Evening fell clear and clean, with that early–summer transparency that makes the air feel like it's washing everything it touches. The coals were settling; the soup pot had been scraped to the shine. Overhead, the sky was already rolling out its constellations—shy at first, then sharp as white cuts.
Rufus—who had decided sleep was an invention for lazy adults—was still fidgeting around the firepit. Adam caught him by the collar, spun him halfway round with theatrical solemnity, and swept an arm toward the sky.
"Come on, pup. Tonight we learn the stars."
Victor tipped his head back too, already hunting his bearings. He shook out a blanket, spread it on the grass, and lay down. Rufus dove in beside him. Adam flopped on the other side with all the grace of a grain sack, hands pillowed behind his head. The three of them ended up flat on their backs, shoulder to shoulder, with warm ash and crushed grass in their noses.
"So," Victor began, "there—see those seven bright stars, like a cart?"
"A saucepan," Adam corrected without lifting an arm. "Looks more like a saucepan than any bear."
"The Great Bear," Victor said, patient. "Those two on the rim—draw a line, and if you follow it you hit the North Star. Look: five times the distance. That's north."
Rufus squinted, astronomer-serious. He traced an invisible line with his finger, then blurted, "I see it! Tiny, but very shiny!"
"Like you," Adam grumbled, fond.
"And that W there?" Rufus asked, already on to the next thing.
"Cassiopeia," Victor smiled. "A queen. Yes, it looks like a W. Or an M, depending on the season."
"W," Adam decreed. "We're not calling it Cassiopoodle. And there," he added, pointing at a dubious alignment, "can't you see an hourglass?"
Victor followed his finger, amused.
"We could. But officially no one's bruised a shin on an Academy lectern to christen 'Adam's Hourglass.'"
"Academy mistake," Adam said. "Things should look like what they are. A saucepan, a W, an hourglass, a spear… There, for instance—" he stabbed at a brave diagonal— "that's my spear when I throw it."
Rufus burst out laughing, teeth bright in the dark.
"You don't even have one! And you, Victor? What else do you see?"
"The Summer Triangle," Victor answered after a beat. "Three stars, high up: there, there, and there. Vega, Deneb, Altair. If you know where to look, you don't get lost. Even without a road or a map."
He heard himself and thought—odd thought—that he wasn't talking about roads or maps.
"Vega, Deneb, Altair," Rufus repeated carefully, as if pocketing three good stones.
Adam, not the sort to yield so quickly, piled on:
"And here I see… the Flattened Fish."
"Nobody sees that," Victor teased.
"I do. And I weigh at least as much as an astronomer."
"We'll note: 'Adam's fishy constellation, unratified,'" Victor said gravely.
They kept wrestling their imaginary charts for a while, between the names that had crossed centuries and the ones being born for no reason but to make a child laugh. Rufus drank it all in, eyes shining, happy to have two teachers who didn't teach the same thing and who were both right, each in his own way.
"Then I'll remember… both," he announced at last, ending all argument.
"Wise," Victor approved.
"Opportunist," Adam corrected. "Like all good students."
The fire snapped softly behind them. Emma, who had drifted closer, watched with a thin smile, arms folded. She'd set down her bow and washed her hands; a breath of herb soap still clung to her fingers. From where she stood, the three sprawled silhouettes made a strange beast with six arms, each in turn pointing skyward. She felt a laugh rise and didn't let it out—for fear of pricking the bubble—then turned away.
Édric sat a little off, on a log, in that strip between fire and night he liked to haunt. He was keeping watch without keeping watch, like a stone you forget is a stone until your foot finds it. Emma settled beside him, close enough their shoulders might have touched if either dared move.
"Let them have their stars," she murmured, a quiet laugh in her throat.
"At worst they'll fall asleep standing tomorrow," he replied, placid.
Silence settled—not heavy, but full. Adam was still lecturing—"Look, my hourglass is perfect"—and Victor still protesting—"Your hourglass has an arm"—with Rufus cutting in to rule at random. Night sounds ran all around them.
Emma drew breath and leapt. She had that in her lately: say the thing when it spilled over, without waiting for a perfect moment that didn't exist.
"Thank you," she said simply.
Édric looked over, surprise flickering in his gray eyes.
"For what?"
"For 'that night.' For bringing Victor back to me."
He looked a heartbeat longer, then nodded slowly, as if the memory, when it passed, hardened and softened him at once.
"I did what had to be done," he said.
"I know. But people don't always."
He let out a small breath that was not quite refusal and not assent. Emma went on, lower now, using the you she saved for when she spoke true:
"We were lucky to cross your road. The troupe. Adam introduced us, and… without him, without you… I'd still be in Dunleigh, in an empty shack. And he… in that miserable manor. We'd have kept circling, each on our own side of the same gulf."
Édric glanced down at the fire where a branch sagged in silence.
"Roads always end up crossing each other" he said, but his voice had lost its usual edge.
