She was fluting the edge of the second one and reluctantly contemplating building up the fire under the hearth oven, which would make the hot room hotter still, when Dag came in.
“Drink?” she guessed.
“Please…”
She held the water ladle to his lips; when he’d drained it, he added, “There’s a young fellow who’s tethered his horse in your front woods. I believe he imagines he’s sneaking up the hill in secret. His ground seems pretty unsettled, but I don’t think he’s a house robber.”
“Did you see him?” she asked, then halted, considering what an absurd question that sounded if you didn’t know Dag. And then how well she had come to know Dag, that it should fall so readily from her lips.
“Just a glimpse.”
“Was he bright blond?”
“Yes.”
She sighed. “Sunny Sawman. I’ll bet Clover told folks that I’m back, and he’s come to see for himself if it’s true.”
“Why not ride openly up the lane?”
She flushed a little, not that he’d likely notice in this heat, and admitted, “He used to sneak up to steal kisses from me that way, from time to time. He was afraid of my brothers finding out, I think.”
“Well, he’s afraid of something.” He hesitated. “Do you want me to stay?”
She tilted her head, frowning. “I better talk to him alone. He won’t be truthful if he’s in front of anyone.” She glanced up uneasily at him. “Maybe… don’t go far?”
He nodded; she didn’t seem to need to explain further. He stepped into Aunt Nattie’s weaving room, flanking the kitchen, and set the door open. She heard him dragging a chair behind it, and the creak of wood and possibly of Dag as he settled into it.
A few moments later, footsteps sounded on the porch, attempted tiptoe; they paused outside the kitchen window above the drainboard. She stepped up and stared without pleasure at Sunny’s face, craning around and peering in. He jerked back as he saw her, then whispered, “Are you alone?”
“For now.”
He nodded and nipped in through the back door. She regarded him, testing her feelings. Straw-gold hair still curled around his head in soft locks, his eyes were still bright blue, his skin fair and fine and summer-flushed, his shoulders broad, his muscular arms, tanned where his sleeves were rolled up, coated with a shimmer of gold hairs that had always seemed to make him gleam in sunlight. His physical charm was unchanged, and she wondered how it was that she was now so wholly unmoved by it, who had once trembled beneath it in a wheatfield in such wild, flattered elation.
His daughter would have been a pretty girl. The thought twisted in her like a knife, and she fought to set it aside.
“Where is everyone?” he asked cautiously, looking around again.
“Papa and the boys are up cutting hay, Mama is out giving the chickens a dusting with that antilice powder she got from your uncle, and Aunt Nattie’s bad knee hurt so she went to lie down after lunch.”
“Nattie’s blind, she won’t see me anyhow. Good.” He loomed nearer, staring hard at her. No—just at her belly. She resisted an impulse to slump and push it out.
His head cocked. “As little as you are, I’d have thought you’d be popping out by now. Clover sure would have bleated about it if she’d noticed.”
“You talk to her?”
“Saw her at noon, down in the village.” He shifted restlessly. “It’s all the talk there, you turning up again.” He turned again, scowling. “So, did you come back to fuss at me some more? It won’t do you any good. I’m betrothed to Violet now.”
“So I heard,” said Fawn, in a flat voice. “I actually hadn’t planned to see you at all. We wouldn’t have stayed on today except for Dag’s broken arm.”
“Yeah, Clover said you had some Lakewalker fellow trailing you. Tall as a flagpole, with one arm wooden and the other broke, who didn’t hardly say boo. Sounds about useless. You been running around alone with him for three or four weeks, seemingly.” He wet his lips. “So, what’s your plan? Switching horses in the middle of the river? Going to tell him the baby is his and hope he can’t count too good?”
A cast-iron frying pan was sitting on the drainboard. Swung in an appropriate arc, it would just fit Sunny’s round face, Fawn thought through a red haze. “No.”
“I’m not playing your little game, Fawn,” said Sunny tightly. “You won’t pin this on me. I meant what I said.” His hands were trembling slightly. But then, so were hers.
Her voice went, if possible, even flatter. “Well, you can put your mind and your nasty tongue to rest. I miscarried down near Glassforge the day the blight bogle nearly killed me. So there’s nothing left to pin on anyone, except bad memories.”
