Chapter Eighteen: Border Crossing

"I killed people, Ette," Val said. It was morning and they were on the road, maybe two miles from the border.

Ette looked up and down the road, as if they might have missed somebody approaching. "Careful who you say that around… yes. You killed folks because you had to, and you only kill folks when they'll kill you or those you're sworn to protect when you don't. I want you to hold that hurt and remember what it feels like and never let it go away, because once a man - or woman - grows numb to that feeling, then she loses part of herself, and it probably won't come back…"

"Whoa. Wait," Galvan said. "Dad… you've killed people? She's killed people?":

Ette looked up and down the road again. It was pretty clear he didn't like discussing murder in the open. "You know what I do for my living, Galv, and sometimes it's not pretty. Why do you think I wasn't so broken up about you deciding not to follow in your old man's footsteps? It's dangerous, unpredictable work. So, yeah. On occasion I've had to end a life. And Val got a head start in that regard because of our friends in the Pale Order. It's never good to take a life, but sometimes it's the best thing you can do, and the bastards she got deserved ten times worse than… what was it you gave him? Exercises three to eight?"

"Four to nine," Val said. "I had nightmares about it."

Ette mulled it over, miming an upward stab. "Yeah, I suppose at your height it would have to be nine."

In her dreams she'd been tied to a chair with brother-knights who were half-demon poking her with rusty ice picks, gouging deep into her veins and lapping out the blood with long serpentine tongues. Then she was a whirlwind of blades and fury in the form of exercises 4-9, chubby, bald-pated monks bleeding out before her eyes. And then… kissing. Kissing Jasil… or was it Penny? It seemed like it was both of them, if that made any sense, and the memory gave Val feelings. Good feelings. Strange feelings. It made it a lot easier to forget about the killing, that's for sure.

Val got a turn riding on the horse because Galvan wanted to sit in the cart and practice his new fiddle. That helped her take her mind off things because she had to pay full attention to the horse, since she was still learning to ride. She didn't have Ette's horse to follow after since the horses were trotting side by side. The aurochs that Ette had procured to pull their substantial cart was a docile creature but staggeringly stupid, and it needed a horse on either side to figure out what direction to follow.

It was still early morning when they arrived at the border. Normally, only the customs agents of the country you were entering would check your cargo and your papers, but that morning the Bolearic guards were out in force and they'd already rerouted about forty people to the side of the road, where they were carrying out a very in-depth inspection. The people looked worried, and they had every reason to be - a contingent of about a dozen Brothers of the Penitent Order were right there with their bolt-casters drawn and going through personal possessions in what looked to be considerable depth. A man and a woman were already in chains for some perceived infraction.

Ette glanced back, perhaps considering whether to take a side-road and wait the commotion out, but he'd already been spotted and the customs agents were already waving at him to bring their mounts off to the side. "Remember to stick to your story," he said.

Two minutes later, and they were off to the side of the road, where the customs agents checked their fake papers and poked through their things. They were quite thorough, finding the 'hidden' pouch in Val's pack, as well as the one in Ette's.

Ette had showed Val a little trick previously, which was to have two hidden areas in your pack. The first was poorly hidden and the second was very hidden. In the case of Val's pack, it would take about five minutes of unthreading the adjustors at the back of the pack to even get to the very hidden bit, the one where she kept her real papers. Even then, the buttons were hidden to look like a slightly-lopsided seam. The regular 'hidden' bit was an unobtrusive button deep within the pack's main cavity, which could be undone to reveal a little pouch. The agents had found that one pretty quickly, after dropping half of her things into the damp grass.

"What've you got in here?" the agent said.

"N-nothing…" Val said.

Actually, though, she had two shillings in there, and the agent quickly scooped them out. "Right you are - I didn't find anything in there." He pocketed the coins and left Val to reassemble her pack.

