Knife Children (The Sharing Knife series) Read online

  After a shortish walk angling up the slope, the clapboard structure that was Pearl Riffle’s medicine tent loomed out of the shadows. It was of a similar vintage to the patrol headquarters, built when the older log cabins, settling into decay, had been replaced with new water-mill-sawn farmer lumber from nearby Pearl Bend. The building had acquired yet another add-on while Barr had been gone, he noted. A tallow-candle lantern, hung on a hook above the door, offered a dim guidelight. Brighter lamps were being lit inside, so apparently Verel had received the word of their coming.

  Lily raised her head and stared blearily. “Tha’s notta tent. Looks just like a house to me.”

  “Lakewalker talk, when we’re being polite about our lapses. I’ll explain later.” He dropped both horses’ reins and went to her stirrup. “Come on down, now.” She did not so much dismount as slump off into his arms. He steered her up the steps.

  She turned her head. “Horses. Moon.”

  “They’ll be taken very good care of shortly. For once, patrollers first.”

  “Oh.”

  He pushed open the door to find three people in the front room, a man, a woman, and a boy, who all looked back with acute interest.

  Verel Owlet hadn’t changed much in two years, Barr was relieved to see: still lean, clean, and fiftyish, hair in a neat black braid down his back. His coppery skin betrayed northern ancestry—Barr’s paler Foxbrush coloration had likely come upriver from the south a few generations back. Barr blinked to recognize the tallish, black-haired boy at the chief maker’s elbow as one of his sons, Quen.

  Verel grinned at his entry. “Well, if it isn’t a familiar face. Good to see you back, Barr!” The medicine maker’s extremely keen groundsense licked out, making a quick first evaluation of the healing tasks that had just landed on his doorstep. “And an unfamiliar face, too. …Good grief, Barr, where in the wide green world did you find yourself a daughter?”

  Barr made a frantic throat-cutting motion which, given his gory bandages, did not seem to be immediately understood.

  Lily mumbled into his shoulder, on which she was leaning, “We’re not related. Just have the same hair color, ‘s all.”

  Barr overrode Verel’s, “You most certainly are!” with a louder, “This here’s Miss Lily Mason from Hackberry Corner, out at t’ west end of Sector Nine, and she’s had a blight burn and a long, bad day. Hope you can help with both.”

  “Of course,” said Verel, giving him a perplexed look, followed by a more kindly maker’s smile to Lily. He added, “I should introduce my new apprentice, Yina Mink. She came on soon after you left for Luthlia, I believe, transferred down from Log Hollow medicine tent to study with me.”

  The woman ducked her head cheerfully at Barr and Lily. She seemed younger than Barr, though not a youngling, with coloration betwixt and between, her reddish-brown hair tied out of the way in a queue at her nape. A simple ankle-length skirt and shirt with the sleeves rolled up, topped by a well-washed, if stained, linen apron, suggested someone who’d come prepared for messy labors.

  “She’s actually just back from a two-month rotation with Dag and Arkady at Clearcreek,” Verel went on, “so you two may have tales to share, later. She’s interested in their farmer schemes.”

  Barr was diverted by that last bit, but, “Later,” he said firmly. “Uh…” His wits, normally quick to self-preservation, were slowing with fatigue, but did manage this much: “Once you’re done torturin’ me, can Lily and me bunk in here tonight?”

  “You know we don’t house the walking wounded, don’t you want to get home…” He trailed off, eyeing Barr. And Lily. Verel was not slow-witted at any time. “But it’s not as if we don’t have the bunks, the latest patrols not being home yet,” he continued smoothly. “Yina, please take Miss Mason here and get her a light ground reinforcement, a drink, a bath, and a clean nightshirt. Check for any other damage. I’ll cope with the smelly patroller.”

  At Lily’s plaintive look and jerky gesture, Barr put in, “Quen—that is Quen, isn’t it? Absent gods, you’re taller. Can you please pull our saddlebags down and take our horses over to the patrol paddocks? Let the girls on duty know they’ve put in a hard day’s work.”

  At a nod from his father, Quen grinned and trotted out. Lily, warily, allowed herself to be drawn off by Yina. “It’ll be all right!” Barr called after her. “Just do what she tells you.”

