Valdemar Books

by Lackey, Mercedes

  Predictably enough, it was her youngest brother, Trey, who first poked his nose into the vacant room and discovered that not only had the bed not been slept in, but that Keisha’s things were all gone. Trey had been the one who had to be threatened with a near-death experience to keep him out of his sisters’ room; he had the curse of insatiable curiosity combined with incredible mischief and the apparent desire to make the lives of his sisters difficult. Such a combination doomed him to a never-ending round of conflict within the family, conflicts from which he always emerged beaten, but uncowed. Keisha suspected he would have played similar tricks on his brothers, except that they’d have boxed his ears for his efforts. At least, when he teased his sisters, he could count on the fact that his worst punishment would come from his mother or father, and probably would only involve physical labor in the form of punitive chores.

  This was normal behavior for a boy between the age when he was no longer willing to play with girls and the time when he discovered that girls were fascinating and desirable creatures. Keisha knew that, though it didn’t stop her from chasing him out with a brandished broom more than once. Shandi had been known to mutter from time to time that if she had her way, Trey wouldn’t live to grow out of his pranks.

  Somehow, though, Trey did survive, and when he invaded his sisters’ domain, he was careful not to let them find out about it.

  At this point in his life, Trey was far more interested in the girls his sisters could get to dance or spend time with him, and he had mostly grown out of his bad habits, but some things, like curiosity, are not the sort of traits that a boy grows out of. Neither is opportunism; instead of going to his parents with his fascinating discovery, Trey came straight to Keisha.

  He walked right in through the open door of her cottage with a hint of a swagger; fortunately for him, Keisha had no patients at the time, or he’d have gone right out again on his ear, just on the basis of his smug expression. I know something, his face said, as plainly as if he’d spoken it. And I bet it’s something I can get advantage out of.

  As it was, she was amused, rather than annoyed; he thought she wouldn’t want Mum and Da told, and he had no notion that she didn’t give a pin whether he told or not. Still, as first to discover the vacancy, he would benefit, and that would probably satisfy him.

  He had taken particular pains with his appearance; his light brown hair was slicked back with water, his shirt neatly tucked into his trews, his face so clean that it was shiny. Evidently he intended to impress her - which meant that he had actually thought things through, for a change.

  So Trey is the first to notice. That’s not bad. And he’s been planning to see if I want to buy his silence. You know, if he’s actually started to think before he acts, he may actually survive to adulthood!

  “Say, Keisha, all your things are gone from your room,” he said without preamble.

  “I know,” she replied calmly, continuing to roll strips of laundered and bleached cloth into bandages, the task she’d been doing when he barged in. “I’ve moved in here; I’m tired of waking Da or Mum up when I get called out in the middle of the night, and I’m very tired of all the noise. You barbarians are bad when you clomp around in the morning, but the worst is the snoring. One of these nights, the house is going to vibrate apart, and the roof will fall down on you all.”

  Trey ignored the insult, concentrating on the only important piece of information she had granted him: that the move really was a move, permanent, and not just for the summer. “Does that mean you aren’t coming back?”

  “Not only that,” she confirmed, “but I’ve packed everything up that I didn’t take with me and gotten it out of the way, up in the attic. I take it that you want to take possession of the room? Be my guest. I don’t need it, and neither does Shandi. When Shandi comes back for visits, she can sleep over here; I’ve space enough.”

  He grinned. “That’s what I was hoping you’d say! You’re sure, now?”

  “Very sure.” She kept her expression as placid as a grazing sheep. “It’s about time I set up on my own, anyway. People will give me more respect if I have my own household.”

  “And I can have the room?”

  “Absolutely.”

  He didn’t jump for joy, but he might just as well have, given,the expression on his face. “Thanks, Keisha! You’re a good ‘un!”

