9. Teething
Teething
Kain did what he'd said he would. He straightened the jar shelf, replaced the two that had rotted through, and rehung the door on Room Five so it stopped catching on the frame.
The wooden forms came off the cellar wall on schedule, and what they left behind was a single smooth face of stone, seamless from the floor to near the ceiling. He ran his fingers across it more than once.
After that he went back to the farm and back to the fence that was supposed to keep Roan where Kain put him. Over the next few days he dug a line of near twenty holes and dropped the cedar posts into them, though he left them loose in the ground.
They couldn't be set firm until the rails went in to line them up, and the rails were still waiting on him.
The morning after he set the last post, boots came pounding up onto the porch, and a fist hit the door hard.
"Coming." Kain shook off the last of sleep and opened it. Oren stood there, eyes wide.
"What is it? Spring's close, but it's no time for collections."
"Sasha sent me." Oren caught his breath. "It's Matthew. He's sick."
"How bad?"
"She said come now."
Kain was out the door at a run. Roan's head came up when he banged through the barn, and he had the saddle on and cinched and the gelding backed out of the stall before he'd thought about any of it.
Oren waved as he went past. Kain lifted a hand but didn't slow. A boy sent running at dawn meant it was bad, and a ride for Oren would have to wait.
He pushed Roan up the road toward Tillamore, then pulled him off it. Straight to the Kettle did Matthew no good.
He could set a bone, but a screaming baby was no broken bone, and what the boy needed was the healer. He cut across town instead.
Maggarie's house sat on the edge of town down one of the side roads, and the sun was just breaking the horizon when Kain hauled Roan up short and dropped down. He hammered on the door. Nothing.
He hit it again, and again, and on the third the door swung open and Maggarie stepped out, grey and small and sharp-eyed.
"Who's dying?" Her voice managed to sound grave and amused at once.
"Matthew."
"Give me a minute." Her eyes crinkled. "I'll ride behind you."
Kain got back up on Roan. Maggarie came out wrapped in her cloak with a small bag clutched against her, reached up a hand, and he pulled her up behind him.
She took hold of his shoulders, he brought Roan around, and he put the horse up the road toward the Kettle.
Roan carried the weight of two without trouble, going at a steady canter, quick but short of a dead run.
At the Kettle he went around back, near Sasha's quarters, swung down, and helped Maggarie to the ground. She nodded and went straight through the door.
Kain turned to hitch Roan to the rail. The rope slipped loose the moment he set it, and Roan frisked back a step, so he caught the lead, drew the horse in, and tied it off right the second time. Then he went in after her.
Inside, Sasha stood holding Matthew, her eyes red. The baby was flushed bright and his eyes were puffy, and he screamed and worked his fists and kicked.
Sasha looked like she hadn't slept at all. Dried tears stood on her cheeks, and her hands shook at her sleeves.
Matthew paid Kain no mind. He screamed until his breath ran out, hitched, gasped, filled his lungs, and screamed again. His tongue pushed part way out and his eyes fixed on nothing.
"He's burning up." Sasha held him close. "Please help him."
"Let me have a look at him. You stand right there." Maggarie held out her arms.
She took Matthew and carried him into the next room before either of them got a word out. His screams went muffled through the wall, and Sasha turned to Kain.
"He's been like this all night." Sasha was wringing her hands raw, and Kain reached out and stilled them, and she held on hard. "I don't know what to do."
"He'll be all right."
"You don't know that."
He didn't, and the boy looked bad enough that there was no pretending otherwise.
"He won't sleep. He won't eat. He won't let me settle him, and he's so hot." Sasha's voice cracked. "He just screams."
Kain nodded. He had no notion what was wrong, but it sounded like more than nothing. Then Maggarie came back out.
"He's fine."
"Did you do something for him?" The words came out shaky.
"Didn't need to. Put a finger in his mouth. The top gums."
"Do what?" Sasha blinked.
"Go on. The top gums."
Sasha reached out with an unsteady hand and slid a finger into the baby's mouth, then went still and blinked.
"There's something. Bumps."
"He's teething. That's all this is, teething fever. Painful for him, terrifying for you, dangerous for neither."
"Really?" Kain said. "Just growing teeth does all that?"
"Picture someone biting through your skin." Maggarie shrugged. "That's the size of it, only from the inside. We forget it ever happened to us."
"I've been bitten. I don't have to picture it."
"Then you'll know how to feel for him." Maggarie patted Sasha's arm. "Cool cloths on his head, and get what food into him you can. It'll break by morning, likely. Some children take their teeth hard, some you'd never know. Differs from one to the next."
Sasha took Matthew back and held him in close. "You scared the life out of me."
"I can see myself home from here, and I needed the market anyway. You've saved me a leg of it." Maggarie gathered her bag. "Get some rest, the both of you."
She let herself out, and Kain watched the door a moment. Sasha settled Matthew down on the bench. Kain turned and went through to the kitchen.
"What are you doing?" Sasha asked.
"Getting breakfast on. People will be hungry, and you heard her. Rest."
"Kain."
"It's all right. I wasn't going to do much today anyway."
That wasn't strictly true, but a line of half-set fence posts would keep a day or two, and it was true enough to get Sasha to agree to rest.
"I can't sleep with him like this anyway."
"Then sit. Rest counts too."
She nodded and went into her room. Kain turned to the kitchen and called out across the tavern.
"Food's coming. Short a hand this morning, but it's handled. Get your orders ready and I'll be along."
Kain worked the bar through the breakfast rush. He wiped tables between orders, poured ale, took copper, scrubbed mugs in the basin, and carried soup out to the trader in the corner.
He worked the slow stretch after, then the lunch rush, then the long quiet of the afternoon. A few times across the day he carried a plate back to Sasha, and each time she took it with a small nod and went back into her room.
He couldn't bring the fever down, and he couldn't mother a sick child the way Sasha could. What he could do was pour the ale and carry the plates and keep the place running while she rested, and his hands knew that work as well as they had ever known anything.
Evening came on, and he ran the dinner rush and cleaned up behind it, and the quiet of the night settled over the room. When Sasha finally came out she looked worn down to nothing, and she found him on the steps to the upstairs, working through a slice of cheese and a heel of bread.
"We've got chairs, you know." She raised an eyebrow.
"Cleaned the tables and the chairs already. Swept that part of the floor. Haven't done the stairs yet, so this is the place to eat."
Sasha lowered herself into a chair by the fire. "I've done the same in my time. We do keep better food than that, though."
"Dinner cleaned out the sausage you'd set by for today. The eggs too, and I wasn't going to break into tomorrow's." Kain turned the cheese over. "Bread and cheese keeps a body going for months. Not much for flavor, but it does the job."
"I won't argue it. You'd know better than me." Sasha looked down at her hands. "Thank you, Kain."
"Told you before, no need for that." Kain finished the bread and gave the cheese his full attention. It was rich and close-grained and squeaked a little against his teeth, which to his mind was the mark of a good cheese. "Matthew's down?"
"Finally. He nursed, drank me dry, and went out cold. I'm hoping he sleeps the night."
"Send word if you need me tomorrow." Kain got to his feet and took up the broom. "I'll do the stairs and head out."
"I'll take those." Sasha put out her hand.
"No trouble."
"Not for me either." She held his eye. "And I'd sooner do one small thing around my own place tonight."
"You held your son all night. That's not nothing."
Sasha shrugged. "You're right. Let me sweep the stupid stairs anyway."
Kain handed her the broom and rode out, down the road toward the farm with the cold close around him. The Kettle fell away behind, a few low lights still burning and the baby asleep somewhere inside it.
The fence would keep till morning.