  Verel took up an oil lamp and gestured Barr into the front treatment room, sitting him on a stool. There followed a contemplative silence while he laid out the tools of his trade, then went off to collect a basin of clean water. Some soaking, scissors, and a touch of groundwork detached Barr’s bandage from the crusts and red ooze underneath. Verel grimaced. “Those are interestingly ugly.”

  Interesting was never a good word to hear from a medicine maker. “Mud-man clawings. Might have been uglier, if the claws had grown harder.”

  “I see that. Touch of blight burn here, too.” Barr could feel Verel’s soothing ground reinforcement go in. Then less-soothing cleaning around the wounds with spirit-soaked cotton wads, more firm and thorough than gentle, which made him hiss. “So what about that girl, Barr? And don’t try to tell me she’s not your daughter.”

  “Half farmer,” Barr got out through gritted teeth, and not just for the horsing around on his neck.

  “Really? …Barr!”

  “It was almost fifteen years ago! I was another man then. Boy, I suppose.”

  “I remember.”

  “Everyone here does,” Barr sighed. “I hoped my stint in Luthlia might cure that.” He watched in disfavor as Verel turned to thread up a curved needle. “Can’t you use groundwork for that?”

  “I’m not the Clearcreek crew, thank you. And even they’d stitch these. Stretchy skin.”

  “Ow,” whimpered Barr as Verel began to demonstrate. “I was young and dumb. I thought I could get away with something. Didn’t find out how wrong I was till two, almost three years later. After that trip to the sea. Ow.”

  “Go on.”

  “In maker’s confidence?”

  Verel pursed his lips. “Maker’s judgment is all I can promise. And due care for the girl.”

  Due care could have all too many possible meanings. Barr didn’t trust Verel quite as much as he trusted Dag, but the maker was likely to be more objective than anyone in Tent Foxbrush. And bringing the lading of these heavy secrets to some safe harbor was suddenly, horribly seductive. Ow.

  “It’s a long story.”

  “That’s fine. This is going to take a few minutes.” As long as needed to get the tale all cleaned out of him, like an old infection? Verel was relentless by trade, as the next needle poke reminded Barr.

  Reluctantly, then less so as his account reached the more recent events, Barr made his confession, punctuated by pained yips. Verel didn’t much interrupt, except with the meticulous work of his hands. They both finished about together, which Barr didn’t take for a coincidence. His hand went to his neck, and was firmly brushed away.

  “Dirty paws off, till you wash up.”

  “Did it really need that blighted many stitches?”

  “I was sewing up ribbons in places, here. Try for some gratitude.”

  “Yessir.”

  Verel sighed. “Your young Lily’s had a dreadful time of it the past month or so, sounds like.”

  “So I make it.” Although Barr still smiled every time he thought of that flattened mud-man.

  “What were you planning to do about it all?”

  “Take her to Dag and Fawn in Clearcreek. I thought I could get good advice from both sides, farmer and Lakewalker, there. And get her one of those walnut groundshields made custom. If she wanted to go home. Or on, for that matter.”

  “That… actually wasn’t a bad scheme.” Verel’s praise would feel more flattering if he didn’t sound quite so surprised.

  “It still could be. I was thinking we might slip out of camp early tomorrow morning.”

  “That girl is not goin
g to be ready for a fifty-mile ride tomorrow. And neither are you.”

  “Hey, we just did forty!”

  “And your horses?”

  “Mm…”

  “Uh-huh.” Verel’s dry growl spoke of decades of arguing with mule-headed patrollers, and winning.

  Barr stared down at his hands, every bit as grubby as Verel claimed. “…Could she share?” he blurted.

  “Hm?”

  “In your judgment. As a medicine maker. Could Lily join a camp?” Could she join this one?

  Verel sucked his lower lip. “I’d have to take a closer look at her, but my first impression was certainly Lakewalker.”

  So had Amma’s been, Barr was reminded. And that Muskrat Slough courier’s.

  “It will be at least another year before her powers settle in past that first rocky rush,” Verel continued. “As you likely remember as well as I do. And some growing at a slower pace after. But given the start she’s made in, what, you said six months, yes. Now, which camp is another question. Some being more rigid than others.”

