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  Knife Children

  Author’s Note: A Bujold Reading-Order Guide

  About the Author

  Books by Lois McMaster Bujold

  KNIFE CHILDREN

  A story in the world of The Sharing Knife

  Lois McMaster Bujold

  Copyright (c) 2019 by Lois McMaster Bujold

  Cover art and design by Ron Miller, 2019

  KNIFE CHILDREN

  Barr scraped his knife over his face by feel, delicately razoring off the last of his tawny beard. He had been pretty proud of that beard, not to mention grateful for its protection when patrolling in the harsh Luthlian winters, but exuberant spring had hit the hinterland of Oleana at just about the time he’d ridden over the border six days back. The muggy heat smelled like new life, like the shy green of the woods around him. It smelled like home. He drew a deep, deep breath of it, and exhaled the last of snowy exile.

  Tossing the double handful of springy beard hairs atop the pile of bay clumps he’d curried out of his mare, he left them all for the birds. Breaking camp consisted merely of kicking the dirt over the embers of his fire, rolling his blanket tight, and saddling up. Briar snorted sleepily as he swung into his well-worn saddle and turned her onto the one-horse-wide patrol trail he’d been following. If he remembered aright, it should drop down to cross the farmer road in just a few more miles.

  He might have made Pearl Riffle Camp already but for this familiar little detour, a few days out of his way. His tent kin could only have a vague idea of his expected arrival; he could slip in this personal patrol unseen and so uncommented-upon. Especially uncommented-upon. He dismissed a lingering guilty twinge as something aged out of use. A dozen and more years his secret had kept itself. Now there was only the routine of tending to this private watch, to be renewed with his return from his two years of exchange patrolling in the far north.

  The cart width of the farmer road came up right on time, and he swung his mount southward onto it. He unfurled his groundsense to its fullest extent, taking in the fresh world around him and all its spring-swelling life… the sun-speckled woodlands, the rising sap of the new plants almost as busy as the scurry of the awakening animals, the dark hum of the soil, and even, when he let his mind ease open and listened with utmost quietude, that subtlest song of the underlying stone itself. He hadn’t been able to sense so deep down before he’d gone on his exchange.

  He was pleased to confirm that his range, too, had grown, well over half a mile in every direction. Not far short of his friend and sometimes-mentor Dag Bluefield with his awesome full mile—they’d have to compare, when Barr next visited upriver to Clearcreek. But Pearl Riffle first. And before Pearl Riffle, this.

  The first peopled farmsteads came into his groundsense, and soon into his sight. He twitched Briar aside to make way for a cart of well-rotted winter manure that its farmer driver aimed to spread on the next field. Barr cast him a polite salute. The man, identifying the rider as a Lakewalker patroller, scowled warily back, but tipped his straw hat in return politeness. He twisted to look over his shoulder as Barr rode on, and Barr hardly needed groundsense to feel the suspicion. That was one thing about home that hadn’t changed much in two years, more’s the pity. Lakewalker practices were a lot less secret than they had used to be, but sometimes Barr thought that just gave rumor more to distort. A trifle wounded, if only in his feelings, Barr pulled his perception back in to himself, reminded again why Lakewalkers kept their extra senses closed around their farmer neighbors. Mostly.

  A spur of hill bent the road in a curve, and on its other side Barr found the big woodlot that had served him so well as a hide over the years. He rode in until the whipping branches grew too punishing, then dismounted and led his mare down to the rivulet that divided the woods. He unbridled and watered her, leaving her with a compulsion not to stray. Groundsense half-open to detect any occupants well before they could notice him, he slipped through the woods toward the rise that gave him the best view of what he’d long thought of as Lily’s farm, though the man who owned it called it after himself; so, the Mason place, in local talk. Fiddler Mason was Lily’s mother’s husband.

  Though not, Barr reflected ruefully, Lily’s father. Not being a Lakewalker, the man fortunately had no way to tell this.

  Being a Lakewalker, Barr unfortunately did.

