked the cubs to class, watched Frost check that Mrs. Dalloway remembered their names, and caught Rose looking for the commander at just about every meal. On the third evening, the wolf finally asked Rose to walk the north wall with him. She went of her own accord, though she'd made Felicity swear to come looking if he tried to explain how vines grew.
Felicity met her on the way back. "Should I fetch a shovel, or did the man make it out of this alive?"
"He wants me to teach his officers what to do if the wall comes down," Rose said. "I asked if I'd be allowed to tell them some of their plans were shit. He said that's usually why you invite somebody to a planning meeting."
At breakfast Rose pulled out a chair at the officers' table to hear what they'd planned. The commander passed her the map. Felicity went back to her eggs before Rose could catch her grinning. Her friend had gotten a straight answer by asking for one, which was more than Felicity could say for herself where Damien was concerned.
That evening she tucked the cubs in and kissed her husbands. Victor caught the direction of her glance across the family's quarters and passed her the lamp. "I'll hear them if they wake up," he said. Voss was already settling himself in the chair by the cubs' beds, shaking dice in his hand to see if Frost had really gone to sleep. A little silver ear gave the game away.
Damien was folding a spare blanket in the room off the sunroom. Felicity set the lamp down beside him. For days he'd made himself welcome on the smallest couch, eaten whatever was left and waited outside any door she closed. She'd spent those same days finding excuses to touch him.
"I'd like to stay with you tonight," she said. "And if you start making up that damn couch for yourself, I'm dragging it into the hall."
Damien left the blanket where it was. "Before you close that door, Felicity, there's something you ought to know about going to bed with a snake."