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The raid on Ashworth's eastern border was two days out, close enough to taste in the air but far enough that the brotherhood could still afford a night of ale.
You'd earned yours. Three campaigns this year, each bloodier than the last, each survived with the kind of quiet competence that kept your name moving through the ranks without you ever needing to say it out loud. Knighthood had come to you the way it came to anyone worth their steel: through performance, through patience, through not dying when the odds suggested you should.
Bucky was the closest thing you had to a constant in the brotherhood. Two years of riding together, three raids, one particularly ugly ambush outside Kensington's territory that neither of you mentioned anymore but both remembered in the same silence. He fought like he'd been built for it, all instinct, never a wasted movement. You fought like you'd studied for it, methodical where he was fluid, precise where he was fast. Between the two of you, most formations held. Off the field, most tavern tabs didn't.
The place was warm the way only small, overcrowded rooms could manage: body heat, hearth fire, too many people in not enough space.
Your chestplate was propped against the wall behind you, gauntlets sitting on the table like misplaced decorations. Bucky still had one pauldron buckled because he'd given up halfway through stripping down, which was typical of him. Two ales deep, armour half-shed, boots up. A good night by any standard.
Bucky brought up squires somewhere between his second ale and his third.
"Mine's useless." He said it the way you'd describe weather, without any real heat behind it. "Good lad, eager. But, couldn't lift a mace to save his own life."
Your laugh came out through your cup. "Could be worse, James."
"Could it?" He tipped his chair onto its back legs, arms folding behind his head. "Go on, then. What's yours like?"
"Reliable, actually." The cup turned slowly in your hands, your thumb finding a dent in the rim. "Bit small. Blonde — this tuft of hair that won't lie flat no matter what he does with it."
Bucky's chair settled to all four legs. You didn't notice.
"He's good. That's the short version." You took a sip. "His name's Steven."
The timing was something you couldn't have planned if you'd tried. A leather bag hit the table beside your gauntlets, heavy enough to rattle the cups. Your squire stood behind it, that impossible tuft of blonde catching the lantern light, slightly breathless from a weight his frame wasn't built to carry but had carried regardless.
"Your blades, ser." He was pink in the face, his chest working harder than the distance from the armoury warranted. "All sharpened. I checked the edges twice."
"Good man." Your hand found his shoulder without ceremony, a firm clap of approval that knocked the air from him visibly. "Steven, this is Ser Barnes. We've ridden together on the last three campaigns. James, this is my squire."
Steve turned to greet your fellow knight, polite and ready. His face emptied. Bucky had gone very still. The kind of still that didn't match the man, the tavern, or the evening.
"Ser." Steve managed eventually. His voice had gone thin as paper.
"...Steven." Bucky said it with the careful precision of someone handling something that could detonate.
A silence passed between them that you couldn't quite read. Steve's posture had stiffened; Bucky's jaw had set. Neither reaction registered as unusual. Steve was always a bit rigid around senior knights, the nerves of a squire who knew his frame didn't match his title. Bucky's moods could shift between ales without warning; you'd stopped reading into them a campaign ago.
"Sit down, Steven. Have a drink." You nudged the bench beside you. "You've earned it tonight."
Steve lowered himself onto the bench like a man settling onto a blade.
"I was just telling James about you, actually." You took a sip, easy, pleased to have your squire beside you as a visual reference instead of just a description. "The work you've been putting in."
Steve's cup stopped halfway to his mouth.
"I had him clean my sharpest blades last week." You nodded toward the leather bag Steve had just delivered, speaking to Bucky with the casual pride of a knight crediting good work. "Full set, longswords included. It took him a while with arms like his, but he managed every one without a nick."
Bucky's hand found his hair. Steve's knuckles whitened around his cup.
"I had him carry two of my heaviest shields across the eastern camp last Tuesday, too." The details kept surfacing mid-sip, the way they always did, in no particular order of importance. "He wouldn't let anyone help. Four trips. Maybe five."
Bucky's ale was empty. He flagged the maid without looking away from Steve. Steve's gaze had fixed itself to a knot in the table with the focus of a man trying to disappear through wood grain.
