“Well, then . . . why don’t you let her harvest with us? We could use the extra hands.”
“Because she’d scare me out of a year’s growth, throwing herself up the rungs and over the treetops, and I need my height, such as it is, to stand up to those Kernan traders looking down their snooty noses at me,” Tolby declared.
“I do believe,” Lily said quietly, “they have far more to fear from you, my dear.”
Tolby looked up at his wife, and then cracked an ear-to-ear grin. “I’d hoped they’d forgotten!” he shouted, and reached up to slap her on the knee. Lily’s voice rang out in soft laughter, the first they’d heard from her in weeks, and it made all the boys jump with a laugh of their own.
Word was, Tolby had once had quite a temper, and it had been suggested that the Dweller would be better off out of the city and in the countryside, where he could knock heads with logs as thick as his rather than with his fellow citizens. His sons didn’t know the truth of that, one way or the other, only that their father commanded a rough respect whenever they went to any of the towns. He was known for his honesty, hard work, and good products, whether it be fresh or dried apples or cider or, rarely, hard cider. Still, he held a flash in his eyes and his sons traded looks again, as they took up their harvesting bags. Short though Dwellers were in the scheme of things, often up to another’s elbow or shoulder at best, their da could hold his own with any man. They had no doubt of that.
“I had a switch around here for slower pickers,” Tolby commented, looking about, and the boys scattered like leaves on the wind, with peals of laughter. He took the last two bags for himself, and lingered by his wife’s shoe. He curled his hand about her shod foot, and Lily smiled down at him. “How are you feeling?”
“I mend. I am doing well,” she answered. “Poor Nutmeg hurts worse than I do, and she can’t begin to understand.” She brushed a wisp of gray-and-brown hair from his creased forehead. “No more children for us, Master Farbranch. At least, not for a while, and not without the help of the Gods.”
He squeezed her shoe. “Should I complain? Three sturdy sons and a beautiful daughter? Lily, you’ve given me all I could ever have dreamed, and more.” He blew a kiss up to her. “Now it’s back to work for me, or those three will decide to see if they’re big enough to threaten
me
with a switch for slacking off.” He chuckled and sauntered off, whistling, slinging a bag over each shoulder. Lily’s smile stayed on her face as she watched him go, and the sadness did not return to her expression for a very long while.
At midday, Hosmer trotted down to the small glen to check on Nutmeg, to find her curled up with one hand under her apple-kissed cheek, sound asleep. He reported his findings to his mother before returning to the harvesting where the wind threatened to do half their work for them, bruising tender fruits as it dashed them to the ground. The sound of the wind-driven sea rose in their ears till Keldan’s sharp, easily diverted attention caught the shrieks.
He threw himself off the ladder. “Mom, Da, it’s Nutmeg!” He pelted through the orchards toward the noise.
Ladders toppled as the Farbranch men bailed on their tasks, gaining ground on the youngest and passing him, Hosmer and Garner narrowly beating Tolby. Lily jumped down and managed a stilted run to catch Keldan by the shoulder. Without protest, he braced himself under her arm as a living crutch and they hurried after.
Nutmeg’s shrieks came excitedly, as she staggered toward them from the river, holding in her arms an oddly shaped bundle as tall as she was, and staggering from its weight. “She’s mine, she’s mine!” cried Nutmeg. “I found a sister and she’s mine!”
“Tree’s blood,” sputtered Garner as he skidded to a halt, then clapped a hand over his mouth for such profanity. Distracted as he was, Tolby managed a cuff to his ears as he strode past his son and planted himself in front of Nutmeg who chuffed and puffed to a halt, and hoisted her bundle in her arms.
“What is that?”
“It’s a girl!” Nutmeg told him. She began to fall over under the weight, and her brothers dove to catch both the sodden rags and their sturdy sister. Nutmeg sat down on her rump as Garner drew the tattered blanket away from her burden.
“It . . . is a girl.” He blinked.
“She was on a pile of sticks in the river and I catched her,” Nutmeg declared. “It was all broken up and she could barely hang on, but I catched her, and now she’s
mine.