Galvan shot Val an angry look because his pack was getting disassembled, too. After spotting hidden pouches in Val's and Ette's packs, they'd decided that Galvan probably had one, too, even though he didn’t. He could have just as easily blamed his dad, but he didn't - he blamed Val, obviously.

"You three are free to go. Have a favorable day," one of the agents said. He gave the all-ok signal and started to wave them past, only to have a junior officer rush up to him.

"Lieutenant says we've got to bring all people with children that age off to the side for inspection, even if they're got Pale Order papers…"

The agent shot them a concerned look and whispered back, though Val's sharp ears could pick him out easily enough: "The criminal they're looking for is a girl, corporal… this man has two boys…"

The corporal glanced right at Val. "Does he, though? Are you willing to bet your career on it?"

"Hell no, I’m not…" The agent turned back to them. "Sorry, sir, but I'm going to need you folks to queue with the other folks off to my left, unless we can, um… inspect… your son's, um… attribute…"

"Inspect my son's 'attribute'?" Ette asked.

"Verify that he's not a daughter… we've got a priest with us who can do it discreetly."

"I guess we'll queue up, then…"

Val didn't point out that a priest was probably the last person in the world who should be inspecting children's genitals. Nor did she point out that she was becoming increasingly uneasy as the customs agents pulled over another traveler and escorted them into the care of armed guards with bolt-casters out of their cases. She had the undeniable premonition that something bad was about to happen.

"It's fine," she said. "The priest can inspect me."

"You sure, Clyve?" Ette asked.

"Yeah," she said. But she flashed one of the hand signals she'd learned from one of Sabine's many books on combat. It meant, basically: I'm pretty sure this will work but, if it doesn't, it's going to be very bad. Ette gave her a wary nod to indicate he understood.

They had Val wait behind a wooden screen while they fetched the priest, and all the while Val tried to recall what a boy's privates actually looked like. She'd seen them before, of course, but never up close, and she had no particular desire to see them up close. She untucked her shirt, pulled out her breeches, and glanced down past her jacket, trying her best to use illusion magic to do a suitable job. The dangers here were twofold… first, she might not do the illusion right on account of a bad memory, which meant the priest would know something was amiss.

And, of course, if anybody in the inspection crew had the Gift, they'd know something was up… not to mention the priest, since priests were a lot more likely than random folks to have it. Though, unlike Val, most folks with the Gift had to be within ten or fifteen feet to sense anything afoot. For Val, her magic sense was about ten times that.

Speaking of which… just then, she heard a whisper at the base of her skull. Hmm… somebody trying to use illusion magic. Or anti-illusion magic. The two felt a lot alike from a spirit-shaping standpoint. The priest was going to find out. He probably already had found out. Val reached for her knife…

"Let's get this over with, shall we, young man?" he said.

He shot Val an annoyed, tired look, shuffled over, and tugged the front of her breeches down with no fanfare. Val just stood there, one hand on the pommel of her knife, everything on display in the cool morning air, and he hadn't even noticed he was one exercise #5 away from getting his throat cut. He frowned, sighed, and pulled the breeches back up, storming off while muttering something about paranoiac customs agents.

"Can I go?" Val called out.

"Obviously," he called back.

Val tucked and buttoned everything back up and mounted up without even thinking about it. That was the first time she'd managed to mount a horse without a whole lot of awkwardness… adrenaline and nervous energy were, apparently, all she needed to be a passable rider. But, if the priest hadn't seen through her illusion, what magic had she felt mere seconds before? Her gut told her trouble was brewing and well on its way to frothing over…

"We should get out of here," she said.

Ette nodded wordlessly and they continued toward the Aureline side of the border perhaps three hundred yards distant. They heard shouting and Val made the mistake of looking back. Back among the detained travelers, a man charged at the penitent brothers and caught at least three bolts to the chest, the shots cracking out as they pierced through his leather shirt.

There was screaming, the sound of horses whinnying and wagons jostling. Val felt the buzz of magic at the back of her brain, and she watched in horror as a man cast a spell that swallowed two of the penitent brothers in the very Earth before he took a bolt to the eye.