  “You’re welcome,” she responded, but he hadn’t waited to hear her; he’d pelted out of the cottage and up the path as fast as his feet would carry him, with the obvious intention of having himself in full possession of the precious cubbyhole before any of his brothers knew it was vacant. Possession being nine-tenths of the law, it would be very difficult for them to evict him, and if he worked fast enough, he could even get one of the two beds disassembled and out before anyone came home, thus giving himself a room without anyone sharing it.

  The longer he remained in undisputed possession of the room, the less likely it would be that he could be ousted from it, so it was also in his best interest to keep any of his brothers from finding out that Keisha wasn’t going to use it anymore. Eventually, of course, they’d notice the change in occupants, probably within two or three days, but in the meantime, Keisha’s absence would not be mentioned by Trey. By that time, both of them would be too well entrenched in their respective places to move.

  That gave her another three days of peace and quiet before Sidonie appeared at the door, time that she used to her advantage. Keisha had already made certain that her reason for setting up in the cottage had been firmly planted in the minds of every gossip in Errold’s Grove. She’d made it clear how much more convenient this arrangement was for everyone, and she had the cottage so clean that not even the most fanatical housekeeper could have found fault with it.

  Sidonie walked straight in, just as Trey had, in the early morning just after Keisha had cleaned up after breakfast. This time Keisha sat in her favorite chair with bqth hands full of a sock, a wooden darning egg, a blunt needle, and wool yarn. She was in the middle of mending, which gave her an excuse to stay where she was as her mother strolled around the cottage, not speaking at all, but examining the place minutely, as if she had never seen it before. Sidonie’s expression was closed, arms crossed over her chest, but Keisha knew that her mother could not hold in her feelings for long. “Well,” she said, finally, “you’ve certainly made yourself at home here.”

  But her daughter had gotten a week’s grace in which to decide exactly how she was going to handle the inevitable confrontation, and even though her stomach knotted and her head began to throb with tension, she kept her face calm and her manner casual. “I started thinking after Shandi left, thinking that the house could do with a few less people in it. Bright Havens, Mum, the boys would crowd Kelmskeep, much less our place! Then I thought of other things. There was no need to keep disturbing you and Da with my night calls, since I have this place,” she explained, keeping her voice warm and slightly amused. “I haven’t been much help around the house in the last six months, what with all the patients I’ve had, and with Shandi gone, it seemed as if it would be easier on you if I were to take care of myself. Now that the boys are doing their share of the work around the house, you really don’t need my help at all, anymore. This arrangement should be more convenient for everyone.”

  “Convenient?” Sidonie’s voice got a bit shrill, and her control over her expression slipped. Strangely enough, she looked a little frightened as well as upset. “Convenient for what? You aren’t old enough to be living by yourself, and right at the edge of the village, too, out where who knows what could happen to you! What will everyone think? Here you are, all alone, no one to chaperone you - people are going to talk! They’re going to say we drove you out, or that you ran away, that we’re wretched parents to let you be on your own in the first place!”

  Keisha laughed, startling her mother into silence. The laughter was strained, but Sidonie was too full of her own emotions to notice. “Talk? Good gracious, Mum, what a
re they going to talk about? No one is going to think that you are bad parents, and if there had been a fight, you know that the neighbors would have overheard it! They didn’t, so obviously there wasn’t one.”

  “You can’t be living alone!” Sidonie insisted. “There’s no one to protect you here.”

  Keisha shook her head, and wished that she hadn’t. “I doubt that will ever be a problem. No one ever comes here that isn’t sick or hurt. No one would dare hurt me. The rest of the village would have his head on a plate. As for this cottage being on the edge of the village, well, that hardly qualifies as isolation! If I even whispered for help, the neighbors would hear me.”

  “Maybe you don’t think that living out here alone is going to cause people to gossip,” Sidonie said darkly, “But - ”

  “Mum, there’re no ‘buts’ about it,” Keisha interrupted, wanting to get the unpleasant scene over with. “Not when anyone in the village can come here at any time of day or night, knock on the door, walk straight in, and see that I’m quite alone. You forget what I am - people have every right to come here whenever they need help. I have less privacy here than I did at home! If I were carrying on an illicit love affair, moving here would be the worst thing I could do!”