His breath of relief was visible and audible; he squeezed his eyes shut with it. The tension in the room seemed to drop by half. She thought Sunny must have gone into a flying panic when he’d heard of her return, watching his comfortable little world teeter, and felt grimly recompensed. Her world had been turned upside down. But if she could now turn it back upright, make all her misery not have been, at the cost of losing all she’d learned on the road to Glassforge—would she?
She could not, she thought, in all fairness judge Sunny for acting as though his daughter weren’t real to him; she’d scarcely seemed real to Fawn a deal of the time either, after all. She asked instead, “So where did you think I’d gone?”
He shrugged. “I thought at first you might have thrown yourself in the river. Gave me a turn, for a while.”
She tossed her head. “But not enough of one to do anything about it, seemingly.”
“What would there have been to do at that point? It seemed like the sort of stupid thing you’d do when you get a mad on. You always did have a temper. I remember how your brothers’d get you so wound up you could scarcely breathe for screaming, sometimes, till your pa’d tear his hair and come beat you for making such awful noise. Then the word got around that some of your clothes had gone missing, which made it seem you’d run off, since not even you would take three changes to go drowning. Your folks all looked, but I guess not far enough.”
“You didn’t help look then, either, I take it.”
“Do I look stupid? I didn’t want to find you! You got yourself into this fix, you could get yourself out.”
“Yeah, that’s what I figured.” Fawn bit her lip.
Silence. More staring.
Just go away, you awful lout. “I haven’t forgotten what you said to me that night, Sunny Sawman. You aren’t welcome in my sight. In case you’d any doubt.”
He shrugged irritably. His golden brows drew together over his snub nose. “I figured the blight bogle was a tall tale. What really happened?”
“Bogles are real enough. One touched me. Here and there.” She fingered her neck where the dents glowed an angry red, and, reluctantly, laid her palm over her belly. “Lakewalkers make special knives to kill malices—that’s their name for blight bogles. Dag had one. Between us, we did for the bogle, but it was too late for the child. It was almost too late for the two of us, but not quite.”
“Oh, magic knives, now, as well as magic monsters? Sure, I believe that. Or maybe some of those secret Lakewalker medicines did the job, and the rest is a nice tale to cover it, make you look good in front of your family, eh?” He moved closer to her. She moved back.
“They don’t even know I was pregnant. I didn’t tell them that part.” She drew a long breath. “Do you really care which, so long as it’s not on you? Feh!” She gripped her hair, then drew her hands down hard over her face. “You know, I really don’t give two pennies what you think as long as you go think it somewhere else.” Aunt Nattie had once remarked that the opposite of love was not hate, but indifference. Fawn felt she was beginning to see the point of that.
Sunny edged closer again; she could feel his breath stir the sweat-dampened hairs on her neck. “So… have you been letting that patroller fellow poke you? Does your family know that?”
; Fawn’s breath clogged in rage. She would not scream… “After a miscarriage? You got no brains at all, Sunny Sawman!”
He did hesitate at that, doubt flickering in his blue eyes.
“Besides,” she went on, “you’re marrying Violet Stonecrop. Are you poking her yet?”
His lips drew back in something like a smile, except that it was devoid of humor. He stepped closer still. “I was right. You are a little slut.” And grinned in countertriumph at the fury she knew was reddening her face. “Don’t give me that scowl,” he added, lifting a hand to squeeze her breast. “I know how easy you are.”
Her fingers groped for the frying-pan handle.
Long footsteps sounded from the weaving room; Sunny jumped back hurriedly.
“Hello, Spark,” said Dag. “Any more of that cider around?”
“Sure, Dag,” she said, backing away from Sunny and escaping across the room to the crock on the shelf. She shifted the lid and drew a cup, willing her hands to stop shaking.
Somehow, Dag was now standing between her and Sunny. “Caller?” he inquired, with a nod at Sunny. Sunny looked as though he was furiously wondering whether Dag had just come in, if they had been overheard, and if the latter, how incriminatingly much.
“This here’s Sunny Sawman,” said Fawn. “He’s leaving. Dag Redwing Hickory, a Lakewalker patroller. He’s staying.”