”
Lily joined them, smoothed Nutmeg’s tousled hair from her face in a quick check to make sure she was all right, then bent down to see what Nutmeg had rescued. Her hand touched cold skin. “She’s alive,” Lily said. “But only barely.” She traced her fingers about the other’s face, gently lifting the tangled hair from her eyes and mouth and shapely ears, then caught her slender wrist, where cruel bracelets bit into her skin, gashing them, and the pain of her touch made the child blink for a moment at her before succumbing again to the darkness. Lily caught her breath. “And she’s a Vaelinar and a slave.”
Chapter Eight
“THE QUESTION REMAINS, then, how are we going to deal with her? And the first of you who says throw her back sleeps at the cider press tonight.” Lily’s eyes flashed a bit as she looked around the room at Tolby, Garner, and Hosmer. Her word had already been made good by banishing Keldan to the boys’ loft at the back of the house where, even if he had his ear to a knot-hole in the floor, he wouldn’t hear much of anything as Hosmer and Garner knew from years of experience. After the river’s find, though scarcely conscious, had swallowed a goblet of apple juice as if starving, and Lily had pulled one of her old, worn nightgowns onto her, the girls had been tucked into Nutmeg’s attic room, where the warmth crept upward at night. Nutmeg had pulled her into bed and stretched out beside her, body curling protectively about the girl under the quilt Lily tucked in about them.
The older Farbranches retreated to the main room for evening chores and talk, and although they sat doing casual things, they all knew there was a great decision at hand.
Tolby rocked back in his chair, pipe in hand, and studied the best way of lighting it, turning it over and over in his hands. A harvesting season though it was, the night held the edge of Frost Month to come, and no one wanted to sleep on the drafty wooden floors of the press even under a pile of blankets, where the machinery and building creaked, groaned, and leaned with every push of the wind and earth.
Hosmer decided to stoke up the small hearth fire a bit, and Garner turned his attention to sewing a patch on his second-best pair of trousers. No one spoke as he quickly put the patch into place, then he inhaled. “Throwing her back’s an idea,” he murmured, pulling the thread through. “ ’Course, we’d have to toss Nutmeg in, too, ’cause I think they’re attached.”
Lily let out a soft chuckle in spite of herself, leaned over, and gently pinched Garner’s round ear. “Who can blame her for wanting a sister with great louts like you around? She wants someone to play with who is interested in more than beating each other with sticks.”
Garner grunted as he dodged only a little from his mother’s hand, and neatly tucked the bone needle into the patch after tying off his knot and biting the thread apart. His hair fell over his brow in careless waves as he did so, and he brushed it back impatiently. His elbow jostled Hosmer casually as he did so, and his brother roused from looking into the small fire.
“I don’t want trouble,” Hosmer remarked.
“What trouble could there be?” Tolby asked.
“She’s one of the invaders.”
“Who came to Kerith centuries ago, bringing much with them, including horses and tools we use today.”
“Slavers,” spat out Hosmer.
“Some, and those days are gone as well. What would you have me do?”
“Sell her to Bregan Oxfort. He’d pay well for her, he always needs an elven escort for the trade Ways.” Hosmer rubbed his nose in defiance, not meeting his mother’s stare, but watching his father’s face instead to see how his words were being taken.
Lily made a sputtering noise, but Tolby cupped his hand over her knee. “I asked,” he said mildly. “Let them answer.”
“She already wears a slave bracelet. We didn’t do that to her, we’d just be passing the trouble along.”
“And, of course,” Garner offered, “it’s not like anyone would want to know how we got a slave?” His lip curled at his brother.
“Oxfort wouldn’t ask. He’d just drop coins in our hands, and even if he did ask, we’ve got that. It would prove the tale.” Hosmer jerked a thumb at the hearth and remains of a bundle of sticks lashed together with poor rags and leather scraps, hardly sturdy enough to float a sparrow downstream, let alone a body, but it had, though little had survived to be caught on weeping willow roots downstream. “If anyone is going to ask questions, I’d rather they’d be asking them of the Merchant Prince than bringing them to our door. No one would dare step on his toes for long. He’s Kernan kind, and powerful, with armies to protect his caravans.”
“What could we possibly gain by passing her along like that?” Tolby’s hand stayed on his wife’s knee, but it squeezed a little.