"I sent him on reconnaissance before the last raid." You were warming to the subject now, the way you always did when someone let you talk about competence. It cost nothing to credit your people. "I needed someone to scout Kensington's patrol routes. Someone small, quiet, easy to miss." Your cup tipped toward Steve with something close to pride. "He came back with the full rotation schedule. Barely a scratch."
Steve's mouth opened. A half-syllable formed at the back of his throat before it died there. His eyes darted to Bucky, then back to the table, a motion so quick you nearly missed it. Bucky's fresh ale arrived, then half of it vanished in one pull.
"I think I'll keep him along for my raids this season, actually." You said it to Bucky, but your hand found Steve's shoulder as you spoke, another firm clap that wheezed the breath from his chest. "He's earned it."
Your attention turned to Steve with the easy warmth of a knight who'd already decided. "You've done well, Steven, genuinely. I'm glad they assigned you to me."
Steve's face held gratitude so tangled in what looked like terror that his blue eyes had gone very wide, very bright. He managed a nod aimed at the table more than at you. Bucky opened his mouth to speak. His voice cracked on the first syllable.
Your ale stopped halfway to your lips.
Bucky didn't crack — you knew this man. You'd seen him take a lance to the shoulder, give orders through a broken visor, hold a line when the rest of the formation buckled. His composure had never faltered on the field, in formation, under any pressure you'd watched him bear. Whatever just happened to his voice shouldn't have been possible. Your gaze moved from Bucky to Steve, then back. Steve hadn't looked directly at Bucky once since the introduction. Bucky hadn't stopped.
"Do you two know each other?"
Simple enough. You asked it the way you'd ask about roads, or the harvest. From your end, this was a footnote.
"Yes." Steve's answer barely qualified as a word — a squeak wrapped around a syllable, thin enough to tear.
"Yes." Bucky's came from somewhere subterranean — a growl shaped into language, aimed past you at Steve like you'd simply been the door it needed to pass through.
The two answers sat in the same silence without occupying the same universe. One was a surrender. The other was a sentencing.
"Oh." You blinked. "Ah." Your eyes travelled between your squire's bloodless face and your fellow knight's locked jaw, cataloguing details that rearranged the last twenty minutes into something you didn't have a name for yet. "Oh."
Your hand was in the air before the thought had fully formed. The tavern maid caught the signal with a speed normally reserved for emergencies, which felt appropriate. The fresh ale arrived. Your mouth found the cup. Whatever this was, it predated you by years, possibly decades. Your squire looked ill. Your fellow knight was vibrating at a frequency that suggested structural damage. The wisest tactical decision of your career was to keep your mouth occupied, so that's where it stayed.
Steve parted his lips.
"Don't." Bucky's courtesy had turned surgical, polite in a way that promised violence. "Not here."
Steve's lips closed.
Your hand tipped the jug before common sense could intervene, topping off Steve's cup with a reflex you couldn't quite stop. Bucky watched you pour with the weary resignation of a person who'd spent years chasing a stray from traffic only to watch someone invite it home. The fire cracked, and a drinking song broke out across the room. Your ale was not going to last long enough for whatever this was.
The argument reached you before the stables did.
" — TOLD you, I TOLD you not to — "
" — it's a SQUIRE post, Buck, it's COMPLETELY — "
"IT IS NOT COMPLETELY DIFFERENT, STEVE."
"I'M GOOD AT IT! SER SAID SO! YOU HEARD — "
"Oh, ser said so. SER SAID SO. Pack it in, lads, ser's given their blessing, must be perfectly safe then — "
"THAT'S NOT WHAT I — "
" — SHIELDS, Steve? RECONNAISSANCE? Do you hear yourself? Do you ACTUALLY — "
You took a very long sip of your ale, leaning against the far wall where neither of them could see you. Your squire's voice had reached a register you hadn't known human throats could produce. Your fellow knight sounded like he was trying to whisper-scream, which wasn't a real thing but Bucky was certainly inventing it. You pushed off the wall before either of them could round the corner. Whatever you owed them about Steve's position could wait until morning. The night was cold, and you needed another drink.