Sunny, looking unaccustomedly up, gave a wary nod. Dag looked back down without a whole lot of expression one way or another.
“Interestin’ to meet you at last, Sunny,” said Dag. “I’ve heard a lot about you. All true, seemingly.”
Sunny’s mouth opened and closed—shocked that his slanderous threats had failed to silence Fawn? Well, he had only his own mouth to blame now. He looked toward the weaving room, which had no other exit except into Nattie and Fawn’s bedroom, and did not come up with a reply.
Dag continued coolly, “So… Sunny… has anyone ever offered to cut out your tongue and feed it to you?”
Sunny swallowed. “No.” He might have been trying for a bold tone, but it came out rather a croak.
“I’m surprised,” said Dag. He gently scratched the side of his nose with his hook, a quiet warning, Fawn thought, if both unobserved and unheeded by Sunny.
“Are you trying to start something?” asked Sunny, recovering his belligerence.
“Alas.” Dag indicated his broken arm with a slight movement of the sling. “I’ll have to take you up later.”
Sunny’s eyes brightened as the apparent helplessness of the patroller dawned on him. “Then maybe you’d better keep a still tongue in your head till then, Lakewalker. Ha! Only Fawn would be fool enough to pick a cripple for a bullyboy!”
Dag’s eyes thinned to gold slits as Fawn cringed. In that same level, affable tone, he murmured, “Changed my mind. I’ll take you up now. Spark, you said this fellow was leaving. Open the door for him, would you?”
Plainly unable to imagine what Dag could possibly do to him, Sunny set his teeth, planted his legs, and glowered. Dag stood quite still. Confused, Fawn hastily set down the cup, slopping cider on the table; she swung the screen door inward and held it.
When Dag moved, his speed was shocking. She caught only a glimpse of him swerving half-around Sunny, his leg coming up hard behind Sunny’s knees, and his left arm whipping around with a wicked whir and glint of his hook. Suddenly Sunny was flailing forward, mouth agape, lifted by Dag’s hook through the seat of his trousers. His feet churned but barely touched the floor; he looked like someone tumbling on ice. Three long Dag-strides, a loud ripping noise, and Sunny was sailing through the air in truth, headfirst all the way over the porch boards to land beyond the steps in an awkward heap, haunches up, face scraping the dirt.
It was partly terrorized relief that Dag hadn’t just torn Sunny’s throat out with his hook as calmly as he’d slain that mud-man, but Fawn burst into a shriek of laughter. She clapped her hand across her mouth and stared at the ridiculously cheering sight of Sunny’s drawers flapping through the new vent in his britches.
Sunny twisted around and glared up, his face flushing a dull, mottled red, then scrambled to his feet, fists clenching. Between the dirt and the curses filling his mouth his spluttering was nearly incoherent, but the general sense of I’ll get you, Lakewalker! I’ll get you both! came through clearly enough, and Fawn’s breath caught in new alarm.
“Best bring a few friends,” Dag recommended dryly. “If you have any.” Aside from the flaring of his nostrils, he seemed barely winded.
Sunny took two steps up onto the porch, but then veered back uncertainly as that hook came quietly to the fore. Fawn darted for the frying pan. As Sunny hovered in doubt, his head jerked up at a thumping and shuffling sounding from the weaving room—blind Aunt Nattie with her cane. She had risen from her nap at last. Sunny stared wildly around, tripped backward down the steps, turned, and fled around the side of the house.
“You’re right, Spark,” Dag said, closing the screen door again. “He doesn’t much care for witnesses. You can sort of see why.”
Nattie wandered into the kitchen. “Hello, Fawn, lovie. Hello, Dag. My, that apple butter smells good.” Her face turned, following the retreating footsteps rounding the house and fading. “Young fool,” she added reflectively. “Sunny always thinks if I can’t see him, I can’t hear him. You have to wonder, really you do.”
Fawn gulped, dropped the pan on the table, and flew into Dag’s embrace. He wrapped his left arm around her in a reassuring hug. Aunt Nattie’s head tilted toward them, a smile touching her lips. “Thank you kindly for that bit o’ housecleaning, patroller.”