“Gain?” Hosmer threw one hand up in the air, in appeal. “Oh, Da. We could sharecrop the orchards and move into town. We could buy that vineyard salon you wanted, and you could retire from keeping the groves, and just work on your brew and warehousing. And Mom . . . Mom could be near healers when she needed them, and have a small tailoring shop like she used to when you first courted her, and make fine gowns when she felt like it, and there would be lots of girls for Nutmeg to play with, and a real school, too.”
“I see you’ve been thinking about this for a while,” Lily responded mildly.
“I have! Ever since that last band of Bolgers came through and rousted us for hard cider year before last. I swear they’ve developed a taste for it over that swill they call booze, and they’ll be back again soon enough, and there will come a time when Da can’t handle them and with us not around—” He ground to a halt.
“I see. Why is it you might not be around?” Tolby drew a small glowing stick from the fire.
Hosmer looked at his father closely. “I can’t stay in orchards my whole life, Da. It isn’t in me. Sooner or later, I’m going to go and see what I want to do.”
Tolby nodded slowly. He looked at Garner who merely shrugged. “I’ve no plans,” he said lightly. “Yet.” As wiry as the others were stocky, one had to look closely at his face to see the Tolby in him; his looks favored Lily more.
“The trouble with young bucks,” the older Dweller remarked, as he let go of his wife’s knee and actually lit his pipe and took a puff on it. “Is that they’re ready to butt heads before they know what a full rack of antlers is, and what weight they’ll be carrying. And before the old buck is ready to retire.”
Hosmer cleared his throat. “What can we do?”
“Think of it this way: what if it were Nutmeg? What if we did have Bolgers attacking, and we’d put her on a raft and floated her downriver to safety? How would you want her finders to treat her, eh?” Tolby’s thick brows lowered heavily. “I shouldn’t even have to ask.”
“I’d kill anyone who hurt her,” his oldest son declared. “You know that!”
“There may be a day when we can’t be here to help Nutmeg, and she has to depend on strangers. What then? We were all newcomers once.”
“Dwellers belong here,” Hosmer answered defensively. “We’re some of the first kin! We’ve never invaded or taken slaves.”
“People are people.”
Garner shifted weight. “Not to them,” he said, backing up his brother. “ ’Course,” and he retreated a little. “I’ve seen Galdarkans bully, too.”
“If she is valuable as a slave, we would have had riders through here already. I can’t say how long she’s been on the river rider, but she wouldn’t have lasted more than a few more days. She’s near starved. From what I know of Vaelinars, they don’t age as we do and their lives are as long as the great trees of the north. She could easily be as old as Mom and I put together, yet still be a child.”
“She is about Nutmeg’s age, physically. Her teeth are still young, with ridges, although she’s lost one,” Lily said. She pushed a hand in her apron pocket and brought out the band which had served as a bracelet, with a ring forged to it for fastening chains. “This one slipped off over her hand. The other Da cut away, and she’ll have scars from that, always it looks. The metal did more than gash her, it branded her as if . . .” Lily stopped uneasily. “As if something evil branded or tattooed itself into her flesh.” She held it out to Hosmer. “Do you wish to put it back on her?”
He stared at the loathsome thing, rearing back. He glared at the floor before muttering, “No.”
“Then what do we do?”
Hosmer looked up, the fire bringing out the gold over the gray in his hair. His gaze flickered with the thoughts running through his head. “We keep her,” he said firmly.
“What if someone comes searching for her? Or sends Bolger hounds after her?”
Garner snorted. “Put her and Nutmeg in the onion-and-garlic cellar. They’ll never smell ’em there!”
“Baths for a week!” chuckled Hosmer. “But it would work.”
Tolby let out a satisfied cloud of smoke, perfuming the air with its spicy apple blend of toback and his own herbs. “Good lads. Now, I won’t say I haven’t been thinking of going to the city, but those plans are off a ways.”
“Till the statute runs out on his charges anyway,” Lily added and stood, gathering up the hem of her dress, merriment crossing her face, and sprinting away as quickly.
“Bah,” said Tolby. He blew a smoke ring in her direction. “Off to bed, then, plenty of work tomorrow. Those apples won’t wait for us!
The boys dashed off from the main room, circling through the kitchen where they could be heard getting a pannier of bread and cheese before thundering up the back stairs to their loft.
“Funny. I don’t remember mentioning food.” Tolby cocked his head, listening to his sons storm the staircase.