The Worthing Saga by Orson Scott Card

lived here on your world, I was already old. Does it matter?”
    Lared could not grasp it, and so he put it into the only terms he knew. “Are you God?” he asked.
    Jason did not laugh at him. Instead he looked thoughtful, and considered the question. It was Justice who answered. All my life I called him God, she said, until I met him.
    “But how can you be God, if Justice is more powerful than you?”
    I am his daughter, five hundred generations from him. Shouldn't the children of God learn something in that time?
    Lared took the finished chain of sausages from Jason's hands and looped it above the smoky fire. “No one ever taught me that God could make sausages.”
    “It's one of the little skills I picked up along the way.”
    It was afternoon already, and so they went back to the house, where Mother sullenly served them cheese and hot bread with the juice of the overripe apples. “Better than anything on Capitol,” Jason said, and Lared, remembering clearly the taste of the tasteless food of Jason's childhood, agreed.
    “Only one job left before your writing days begin,” said Jason. “Ink.”
    “The old cleric left me some,” Lared said.
    “No better than mule piss,” said Jason. “I'll teach you how to make ink that lasts.”
    Mother was not pleased. “There's work to do,” she said.
    “You can't take Lared out on some foolish task like ink-making.”
    Jason smiled, but his eyes were hard. “Thano, I have worked in this village like your own son. The snow will be here soon, and you have never before been so well prepared. And yet I have paid you for my lodging, when by rights you ought to have paid me. I warn you, don't begrudge me your son's time.”
    “You warn me? What will you do, murder me in my own house?” She dared him to hurt her.
    But he only needed to strike her with words. “Don't stand in my way, Thano, or I will tell your husband that he isn't the only one in this house who keeps a little forge. I will tell your husband which travelers you have had pumping the bellows handle for you, to keep your little tire hot.”
    Mother's eyes went small, and she turned back to cutting turnips into the supper soup.
    Her docility was confession. Lared looked on her with contempt and fear; He thought of his thin body, his narrow shoulders, and wondered what traveler had sired him. What have you stolen from the chain of life? he demanded silently.
    You are your father's son, said Justice in his mind. And Sala is his, too. Those who protected you from pain prevented bastards as well.
    It was scant comfort. Cold and fearsome as Mother had always been, still he had never thought she was false.
    “I'm learning the language very well, don't you think?” said Jason cheerfully.
    “Go make your ink.” Mother was sullen. “I don't like having you indoors here.”
    I don't much like to be here either, Mother.
    Jason kissed Justice lightly on the cheek as he left. Justice only glared at him. Jason explained to Lared when they got outside. “Justice hates it when I make people obey me out of fear. She thinks it's ugly and not nice. She always used to make people obey her by changing what they wanted, so it didn't occur to them to disobey. I think that's degrading and turns people into animals.”
    Lared shrugged. Just so long as Mother let him learn how to make good ink, it didn't matter to Lared how Jason and Justice got it done.
    Jason looked for a certain fungus growth on certain trees, and gathered them into one bag; he had Lared fill another bag with blackthorn stalks, though it cut his hands. Lared did not complain of the pain, because it gave him pleasure to bear it wordlessly. And as dark came on, and they were nearly home, Jason stopped and tapped a pine tree, which still had enough life in it to fill a little jar with gum.
    The funguses they boiled and ground up and boiled again, then strained out the thin black fluid that was left. They crushed the blackthorn into it, and strained it again, and