Stocker ducked his head shyly to Barr.
“That’s a good making on that groundshield,” Barr observed kindly. “Is it Maker Verel’s work, out of Pearl Riffle? It feels familiar.”
“Close. You’ve a shrewd eye.” The woman grinned. “Verel trained our knife maker at Muskrat Slough Camp how to do it.”
Muskrat Slough’s patrol territory bordered that of Pearl Riffle on the northeast; they hadn’t been participating in the new trial at the time Barr had left for Luthlia. So, the work was spreading, much as Dag and Arkady had hoped, picked up from camp to camp. It didn’t sound as if any lurid mishaps had undercut the effort yet, either, though there were bound to be hitches sometime.
“I’m Astrie Graygoose of Muskrat Slough, by the way, and this is my apprentice. He’s been training for half a year, so far.”
“I hope to be let go on a real patrol, soon,” Stocker confided to Barr.
Without groundsense, farmer-patrollers couldn’t help scan for malices on the pattern-sweeps, but there was plenty of support work to be done for a moving patrol. Arkady had been encouraging patrol leaders to keep careful records, to try and see if farmer helpers made a discernible difference in a patrol’s speed and efficiency, not just ease. Dag, and Barr with him, thought the real value was in bringing farmers into patroller methods so they could go home again and tell accurate stories, bridging the dangerous gulf of communication between the two peoples. Because as more farmers moved north into what had once been exclusively Lakewalker territories, the chance—no, the certainty—of bad malice attacks like the one near Glassforge a dozen years back, or that lethal break-out over in Raintree that had wiped out an entire village, most of a camp, and made a mess of hundreds of square miles of territory, were bound to increase.
Barr touched his temple. “I’m Barr of Tent Foxbrush, down at Pearl Riffle. Been away to Luthlia, just on my way home.”
Barr expected the woman to be impressed by his distant exchange patrol, and indeed her eyes widened. But instead she gasped, “Barr of Pearl Riffle? I’ve heard of you! Maker Verel talked all about you!”
Barr cringed. The Pearl Riffle medicine maker, after all, had known him since his birth, and been a close witness to his erratic youth, patching him up any number of times. “Oh?” he said warily.
“He said you were involved in that nasty episode south of the Grace off the Tripoint Trace, a few years back. Is it true that malice made mud-men that could fly?”
Malices, once they reached full-enough powers, could mold distorted half-intelligent slaves out of animals, which Lakewalkers dubbed all too descriptively mud-men. The process was gut-wrenching, and so were the results. “Yep, evil thing hatched out in the mouth of a bat cavern, up in those limestone hills. Must have been like being born into a banquet. It had millions of the little critters to ground-rip for power, right to hand.” Ordinary bats still gave Barr a twinge. “It made itself a crew of big ones, about the size of a dog. Huge wings on ‘em. A pack of them could get together and lift a man right out of his saddle.” Yeah, ask me how I know this. Better still, don’t. The Trace malice’s mud-bats were still the stuff of Barr’s nightmares.
Both the patroller and her farmer apprentice looked awestruck.
Barr cut across mouths opening with more questions. He was usually good for a long patroller gossip, though preferably over farmer beer, but not today. He half-saluted again. “Well. I’d best be on my way, or my quarry will be out of range again. Thank you muchly for your lead.”
“Fare safe,” Astrie said, letting him go with obvious reluctance. “I hope you find that girl.”
“So do I, ma’am.”
As Barr rode away, he could hear the farmer lad whispering fiercely, “D’you think he was telling the truth about the flying malice? Or was that a tall tale?”
“Oh yes,” replied the courier, who would know. The boy stared agog back over his shoulder. Barr set his jaw and pushed on.
* * *
He paused for a long moment at the junction with the old straight road, mulling. It wasn’t as if Lily could be the only blond girl with a gray nag in all of Oleana, and the worry that he might have been chasing the wrong fox for several days was maddening. Glassforge drew him, not least for the memory of a certain very comfortable inn that gave free rooms to patrollers, which would make a dandy base for his search of the town.