  “I know,” said Barr. Any camp in Luthlia would take Lily in a heartbeat, Barr suspected; that pressed hinterland was notorious for accepting anyone who could ride, sense, and brought a primed knife or even just a bonded one, no questions asked. He’d been invited to stay himself. But Luthlia was a thousand miles off, up around the west end of the Dead Lake. Camps to the south were pickier about farmers and farmer blood; granted, camps to the north didn’t have farmer neighbors. Yet. As Dag was fond of grimly pointing out.

  So, it was not a camp, maybe not even this camp, that was the hurdle. Which left Tent Foxbrush. Very proud patrollers, Tent Foxbrush. As rattle-pated boys who did not live up to their family’s expectations had pointed out to them, repeatedly. I really do not want to deal with this.

  Barr sighed. “Does that bath and nightshirt offer go for me, too?”

  Verel smirked. “Especially the bath. Patroller reek, whiffy!”

  “Your favorite perfume, Verel.”

  “Heh. Just our most familiar.” But Verel lifted a lamp as Barr creakily unbent from the stool, the maker’s other hand going out to stop a stumble. Barr winced and shrugged it off, limping after the light through the medicine tent and out the side door.

  On the short, covered boardwalk to the pump-and-bathhouse, Barr heard Lily’s voice, raised and distraught.

  “That can’t be right. He kept trying to teach me all these horrible patroller things, and I don’t want to know any more! I never seen a blight bogle before and I hope I never see one again! I can’t be a Lakewalker—” She broke off abruptly as Verel and Barr made their way into the flagstone-paved chamber; its tricky Tripoint iron pump had replaced the old open well out in the yard only a few years back.

  Lily was perched on a stool, rocking anxiously. Judging from her hair, darkened tawny from the damp and hanging in washed tangles down her back, the bath had been accomplished. Her nightshirt was oversized and threadbare, though boiled clean, typical of the outworn clothing folks donated to the medicine tent to take its last abuse from leaky patients. Yina’s treatment must have cut in—Lily’s yelping was a good sign, really; if the blight nausea were lingering she would still be too limp and green to be upset. What she was saying, though…

  “How’s she doing?” Verel asked his apprentice. Senior apprentice, Barr guessed, from her impressive maker’s ground density.

  She turned to him in open relief. “Ground reinforcement onboard, drank all she’ll hold, splinters out of her hands, ointment and bandages to the saddle sores on her knees, which hadn’t rubbed too deep. They’ll scab and heal up on their own if she stays off a horse for a few days. All that’s left is hunger and exhaustion, and I think she’s about ready to try a bite.” Yina smiled at Lily in tentative encouragement. “And a bed is waiting to take care of the other, eh?” She added to Verel, “No other injuries. All in all, a healthy and intact young woman.”

  “That’s good to hear.”

  Barr thought so, too, and then the double meaning of that polite ‘intact’ cut in. Oh. He was suddenly glad not to be a medicine maker, although patrol leaders, too, had to deal with every kind of human hurt, on the fly and with fewer supplies. Still, it was like noticing a dangerous drop only after you’d drawn back from it, a spot of retroactive dizziness.

  Lily swung around and up onto her bare feet, scowling fiercely at Barr. “Tell them it isn’t so!”

  “Which isn’t so?” said Barr, confused again. Or this might be his new permanent state.

  Her hand circled and fell back, as if trying to encompass everything and failing. “That patroller fellow is not my papa!” she insisted to the makers.

  Yina said placatingly, “Well, that ground congruence might be uncle or brother, but it sure looks like father to me.”

  “No, not any! Tell, them, Barr! My papa is Fid Mason of Hackberry Corner!”

  Ah. Barr cleared his throat, feeling sheepish and small. There was no more putting this off, plainly. “In every important way but one I think he really is, Lily.” With an effort, he kept himself from closing his eyes tight as he spoke, like a youngster getting a stitch put in. “But… yeah. Not quite fifteen years ago, I was a young patroller visiting Hackberry Corner. My patrol camped for a few days on your grandparents’ farm. Where I met your mother. We, er, fancied each other. Things happened.”

  “That’s not possible. Mama hates Lakewalkers!”

  “Well,” Barr sighed, “she didn’t then. I rode off, things happened to me… You were rising two by the time I ever got back around there. Surprise to me. Your mama told me to back the blight off—well, she didn’t say blight—and stay away, so I did.

