Knife Children (The Sharing Knife series)

by Lois McMaster Bujold

  Not back home, obviously, or she’d have turned onto the same road Barr had been traveling, and they’d have met hours ago. “I see,” Barr said. Which sounded pretty vague and useless in his own ears, but maybe would encourage her to go on.

  She looked up in sudden hope. “Can you teach me?”

  “Not in an evening, no. It usually takes some months of practice to get a handle on it.” Or years, before one was strong enough to face a malice and not get ground-ripped.

  “Oh.” Her face fell.

  “But you could be taught in time, yes,” he put in hastily. “No doubt of it.”

  “Oh…” She chewed on her lower lip, staring at her knees.

  “Well,” said Barr, which made her jump again. “It’s pushing dark, and I have a tired horse to take care of.” By the flicker in her, this ploy caught her attention. He clambered to his feet. “I will invite myself to share your fire tonight, but Briar comes first.” Not giving her an opening to refuse his company, and cloaking his determination to stick to her in horse concerns, which seemed to work.

  She watched in wary fascination as he pulled his gear from Briar’s back and set about his nightly routine of horse-care, ingrained from hundreds of patrols. She’d fled Glassforge in too much of a pelter to restock rations, it appeared, because he had no trouble convincing her to share the last of his Tamarack grub, extended, and taken, with a long arm.

  He prudently waited until she had some food inboard before digging out and handing across Fid’s letter. He thought she’d have been happier if he’d offered her a rattlesnake, but she did take it, and, after biting her lip, ripped it open, scattering the carefully reaffixed sealing wax. She peered at the crabbed scrawl in the growing twilight, mouth moving as she sounded out the words. When she finished, she squeezed the letter into a tight ball and threw it hard onto the fire. Barr winced as it flared up, feeling for Fid.

  “Good news or bad?” he asked, as if he didn’t know.

  She hunched, wrapping her arms around her knees and rocking. “Same stupid, stupid… Agh!” Moon, unbridled and quite unsecured, wandered over and nosed her cheek, and she leaned into him, sniffing.

  Barr decided to take a chance. “They told me about the fire.” He did not add, And Edjer; he was entailed, and there was an unfine line between prodding, and impaling through the heart.

  She looked up with a bitter glare, eyes glinting blue in the firelight. “I s’ppose you think I’m a, a ars’nist, too.”

  He hardly needed the question at this point, open as she was, but she did. “Look me in the face and answer me. Did you start that fire in the barn?”

  Compelled by the gravity in his voice, she did so. “No!”

  “And I can see you are telling the truth.”

  She reared back, weirdly offended. “Why? Nobody else did!”

  “Because I don’t have to believe. Or guess, or judge. Groundsense is the difference between someone telling you the sky is blue, and looking up to see it with your own eyes. It’s not fair to expect a blind man to make out blue.” He thought he could safely leave the conclusion to her.

  She mulled this for a minute, good, not flaring into argument. The wheels were turning in her head, though, for at last she said, “Can Lakewalkers even lie, then?”

  “Not to each other, not easily. We can lie to farmers all right. Young patrollers can get carried away by the novelty, at first, but it turns out there are consequences.” And he wasn’t going to volunteer those stories, not tonight. No more than he would press her to tell what she hadn’t added to hers, whatever bur in her hair it was. There would be time to comb that out later.

  Because wherever this was going, he thought as they both settled into their bedrolls on opposite sides of the fire, it wasn’t shaping up to be nearly as simple as frog-marching her back to her farm.

  Blight it. He rolled over, but didn’t drop off for a long time. Neither, he noted, did she.

  * * *

  Barr was glad he’d given himself the night to sleep on this tangle, because when he woke up, he had a plan. And it was a good one, too.

  He waited till after they’d washed their faces in the creek, and tended to their horses, and Lily, wincing, had watched him scrape his knife over his face, and they’d both eaten, before he presented it to her.

  “We’re going to ride out this morning.”

  She was on her feet in an instant, fists clenched and blond braid swinging, glaring blue fire at him. “I don’t want to go back to Hackberry Corner! You can’t make me!”