But no. If he tried, he could likely overtake the girl that the patroller woman had seen in a few hours, at least if she stayed within half a mile of the road. If she was the wrong one, he could still double back to Glassforge. If he went to Glassforge first, the girl would pass beyond hope of his catching her for sure. He turned Briar south and chirped her into a trot.
The sun was dipping below the trees to the west when a flicker off the road to his left stopped his breath, and Briar. They were passing a stretch of steeper wooded hills, rugged and unfarmed. A shallow creek draining them crossed the road, so modest it didn’t even rate a bridge, just a splashing ford. About a quarter mile up it, a single person lurked, and, yes, a single horse.
He tried to quell his hope, to persuade himself that the spiky, flaring ground he felt was unfamiliar. It was certainly not the same as the one he’d last burned into his memory two years ago, but then, his own probably wasn’t, either. A person grew, and their ground grew with them. The underlying truth of the world, Maker Arkady had once described ground, so how could it not?
Yeah. We’ve arrived. He turned Briar into the creek, letting her pick her way slowly over the stones. He’d had plenty of time on his ride to rehearse how the blight he was going to present himself to Lily, and none of the scenes exactly matched this one. He’d figured to find her in some peopled place and study her from a distance, first. Make his approach casual, polite and unalarming. For starters, a man sneaking up on a girl alone in the woods could be misunderstood in so many awkward ways it would be funny, except it wasn’t. Well, then, don’t sneak. Make noise. Briar’s hooves were doing a fair job at that, scraping and splashing.
Barr let his groundsense ease from its full stretch, going loose and relaxed. He could sense her, and get a sense of her, before she saw him, at least.
Except he hadn’t expected to be sensed back.
He flinched at her sudden recoil and panic. By the time her simple campsite, tucked into an opening in the underbrush by the creek side, came into the view of his eyes, she was on her feet and had darted behind her unsaddled horse, gripping its mane as if to vault aboard and flee. Moon’s head, too, was up, eyes wide and nostrils flaring.
Oh, dear, that horse. Every bit as pretty as described: salt-and-pepper mane and tail, near-white coat blending to dapples over the haunches like some fancy brocade cloth, and trim gray legs and hooves. In height, just on the borderline of a pony and a horse, as his mistress was on the cusp between girl and woman, but slim-built, not a shaggy barrel-on-legs.
And Barr had never seen a more beguiled animal in his life. From nose to tail, downright besotted. Not that the feelings weren’t returned in full, he expected. Moon’s legs were planted foursquare in a defensive posture, neck bent and head lowered toward Barr, ears back, as if ready to fend off a catamount from a foal.
The tow-headed girl sheltered behind this restive bulwark had grown taller than Barr had pictured, also in that slim-built style just before the fullness of a woman’s body overtook her. It was probably chance, or travel practicality, that her pale hair was drawn back in a thick braid at her nape nearly identical to Barr’s own. Minus the souvenir shark teeth. Bright blue eyes, now narrowed in anger and fear. Long-fingered hands, promising still more growth to come, one clutching a fistful of mane, the other a drawn belt-knife. Ordinary blouse, limp and dirty with the day’s sweat and heat, riding trousers that might be a brother’s or her own, good leather boots just now jammed over bare feet in her scramble up, still unfastened.
And an upset, unguarded ground that beat on him, at this range, like a river torrent.
He wondere
d briefly when, over the years, he had so thoroughly convinced himself that Lily would grow to her farmer side as to not even entertain the notion she’d throw not just Lakewalker, but strongly Lakewalker. And why? To help steel himself to keep his distance, as her mother had demanded? Or because she wouldn’t be his problem, then?
Well, looks like she’s my problem now. In so many ways.
Barr pulled his own ground in, drew breath through his teeth, stretched his lips in a smile that he suspected looked horribly false, and touched his temple in the same polite salute he’d lately offered his patroller informant. Keeping his voice as even as he could, he began with what he hoped would be the most immediate possible reassurance: “Miss Lily Mason? My name is Barr Foxbrush, and your family back in Hackberry Corner asked me to find you. Your friend Meggie Smith guessed you might have come this way. I have a letter for you from your papa Fid.” There. All his authentication out on the table at once. And if it wasn’t enough, he was in trouble.