"Val!" Ette shouted.

He'd sped to a canter and she hadn't noticed. It took her three terrifying seconds to remember how to instruct her horse to do likewise, and then both horses were going at a decent clip with the aurochs, the cart, and Galvan and his old fiddle thundering along right behind them. The agents on the Aureline side of the border waved for them to stop, and two of the guards lowered their bolt-casters. Ette eased his horse to a stop. Val yanked hers to a halt - poor thing. She'd have to learn better control. And Galvan cursed as a handful of poorly-secured crates jostled right into his back. His fiddle, fortunately, was unharmed.

"Are you trying to get shot?" the agent shouted.

"Why do you think we were going so fast?" Ette shouted. "It's a massacre back there!"

A guard called down from the roadside lookout post, handing the monoculars off to his lieutenant. "It's true - I count at least a dozen citizens dead… and three brother-knights, and they're still going…"

Screams echoed from the road behind them. A horse whinny-shrieked in terror, followed by a few similar but more human shrieks. It had all happened so suddenly, a tense situation suddenly igniting like a spark to tinder. An expression that Val now appreciated after her fire-building lessons from the night before. Were they going to kill all of those people or just the ones who tried to fight back?

"They were pulling everybody who follows the old ways aside on account of recent troubles back in Wayfair," Ette said.

"But you're not Old Sudren?"

Ette shook his head and presented his papers. "I'm not, but I got nothing against them and don't care to be on the massacre side of the border. Can we please pass?"

"Let them past and then we'll inspect," the lieutenant called down. "I don't want anybody in the border zone until this whole mess is cleared."

They pulled across the border marking, riding for another twenty yards to be safely in Aurilicht before dismounting. Or attempting to dismount. Val fell right off onto the ground and just stayed there, shaking and crying. She couldn't even quite explain why. Though almost getting murdered, killing four people, experiencing her first kiss, and witnessing her first massacre, all in the past day, might have had a part in it. Ette pulled her to her feet and into a hug, holding her there as the custom agents got on with their work as if there wasn't a crying girl ten feet away or a massacre being perpetrated three hundred yards behind them.

+++++

They arrived in Verdenlecht around noon and Val couldn't remember a time where she'd felt happier about returning to a place in her life. This was the city where her first memorable experience was watching a miserable bastard get beheaded. It was a place where, in a very short time, she'd found a household that liked her - or at least tolerated her. She'd joined a temple that thought she was blessed by the gods (though, if she was, Val considered what they'd offered her so far a very ambivalent sort of blessing). And the priestess of that temple was her friend… and was teaching her magic.

As they passed the St. Abulard's temple, Val spat at the big, hand-painted sign about religious intolerance. Three monks of the church had tried to bleed her to death while two brother-knights of the Penitent Order had watched on. Now they were all dead, along with another six or seven killed by her and Ette. She spat at the sign again. Good riddance.

"Watch where you do that," Ette said. "The Pale Order isn't high and mighty here, but they're not pushovers, either. Maybe some day, you'll be able to show them how you really feel."

Val really hoped so… and Ette was right. She was only going to get better at fighting and better at magic. Some day, she would have more resources and more friends, and she would not forget. She smiled sweetly at Ette.

"I'll behave myself."

"I know," Ette said.

When they arrived at the new Vinzenno residence, Ginn rushed out to greet them and pulled Galvan into the sort of hug where she lifted you off the ground and mashed you into her bosom. That was a good sort of hug, if a bit awkward. Val got a hug, too, once Ginn stopped getting weepy over Galvan getting back home. The hug she got wasn't all-encompassing and motherly, but Val wasn't jealous about it. Honestly, she definitely wasn't.

Then Val spotted Iselde on the street and was about ten seconds off from dashing out to join her in the Riverways when Ette grabbed her wrist and forbade it. Until they were sure that the Pale Order didn't have their sights out for Val, she was to continue to minimize her outdoors time.

