The Bone Knife Read online

The Bone Knife

  By Intisar Khanani

  The Bone Knife

  Copyright 2012 Intisar Khanani

  Cover art © by Stephanie Mooney

  All rights reserved.

  The Bone Knife

  “We’ve a visitor,” Niya says as I enter from the kitchen yard. She kneels before the low work table at the center of the room, punching down the morning’s dough, her arms daubed with flour and her hair wisping out of her braid. “I heard Baba answer the door a moment ago.”

  “I know. He’s trouble.” I cross the kitchen, debating how to handle the sort of trouble he is. With our mother gone to town, and our father already busy with him, it falls to me as the eldest of my sisters to figure out what to do. “Did you make any of your specials?” I ask, taking a taste from the pot bubbling over the fire.

  “Just the bread—who is he?” Niya turns towards me, pushing her hair back from her face and coating the stray locks in white.

  “I don’t know.” I join her at the table and lean down to take a pinch of the dough. Underlying the gentle flavor of rosemary I catch a hint of warm blue skies, wheat fields golden in the sunlight, swallows warbling. I have to hold back a sigh as the taste of Niya’s magic fades. “We’ll make flatbread for lunch just in case he stays,” I say. “He may not even be here long enough to eat.”

  She refuses to be distracted. “If you don’t know who he is, why’d you say he was trouble?”

  I hesitate, uncertain of so many things: what to tell her, how to protect her, exactly what I had seen a handful of minutes earlier. Looking over the low mud brick and adobe wall bounding the kitchen yard, I had been slow to realize that the man walking down our drive, a journey bag slung over his shoulder, was not a man at all. It had been there in the impenetrable obsidian of his eyes, the flawlessly sculpted features, the strange paleness of his skin. The paleness alone would have set him apart from the people of our land, but it was the exquisite grace of his movements, the agelessness of his face, that marked him as something other.

  Leaning on the wall, watching him, I had forgotten myself: forgotten that young women should beware of the Fair Folk; forgotten that my sister with her life’s secret was within; forgotten, impossibly, my own unremarkable features, my deformed foot. Only as he neared the corner of the house had he glanced at me, amusement in the tilt of his lips, as if to say, Did you think I didn’t see you?

  I had turned my back on him, tossing a final handful of grain to the chickens, and then hurried indoors to my sister.

  “Rae? What is it?” Niya watches me now expectantly.

  “Well,” I begin when an explosion comes through the hall door in the form of a gangly girl with flying hair, pointy elbows and pounding boots.

  “Rae!” cries this ball of energy. “Niya!”

  “No need to shout,” I say mildly. “We’re right here.” Our youngest sister skids to a stop, thumping into the table as she drops down beside it and sending the tin cup on the corner flying. It clatters to the floor, spraying an arc of water across the worn stones. At least it wasn’t milk.

  “There’s a faerie come to visit Baba!”

  I guess I needn’t worry about how to word my news now.

  “A faerie?” Niya echoes, gray eyes widening as she turns to me. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I told you he was trouble,” I remind her. “And I was going to tell you what kind when Bean,” I glance at our little sister pointedly, “knocked over the water.”

  “Oh well,” Bean says, reaching to scoop up the cup and return it to the table, “some of us do get excited once in a while.”

  “But he might guess,” Niya says, ignoring this.

  “Which is why he’ll eat my bread, not yours.” Even though that’s hardly a guarantee. I forge on, feigning confidence. “Bean, check the curry, would you? I thought I could just taste Niya’s touch in it as well.”

  “He’s magic,” Bean says, walking over to the stove. “Do you think he’ll be able to tell about Niya just by looking?”

  “I don’t know,” I admit. The faerie has likely come from the King’s city, and will know as well as any of us what a law-abiding citizen would do: report us to the Council of Mages for secretly harboring a magical talent—one that should have been sent to them when it surfaced, to be properly trained and sworn into the service of the King. Niya has turned a shade paler. If she were discovered, she would be taken from us, and we would be punished. I touch her shoulder, though I have little comfort to offer. “There’s no saying what faeries can tell just from sight, what with those eyes of theirs. Keep out of his way unless Mama thinks it’s okay.” Which she won’t, if I know our mother at all.

