scot free. Talsu didn’t have so sharp a counterargument.
“Well, Father, it will be awhile yet before I can run around and get in trouble like I could before,” he told his father that evening as Traku was closing up the shop.
Traku started to slap him on the shoulder, as he would have done before Talsu made the acquaintance of a blade. He stopped awkwardly, the motion half completed. Any jar hurt Talsu these days. Embarrassed at himself, Traku said, “I wouldn’t mind if you did.”
“I wouldn’t mind if I did, either,” Talsu said, “but I can’t, not for a while. I haven’t got the strength to haul rocks or break them, either. But you taught me the needle and scissors, so I can still bring in money.”
“Once upon a time, the way fathers will, I hoped you’d make something better than a tailor of yourself,” his father answered, barring the door. “But you couldn’t hope to rise too far out of your class, and I’m glad you’re content to stay where you are.” That wasn’t exactly what Talsu had said. Before he could tell his father so, Traku went on, “And if you want to right about now, I bet we could fix up a marriage for you that’s in our class, and the arrangements would go like
Talsu flushed. “D’you really think so?” he mumbled.
“Aye, I do,” Traku said. “Gailisa’s never hated you, you know, and now that you took on the redheads to keep them from doing whatever they would have done to her, she really thinks the sun rises and sets on your head.”
A slow smile stretched across Talsu’s face. “Aye, I had noticed that. She’s come visiting a lot since I got stuck, hasn’t she?”
“Just a bit,” his father said solemnly. “Pretty girl. Good girl, too, and that counts for more in the long run, though you can’t always see as much when you’re young. She’s grateful to you, sure enough.” He nodded, agreeing with himself. “She shows it, too, in ways that count. “We haven’t eaten this well since before the war. If you end up deciding needle and scissors and tape measure and tailoring magic don’t suit you, you might have yourself a grocer’s shop instead.”
“I’m not going to worry about that right now,” Talsu said. A delicious smell floated down the stairs. He grinned. “I’d sooner worry about supper--stuffed cabbage, or my nose has gone daft.”
“The rest of you, maybe. Your nose, no.” His father held out a hand. “Do you want some help getting up the steps?”
“I can manage,” Talsu said. “It doesn’t hurt as much as it used to.” Going up or down stairs, especially up them, made him raise his legs higher than usual, which meant the healing muscles in his flanks had to work harder. Up he went, slowly. Saying it hurt less than it had was true, but didn’t mean it didn’t hurt at all.
He made it, though, and made it without gritting his teeth more than a couple of times. That was a sizable improvement on the bent-over hobbling he’d done when he first came home. And once, a few days before, he’d stumbled going up the stairs. He’d thought he was going to come to pieces. He’d rather hoped he would, in fact; he hadn’t hurt so much since just after he got stabbed.
He also had to sit carefully. Once he was at the table and had taken a couple of deep breaths, the pain eased. It didn’t go away, but it eased. His sister Ausra set a heaping plate in front of him. He dug in. The sauce, sharp with vinegar and sweet with honey, livened up the cabbage and the mix of meat and barley with which it was stuffed. “Good,” he said enthusiastically--and blurrily, because he didn’t bother swallowing first. “Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me--thank your lady friend,” his sister answered. “She’s the one who got us the ground mutton and the honey.”
“My lady friend,” Talsu echoed. “I guess maybe she is.”
His father coughed. His mother smiled. His sister laughed out loud. “Of course she is, you dunderhead,” Ausra said. “She’s as much your friend as you want her to be.”
Traku had said the same thing. Hearing it from another woman, though, made it somehow seem more real, more immediate. (Not that thinking of Ausra as a woman rather than as a brat and a nuisance of a little sister didn’t feel strange.) “Well, maybe,” Talsu muttered.
“No maybes about it--it’s true.” That wasn’t his sister, but his mother--and Laitsina spoke with great certainty.
Traku coughed again. “What I told him was, he could stay a tailor if he chose, or he could go into the grocer’s line if he didn’t. Pass me that pitcher of wine, will you, Ausra?”
Talsu’s ears burned. “Don’t you think it’s rude to run somebody’s life for him right in front of his face?” he asked the rest of his family.
