Knife Children

by Lois McMaster Bujold

  Barr rolled his shoulders and stretched his arms up, trying not to groan. He felt as beaten as if he’d dismounted from a long day of patrolling. In the rain. I needed to have done this better. It was a lot to ask of twenty minutes of truth, to lance an infection years in the brewing. I want to do better.

  I have to do better.

  “So. That brings us back around to Lily. Given her Lakewalker powers coming on as strong as they are, she needs training. She needs to be around other Lakewalkers, to show her how to go on. She needs to stay here. She can’t go back to your farm.” Leaving aside that she’d fight like a wildcat to resist such a returning, right now.

  That was… maybe a little too blunt, judging from how Fid ruffled up. But any mealy-mouthed hedging Barr could imagine coming up with had to boil down to the same facts in the end. There wasn’t much honesty in pretending Lily had a choice in this, except a little in where: Pearl Riffle, Clearcreek, some other camp. And Barr couldn’t patrol out of Clearcreek, and in any other camp he would have even less clout, without the kin support they both needed.

  And that’s only the beginning of how hard our trail can be to ride. Lily needed to know this. Fid, maybe, could make do with the softer version, until Lily was ready to tell him someday herself.

  Fid, too, stared down at the table, find some echoing fascination in what he wasn’t seeing in the grain. Barr could just about sense him laboriously reworking his every expectation for the results of his anxious journey, and his respect for the man rose a notch. Another notch.

  “Lily,” he said at last, “isn’t really a child anymore, hard as it is for me to see it with my head full of memories. Girls only a little older than her get betrothed, some of them. Bell was only three years older than Lily is now when she had Lily; married and running her own household, too.” Fid contemplated that statement with his own sort of paternal bewilderment. “And I truly don’t know what it’s like to be Lakewalker, on the inside.” He looked up. “It was a long way to travel to realize it, but I believe I have to let Lily choose.” Barr wondered if Fid was also thinking, I needed to have done this better.

  “Do I really have a say?” asked Lily. Her rhetorical tone suggested she understood the catch. Already. Good. Which was not the same thing as happy.

  “Only whether to do it half-hearted or whole,” said Barr.

  “Or throw myself in the river, I suppose.” Barr wasn’t sure if that was a snarl or a scoff. “Which I gather would be considered a sinful waste.”

  Wait, had she actually just made a patroller joke? He offered in return, “That it surely would.”

  “Well, I’m not having any waste in my house. Tent. Whichever.”

  And cranky, it seemed, was not the same thing as unhappy.

  “Glad to hear it,” murmured Amma from the side, and Lily’s head swiveled around to meet her gray glare. They nodded to each other, as if in some mutual agreement. What?

  So even Amma, it appeared, was not wholly immune to youthful admiration. Scary…

  Barr didn’t think there was any more he could do at this table today, and they’d drunk all the tea. A decent escape suggested itself. He tossed out, “I, uh, notice that deep burn on your right hand is giving you trouble still. If you like, I could walk you over to our medicine tent, and have one of our makers take a look at it before you go.”

  Fid looked surprised, touching his right arm gingerly with his left. “Like what you did for me before you left Hackberry? I have to admit, I do think that helped some.”

  It might be the reason he hadn’t already lost a hand or arm to infection, although Barr would make no claims. “Verel or Yina can do a whole lot more than I could. I’m just a clumsy patroller when it comes to groundwork. They can fix up hurts way worse’n this one.” He tapped his neck, and Fid squinted in curiosity. Barr rose, by way of leading, and Fid and Lily followed on tamely.

  Amma observed from behind her desk, “There’s a passable rivermen’s inn down at Pearl Bend, Mister Mason, where you and your boy might find a room to rest up tonight before you start home.”

  “Uh, thank you, that’s good to know.”

  Barr thought Fid took her prompting with fair tolerance, which cleared the last of Barr’s mess from Amma’s desk from her vantage. He breathed relief that he wasn’t expected to find the farmers a place to sleep in crowded Tent Foxbrush.

  He ushered his charges out, pausing to stick his head back in the door at Amma’s lifted hand.

  She stared at him for a thoughtful, unsmiling moment, but then said, “You did all right, Barr.”