  Niya rests her hands against the worktable, palms down as if steadying herself. “We’ve never had a faerie visit before,” she whispers.

  “First time for everything,” Bean points out cheerfully. “Might even be the first time I don’t burn lunch, if he’s lucky.”

  “Bean, would you please try to be helpful?”

  “Okay, all right,” she grouses. “What do you want me to cook?”

  “Something edible.” At her hurt look, I relent. “How about your potato and garlic dill dish? It’s quite good.” And she typically manages to not burn it.

  She rolls up her sleeves with a grin. “I can do that.”

  The dish, as I had hoped, turns out well, as does my flatbread, though neither could ever vie with Niya’s work. Our faerie visitor does indeed stay for lunch, and then returns to inspecting our horses with Baba, apparently having come to buy from us. Since we do not want to draw attention to Niya, Mama and the rest of us take our lunch in the kitchen.

  As always, Bean and I spend the afternoon training horses. We take our colts to the back pasture, far past the stables and out of the way of Baba and the faerie. As we lead the colts out, I can feel the faerie’s glance, taking in Bean’s quick light step and my own slight limp. With my clubfoot, I walk on the side of my foot. While it is hardly painful, the movement is pronounced just enough for anyone to guess at my deformity, even with my feet hidden by the grasses and my long skirt. Now, I gaze forcefully ahead, ignoring the faerie’s regard. Bean’s current reclamation project, Hop, a three-legged calico, follows along behind us mewling until she takes pity and picks up the dratted cat, carrying her with us to the pasture.

  “She can get along perfectly fine,” I tell Bean. “You’re just spoiling the creature.”

  “So?” Bean asks, scratching the little cat’s throat. It stretches its neck rapturously and purrs fit to burst.

  We work the colts through the afternoon, until both they and Bean are tired out. Hop sleeps in the sun and then prowls the longer grasses beyond the fence before finally making her way back to the stables by herself, clearly put out by our long stay. When we return the colts to their usual field by the stable, I see Bean looking around curiously. I too can hear the faint sound of voices.

  “They’re in the practice ring,” I tell her. I can just see the edge of the ring past the stable. “They must be trying out some of the horses.”

  “Baba might need help,” Bean says, shifting from foot to foot, her eyes trained on the ring’s fence.

  “Mama will want our help making dinner. And,” I point out sweetly, “you said you were tired.”

  Bean gives me a black look but follows me to the house. She does get her wish to see more of the faerie, though, for he has decided to stay the night with us. We had set out lunch while the men were out, and cleaned up after they’d left. Dinner, though, will have to be more formal. By rights, as eldest daughter of the house, I should serve them. But Mama gently suggests that Bean do the serving, and I understand at once. With my limp I would be an obtrusive presence. Bean, for all her exciteme
nt, knows how to slip in and refill glasses, serve dishes and remove empty platters without drawing notice. I force a smile, pretending not to mind, and it is a sign of Mama’s own guilty conscience that she quickly changes the subject.

  “How many horses will he buy?” Niya asks Mama as we sit around the kitchen table eating the last of Bean’s potatoes. It had irked her to stay hidden all day, knowing nothing of the faerie’s review of the horses.

  “And how did he hear about us?” I poke at my potatoes. They are significantly better than Bean usually makes them, but I am not hungry.

  “He wants five or six, and he hasn’t said much of anything about himself,” Mama says. “Though I’ve barely had a chance to speak with him or your father.”

  “Five or six!” Niya and Bean exchange an awed glance.

  “Best make sure he doesn’t pay with faerie gold,” I warn Mama.

  She chuckles. “If your father isn’t wise enough to beware of that, he deserves to lose them.”

  “We’ve some of the best horses in the south,” Niya says in answer to my first question. “I expect he heard of us and came to see himself. I’m sure he’ll deal honestly.”

  I have been to Spring Fair with Baba to sell our horses; ours are among the finest, though not necessarily the very best, in all of southern Menaiya. It is possible Niya is right. I bite my lip, wondering why I am so suspicious of him.

