him go, shaking her head slightly. If that’s all it took to give him some breathing room and lower his tension, she should have said something three days ago, when they were informed Master Lynn was coming.
They still had rough days with Rune. He oscillated between being a troublemaking rapscallion to this broken child that did anything and everything to please the people around him. The first month alone had been no joking matter, once he realized that they fully intended to keep him. Siobhan had woken up many a night to find him on her bedroom floor, which Wolf hadn’t taken kindly to. But six months of consistent love, attention, and patience had brought about startling results. Rune showed signs now of steadying out, becoming more confident with his place here amongst them.
Conli drifted out from his clinic with an empty pail in his hands. He glanced up the stairs to catch a glimpse of Rune’s disappearing back. “Did you finally convince him to sleep?”
“I convinced him there was no reason to be nervous,” she corrected. “He’s the one that decided to sleep.”
“Good.” Conli clearly didn’t care about methods, but results.
“You were right all those months ago,” she said on a sigh, pushing away from the table. “I’m really a mother to him.”
He patted her on the shoulder, an amused smirk pulling at the corner of his mouth. “Still feel odd?”
“With a child taller than I am, why would I?” she growled sarcastically, although she couldn’t help but smile as he chuckled. “No, not really. I’ve gotten used to it now, I suppose.”
“You must have; otherwise you wouldn’t have given him your last name.”
She splayed her hands in an easy shrug at this. “He needed a full name. No one would take him seriously if he didn’t have one.” And it would have served as a social stigma, a mark of his past, for the rest of his life if he continued to be only ‘Rune.’ Siobhan hadn’t thought much of it, at first. She’d named Rune once already, why not complete the job?
But the look on Rune’s face when she’d offered made her realize she hadn’t thought it completely through. In that moment, he’d looked at her like a child that had just been handed a part of the heavens.
And in that moment, she’d gained a son, a child, whether she’d intended to or not.
“You realize that when he passes the journeyman test, we’re likely to have a lot of fights and arguments with the other guilds,” Conli warned, his humor fading.
“I know,” she agreed heavily. No one took a pathmaking apprentice seriously the first few months of his training as very few could grasp the mechanics, theories, and calculations behind it. Having the talent was only the base level, the first step of what it took to become a true Pathmaker. But if a person could pass the first test into journeyman, then they proved that they had the capability to become a true master. At that point, they could even work, with their master’s supervision.
That was part of the reason why another master had to come in and supervise the journeyman test, to make sure that the apprentice truly had the necessary skills and wasn’t being helped along by his master. But another part of the reason was to register the newly minted journeyman on the list of available Pathmakers. When he was registered, anyone and everyone that needed pathmaking skills could call upon him.
When Rune made that list, every major guild in the four continents would surely cry in outrage that Deepwoods had not one, but two Pathmakers. They’d certainly be knocking on Blackstone’s door and her own, trying to get her to hand one or the other over.
Just imagining it was giving her a headache.
Conli eyed her with open misgiving. “Do you even have a plan?”
“I certainly don’t,” she responded congenially, “but am currently taking suggestions.”
He raised his eyes to the ceiling. “I’m not looking forward to this.”
“They’ll only badger us for about a year,” she said with mock enthusiasm that sounded hollow in her own ears. “After that, it’ll taper off. We’ll just take a lot of escorting jobs to far off, exotic places in the meantime.”
“You mean run away.”
Siobhan shook her head sorrowfully. “It sounds so demeaning and cowardly when you put it that way.”
“I have a destination in mind,” Fei said calmly from somewhere above her head.
She froze before looking upward in creaking degrees. Fei lounged casually on one of the