  It wasn’t delivered in quite the cordial tone as she’d praised him for the malice sighting, but he wasn’t going to hold out for a miracle. He gave her a short nod in thanks, and retreated while he still had his skin. And, more importantly, his place in the patrol, and all the support that came with it.

  Farmers, Barr had found, often didn’t quite realize that patrolling wasn’t a job of work like a field hand or a boatman. His labor was itself a donation from his tent, just like all his clothing and gear. His hand touched his belt. And our knives, bonded or primed, donations of our bodies and lives. Not something that could be counted in coin.

  Not something that dared be counted at all, until the long debt of the malice infection was paid down even, one death shared with every monster at the last. Barr, like most Lakewalkers, had wondered if that barely understood legacy of their lost mage ancestors would be eradicated in his lifetime, and, like most Lakewalkers, had learned not to think too hard about it. The futile anticipation just made a fellow cranky.

  * * *

  Fid was right fascinated by the medicine tent, and Verel responded with a genial lecture about medicine making while he worked over Fid’s hand, and how the services were being cautiously extended to the farmer neighbors. Fid seemed to take in maybe one word in three of the first, but followed the second with a thinking look on his face. The scorings the mud-man had put on Barr’s neck led naturally to the story of the malice sighting, which Barr let Lily mainly tell, and then back to how he’d found her in the woods, lightly touched on. Lily was already beginning to grasp what details were best left out to a non-patroller listener, Barr was reassured to find.

  Barr managed to limit Fid’s natural curiosity about where his all-but-daughter would be staying to a view of Tent Foxbrush from a distance. He did offer the tidbit, also welcome tidings to Lily, that Barr’s mother was figuring out how to set her up a bunk alongside Raki’s when his middle sister Toshi took over the old girls’ room. No more temporary bedroll on the floor. Barr considered it a sneaky victory that he’d never had to beg outright, though he and Bay had been detailed to do the bed-building.

  After a cast around, they found Reeve down watching the ferry with that river-hungry look on his face so common to youngsters seeing the Grace for the first time, which at least gave Fid something fresh to worry about. Barr raised his standing in the boy’s eyes with a severely curtailed account of his own trip all the way to the Graymouth, most of which was new to Lily as well. This occupied the time till he was able to collect their horses and gear and ease them back to the south camp gate.

  “Are there any messages you want me to give your mother?” Fid asked Lily.

  Her lips flattened; she shook her head, but then managed, “Just tell her I’m going to be fine here.”

  Which was what Bell’s heart most needed to hear, Barr supposed, that Lily was sheltered and well. At her side was a picture disastrous for both. Not so much peace, then, as a truce best preserved at a distance. For now.

  “This isn’t a goodbye forever,” Barr pointed out. “You folks may travel this way again sometime. People could write. And if Lily ever goes for a patroller, well, Hackberry Corner is in one of our patrol sectors.” Which was how this had all got started in the first place, speaking of thorny reminders. “She might be able to stop in for a visit, between duties.”

  By her expression, Lily was not yet ready to regard this offer as a treat, bu
t time changed all things. Given enough of it.

  “And you, Patroller?” Fid’s eyebrows lifted, a bit dryly. “Anything more you want said?”

  Blight, no. If he couldn’t heal Bell’s wounds, the least he could do was not pick at her scabs. “Just tell her I’ll look out for Lily. With everything in my abilities.”

  A quick fierce chin-duck. “See you do.”

  The hug at his stirrup Fid exchanged with Lily was awkward on both sides. Lily muttered a shaky, suffocated Thank you. Fid patted her clumsily on the shoulder in lieu of any more stab at words. It felt like blessing enough.

  The two Masons mounted and rode toward Pearl Bend, with everyone waving a dutiful last hand, even Reeve, who was looking somewhat confused by the day’s developments. Barr was entirely willing to leave Fid to cut and sew whatever explanations he chose for all this to Reeve.

  He sneaked a glance at Lily’s sober profile, watching them ride off. “You going to be all right?”

  She shrugged. “In time. I expect.”

  “Can’t ask for more. Let’s go home.”