  Barr probably could, but no. “In fact, you can’t go back to your farm, not the way you are now. It would be irresponsible, not to mention downright cruel.” All right, hearing himself preach responsibility was like spitting cotton bolls out of his mouth, but needs must drive, as the farmers said.

  It took the wind right out of her sails, anyhow. She blinked at him. “What?”

  “Until you’ve mastered your own groundshielding, it would just thrust you back into the same painfulness you came out of. But there’s a shortcut for that problem.”

  She sank back to her haunches. “…What is it?”

  “Some Lakewalkers I know, really fine makers, developed a way a few years back to place shielding outside the body. They mostly use walnuts, but I’m told any living seed with a tight sturdy shell can anchor the shielding. And they discovered, through some trial and error, how to bind this to a farmer’s ground. One of the fellows was trying to work out a way to shield his farmer wife, see.”

  “I… I didn’t think Lakewalkers were allowed to marry farmers.” She eyed him in new speculation.

  “It’s heavily discouraged, and he got in a lot of trouble over it—he was exiled from his camp—but more good came of that in the end than I think anyone foresaw. It sure loosened up my notions of what can and can’t be done. Anyway, I can take you over to him—he and his wife’s got a place at Clearcreek, about fifty miles up the Grace from Pearl Riffle. We can cut across the top of the triangle to there by riding overland on the patrol trails.” Thus avoiding Pearl Riffle, Barr’s tent-kin, and a host of complications, yeah. “Dag can fit you with the same kind of groundshield they’re trying out on the farmer-patrollers these days. And then, well, and then you can make a choice.”

  “To go home? Or… what? What’s the or-what?”

  Barr scratched his head, grimacing. “Lily, I don’t know yet. I do know I haven’t worked through all the possibilities. Thing is, you don’t have to do this on your own. No one else ever does, so why should you?”

  Her “Oh,” was very small. But thoughtful. Thing was, she would fall in behind him today without protest, which would at least get them headed the right way.

  Though sometime, plainly, he needed to give her a lecture about not letting herself be talked into going off into the woods alone with strange men. But that had better wait.

  Also, the ride would give Barr a chance to do some more make-up tutoring on matters Lakewalker, not that he could mend a lapse of years in a few days. Which was no excuse for not starting—doing what he could, with what he had, where he was, as Fawn would no doubt put it in her daunting downright way. There was also the chance Dag would have some idea what to do about Lily’s over-beguiled horse, which even now was sniffing at her distress and trying to lick her like a foal, which at least distracted her and made her laugh, fending off slimy horse-tongue. On Barr’s current list of problems, Moon wasn’t even on the first page.

  “Farmer-patrollers…?” she said, when she’d fallen solemn again.

  “Haven’t you heard about that, back at Hackberry Corner? I know Smith knows, because I’ve told him myself.” From the smithy, the word should certainly have trickled out.

  “We didn’t talk about Lakewalkers at my house. But my cousin heard a rumor patrollers were picking up farmers and magicking them to be their servants.”

  Beating his head on a tree wouldn’t be helpful, Barr supposed. “That’s backwards. Shielding actually defends a person f
rom anyone messing with their ground without leave. And it’s strong—has to be, to be any use against a malice. Which eats ground, and sucks the life right out of you. Anything that’ll defend against a malice will for-sure defend against a Lakewalker.” He added conscientiously, “The farmer helpers do all the same work on a patrol that we do, side by side, except sweep for malice-sign at a distance. Or go in for a final attack.” The efficiency-debates belonged to some more advanced tutorial, he reckoned.

  Lily didn’t even have as much gear to gather up as he did, so they were soon on their way. She rode behind him single-file into the maze of twisty patrol trails, all looking alike to the unfamiliar eye, that netted the hills southeast of Glassforge. This discouraged conversation apart from a few directions and remarks called over his shoulder. Barr had to wait to take up his thread again until their noon halt to rest the horses and themselves. They fetched up at a rocky clearing overlooking a ravine, scar of an old earth-slide.