  He’d been eighteen, just woken to what he’d naively imagined to be his full powers as a new patroller. The same beguiling persuasion that worked on animals worked on farmers, he’d heard, and, encountering that pretty young farmer girl when his patrol had camped on her family’s land, he’d been more than tempted to try it out. Bluebell hadn’t been unwilling. He’d not mistaken those artful glances of admiration she’d cast his youthful good looks. From admiration to arousal turned out to be but a step, and a step more from there to the loft of her father’s barn. Where he’d tried his best to give her as good a time as what he now recognized as his clumsy inexperience could provide.

  Her older sister had disapproved, though not enough to tattle on her to their parents. Barr’s patrol partner Remo had disapproved even more, vehemently rejecting Barr’s suggestion that Remo take on the sister as well, in case it was jealousy. (On either side, Barr had barely had the wits not to say.) Really, the two’d had so much in common… But Remo hadn’t tattled to their patrol leader, either.

  And Barr had ridden away thinking little more on it, and then even less as events overtook him and Remo both. They’d returned from their epic trip to the sea and back much-changed patrollers, older in more than years.

  So when, at Barr’s next routine patrol through these parts, he’d chanced upon the now-married Bluebell and her two-year-old, blond daughter, the shock of recognition had staggered him. My child, the tow-headed toddler’s ground showed, unmistakably. After being roundly told off by Bluebell and commanded to keep away from her and hers forever, Barr had ridden away rocked by churning thoughts.

  He’d taken his confusion to Dag and Fawn Bluefield, the only Lakewalker-farmer couple he knew, pleading for advice. Where he’d got his head washed by Fawn all over again, as she’d backed up Bluebell’s demand in the sharpest terms. She’d also delivered him a homily on the realities of farmer-women’s lives, illustrated with some eye-opening tales from her own younger days that’d left him cringing.

  Dag was plain-spoken, but had a deadly aim. His time as a patrol captain had taught him everything about young patrollers he might’ve missed in being one, and their shared ordeals on the big river trip had shown him precisely where to put the knife into Barr for the most effect. Why we do not use Lakewalker persuasion on farmers for sexual favors, ever, yeah, that scar could still bleed when Barr poked at it.

  Not that he hadn’t had that lecture from his own patrol leaders, but Dag’d had a way of making it stick. Or maybe it was their joint witness of that evil Lakewalker renegade Crane, ruling his gang of river bandits, surely at the bottom of the slippery slope Barr had slithered along the top of. He remembered a ravine full of bodies, and shuddered.

  Barr had never strayed off the marked trail again, that was certain. Which didn’t mean the consequences of the first-and-last time didn’t keep spinning out.

  Because, Dag had allowed, Lily needed keeping an eye on not just for her general welfare, but in case she threw to her Lakewalker bloodline and experienced some frightening rise of groundsense when she grew from girl to woman.

  At one time, Barr had almost hoped that would happen, if only to prove… something, maybe about himself to himself, some Lakewalkerish potency or other blighted nonsense. A longer stretch rubbing about the world had robbed him of such self-centered views. If Lily were
lucky, she would inherit no more than a usefully keen intuition, and go on blending with her family and neighbors all unsuspected. And maybe find happiness, in some short-lived farmerish way.

  As the years slid by without sign or rumor of anything strange about the pretty oldest Mason girl, Barr had slowly relaxed. She’d not yet started her monthlies, barely budding, when Barr had been assigned to exchange in Luthlia, a valuable training experience for a powerful young Lakewalker destined, maybe, for patrol leader soon. Lily had been just fine then; checking on her closely, or as closely as he could without being spotted, was the last task he’d done on his way out of Oleana.

  And the first on his return.

  Settling behind some deadfall at the edge of the woodlot, he let his perception stretch to a hundred or so paces, looking for the daily routines of the farm. And for Lily. She might be out feeding the animals, planting the kitchen garden, helping in the orchard. Or inside, plucking a chicken or cooking in the kitchen, or spinning. Or, most likely, pressed to look after her string of little brothers and sisters that had appeared with calendrical regularity, as if Bluebell were trying to make up her initial lie to her oblivious spouse by sheer weight of numbers.