  They turned back to the camp, walking together slow.

  Epilogue

  The Pearl Riffle bone shack, lair of the camp’s knife-maker, lay as hidden as it could be in the heart of the camp. Which wasn’t all that concealed, since the patch of woods in the shallow ravine that cut down from the valley’s ridge was pretty small. The paths winding back and forth up into it tried to suggest a graver journey than the number of steps actually accounted for, to put the supplicant in the right frame of mind, maybe.

  Lily, walking ahead of Barr, had an eager spring in her stride that he remembered from his own trek up this track, gods, it really was twenty years back, wasn’t it? At the time, he’d seen getting his bonded knife as his portal into adulthood, outward and visible sign of a maturity that he hadn’t, actually, quite achieved yet. But you had to start somewhere. For Lily, it bore the added weight of marking full acceptance into her adopted community, absolute proof of her right to be there.

  He’d been sixteen then; she was sixteen now. Why did she seem so unfairly young? She’d grown physically, to be sure, in the last two years since he’d brought her home to Tent Foxbrush. At first it had mainly gone into a gangling and somewhat alarming height, but then she’d filled out into her woman’s shape. Watching her full hips sway as her strong legs boosted her up the hillside, her blond braid swinging in counterpoint, made Barr want to leap between her and every young male just like himself who’d ever been whelped. If only she hadn’t made it so clear she was entirely capable of defending herself. With extra tutorials from her amused mentor Amma, absent gods help the coming herd of moonstruck fellows due to be slaughtered in her path.

  He remembered his own father escorting him up this trail, trudging with slow steps that Barr had been sure were put on just to aggravate him. Now he and Oris Foxbrush trudged in tandem. He glanced over his shoulder. The graying patrol leader had a weird little smile on his face, watching Barr in turn.

  “What,” muttered Barr.

  “Just thinkin’. You?”

  “…Yeah.”

  The bare black branches of the late-winter trees seemed to clutch at the turning world like the fingers of a jealous lover, unwilling to relinquish what was already gone. They’d change to shy budding in the first warm week, but right now they suited Barr’s mood a little too well. The path took one last turn through the boles to reveal the tiny clearing and the bone shack in its midst.

  A one-room log cabin, any farmer would call it; barely more than shed-sized, though it sported costly glass windows for the light. The traditional south-facing leather flap was raised on its poles, letting more light into the bone-crafter’s intensely private workspace. Smoke trickled up from the fieldstone chimney, whether for some of the rites of preparation or just to take the chill off the maker’s fingers Barr couldn’t guess. Feris Nighthawk, the maker, would have fasted and meditated this morning in preparation for this.

  Along the eaves, a dozen thighbones and a few robust upper arm bones cured in the cold air, like sinister wind chimes. Each bore a carefully inked label somewhere on its length naming the donor, and the inheritor if there was one. Together with any final brief remarks it had tickled the donor to make, ranging from earnest hopes to last words in some fool argument to really bad jokes. A few people willed their bones to the camp generally, to serve whoever needed a bonded knife. Barr knew a fellow patroller with one; the words burned into the finished blade read simply, USE ME. The death it was meant to ensnare hadn’t yet come up, though he’d carried it for years.

  The thighbone for Lily’s knife had been brought down from Log Hollow by Yina on her last visit home, Yina’s share from a Tent Mink great-uncle and a generous gift. Farmer brides, Barr dimly thought, received bedlinens and cookware and such for their wedding portions, or a few farm animals, or seed grain. Baby blankets, maybe, if things had got far enough. Gifts for life. We get dry bones, and are grateful for them.

  All right, Yina had brought back a cartload of other useful items for a new tent as well, which Barr knew because he’d unloaded them all. Be fair.

  The bone blank had been delivered to Feris a month ago, the delicate groundwork for someday capturing a death to be laid in along with the carving and shaping, polishing and grinding to a heart-piercing point. Word had come down the hill yesterday that it was ready, and so here they all were. Ready or not.

  Feris came to the entryway, smiling at Lily. “Good morning, Miss Mason. Are you all set for this? Feeling well today?”