Her tension didn’t ease. “My mother would never deal with a Lakewalker.”
She did once, Barr did not say. “She wasn’t keen on it, but you threw your family into something of a tizzy, disappearing like that without a word or a note. And your papa couldn’t chase you on account of his burns, though I got the notion he would’ve if he’d ‘a could.”
Slowly, Barr dismounted, but had the wits not to start toward her yet. This was trickier than persuading a wild animal to come to his hand with food. What in the wide green world would she consider nourishment? True, he had more direct methods at his command for persuading farmer girls, ouch, and he’d thought he might be forced to use them if he had trouble getting her turned back toward her home, but he’d never imagined she’d be able to see them coming.
“Do, um, I take from this that you’ve never dealt with a Lakewalker either?”
She shook her head. “I seen a patrol going down the west road a time or two. I took to the hedge.”
That wouldn’t have hidden you from them. “Well, we’re not scary folks.”
Her glower over her horse’s withers denied this assertion in the strongest way. “Isn’t it true you chop up your dead to make magic knives of their bones?”
He could hardly say no, but yes seemed fraught with pitfalls. “It’s a solemn ritual. Part of our burial rites. Not whatever pig butchery you’re picturing.” Though harvesting thigh bones was unavoidably messy, true, and he’d helped in the process more than once. A grim and sad task, and this was not the time to go into those details. The emergency to hand was Lily’s out-of-control ground and groundsense.
Blight it, there had been no sign of such a development in her two years ago. Or he’d have taken steps, though he’d no idea what kind. Not gone off to Luthlia, maybe, or at the very least, detailed a trusted patroller friend to keep an eye on his behalf. And how sad was it that he could not call to mind more than one patroller friend he trusted that much? Remo at least knew about Lily, and would have had the wits to check on her if Barr hadn’t come back, but Remo had long since transferred north to Hickory Lake Camp, and was happy there, or as happy as Remo ever got. String-bound to a nice girl, too, as Barr’s parents frequently pointed out, with meaningful looks his way.
Which jogged his recall of his own rather late and abrupt blooming into his full powers, and the really annoying anxiety on the part of his tent-kin that had preceded it. I should have remembered that.
He leaned against Briar’s shoulder; she drooped her ears and leaned back, blowing out her breath in a placid huff. He tried feeding a little of her calm toward Moon, whose ears unflattened and flicked, though the gelding kept a wary eye on the intruders.
Which promptly rebounded, as Lily jerked up and cried, “What are you doing to my horse?”
Barr stayed still and let his brows rise; kept his voice level. “You feel that, did you? That was a touch of Lakewalker groundwork.”
By her look of outrage, the coin was not dropping for her. Barr sighed and added explicitly, “Which you could not have felt unless you had Lakewalker blood yourself. You ever suspect that?”
“What…?!”
No, evidently. Or she might have been way more curious about patrollers passing through Hackberry Corner. Barr guessed any talk of Lakewalkers was strongly discouraged around the Mason house, so at this point Lily likely knew pretty much nothing about what was happening inside her. Argh.
Growing up in a Lakewalker camp, Barr had been as ground-blind as any other child, but he’d had people all around him with groundsense who knew what to do with it, talked about it, did tricks with it, instructed him in what to expect—well, apart from his one older brother who’d done his cackling best to fill Barr’s young head with terrifying fables, for which Barr had still not entirely forgiven him. The rest of his kin had looked forward to and applauded any little sign of his power’s advent. What if all those sputtering first reports from his new sense had possessed no explanation? Would he have thought himself going mad?
Had Lily?
“That’s not possible!” gasped Lily. “Lakewalkers are evil sorcerers!”
Barr rubbed the back of his neck, trying to look as hangdog and unthreatening as possible, and offered, “Oh, come on, do I look like an evil sorcerer to you?” Which… might not be as clever a ploy as it seemed at first blush, because what if she said Yes!