  Not that it mattered materially, given the patrilinear farmer passion for their lands. Lily’s half-brother Reeve, as Fid’s eldest boy, would inherit the Mason farm in due course. Not Lily. Lily would be expected to go be the wife on someone else’s farm. She should have been my tent-heiress.

  Barr’s reaching groundsense found… no one.

  Huh?

  He stood from his concealing crouch, blinking and staring.

  The house and barn were burned to the ground, only a few blackened timbers and a chimney still sticking up. A more distant shed and, as if in mockery, the privy still stood. Not a person, not a farm animal, not even a stray dog skulked about.

  Barr lurched forward to the ruins, jaw hanging open. The char was cold, rain-sodden, a few sly weeds starting to creep in around the edges of the burn. The smoke-stink was old. Not a recent disaster, then; a month or two gone? No blight sign, he stifled his first surge of panic. Not a malice attack. Ground-ripping wasn’t the only force that could level a place, even if it was the most absolute. People can die just as hard from other things, you know.

  But neither eye nor groundsense found any human bodies in the shambles, although at the barn he was able to make out the remains of a couple of sheep, pulled apart and mostly disposed of by some later wild scavengers, foxes or vultures or crows. Belly-cold, he walked along the path to the home graveyard at the edge of the woods, stride lengthening as he made out the mound of a new-turned grave. It bore no marker, or none yet. Was it too short to harbor an adult…?

  Blight it, he was the one who was supposed to be riding into mortal danger. Not her. Lily was supposed to be left safe here…

  He stood shaken and bewildered for a moment more. No. He rubbed his mouth. It couldn’t be as much a mystery around these parts as it was to him. People in the village would have to know what had happened, where the Mason family had gone. He’d always been chary about asking too many questions around Lily’s village, because people tended to remember the overly curious Lakewalker stranger. But he’d have to ask now. He hurried back to his horse.

  She was supposed to be safe…

  * * *

  With as many as a couple of dozen horses in an average patrol, the one sort of farmer regularly visited by Lakewalkers on their twice-yearly rounds was the village blacksmith. Barr had encountered the Hackberry Corner man several times by now, both on official patrols and during his more private reconnoiters. The smith was either unusually open-minded about what farmers named, not without some cause, Lakewalker necromancy, or the patrols’ regular custom bought his tolerance. Barr had always found the smith a reliable if rambling source of local gossip.

  The smithy’s doors were pushed wide to the spring air, the whanging of metal on metal betraying why. Barr dismounted and ventured in, then paused. Hot iron waited on no man.

  The coals of the forge glowed dully under a coat of gray, muted by the block of sunlight streaming in. The smith was swinging his hammer on a long piece held in place, somewhat to Barr’s surprise, by a sturdy young woman in a leather apron whom he recognized as the smith’s daughter. She turned it steadily between blows as it slowly deformed in the desired direction. The man let his hammer droop, stood up drawing breath, and waved at the forge. The girl tucked the cooling end neatly back into the coals, then went around to work the bellows.

  The smith, whose name, memorably enough, was Smith, turned to Barr. “Well, how de’, Lakewalker. Haven’t seen you around for a while.”

  Barr ducked his head in return greeting. “I was gone to Luthlia. Just on my way back home.”

  Smith’s bushy brows went up. “That’s a long ways.”

  “Having just rode every mile of it, I have to agree.”

  “Horseshoes worn?”

  “Not to change out yet. But as I was riding through, I saw the Mason place had burned down.” The buildings, or their remains, were not at all visible from the road, nor was this village exactly on the route to Pearl Riffle, but Barr glided lightly over those wrinkles. “What the blight happened there, and when?”

  “Ah.” Smith brightened right up. Hackberry Corner was a place short of entertainment; fires and like disasters could be a fruitful source of gossip for years, after. Or maybe the blacksmith was just especially fond of blazes. “That was a right mess, and a tragedy, too, as it turned out.”

  Barr stiffened, resisting the urge to grab the fellow by his sweaty collar and tell him to get on with it. He managed a neutral but still encouraging, “Oh?”