  “Yes, sir!” She smiled back, rolling on her toes as if to take flight. Barr was secretly pleased Lily had chosen to keep her farmer surname, though he gathered it was half for just how confusing she’d found Lakewalker tent-name-swapping customs. He pictured a future Tent Mason, rising up defiantly, and smirked.

  Feris allowed Barr and Oris an ambiguous smile, waving toward the split-log bench across the clearing from his doorway. “Have a seat.” The tent flap dropped closed emphatically behind him and Lily. Feris had mage-worked knife bone for Pearl Riffle for the past fifteen years, honing all aspects of his task to a courteous and necessary efficiency. When he finished this morning, he’d spend the rest of the day sagging in exhaustion.

  Barr and Oris sat on the bench with matching grunts, which made Barr laugh under his breath.

  “How are you holding up?” asked Oris.

  “I’d think that’s what we should be asking Lily.”

  Oris snorted. “It never is. Giddy-drunk on heroism, the lot of you, and never looking back. Just on.”

  “Not… very far on, seems to me now.”

  “Yeah. I remember how all-fired eager you were, rushing headlong half-ready.”

  “I was too all-ready!” Barr protested.

  “Hah.”

  Barr dug in the damp, cold dirt with the toe of his boot. No insect or frog song yet broke the woods’ chill silence, and bird chirps were still rare and lonely. “Does this get easier? With practice?”

  “The waiting out here, you mean? I had the five of you, and a couple of your cousins—well, I misspoke, it was Kiska came up with Shirri, and your grandmother. Enough that if it was going to get easier, it should have by the time I was down to you.”

  “And…?”

  “No,” said Oris baldly. “Actually, as I recollect, you were the worst. Because it seemed to us you were the most likely of all to end up coming back early to haunt us as a primed knife. I knew I didn’t want to be the one to carry it, if so. Thought maybe I’d give you to Amma to portion out.”

  “That would have been all right.”

  “Not from your mother’s point of view.” And, gruffly, “Or mine.”

  “Mm.” Barr tilted his head, listening.

  “Waiting for the yelp?” asked his father.

  When the knife-maker sliced his thin scalpel across the recipient’s arm to release and capture the live blood needed to bind spirit to bone blade, ground to groun
dwork. “With Lily, I imagine I wait in vain. I’ll bet she doesn’t even peep.”

  “You yelped.”

  “Did not. Must have been one of the others.”

  Oris snickered. “No, it was you. I remember, because I flinched and braced for trouble. Your next trouble.”

  “Well, for that you had to wait a while longer.”

  “A little longer.”

  “Not poking there,” said Barr, attempting dignity.

  “No, you wouldn’t win.”

  The sun warmed the backs of their necks a little, burning wanly through the cloud veil.

  “I hope,” Barr sighed after a while, “it’ll be a hundred years before Lily comes to prime her blade.” After Barr was long buried, by preference. Though Lakewalkers didn’t habitually carry their bonded knives about their persons for, quite precisely, a lifetime in expectation of dying in bed.

  “So we all say,” agreed Oris.

  Barr turned the wedding braid on his left wrist, still stiff and new, threads bright-colored. String-bound to Yina through it, he could feel the life in her as she moved about her tasks somewhere in the camp below. Busy, engaged; he did love her intense focus, the wicked wit he’d discovered behind her straight face, her deep, deep ground. He wondered what oddness she was feeling of him right this moment.

  They had hopes of a child; certainly they were having fun trying for one. Children, in time. Would he, for every celebrated birth, be constrained sixteen years later to sit again on a bench like this outside a bone shack?

  “This is wrong,” he said suddenly.

  “Hm?” said Oris.

  “Feeding our children into this long war. It should be us, not them.”

  “You are them.” Oris huffed, the nippy air making his irony visible as a wisp of mist. “I suppose I was too, once, from somebody’s point of view. Everybody born, dies. If you choose the first, you have already chosen the second.”

  Barr was pretty sure he hadn’t felt the full force of what that meant till now, and he’d participated in every other part of this ritual, up to and including helping a dying friend to share. He stared at the blank leather of the tent flap, not needing groundsense to know exactly what was happening inside. Experience served. “Almost makes me wish I could have left her on her farm.”