Athyra by Steven Brust

long cloth bags from under the porch, shook them and turned them inside out, then nodded to his sister.
    “We’re almost done,” she said.
    “I know. Today, or maybe tomorrow.”
    Polyi, hands on her hips and scythe leaning against her side, twisted in place a couple of times, as if to loosen muscles that were already tired. Savn rolled his shoulders and put his lyorn-skin gloves on. His hands would be hot and sweaty in half an hour, but blisters, as he well knew, would be worse. ¦
    He said, “Let’s get to it.” They headed out to the last field. Savn collected the plants into sacks while his sister went ahead of him with the reaper. They fell into the rhythm easily—which was important. If they didn’t, Savn would have had to pick the plants up off the ground, which was hard on his back and took much longer. But by now they knew each other, so that as Polyi swung the tool for each cut, the plant would fall neatly into Savn’s gloved hand, and then he would take a half-step backward in order to miss the back sweep. He didn’t have to watch either his hands or the plants—only his sister, to be certain that if for any reason the rhythm changed he would be able to avoid the sharp blade. He knew well what could happen if he looked away at the wrong time—he had helped Master Wag patch up three people this harvest.
    It was boring drudge-work, but also easy and satisfying now that they had the system worked out, and he could hear the steady shhhick, shhhick as Mae and Pae worked from the other end. Soon—probably tomorrow, he decided, they would meet, and that would be the end of the harvest for this year. Then Mae and Pae would prepare the ground for the winter, and next year they would start all over again, and the next year, and the next, until the day Savn would begin earning money as a physicker himself, either in Smallcliff or elsewhere. Then there would be a few lean years before he could afford to send enough money back to pay for the work he could not do, but after that Mae and Pae would be able to hire someone, and after that he could begin saving, until he had so much money that he’d be able to travel, and—
    When did I decide I wanted to travel? he asked himself.
    Well, he wasn’t sure he did want to, come to that, but he remembered when he had begun thinking about it—it was while he was standing outside his house, and the night had seemed to speak to him of distant places. He remembered his own question of Vlad, which had seemed to impress the Easterner: are you running to something or away from something? If he, Savn, were to leave, would he be leaving his family, or searching for more? Would he be deserting his home, or would he be setting out to find adventure and fortune? Had the Easterner inspired all of these thoughts? Was the Easterner somehow responsible for the experience he’d had on that strange, wonderful evening? I don’t care what they say, I’ll bet he didn’t kill Reins. They finished the row and began on the next, and so the morning passed. When it was nearly noon, their rhythm was broken by Pae, who whistled through his fingers to signal that Savn and Polyi were finished for the day.
    As they walked back to the house, Polyi said, “Do you think they’ll finish without us?”
    Savn looked back at what remained to be done and said, “I hope it doesn’t rain tomorrow.”
    Polyi nodded. “Me, too. Shall we go to Tern’s house today?”
    “Sure.”
    “You didn’t wait for me yesterday, you know.”
    “I didn’t? That’s right, I didn’t. I guess I was thinking about other things.”
    “Such as what?”
    “I don’t know. Things. Anyway, today we’ll go there.”
    Savn bathed, and as he’d promised, waited for his sister, and the two of them set off for Tern’s house. They spoke little as they walked, although it seemed to Savn that a couple of times Polyi started to say or ask something, then thought better of it. Eventually she started singing “Dung-Foot