“Don’t you do that now?”
“No. We are too reduced—maybe our bloodlines were adulterated in the dark times, no one knows. Anyway, it’s forbidden.”
“I mean for your pattern walking.”
“That’s just simple perception. Like the difference between feeling with your hand and pushing with your hand, perhaps.”
“Why is pushing forbidden? Or was that linking up in bunches to push that’s not allowed?”
He should have known that the last remark would elicit more questions. Throwing one fact to Fawn was like throwing one piece of meat to a pack of starving dogs; it just caused a riot. “Bad experiences,” he replied in a quelling tone. All right, by the pursing of her lips and wrinkling of her brow, quelling wasn’t going to work; try for distraction. “Let me tell you, though, not a patroller up Luthlia way survives the lake country without learning how to bounce mosquitoes through their grounds. Ferocious little pests—they’ll drain you dry, they will.”
“You use magic to repel mosquitoes!” she said, sounding as though she couldn’t decide whether to be impressed or offended. “We just have recipes for horrible stuff to rub on our skins. Once you know what’s in them, you’d almost rather be bit.”
He snickered, then sighed. “They say we are a fallen folk, and I for one believe it. The ancient lords built great cities, ships, and roads, transformed their bodies, sought longevity, and brought the whole world crashing down at the last. Though I suspect it was a really good run for a while, till then. Me—I bounce mosquitoes. Oh, and I can summon and dismiss my horse, once I get him trained up to it. And help settle another’s hurting body, if I’m lucky. And see the world double, down to the ground. That’s about it for Dag magic, I’m afraid.”
Her eyes lifted to his face. “And kill malices,” she said slowly.
“Aye. That mainly.”
He reached for her, swallowing her next question with a kiss.
It took the better part of a week for Dag’s boat anchor of a conscience to drag him out of the clouds and back onto the road. He wished he could just jettison the blighted deadweight. But one morning he turned back from shaving to find Fawn, half-dressed and with her bedroll open on the bed, frowning down at the sharing knife that lay there.
He came and wrapped her in his arms, her bare back to his bare torso.
“It’s time, I guess,” she said.
“I guess so, too.” He sighed. “Not that you couldn’t count my unused camp-time by years, but Mari gave me leave to solve the mystery of that thing, not to linger here in this brick-and-clapboard paradise. The hirelings have been giving me squinty looks for days.”
“They’ve been real nice to me,” she observed accurately.
“You’re good at finding friends.” In fact, everyone from the cooks, scullions, chambermaids, and horse boys up to the owner and his wife had grown downright defensive of Fawn, farmer heroine as she was. To the point where Dag suspected that if she demanded, Throw this lanky fellow into the street! he’d shortly find himself sitting in the dust clutching his saddlebags. The Glassforgers who worked here were used to patrollers and their odd ways with each other, but it was clear enough to Dag that they just barely tolerated this mismatch, and that only for the sake of Fawn’s obvious delight. Other patrons now drifting in, drovers and drivers and traveling families and boatmen up from the river to secure cargoes, looked askance at the odd pair, and even more askance after collecting whatever garbled gossip was circulating about them.
Dag wondered how askance he would be looked at in West Blue. Fawn had gradually grown reconciled to the planned stop at her home, partly from guilt at his word picture of her parents’ probable anxiety, and partly by his pledge not to abandon her there. It was the only promise she’d ever asked him to repeat.
He dropped a kiss on the top of her head, letting his finger snake around and drift over the healing wounds on her left cheek. “Your bruises are fading now. I figure if I bring you back to your family claiming to be your protector, it’ll be more convincing if you don’t look like you just lost a drunken brawl.”
Her lips twitched up as she caught his hand and kissed it, but then her fingers drifted to the malice marks on her neck. “Except for these.”
“Don’t pick.”
“They itch. Are they ever going to drop off? The other scabs did already.”
“Soon enough, I judge. It’ll leave these deep bitter-red dents underneath for a time, but they’ll fade almost like other scars. They’ll turn silvery when they’re old.”