She did look as though she was thinking about it. Embarrassingly hard. But what she finally came up with was, “How could I possibly have Lakewalker blood?”
“Got a Lakewalker somewhere up your family tree, I expect, maybe on more than one side. Two lines cross, and then sometimes you get a throwback.” Barr tried to make it sound as if distant and unremembered umpty-great grandparents were at fault. It did happen that way, time to time. This reflection suddenly made him wonder about Bluebell’s ancestry, but that was a curiosity for some less-fraught moment.
Barr went on, invitingly, “The last, what, half-year, year, must have been really confusing for you, then. Worse’n wisdom teeth, when your groundsense comes in. All those flickers in your mind that don’t seem to be coming from anywhere. And all that blare leaking from unshielded people. Maybe disturbing for them, too, when you start reading their feelings, and have no way of getting away from ‘em, and they don’t understand why you’re suddenly saying all those strange things.”
Lily slipped her knife back into its sheath, a hopeful sign, but only to clutch Moon’s mane tighter in both hands. “I never said anything. To anyone.”
“Lonely, too, then, sounds like,” Barr tossed out, lure-like.
He hadn’t expected a blighted emotional shark to lunge for it. Her mouth crumpled up and she dropped to her knees with a choke, swiftly muffled as she caught her face in her hands. Moon turned and lowered his nose to snuffle her hair in a concerned fashion. She switched over to burying her bit-back sobs in his silky neck.
Barr gnawed his knuckle, uncertain whether to advance or retreat. The open distress in her made him nigh frantic, because unshielded emotions were contagious, as many a patrol leader had needed to deal firmly with. He finally dropped Briar’s reins, trod over, and lowered himself cross-legged an arm’s reach from her. When her shakes trailed off, which didn’t take as long as it felt like, he tentatively offered her a bracing pat on the shoulder. He might have done the same to a fellow patroller having a breakdown, nothing paternal there at all, necessarily. She recoiled much less, this time. Good? He caught his hands together in his lap to prevent mishaps. Inadvertent hugs, for example, which he sensed would be inadvisable.
She rubbed her eyes with the back of her wrist, snuffled loudly and definitively, and sat up, looking at him square-on for the first time. Barr closed his ground in unconscious defense.
“Oh!” She jerked, startled. “What did you just do?”
“What did it loo—feel like I just did?” he returned cautiously.
“It’s like—you were there. And then you weren’t.”
Barr let his gro
und ease open just a fraction.
“…and there you are again. Are you doing something?” She scowled in dismay.
“Yes. With some practice, Lakewalkers can close down their groundsense, turn it off for a while. As voluntary as closing your eyes. It means people can’t feel into you, but it works both ways—you make yourself blind to others in turn. Which is a really welcome thing, when people make you too weary.” Groundshielding’s critical function in fighting malices, he suspected he’d best leave for another explanation.
She caught her breath. “When I went to Glassforge…”
“Ah, so you did go there. I couldn’t figure out why you were going away from it.”
“I thought it would be a place to lose myself, to maybe find work and never have to go home, but when I got there, it was all… strange. Uncomfortable. Like I was stuffed into a room with about a thousand people that would only hold twenty, and there was no air left to breathe.”
Barr let his tone grow casual. “That would be normal, for a young Lakewalker dropped into such a crowd of unshielded people.” The first really big farmer town he’d ever hit had thrown him totally aback, and he’d had a patroller’s control by then.
“Normal…!” She gulped. “Normal… I thought I was going crazy.” More than a hint of that breathless panic, now remembered, tightened her chest.
“If you’d grown up in a Lakewalker camp, most of the adults would keep themselves to themselves, most of the time. And you’d have had help toward working out how to shield for yourself. Plus, we don’t usually live so tight together.”
She shook her head in bewilderment. “I stood it for one night, sleeping in a shed, then I turned Moon around and rode out again as fast as we could. And then I didn’t know where to go.” Her voice squeaked painfully on this last word, but she fought back further tears.
Knife Children Page 4