  “Kid playing with candles in the barn in the evening, was how it started, I heard. On accident, but still. Which kid was the source of the row, later, since the girl said it was the boy, and the boy said it was the girl, but in any case, it jumped to the house, and then it was too late for anything. Though Fid and Bell tried. They did get all the youngsters out, and most of the animals, so there’s that. But by the time the neighbors saw the glow against the sky and smoke and ran over, there was nothing left to do but watch it finish burn.”

  “Which girl and boy?” Barr got out.

  “Yeah, Fid and Bell’s got a passel of them, don’t they? The oldest girl, Lily, and the second boy, Edjer. Who’d always been a handful, got to say. I’m inclined to Lily’s story, myself. But the boy took a lung fever from all the smoke, and was carried off inside a week, poor tyke. The family was real shook by that, when they thought they’d all got out clear except for Fid’s burns. Bell didn’t much care for Lily sticking to her story against the dead boy. Which I can kind of understand, though it don’t seem fair. I mean, if it really was Ed started it. Not so much if it was the other way around.”

  Not Lily, not Lily, not Lily in that short grave. Barr, dizzied, concealed his huff of profound relief.

  He opened his mouth, but the smith’s daughter called, “Pa, it’s ready,” and Smith motioned Barr to wait. Barr stood back. This time, the girl took the hammer and her father turned the piece. The hammer whanged all the same, the sparks spurting in orange sprays.

  “More to the end,” Smith called, and, “Good! Stop there for now.” He quenched the rod in a nearby barrel of water. A female voice called something unintelligible from the adjacent house, and Smith added, “Go see what your ma wants.” The girl nodded and scampered off.

  “You apprenticing her?” Barr couldn’t help asking.

  “Yep.” Smith nodded in a satisfied way. “She’d been hanging around underfoot all her life, but I’d thought her older brother was going to take over from me. Except he was wild to go on the river, which his ma thought was too dangerous. I told him it wasn’t going to be any less work, neither. We butted heads for a long time, till I finally gave up and let him go. I think he could be surprised, if he ever comes dragging back here, to find the forge didn’t wait for him. Meggie’s half my partner already.
I give her all the fiddly bits, which she’s got a better eye for than me, I must say it what shouldn’t, her ma says.”

  Barr was then dragged aside to dutifully inspect and admire some sample fiddly bits, a right elegant set of ivy-leaf iron hinges and a three-fourths finished spray of copper flowers intended to crown a door lintel. But at last he was able to bring the gossip back around to his own most burning paternal interest.

  “So where are all the Masons now? There was no one around their place. Are they coming back?”

  “Oh, they was all took in by Bell’s sister Iris, down at her place. It makes for a mob, with all those cousins, but family deals as family must. Soon as Fid recovers a bit more, village plans a house-raising for them. And maybe a barn-raising come fall. It won’t be a patch on the ones that burned down, but it’ll be a start. They need something before Bell pops her next one.”

  “She’s pregnant again?”

  “Oh, aye. Fid says she catches like a fishing net, without hardly trying.”

  All right, maybe it wasn’t just me…

  Though Lakewalkers tended to the opposite problem about fertility. Had those assumptions ambushed Barr, back then, made him careless? Nh. At that age, his notions of long-term consequences had come to something like tomorrow’s sundown, so maybe not. “I wonder if she hopes it’ll be a boy to make up?”

  “I don’t think it works quite that way,” said Smith. He cast a glance toward his house, and scratched his graying hair.

  “Yeah, I guess not…”

  The girl was coming back; Barr made his escape before her proud papa could corner him to show off more of her undoubted skills.

  Barr didn’t need directions to Iris’s farm, the Tamarack place after her husband’s family name; he’d checked it out, if from groundsense distance, some of the other times he’d found Lily to be visiting her cousins. He was fairly sure Iris would still recognize him, even after almost fifteen years. Lakewalkers aged more slowly than farmers, not to mention farm wives. For a moment, he regretted the recent loss of his maybe-disguising beard. Whether Iris would still hold a grudge against her sister’s seducer was a question he’d never tested. He’d never seen her mistreat Lily, anyway, though Barr had to grant his stretches of observation had been brief.