  “Keisha!” Sidonie cried, shocked.

  “Well, it wouldr she insisted. “If I’m not here, it’s going to be noticed right away, and people are going to want to know where I am and look until they find me! There is no way that I could go off for a romp in the hay-fields, Mum; sure as I did, someone would get sick or hurt, and the whole secret would be all over the village. And I can’t have a young man here without someone eventually walking in on it! So there you are. Not only am I chaperoned, I have the entire village as my chaperone!” She shrugged. “Besides, as you well know, I haven’t any suitors. I doubt that there’s a boy in the entire village who thinks of me as a girl. I’m the Healer, and for them, I’m about as likely a source of romance as a tree stump.”

  “Maybe, but you still aren’t old enough to be on your own like this,” Sidonie replied stubbornly.

  “I’m old enough to be married, with a family, and you’ve said as much yourself,” Keisha countered, as her stomach soured and her neck muscles knotted. “So I’m old enough. I have all the proper domestic skills, and I can take care of myself quite neatly. Well, look around you. If you see anything amiss, I’d like to know.”

  “But what are people going to say about us, about your father, about me?” Sidonie’s voice was no louder, but there was a definite edge to it. This, then, was probably the source of her anxiety. “They’re going to say that we drove you out, that we were such wretched parents that we fought, that - ”

  Again, Keisha interrupted. “They’re going to say what they’ve been saying for the past week, that I am a very considerate daughter to see that not only were night calls disturbing you, but that I was afraid that some folk hesitated to call me out because they didn’t want to wake the rest of the household just to get me. I’ve made a point of telling everyone who noticed that I was actually living here that this was the reason why I moved. They’ll say that only someone who was raised right would be polite enough to want to save her parents from such disturbance, and at the same time make herself more available to the village than she was before.” She chuckled, shocking her mother out of incipient hysteria. “And if you don’t believe me, ask Mandy Lutter; she’s all but taken credit for the idea herself. She’s got half the village convinced that it was a chance remark from her that made me see it would be easier for people if I moved to the cottage.”

  “Oh,” Sidonie said weakly, all of her arguments overcome.

  Keisha’s own symptoms of stress began to ease, and she felt that she was winning the confrontation.

  “Mother, love, I’m hardly living away from you when the house is all but next door,” she pointed out, a little more gently. “How big is the village, after all? If it will make you feel better, I’ll make sure and come home for dinner as often as I can. If you need me to help, you’ve only to ask, and you know that. If I really wanted to leave you all, I’d let Gil arrange for me to go to Healer’s Collegium. I’m here, aren’t I? And haven’t I said all along that I’m not going to the Collegium? I promise you, I haven’t changed my mind.”

  She would have said more, pressing home the point, but just then two young men came in, supporting a third, whose arm bent at an entirely unnatural angle at the shoulder joint. Keisha dropped her mending and forgot everything she was about to say, forgot even her mother’s presence, until it was all over and the dislocated shoulder was back in place again. By then, of course, Sidonie was gone.

  But she had simply slipped out, so Keisha had won; or at least, her mother had gone off to think about what she had said. Sidonie was perfectly capable of thinking clearly when her emotions didn’t get in the way.

  So when she’s thinking dispassionately about what I told her, I will win. Keisha sighed, the last of her tension ebbing. It hadn’t been nearly as bad as she’d thought it would be.

  A dislocated shoulder didn’t create nearly the mess of the average wound, and there was very little to clean up after the young man had gone. Keisha put the room to rights again, returned to her chair, and picked up her mending, but her mind was still on her mother.

  It would probably be a good thing if I showed up at supper - or before, actually, with some fresh herbs or salad greens. That way I’ll just show that I meant what I said, that I’m not actually leaving the family, I’ve just put a little distance between us.

