Chương 6: Chapter 05 - The Price Tag on Being Right

Calder Tannerson · Age six months Blue's head came up off the floor by the crate before the bell finished. Her ears went forward. She did not look at the door. She looked at him. Neither did I. Two of us in this room who know something walked in, and neither of us can say it. The woman wearing it was tall and rangy, hair the color of wet sand cropped short, a crossbow slung across her back and worn to her as a second spine. A hitch in her walk she did not explain to anybody.

Her eyes came around the room, pale amber, set at an angle no human wore. Skin burned dark by more swamp than most men see in a life. Cal's fist was in his mouth and the bow crossed his eye-line at four feet. The read came up off it before she cleared the threshold. Dry string. Worn catch. A cold-draw death waiting in the served middle. There was nothing new in it. He had run the same three faults off the hunters' bow six weeks back, and the eye did not care that he already knew.

It read what was in front of it and handed him the verdict whether he wanted it or not. Old news. Filed. Move. His fist had stopped moving. Too still. No baby is ever this still. He started the chewing again and let his eyes go loose. A beat late. The woman's head had already come a quarter-turn toward the crate. Not a look. The start of one. She let it go and came back to the bench. I do not have her name. I have bodies. The loud hunter had gone quiet. The two at the bench straightened without deciding to.

His father's voice did not move to meet her.

"With you in a moment, Captain Drostan." Bram did not look up.

"Finishing here first." Drostan. Name and bodies both, then. He did not hurry the words. He did not hurry the work.

"I ride at first light."

"Then you'll want the bow right." Bram turned the strap over.

"Sit if you like. Sitting's free." She did not sit. She set her shoulder against the bench, and her boot started up a small sound against the floor, and stopped, and started again. Unused to waiting, that one. The crossbow took a while to settle. Bram ran his thumb down the length of it, slow, and stopped at the served middle. Then at the seat.

"Strap's the easy part." His thumb stayed where it was.

"String's dry through the middle. It'll part on a cold draw. And she's been pulled crooked. Worn on the catch." He set the bow down.

"New strap, and you'd still lose the bow on a winter hunt. Maybe a hand with it." The captain's boot went quiet.

"Garrison armorer looked at that bow in the spring," the captain said.

"Then he looked at it in the spring."

"He signed it fit."

"Might've been." Bram picked it up again and turned it so the light ran the length of the string.

"String's a year older than his signature. Paper doesn't dry out. String does." The near hunter swore, low and impressed, and bent to look where the thumb had sat.

"Show me," the captain said. Bram showed her. He set her own thumb on the served middle and moved it along until she found the brittle place under the wax. She went still with her hand on her own weapon. The whole diagnosis, out loud, in the time it took a grown man to run his thumb down a string. He gets there with his hands. I get there with an eye I cannot switch off, and only one of us is allowed to say so.

Then Bram's hand went out past the bench edge, closed on nothing, and came back with a coil of waxed cord in it. The band on his middle finger was plain and worn smooth. Three times now. Find out what it costs. Not today. Today I have Drostan. The satchel had settled against the crate rail where his arm could reach it. Blue reached it first. Her nose went to the lower corner and stopped there, and her lip came off her teeth without a sound in it. She has the smell. I have the marks.

Between us we have the whole answer and not one word to put it in. He looked at the corner and everything in him went cold and level. Same square chew. Same patient angle. He closed his whole hand on the strap and hauled it in. The corner of it went in his mouth. That was the entire toolkit a six-month body issued, and it was enough. He worked it with his gums and turned it so the light hit the marks. Small. Even. Paired. Foraging does not hit one seam twice at the same angle.

Six weeks of that mouth under the storeroom floor. I screamed a woman awake over it and she carried me and sang and never looked down. Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon. Bram set a trap built for a quarter of what was under there and caught nothing. The first grown man who can read a chew mark, and I put the mark in his hands. Then his eye came off the satchel and did not stop where he aimed it. The eye ran the strap on the bench. The blown seam in the repair pile.

The gnawed corner under his hand. It sorted them without asking, the same as it had sorted the gate at dawn. Strap. Spaced wrong for the load, and it will let go on the stress run. Seam. Held dry too long, parted where the wax broke. Satchel. Opened twice at the doubled leather, where the smell pooled and something came back to the bleed. The join, every time. That is the boon. Failure-Point Sense, and it is not going to stop. It does not have an off. He held the corner up into the light and kept it there.

"Bah-da." Look at it. One of you look at it.

"Bah-da. Bah-DA." He put a whole morning of it into the second one. Nobody looked. Two grown men and a garrison captain in the room, and the loudest thing in it was a baby holding evidence over his head. So he opened his hand. The corner dropped over the crate rail and landed chewed-side up by his father's boot. Cal put both fists back in his mouth and looked at the ceiling. Bram bent and picked it up. He turned it over once.

"Huh," he said, and turned it over again.

"Let's see." The near hunter came off the bench. He put his chin over the crate rail on his way past and took the corner out of Bram's hand, and he did not sound impressed anymore.

"That's a hill-rat."

"Corner's chewed square. Hill-rat does that. House rat doesn't." He straightened.

"Where'd you range last, Captain?"

"Two days north. Dry hummock."

"That's your answer, then. They're digging that high now." The hunter picked up his own pack and looked at the underside of it a while before he shouldered it.

"Wren's had four sacks opened this month. She's been saying it's cats not doing their work."

"Cats," Bram said.