“My pleasure, Aunt Nattie. Here, now.” Dag folded Fawn closer. “For what it’s worth, Spark, he was more afraid of you than you were of him.” He added reflectively, “Sort of like a snake, that way.”
She gave a shaken giggle, and his grip eased. “I was about to hit him with the frying pan, just before you came in.”
“Thought something like that might be up. I was having a few daydreams along that line myself.”
“Too bad you couldn’t really have cut his tongue out…” She paused. “Was that a joke or not? I’m not too sure sometimes about patroller humor.”
“Eh,” he said, sounding faintly wistful. “Not, in any case, currently practical. Though I suppose I’m right glad to see Sunny doesn’t believe any of those ugly rumors about Lakewalkers being black sorcerers.”
Her trembling diminished, but her brows pinched as she thought back. “I’m so glad you were there. Though I wish your arm wasn’t broken. Is it all right?” She touched the sling in worry.
“That wasn’t especially good for it, but I haven’t unset it. We’re lucky for your aunt Nattie and Sunny’s, ah, sudden shyness.”
She drew back to stare up at his serious face, her eyes questioning, and he went on, “See, despite whatever hog butchering he’s done, Sunny’s never been in a lethal fight. I’ve been in no other kind since I was younger than him. He’s used to puppy scraps, the sort you have with brothers or cousins or friends or, in any case, folks you’re going to have to go on living with. Age, weight, youth, muscle, would all count against me in that sort of scuffle, even without a broken arm. If you truly want him dead, I’m your man; if you want less, it’s trickier.”
She sighed and leaned her head against his chest. “I don’t want him dead. I just want him behind me. Miles and years. I suppose I just have to wait for the years. I still think of him every day, and I don’t want to. Dead would be even worse, for that.”
“Wise Spark,” he murmured.
Her nose wrinkled in doubt. How seriously had he meant that lethal offer, to be so relieved that she hadn’t taken him up on it? Remembering, she fetched him his drink, which he accepted with a smile of thanks.
Nattie had drifted to the hearth to stir the apple butter which, by the smell, was on the verge of scorching. Now she tapped the wooden spoon on the pot rim to shake off the excess, set it aside, turned bac
k, and said, “You’re a smart man, patroller.”
“Oh, Nattie,” said Fawn dolefully. “How much of that awfulness did you hear?”
“Pretty much all, lovie.” She sighed. “Is Sunny gone yet?”
That funny look Dag got when consulting his groundsense flitted over his face. “Long gone, Aunt Nattie.”
Fawn breathed relief.
“Dag, you’re a good fellow, but I need to talk with my niece. Why don’t you take a walk?”
He looked down to Fawn, who nodded reluctantly. He said, “I expect I could stand to go check on Copperhead, make sure he hasn’t bitten anybody yet.”
“I ’spect so,” Nattie agreed.
He gave Fawn a last hug, bent down to touch his cider-scented lips to hers, smiled in encouragement, and left. She heard his steps wend through the house to the front door, and out.
Fawn wanted to put her head down in Nattie’s lap and bawl; instead, she busied herself raking the coals under the oven for the pies. Nattie sat on a kitchen chair and rested her hands on her cane. Haltingly at first, then less so, the story came out, from Fawn’s foolish tumble at the spring wedding to her growing realization and fear of the consequences to the initial horrid talk with Sunny.
“Teh.” Nattie sighed in regret. “I knew you were troubled, lovie. I tried to get you to talk to me, but you wouldn’t.”
“I know. I don’t know if I’m sorry now or not. I figured it was a problem I’d bought all on my own, so it was a problem to pay for all on my own. And then I thought my nerve would fail if I didn’t plunge in.”
For Nattie today, Fawn resolved to leave out nothing of her journey except the uncanny accident with Dag’s sharing knife—partly because she was daunted by the complicated explanations that would have to go with, partly because it made no difference to the fate of her pregnancy, but mostly because Lakewalker secrets were so clearly not hers to give away. No, not just Lakewalker secrets—Dag’s privacy. She grasped, now, what an intimate and personal possession his dead wife’s bone had been. It was the only confidence he’d asked her to keep.