“Nobody wants to kill you.” She watched the blood form a droplet, then run down into the crease of his finger. “Why would anyone want to kill you?”

He shook his head and sighed at her innocence. “Are you just going to sit there while I bleed to death?”

She stared. “You want me to do that, too? Just so you’ll tell me some stupid secret?”

“So, then.” He sucked off the blood, wiped his finger on his sleeve. “I won’t tell you. Go away and leave me alone.”

“Don’t be mean.” She watched him carefully—she could see he would not change his mind—he could be as stubborn as a bent nail. “Very well, let me do it.”

He hesitated, clearly unwilling to do something as unmanly as surrender his blade to his sister, but at last let her take it. She held the sharp edge over her finger for long moments, biting her lip.

“Hurry!”

When she did not immediately comply, he shot out his good arm, seized her hand, and forced her skin against the knife blade. It cut, but not too deeply; by the time she had finished cursing him the worst of the sting was over. A red pearl appeared on her fingertip. Barrick took her hand, far more gently now, and brought her finger against his.

It was a strange moment, not because of the sensation itself, which was nothing more noteworthy than the girl would have expected from rubbing a still-sore finger against her brother’s, smearing a little blood across the whorled fingertips, but because of the intensity in Barrick’s eyes, the way he watched that daub of red with the avidity of someone witnessing something far more arresting: lovemaking or a hanging, nakedness or death.

He glanced up and saw her staring. “Don’t look at me like that. Do you swear you’ll never reveal what I tell you? That the gods can punish you horribly if you do?”

“Barrick! What a thing to say. I’m not going to tell anyone, you know that.”

“We’ve shared blood, now. You can’t change your mind.”

She shook her head. Only a boy could think that a ceremony with knives and finger cutting was a stronger bond than having shared the warm darkness of a mother’s womb. “I won’t change my mind.” She paused to find the words to convey her certainty. “You know that, don’t you?”

“Very well. I’ll show you.”

He stood up, and to his sister’s surprise, clambered onto a block of wood that had been used as a pantry stool since before either of them could remember, then scrabbled in the back of one of the upper shelves before pulling out a bundle wrapped in a cleaning rag. He took it down and sat again, holding it carefully, as though it were something alive and potentially dangerous. The girl was caught between wanting to lean forward and wanting to scramble away, in case anything might jump out at her. When the stained cloth had been folded back, she stared.