"Maybe. There are crossroads that save, all the same. The troupe gave us everything. For him, two brothers and… a father. For me, a place where I don't have to apologize for existing, for being the daughter of a whore with her dead brothers."
She wasn't looking at him now. She spoke toward the fire, with that deep-water calm that sometimes came to her. Édric's chin twitched, almost too slight to see, like a knot loosening at the base of his neck.
"Adam's stubborn," he said, nudging the feeling a step aside. "He doesn't let go of what he loves. He wouldve dragged you here by the scruff if he had to."
"Yes," Emma smiled. "He's got a nose for people. But it isn't just him. You hold us too. You hold him."
She turned, frank. The man held her gaze, and if you knew how to look, you could see it—the faint tremor along his mouth under the beard.
"I'm not good at this," he admitted, voice rough. "Words… Thank you, I… well. You understood me."
"Yes," Emma said simply.
He made a sound that passed for a laugh. To cover himself, he pretended interest in the lesson beyond.
"And between us," he added, "Adam's right about the saucepan. We've called it that on the road forever. Great Bear, Saucepan… so long as we find north."
Emma followed his gaze, found the handle and the bowl and the line drawn to the small stubborn and shiny star.
"So long as we find north," she echoed.
She was quiet, then added, lower:
"You know he listens to you. He pretends he only listens to me, to Rufus, to Adam… but when you speak, he sets his weapons down inside."
A very slight smile moved Édric's face. He scratched his cheek; his fingers cracked.
"He's a good lad. He's… himself, that's all. I tell him to lower his guard, he lowers it; I tell him to hush, he does; I tell him to stay, he jumps in the fire for someone. I'm proud. And I keep watch, as I can. Over all of you."
"I know," Emma said.
They stayed side by side without more words, and that silence, truly, made a bond.
In the grass, Rufus was far from done renaming the sky.
"And that, Victor? Looks like a fairground cart."
"Still the Great Bear," Victor laughed. "We might let the bear rest."
"And there—oh! It looks like… a comb."
"The Lyre," Victor said, tender.
"The Lyre?" Rufus faltered.
"An instrument. For music."
"I like 'comb' better," Adam ruled. "We've got a saucepan, an hourglass, a comb. We're missing a shoe and we can open shop."
"With you selling, we'll sell nothing," Victor shot back.
"With me selling, we'll sell the moon," Adam retorted. "We'll tell them it whitens wool."
Rufus laughed so hard he had to roll onto his belly to catch his breath. Adam laid a flat hand on his back in time, like calming a colt. Victor kept pointing, patient, sometimes lifting an arm to line the boy's eye with the invisible tip of a star.
"See," he said, "if one day you're lost—properly lost—you can look up. Things move, but not all of them. There are fixed points. You just have to take hold."
"Like I do with you," Adam slipped in, as if it meant nothing.
Victor turned his head. Adam was looking at the sky, but the remark had the exact weight of a thank-you. Victor wanted to say something bigger than a joke and found nothing better than grabbing Adam's forearm and giving it a shake—a softheaded gesture that said enough.
Emma watched them still, her profile cut clean against the embers, and thought that what Victor said of the stars he was saying of them without knowing.
Rufus yawned so wide you'd swear he swallowed the Lyre and half the W. Adam laughed, levered himself up, shrugged off his cloak, and covered the boy with clumsy care. Rufus rolled and tucked himself against Victor, who naturally folded an arm around him. They became a small, quiet heap—mixed warmth, matched breath.
"Looks like a new constellation," Emma whispered to Édric. "The Beast with Two Big Brothers."
"Bad omen for anyone who tries their luck," he grunted, but there was no bite in it.
She thanked him with a look. He, after one last glance at the sky—maybe just to make sure north was indeed still there—stood to make his usual half-circuit, not too close, not too far, just enough that if a shadow moved it would meet a wall.
Victor lay flat, eye still open. Emma stretched down beside him without a word. Through the thin canvas he felt the sure rhythm of her breathing. Between his ribs, the world had stopped cracking. He raised his hand once more to draw a line—saucepan, bear, queen, who cared—and let it drop onto Rufus's head, stroking with his fingertips. The child mumbled something unintelligible that must have been the name of a star or the name of Adam—which, tonight, amounted to the same thing.
"See," Victor breathed, mostly for himself, "we can live somewhere."
Emma, who had heard, squeezed his hand.
A little farther off, Édric, back on his log, watched without watching these young ones breathing together, and a soft kind of fatigue passed through his eyes—the kind you accept. He dipped his chin toward the north, a nod to the stubborn little star, then folded his arms and let his lids fall halfway—not to sleep, but to listen better.
Camp slid into that mild hush where crickets take over. Overhead, the constellations—official and otherwise—held fast. The W stayed a W, the saucepan a saucepan, the bear a bear. And if you had the right eyes, you could make out a new figure among them: three warm points, almost in a line—a brother, another brother, and between them, a child—with a still sentry sketched a little apart. A good map, Emma thought before sleep found her, not to lose ourselves. A map of our own.