To this, she responded that Iselde would have to spend the day because, if she couldn't go out, then her friends would have to come to her. With only a little hesitation, Ginn agreed, and so Val showed her friend all over the place, including her bedroom upstairs and then downstairs to the little practice area, where her book was still open to page one hundred seventeen on Tovin's Manual for the Practise of Blades. That page had exercise twenty-five for paired knives, which Val had just got to before her trip back to Wayfair.

She brought out Ette's practice knife collection - they were all serviceable for play fighting, though most weren't sharp enough to cause serious harm unless you really meant to - and showed Iselde some of the techniques. Iselde was no stranger to fighting with knives. She carried a stabbing knife whenever she was out on the street but didn't know how to use it beyond 'pointy end forward' and 'sharp bit goes into the bad guy'… which were both good advice, regardless, but a bit simplistic. Val helped expand her horizons, running her through exercises and then practicing some light sparring and combat drills while wearing protective leather vests.

"Are you girls all right down there?" Ginn called from the top of the stairs.

"We're just fighting with knives," Val called back.

"Okay! Dinner's in thirty!"

As they finished up their sparring and cleaned their tools and practice area down (cleaning up was an important part of practice), Val and Iselde got to talking about how great it was to have a partner to practice fighting with. And that gave Val a great idea for Ginn and Ette's security business. After Iselde went back to get her supper at the orphanage, after having snagged at least three berry-rolls from Ette's baking tray, Val sat down to dinner and ran her idea by Ette and Ginn.

"Having Iselde down there to practice with me helped a lot. I'll need some real practice if I'm to be good in a pinch, assuming I'm not fighting target dummies… and I'll probably be downstairs a lot if I can't go out like I usually do. So…"

Ette sighed. "Yeah, I know. I promise I'll put in more time with you in the practice room, Val. It's just…"

"Wait, I'm not done. I got to thinking that there are a fair number of people who might want to fight but don't know how… and they might be willing to pay to learn. I know at least a few people at the temple who'd be game. I can ask around and maybe even get Priestess Oestel to make an announcement at worship since we're pretty much friends. I figure you and Ginn could teach things mostly, but I could help with classes, and keep the books, keep the room clean. You'd hardly have to do anything. I can still pay my way even if I'm not helping outside."

"That's…" Ginn shot Ette a meaningful look. "That's actually not a bad idea, Val. But… you know you don't have to 'pay your way', right?"

"Everybody's got to pay their way," Val said. "Isn't that how apprenticeships work?"

"That's true in a way, yes. But… you understand that we haven't brought you into our home because we think it'll be worth coin to us… I hope you understand that. It's not a matter of coin. It's a matter of family."

"Family?"

"Family," Ette agreed.

"But I'm not your blood…" Val craned her neck to see if Galvan was nearby. She whispered: "Galvan's your blood… he's your family. You hardly know me."

"We know you plenty," Ette said. "Do you think I didn't see you sneak four berry-rolls to your friend before she left? And then a fifth so her brother's friend could have one, too? Did you think I didn't learn about how you freed two women from those godsdamned cages before you got yourself caught by the penitent brothers? Or how you got in this whole mess to begin with because your friend got hurt and you gave up some of your blood to get him healed? You were blessed by Valkyrie for a reason and, even if you can't see it, I damn well can."

"Amen, husband," Ginn reached across the table and squeezed Val's hand. "Val, you're not our assistant. You're family. When we attested to your character in front of the gods, we made that pact and I'll not undo it just because things get dicey. You're going to get started on your fighting school idea because it's a good idea and not because we expect money out of you, do you understand? What's ours is also yours because you're family."

"I…" Val choked back tears. "I always wanted a family. I love you guys."

Galvan stepped into the room and froze, a half-eaten berry-roll in his mouth. "Um… did I just miss something?"