  “But I kept an eye on you, time to time, till I transferred up two years ago to the hinterland of Luthlia. On the way home last week I found your place burned down, deserted, which gave me quite a turn. So I rode around till I found your family at your aunt’s, but you weren’t there. And the rest you know.”

  “No,” Lily whispered miserably. “I don’t want to be a Lakewalker anymore…” Her voice rose in a new outrage. “And you, you knew all along, and you didn’t say…?” The outrage edged into horror. “I was startin’ to get sweet on you!”

  “Huh?” said Barr.

  Verel leaned over, took aim, and flicked him hard with a fingernail upside his head. “And there’s another good reason for being more honest, sooner, Barr!”

  Barr and Lily glowered at each other with equal, he thought, if differently angled, dismay. Yes, he’d wanted her to like him, sure, if only to make keeping her on the right trail easier, but not that way! He choked out, “I didn’t think you’d care for the news.”

  “Well, you’re right!” She crossed her arms tightly, chin thrust out. Trembling. “Explains why you’re so old, though!”

  Was that supposed to be some kind of counter-stab? And how had they descended to stabbing each other, anyway?

  “Look, Lily. No one, not even me, could know you were going to throw to your Lakewalker side until you did, this past half-year. Throw strong, even less. And if you didn’t, if you hadn’t, it seemed best to leave things as they lay, over there in Hackberry Corner. Like your mother wanted. But it didn’t work out that way, so you’re my responsibility now, will or nil.”

  “Nobody asked you to take responsibility for me!” she snapped, then hesitated. “…Did they? Anyhow, I know I didn’t!”

  Helplessly, he scratched his grimy head. “It doesn’t work that way. Patrol rules. If you’re the one who can, the one in position, you’re the one who does. You don’t wait.” Well, there’d been his imagined reinforcements at Clearcreek, toward which he’d been retreating with all the speed he could muster, but waving Dag and Fawn at her seemed pretty pointless when she still didn’t even know who they were. What they were. …What she was.

  “So, am I one of your blight bogles now? As well as a farmer? Pick one! Just so’s you don’t pick Lakewalker!”

  “No—look—that’s
, that, who you are, it’s not something you can choose. Nor me neither. It just is!”

  Verel and Yina exchanged an unreadable look.

  “I’m sorry,” said Yina hesitantly. “It seems I shouldn’t have spoken.”

  Barr waved this off. “Not your fault. Nobody told you.” There’d been no private moment to warn her away from his secrets, nor had he marshaled the wits to make one.

  “But—” Her head tilted. “My word, Verel, how many stitches did you put in him? He looks like a quilt.”

  “Forty-three,” said Verel, with a certain makerly satisfaction. He swung the lamp to cast light on his work.

  Lily fell still, staring at Barr’s neck. In a much smaller voice, she said, “You claimed they were just scratches.”

  “So they were,” said Barr. “Didn’t tear through any muscles much, didn’t rip a big blood vessel. Or I wouldn’t be here to complain.”

  Verel snorted. “Patrollers. Bane of my life.” He set the lamp down. “Later, we will discuss the wonders of adhesions, but for now, Yina, please clear the washroom for us, and get what food you can into that tired young lady, eh? And get her tucked in.”

  Separating the combatants? Might be wise.

  Lily’s tight face looked as if she was stuck between anger and tears, and Barr wasn’t sure which he’d rather, or rather not. The sight was surprisingly painful. But Yina nodded understanding, of the direction and likely the undercurrent as well, and shepherded her charge out. Lily looked back in worry at Barr as his fingers began to fumble at his shirt, all streaked brown and dried stiff. Briefly, Yina followed her gaze.

  As the door swung closed, he called after them, “You did terrific well at the malice sighting, Lily!” He couldn’t see how she took it.

  Verel watched him pick for another moment or two, then sighed, shifted over, and began undoing the obstinate buttons himself. It made Barr feel about five years old. He could almost wish he still was.

  “This… wasn’t how I’d planned to tell her. About me ‘n her.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “I mean, I suspected it wasn’t going to go down well, but I thought I’d best try to get Lily to understand what it meant to be a Lakewalker, first.”