  Lily perched on a boulder; Barr stretched out his legs and put his back to another. He then amused himself by introducing her to dried plunkin, a standard and long-keeping patrol ration from his emergency supply kept in the bottom of his saddlebags.

  She chewed on the leathery strip in some doubt.

  “How do you like it?” Barr asked slyly.

  “It’s… not bad.” He watched her struggle for politeness. “Better than jerky.”

  “I have some venison jerky, too, somewhere in there if you want.” Marginally better than eating the saddlebags as it was.

  “That’s all right,” she said, swallowing bravely. “I’ve never ate Lakewalker food before. Do you have this all the time?”

  “Not if we can help it.” Charitably, he handed across his water canteen.

  “Oh.” The ghost of a grin flickered over her face, which was rare and sort of enchanting. “Like parched corn cakes.”

  “Pretty much, yeah.” He added, “The bulbs grow like a root vegetable at the bottom of lake shallows. From special-bred water lilies.”

  “Huh.” The specter-smile faded again as she looked him over. “Can I… ask something Lakewalker?”

  “You can ask pretty much anything, Lily. I’ll answer as best I can.” Maybe. Depending.

  Her gaze flicked to his waist. “Is that one of those human-bone knives they talk about?”

  Barr kept his voice easy. “Ayup.” He drew his bonded, unprimed knife from its sheath and cradled it in his hands. Eight inches of maker-treated bone blade ran up to about four inches of wrapped hilt, just fitting his fist. The point was as sharp as bone could be polished, and his sheath was custom-built to protect it.

  “Is that what patrollers stick in a blight bogle—a malice?”

  “Yes. Well, not this one. It’s not ready for that job yet, not primed.”

  “Uh, then why do you carry it around? Wouldn’t a, a primed knife, whatever that is, be better?”

  “Yes, and I usually have one, but I used my last primed knife on a sessile malice up in north Raintree, that I ran across coming home. Quick work, that one, which is the way I like it. I was going to beg a replacement knife at Hickory Lake Camp, where I stopped for a visit, and they would have given me one, too, but all their spares were out with patrollers that week. So I figured to wait till I hit Pearl Riffle.”

  “But then you went out of your way for me.”

  “Not very much out. Taking care of each other is as much a duty for Lakewalkers as hunting malices.”

  “Huh.” She digested this for a spell.

  All right, the next part was maybe the hardest hurdle he would have to get her over. Don’t mess this one up, Barr. “Malices are immortal, deathless, and after they hatch will just go on eating ground, eventually killing everything around them, until the whole world is dust. I don’t know if after all the malices then ate each other, the last one would starve, and I don’t especially want to find out. Although I should say malices do eat, that is ground-rip, each other. Not good, because then the eater grows faster. Anyway, the reason these are called sharing knives“—he lifted the one in his hand—“is because they’re built to share death with a malice. And the way it gets that death is from a Lakewalker. When a Lakewalker is on the verge of death—usually—the trick is to shove the unprimed, bonded knife into your own heart, so that the unmaking of your death is caught by the groundwork laid in the knife instead of going into the air, so to speak.

  “This knife has been bonded to me personal by a Lakewalker knife-maker. I always keep it on me so’s if I run into any fatal mishap, out and about in the world or on patrol, it’s right there to stick into my heart, or get stuck into my heart, because sometimes you need help for that part. It’s an act that needs physical strength at a pretty awkward angle, see. And there’s no saying you’ll be in condition to roll over on it, which is about the only way to get enough force to make it quick.”

  He glanced up to check how she was taking this, so far. She had twisted into a ball atop her boulder and was staring at him big-eyed. Um. He forged on.

  “Patrollers all learn how to help each other to this. Now, I have no plans to fall off my horse and break my neck on this little trip, but, you know, just in case, I think we’d better have you practice a bit. So’s you’d know how if you had to.”

  “You want me to murder you?”

  “Sharing isn’t murder.”

  “Help you kill yourself, then! Just as bad!”

  “Sharing isn’t suicide, neither. Jumping off a cliff or drowning yourself is suicide. The most shameful thing in the world to me, to most any patroller who’s ever seen a malice at work, would be to waste my death. Way worse than… than any other dodgy thing I’ve ever done nor hoped not to do.”