  “Why would a rich Faerie come walking through the dust and the heat?” I ask no one in particular.

  Mama casts me a quieting glance.

  It doesn’t occur to me until much later, as I make my rounds assuring all the doors and windows are barred against the night, that the faerie might notice the strangeness of our absence, the careful withdrawal of the women from his presence.

  I pull the shutters closed in the dining room and draw the curtains to hide them, grateful that the men have finally retired for the night. But as I turn back to the room I realize I am not alone. The faerie stands in the doorway, watching me. I start with surprise, and at his slight smile, I make an awkward curtsy.

  “Can I help you, master—” I stumble to a stop, realizing belatedly that I never learned his name.

  “Genno Stonemane,” he supplies, his voice lilting, deep and sweet. I find myself pressing my back against the wall. Whatever is the miserable fellow doing down here? And why does he have to be so lovely? At least Niya is safe in our bedchamber.

  “Master Stonemane,” I amend. “May I help you?”

  “I have noticed something curious. I thought you might explain it to me.” He steps into the room. In the candlelight I can see that he has had a chance to wash the dust from his face and hair; the result is an exquisite and frightening beauty. His hair shines darkly, falling smoothly over his shoulders, setting off the luminescence of his skin, the midnight shadows of his eyes. I drop my gaze to the low table, grateful for its presence between us.

  “I am not very good with explanations,” I say. “Perhaps my father can help you?”

  “Not unless he does the sewing in the house,” Stonemane says.

  “The sewing?”

  “Those are lovely curtains behind you,” he remarks genially, walking towards me. I retreat to the other side of the window, my turned foot making every movement doubly awkward. He smiles as he reaches me, the space between us made up now of only two narrow panels of embroidered cotton. “Did you sew them yourself?”

  “No,” I answer gladly.

  “Ah, then it was your younger sister who served us dinner.”

  “No, I’m afraid not.”

  “Of course. Then it was the third sister, the one who has stayed hidden.” I take a quick step back—how could he know? His teeth glint in the candlelight. “She has a fine way with stitches. Just here,” he reaches out a long-fingered hand to tap a flower, “she has caught the scent of a spring day when the daffodils first turn their heads to the sun, and here,” his fingers follow a tracery of blue, “flows the warmth of a late summer breeze.”

  We are caught. I know it from the smile that plays over his lips, from the very words he uses to describe Niya’s work. I see it all in the blink of an eye: Baba and Mama imprisoned, Bean whipped in the stocks, and Niya—taken. My hand shakes so that I spill beeswax over my knuckles. The fire-hot bite of the wax jolts me back to myself. I straighten my back, glaring at him. “Master Stonemane, your imagination is quite exceptional. I am sure Mama will be pleased to hear your compliments; she purchased the cloth last year at the Fair. Now, if you have no more pressing questions, I must be about my work. Good evening.”

  I turn and stump around the table, dreadfully aware of my uneven pace and his eyes boring into my back.

  “Mistress Amraeya,” he says as I reach the door. It is neither a command nor a question, and I find myself glancing over my shoulder. I can only just make out his form beside the curtains, for the light of my candle cannot reach him where he stands. “Give your sister my regards.”

  I turn away and hurry up the stairs to our bedchamber, bolting the door behind me. My sisters are already changed and settled beneath the blankets on the quilted sleeping mat we share. I set my candle on a low table and change into my shift, my hands faltering. He will not betray us, I tell myself. He sent her his greetings—he can’t mean to report us to the Council for hiding Niya’s talent. It is only a small talent.

  Somewhat steadier, I slide under the covers. Niya, stuck in the middle for the night, scoots over, shoving Bean into the corner to make space for me.

  “Whozzat?” Bean asks groggily before falling back to sleep.

  Niya huddles against me. I think her asleep until she says, “I heard your voice before you came up.” I close my eyes. I do not want to tell her. “Was it him?”

  “Yes,” I whisper.

  “What did he say?”

  “He just had some question or the other.” I pretend a yawn. “I’ll tell you in the morning, all right?”

  She relaxes beside me. “Okay.”

  I fall asleep praying the dawn will take Genno Stonemane and leave Niya as safe as ever.