2. Honest Work
Honest Work
The fire had burned itself out somewhere in the night, and the cold of the room was the first thing Kain felt when he woke. He swung his legs out from under the blankets, dressed against the chill, and went out into the front room.
Ghost lay at the hearth in the gray light, awake, its one eye tracking the door before Kain had finished crossing the floor.
He lit a small fire in the stove and pulled a few strips of smoked fish from the cupboard, the last of what he'd put up before the snow came.
He tossed a few pieces toward the hearth one at a time, and Ghost caught each one out of the air without lifting its head more than a few inches off the stone.
After the last one, the wolf got to its feet, crossed to the door, and stood waiting. Kain let it out, and it went off toward the treeline at a trot and was gone into the trees.
He made his own breakfast, ate it standing at the counter, and got himself ready for the day. When he stepped outside the air was bitter enough to burn his lungs and sting his cheeks, and the sky was clear and bright, the hard cold that came on days with no cloud to hold any warmth in.
He crossed the yard to the barn and went down the row to Roan's stall. The horse poked his head over the door and nickered, and Kain rubbed the flat of his nose.
"Morning, boy. Hungry?"
Roan kicked once at the stall door, impatient for the yard.
"I'll let you out. Let me get your feed together first."
He scooped the right measure of feed from the sacks against the wall and tipped it into Roan's bag, and the horse dropped his head and started to eat.
While Roan worked through it, Kain took down the brushes and combs and set to grooming, working the straw out of the mane that had tangled in the night and brushing the dust from behind the ears.
When the bag was empty Roan lifted his head, then took a step back and nudged at it again.
"You want more?" Kain pushed the horse's head gently off the sack. "No, boy. You've had enough."
Roan nudged the sack one more time, and Kain slipped the halter over his ears.
"Come on. You're not fooling me."
He led Roan out into the fenced stretch of yard, and the horse broke into a frisk in the cold morning air. Kain watched him a moment, then turned back to the stall.
Mucking the stall first thing was a long way from his favorite work, but it sat better than a lot of jobs he'd held.
He'd smelled worse in his years with the Silver Hands, caves he'd never quite gotten out of his nose, and horse manure was honest by comparison.
It needed shoveling either way, so he shoveled it.
When the stall was clean he spread fresh straw across it, checked the water trough, and broke away the skin of ice that had set across the top overnight. Then he led Roan back in to drink.
While the horse drank, Kain climbed the ladder into the loft, and his boots came down solid on the half of the floor he'd already laid.
The new beams were stacked off to one side with the tools laid out beside them.
He took up his rule and set to measuring, taking his time and getting the marks right.
He wasn't trying to finish the whole floor in a day. He measured each board twice, cut it to ten feet, and set it down into the gap where he'd pulled a rotten one out, checked the fit against the joists, then took up the hammer and started driving nails.
The smell of fresh sawdust filled the loft, and each hammer-strike came back to him off the rafters a half-beat behind his arm. He worked one board in and then the next, and by the time both sat flush and nailed down it was well into the afternoon.
He'd taken his time, and the boards he'd set sat flush and square, the work the better for it. He stood, rolled the stiffness out of his shoulders, and climbed back down.
Roan watched him come down over the top of the stall door.
"All right, boy. Want to head into town?"
Roan stood for the saddle without a fight, and Kain rode him out toward Tillamore. Sasha had sent word up with Oren the day before, asking for a hand at the Kettle, and there was no question of saying no to that.
He came up on the Kettle from the front and swung Roan around to the back of the tavern, where he stepped down and hitched the horse to one of the posts and let himself in through the rear door.
Sasha was at the bar with Matthew bound to her back in a sling, and the baby lifted his head at the sound of the door. Sasha turned a moment after.
"You came. Thank you."
"What do you need."
"Paperwork, mostly." She shifted the sling on her shoulders. "Some numbers in my books that won't sit right. Either a customer's been helping himself or I'm a worse bookkeeper than I thought, and I can't tell which from out here on the floor."