  She finished the mending, took care of several children with insect stings and some ugly thorn scratches, then spent the afternoon dosing some horses for worms. As suppertime neared, she finished that task, returned home, and went into her garden to gather a peace offering.

  She entered the kitchen with her basket of clean salad makings, expecting to find her mother there. But Sidonie wasn’t at the house, she’d gone out to the farm, according to Trey, who was in charge of the evening dinner. He welcomed Keisha, her offerings, and her help with pleasure, and the two of them put together a good warm-weather meal of soup, bread, and salad in short order.

  Sidonie came back arm-in-arm with her husband, sun-browned and smiling under the rim of her work hat, and greeted Keisha with calm pleasure. That told Keisha something important: that her mother had checked with Mandy Lutter, that most notorious of village gossips, and what she had heard had pleased and reassured her. Mandy was not likely to withhold anything juicy about anyone, not even to the subject’s mother.

  So everyone is saying what a good girl I am to be thinking of my family and of the village’s welfare, she thought with conscious irony. Mandy and the rest are all seeing how convenient the arrangement is for them, no doubt. Well, it is convenient for them - and I don’t mind if I get a few more midnight calls than I would if I was still living here. They can say whatever they like about me. As long as it makes Mum and Da feel better about this situation, that’s all that matters to me.

  She sat down with the rest to dinner, Sidonie having greeted her bonus of salad with a smile of thanks, and discovered that as of this afternoon, there was another topic entirely to interest everyone in the village. She had taken second place to a much more entertaining subject.

  “I saw Mandy Lutter today, while I was on my way out to the farm. For once, there was a good reason to get Mandy’s mouth going,” Sidonie said, once the soup had been ladled out and everyone had started on the meal. “I won’t tease you and make you guess what her news was, though. It’s too exciting for that. Young Darian Firkin is coming back at long last! He’s going to come back, just as he promised Lord Breon, and there’s going to be a mage here again! Can you believe it?”

  For a moment, Keisha drew an absolute blank as to who “Darian Firkin” was, but only for a moment. She blinked in surprise; the young boy who had been Wizard Justyn’s apprentice had been gone for at least four years, and she honestly hadn’t expected him ever to retu
rn, no matter what he’d promised. Why should he? He’d been adopted by Hawkbrothers, he’d gone out to see the world, what could possibly tempt him to come back here except that old promise? “Back where? Here? Is he going to set up in Errold’s Grove?”

  And for one, panicked, admittedly selfish instant, she thought, Ami going to have to give the cottage back? Oh, Havens, no. That can’t be the reason Mum is so pleased!

  “No, no, not here, not the village,” Sidonie corrected, waving a chunk of bread vaguely at the window. “He’s going to have a place outside the village, he’s going to have a lot of those Hawkbrothers there, and of course they wouldn’t feel comfortable living right in the village. But he will be within easy fetching distance of Errold’s Grove. If we need his skills, we’ll be able to get him.”

  Thank goodness. . . . My refuge is still mine, was Keisha’s relieved thought.

  “Most people wouldn’t feel comfortable with those bloody great birds about, staring at their hens,” Ayver pointed out with a laugh. “So it’s just as well he isn’t planning on moving back into Errold’s Grove. Don’t forget, he’s got one of those huge birds himself, so even if his friends didn’t want to stay here, if he did, that bird would be here, too. Poor hens and ducks would likely never lay again for sheer nerves.”

  “Where, outside the village?” one of the boys wanted to know. “How far from here?” They glanced at each other, and Keisha thought she knew the notions dancing in their heads. Hawkbrothers - there were all sorts of things the Hawkbrothers knew or could do, and anyone who got friendly with them stood a good chance of picking up some interesting information and skills. If this place they were settling was close by, a fellow had a chance of slipping over there now and again without being missed from his work.