High above, the long gallery threw a hard shadow over the yard. Caltrion stood there, hands clasped behind him, expression unreadable. Sunlight caught in his eyes like coins.
“Where is Padrick?” he asked without turning.
“I’ve not seen him today, my lord,” said the captain. His voice was careful. Everyone’s was careful here.
The god’s gaze slid from the yard, to the low buildings where the living slept in shifts, and to the fields beyond.
“Call the boys to water,” he said. “I will find my son.”
The captain bowed, and his shout cracked the yard. The boys limped gratefully to pails. Caltrion pulled at the unseen threads of the dead as he went, and they stopped as one and turned, feet dragging in unison towards the pens.
Caltrion left the shade and crossed into the sun without a blink, his shadow long, his steps a weightless glide.
He already knew where Padrick would be.
In the southwest field, a square of messy green angled into an empire of wheat. The garden was fenced with rough slats Padrick had hammered himself, more gesture than barrier. Bees thrummed in the air; the earth smelled dark and warm.
Padrick crouched among tomato vines, fingertips dusty. “Look at you,” he murmured to the smallest plant, its fruit round and shy under leaves. He smiled proudly at it, tucking a stray stem back against its stake.
“Padrick,” Caltrion appeared as storms do over flat land—suddenly inevitable.
Padrick didn’t jump. He had sensed him coming—had already sent Gemma away. “Yes, Father,” he said, still facing the tomatoes. Then he rose, hands muddy to the wrist.
“Why are you not training?” The words were without softness.
“I was tending to my garden.” Padrick wiped his palms on his trousers and found the gesture pointless; the dirt only spread.
The air seemed to cool around them. Leaves recoiled, stems drew in as if wind had passed in the opposite direction. “You waste your time. You skip drills. You turn from what is yours. How do you hope to command an army if you will not even learn its steps?”
“I do not hope for it,” Padrick said, meeting his eyes. “I do not wish to command an army, or to lord over the dead.”
The god’s gaze did not waver. “One way or another you will.”
Padrick’s jaw tightened. “I only want to be human.”
Caltrion’s eyes, once bright as hammered gold, darkened as a cup fills with ink. He seemed taller by slow degrees, back easing toward the sky. “You are not,” he said, voice gone cold. “It is in your fate to be more. You are my son. And this is how you speak to me? I should have left you for teeth in the wolf-woods.”
“You do not frighten me,” Padrick said. He was not certain this was true. But the sentence felt like a stake set in the earth.
“Train,” Caltrion said. The word landed as command, and the garden held its breath. “I have been patient. This is the last I will remind you.”
He vanished so neatly the bees and air did not stir.
Padrick remained, chest tight, hands still dirty. He knelt and touched the smallest tomato lightly. The plant quivered back toward the light.
“I’m sorry,” he told the leaves, and returned to the yard.
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