  She swallowed and kept staring.

  “What I’ve just said to you is the most important secret to ever know about us Lakewalkers. A primed knife isn’t just a piece of bone, it’s a mortal gift to the future, that a person can only give once. There’s a whole raft of camp customs about knives, making them, bonding them, who gets to will them or keep them or carry or allot them, disposing of the broken pieces after a kill, all of it as emotional as can be, underneath. I’ll try to tell you the key ones, so’s if we run across another Lakewalker you won’t put your foot wrong. Though I think you can guess the first rule is, don’t make a big fuss about it. You just deal.”

  And the next important thing was how she had drawn in her erratic ground during his homily, ah! Just a flinch, so far, but as diagnostic as what she’d done to Moon. We can work with this, yes. Had watching toddler-Lily take her first steps felt something like this to Fid…? Unsettling thought. Later.

  She lifted her chin from her tight-bent knees, where it had sunk. But the first question out of her mouth was not one he expected. Naturally. You learning yet, Barr? “Can those farmer-patrollers of yours… share?”

  “No,” he said simply. “This gets into the details of knife-making, much of which is, frankly, over my head, though you can try to get Dag or Arkady to explain it all, when we get there. They call it affinity. And I would purely like to know how we Lakewalkers have it with malices, and ordinary folks don’t, because it has something to do with how the old mage-lords wrecked the world in the first place, and how the first malice was made and killed and burst and spread, something way over a thousand years ago. Maybe somebody will recover that history someday, but I know it won’t be me. I have patrols to walk.” He took a breath.

  “Which brings up another thing about farmers and Lakewalkers. You know both sides discourage or outright forbid intermarriage, and you know this sometimes fails.” Still more at couplings that weren’t marriage, ahem. “So farmer-Lakewalker crosses are a known thing, always have been. I had to get Arkady to tell me this, once, because even I didn’t learn it at home. Sometimes those crosses have enough groundsense, or maker ability, to ask to join a Lakewalker camp. The real test of whether the camp’ll say yes is if the camp knife-maker judges the person has enough affinity to share
their death. If they don’t make that threshold, then they’re refused.”

  Her face scrunched up. “So what happens if someone born in a camp doesn’t have enough of this… affinity? Or does that happen?”

  “Sometimes,” Barr admitted.

  “Are they thrown out?”

  “Not usually. There’s still plenty of work needs doing that doesn’t take groundsense. Hence, farmer-patrollers. But they’d have trouble getting string-bound—married, you would say—and they’d be discouraged from having children.”

  She was of farm stock; she knew about breeding animals. She didn’t seem to have trouble following this. But what she said was, “I’m beginning to see why you people keep yourselves to yourselves.”

  “Yeah,” sighed Barr.

  Her eyes narrowed to silver slits. “So… if I was to ask to join a camp, would they let me in or not? Do I have this affinity thing? Am I a Lakewalker?”

  Yes, Barr did not say aloud. The inadvertent beguilement of her horse alone proved it. It was possibly the first time that imagining someone he knew choosing to share seemed a horror and not a heroism, and he was oddly shaken. And then he wondered about his parents, and then he wondered about all parents. He dodged the thought and the question with, “Arkady or Dag could tell, when we get to Clearcreek. For sure.” Which was true enough.

  And her curiosity would keep her following him all the way there, without him having to apply any cruder persuasion, good. That, and her shattered belief she’d nowhere else to go; best put off arguing her out of that.

  He then jumped up and diverted her with acting out the basic techniques for assisting with a sharing, prudently using short sticks instead of the real thing or their steel knives. This seemed to go over about as well as asking her to eat worms, but she set her jaw and pushed through, right valiantly, he thought. This led, in turn, to his declaring that she needed to learn basic patroller knife-fighting styles, too, promising the first lesson at their night’s halt. Upon his assurance that patroller-girls learned this, and yes, there were girl patrollers, plenty of them, including several of Barr’s immediate relatives, he won her provisional assent.