"I've got the bar." He looked at the sling. "How's Matthew."
She turned so he could see the boy fully. Four months old now, and Matthew lifted his head at the movement and fixed Kain with the unfocused gravity of someone still deciding whether the situation called for crying.
"Holding your head up," Kain said.
"He is." Sasha worked the sling off her shoulders and settled Matthew into the bassinet behind the bar, within reach of Kain's boot. "Evening shift's about to start. Keep that rocking and he'll mostly sleep."
She slipped toward the back of the tavern, and Kain watched her go, then turned to face the room.
It wasn't long before the room began to fill for the evening meal. Some were village regulars, others travelers passing through on the road, and Kain poured and served and kept one boot moving against the bassinet through all of it.
Oren, the delivery boy for Sam, scrambled up onto a barstool and dropped his elbows on the bar.
"Hey, Kain."
"Oren."
"Can I get a beer?"
"You can get the special and a cup of water. Ask me about beer again and I'll have a word with your father."
Oren weighed that and decided to change the subject. "My mom says Matthew's your nephew. That means your brother was the one with Sasha, which means you and her aren't, you know."
"Your mother's right. He's my nephew. That's the end of it."
"I was only asking."
"And I only answered."
Kain set the plate and the cup down in front of him. Oren's father came in a moment later, and the boy's mouth shut with the speed of someone who knew the difference between the questions you asked in front of your parents and the ones you didn't.
Kain drew the older man a beer and brought the special without being asked.
The evening ran. He poured ale and carried plates, broke up a low argument between two farmers over a drainage ditch that ran between their fields, and kept the bassinet rocking with one boot whenever Matthew stirred.
He'd watched the work done in tavern rooms across half the provinces, and his hands knew it without being told.
Sasha came back out as the crowd thinned toward the end of the night.
"Bad bookkeeping. I put a month's income in the wrong column and chased my own mistake for an hour." She lifted Matthew out of the bassinet. "No thief. Just me."
"Better than a thief in the books," Kain said.
"That's how I see it." She settled the baby against her shoulder. "One more thing, if you've got it left in you. The woodpile out back is down to nothing, and the rounds they delivered still need splitting."
"I'll handle it."
The axe in Sasha's shed was old, the handle worn smooth and dark from years of hands. Kain lit the lantern, hung it from a nail under the shed's overhang, and carried the first round to the block.
He set it on end, read the grain for a second, raised the axe, and brought it down. The round split clean and fell open into two halves.
He stood one half up on the block and split it again, and again after that, until the pieces were sized down small enough for the Kettle's hearth.
The work ran on the same rhythm the farm ran on, steady and physical and asking just enough of his attention to keep his hands honest and his head quiet. He went through the pile of rounds one at a time, and the stack of split wood climbed the back wall of the tavern as he worked.
It was well past dark by the time the last round came apart, and he hung the axe back on its pegs and went in through the back door. A bowl of stew sat on the counter, still warm, a scrap of paper beside it with his name on it in Sasha's hand.
She'd gone upstairs, to bed or to the guest rooms, and the common room stood empty but for the low fire in the hearth.
He sat at the bar and ate it. The empty tavern kept a different quiet than the farmhouse did, the kind that came from a room used hard all day and then left to itself for a few hours.
When the bowl was clean he washed it, set it on the rack to dry, and went out the back to where Roan stood tied and waiting.
The ride home was cold and dark and short, the hoofbeats steady on the packed earth and the road laid out pale ahead of him under the stars.
Ghost was inside when he came through the door, stretched out at the hearth in the same spot where it had lain at first light, as though the whole day between had happened to someone else.
Kain banked the fire down to coals, hung his cloak on its peg by the door, and pulled his boots off one at a time.
The loft would keep until morning and the thaw would come when it came, and he went to bed in no hurry about either.