"Cats," the hunter agreed. Then the storeroom wall let go. They came out low along the base of it, four or five, ordinary and grey and none bigger than a man's boot, and they crossed the open floor between four pairs of standing legs. Blue came off the boards, took one at the doorway without hurrying. One broke for the crate, low and fast. Cal's whole body locked on it. Blue was already turning before it cleared the boot-line, and she took it a hand's breadth from the rail. She had not been watching the rat.

She had been watching him. The near hunter had a bolt in the groove before Cal saw him reach. The far one put a boot on two more. It was done in the time it takes to set a strap down.

"Told you it was the cats," the far one said, and he was pleased about it. The near one did not reload. He was looking at the wall they had come out of, and his hand had stopped on the bolt. Vermin do not quit a warm colony to run at a room full of boots. Whatever moved them is worse than we are. Nobody spoke, and Cal let his own body jump at the quiet. She moved when I moved. Not at the rat. At me going still. He filed it and it would not lie flat with the rest. Bram's hands stopped on the bench.

"I set a trap in the storeroom six weeks back," Bram said.

"Caught nothing."

"You wouldn't." The hunter handed the corner back.

"Trap's built for a house rat. You'd want the ground under it, not the floor on top of it." The captain had come off the bench.

"How big."

"Dog." The hunter said it flat.

"Colony that far up dries the ground out from underneath. Tunnels run, ground goes soft, and one wet season your piers go with it." He shrugged into his pack.

"And where the hill-rats den, the bigger ones come up after them. Wolf-sized. Those hunt together."

"Two days north," the captain said.

"I've a squad camped on that hummock."

"Then I'd move them off it," the hunter said. Nobody said anything for a moment. Bram was looking at the floor of his own workshop. Six weeks. One dropped strap. Drostan's eyes left the floor and found him. He knew exactly why. A woman who read weapons for a living had just watched a baby put evidence on the floor where a grown man would trip over it. She files things. Three weeks out she is at the well asking why the Leatherman's boy watches like that.

"Bad luck in a house, a child like that." The far hunter said it to nobody, cheerfully, on his way to the door. There it is. Not malice. Weather. Me. I built it. One quiet too-long stare at a time. Kill it now or bury it later. He waited. The captain drew breath to speak, and he had a half-second of her open mouth and her eyes on him, and he spent it. He drove his heel into the crate rail. He blew a wet raspberry at the ceiling loud enough to take the room.

He lost the satchel strap and squalled about losing it, on and on, with his face going red and his fists going nowhere. Her question died somewhere behind her teeth.

"Lungs on that one," the near hunter said.

"His mother's," Bram said. Nobody looks at a loud baby. They look away from one. ～～～～～ THE ADMINISTRATOR ～～～～～ You read five made things today and were wrong about none of them. You did not choose to. That is what a boon is, once it has taken root. Attribute Increased...... Perception +1 Skill Points Awarded...... +1 ～～ THIS IS HOW HEROES ARE CREATED. ～～ It has been counting since the gate at dawn, and it did not tell me it was keeping score, and it paid out on a thing I cannot switch off.

Something behind his eyes came a half-step forward and stayed there. The light off the bench was the same light. He could see the grain in it now. And the bill for it is Drostan, who has my face. The talk at the bench wound down. Coin changed hands. The hunters went out into a cold that came in behind them and took its time leaving. Drostan did not go with them. She shouldered her bow, put her hand on the door, and stopped there. She turned back around.

"Leatherman." Bram looked up.

"Your boy." Cal's whole body went to nothing. Slack jaw. Loose hands. A gummed fist and eyes on the middle distance, aimed at no one, seeing the door and the woman and the four steps between her and the crate. Say he sleeps. Say he eats. Say he is six months old and there is nothing to say about him. His father set the awl down. He did not set it down fast.

"He's six months," Bram said.

"I know what he is." She had not moved off the door.

"I've a nephew that age. He looks at the ceiling." Bram wiped his hands on the apron. He took his time about it.

"Boy watches his mother teach four nights a week," he said.

"Watches me all day. Reckon he thinks watching is the work."

"Reckon he might."

"Bow'll be ready midday tomorrow." Bram picked the awl back up.

"I'd not ride at first light on that string, Captain. Whatever the paper says." She stood there a moment longer.

"Midday, then," she said, and went out, and the bell over the door did what bells do. Bram stood at the bench with his hands on nothing. He is covering for me. And he does not know what he is covering. Bram found the line he had lost in the leather. He did not look at the crate.

"Sleeps sound," he said, to nobody.

"Eats everything." He said it twice more before the awl went back in. Then he set the awl down again and went out the back toward the house, and Cal heard the storeroom floorboards come up one at a time. Blue went with him. She did not wait to be called. ✦ They stopped coming up. Bram did not come back for a long while. When he did, he had dirt to the elbow and he did not say what was under there. He went to the wall where the trap hung. He took it down and turned it over once in his hands.

Six weeks that thing sat over the wrong hole. Then he dropped it in the scrap bin. It was the loudest thing that had happened in the shop all day. He pulled a fresh length of stock down off the rack and started measuring. He is building the other one. The one that goes under. Blue lay down against the bench leg where Bram worked and put her chin on her paws. Cal watched her settle, and his hand pressed flat to the crate floor, low, the way it had in the swarm. He had not sent it there.

Her ear came around to him, then back to the door. I do not have a word for what just passed between us. A whole morning of not being heard, and one thing in this house answered me without being asked. That is worth finding out. Quiet, and mine, and starting tomorrow.