“Oh—that long shiny groove on your leg that starts behind your knee and goes around up your thigh—was that a malice-clawing, then?” She had mapped every mark upon him as assiduously as a pattern-grid surveyor, these past days and nights, and demanded annotations for most of them, too.
“Just a touch. I got away, and my linker put his knife in a moment later.”
She turned to hug him around the waist. “I’m glad it didn’t grab any higher,” she said seriously.
Dag choked a laugh. “Me too, Spark!”
They were on the straight road north by noon.
They rode slowly, in part for their dual disinclination for their destinations, but mostly because of the dog-breath humidity that had set in after the last rain. The horses plodded beneath a brassy sun. Their riders talked or fell silent with, it seemed to Dag, equal ease. They spent the next afternoon—rainy again—in the loft of the barn at the well-house where they’d first glimpsed each other, picnicking on farm fare and listening to the soothing sounds of the drops on the roof and the horses champing hay below, didn’t notice when the storm stopped, and lingered there overnight.
The next day was brighter and clearer, the hot white haze blown away east, and they reluctantly rode on. On the fifth night of the two-day ride they stopped a short leg from Lumpton Market to camp one last time. Fawn had figured an early start from Lumpton would bring them to West Blue before dark. It was hard for Dag to guess what would happen then, though her slowly unfolding tales of her family had at least given him a better sense of who he would encounter.
They found a campsite by a winding creek, out of view of the road, beneath a scattered stand of leatherpod trees. Later in the fall, the seed-pods would hang down beneath the big spade-shaped leaves like hundreds of leather straps, but now the trees were in full bloom. Spikes stood up from crowns of leaves with dozens of linen-white blossoms the size of egg cups clustered on them, breathing sweet perfume into the evening air. As the moonless night fell, fireflies rose up along the creek and from the meadow beyond it, twinkling in the mist. Beneath the leatherpod tree, the shadows grew black.
“Wish I could see you better,” Fawn murmured, as they lay down across their combined blankets and commenced a desultory fiddling with each other’s buttons. No one wanted a blanket atop, in this heat.
“Hm.” Dag sat up on one elbow and smiled in the dark. “Give me a minute, Spark, and I might be able to do something about that.”
“No, don’t put more wood on the fire. ‘S too hot now.”
“Wasn’t going to. Just wait and see. In fact, close your eyes.”
He extended his groundsense to its full range and found no menace for a mile, just the small nesting life of the grass: mice and shrews and rabbits and sleepy meadowlarks; above, a few fluttering bats, and the silent ghostly passage of an owl. He drew his net finer still, filling it with tinier life. Not a bounce, but a persuasion… yes. This still worked. The tree began to throng with his invited visitors, more and more. Beside him, Fawn’s face slowly emerged from the gloom as though rising from deep water.
“Can I open them yet?” she asked, her eyes dutifully scrunched up.
“Just a moment more… yes. Now.”
He kept his eyes on her face as she looked up, so as not to miss the best wonder of all. Her eyes opened, then shot wide; her lips parted in a gasp.
Above them, the leatherpod tree was filled with hundreds, perhaps thousands, of—in Dag’
s wide-open perception, slightly bewildered—fireflies, so dense the lighter branches bent with their load. Many of them crawled inside the white blossoms, and when they lit, the clusters of petal cups glowed like pale lanterns. The cool, shadowless radiance bathed them both. Her breath drew in. “Oh,” she said, rising on one elbow and staring upward. “Oh…”
“Wait. I can do more.” He concentrated, and drew down a lambent swirl of insects to spiral around and land in her dark hair, lighting it like a coronet of candles.
“Dag… !” She gave a wild laugh, half delight, half indignation, her hands rising to gently prod her curls. “You put bugs in my hair!”
“I happen to know you like bugs.”
“I do,” she admitted fairly. “Some kinds, anyhow. But how… ? Did you learn to do this up in the woods of Luthlia, too?”
“No, actually. I learned it in camp, back when my groundsense first came in—I was about twelve, I guess. The children learn it from each other; no adult ever teaches it, but I think most everyone knows how to catch fireflies this way. We just forget. Grow up and get busy and all. Though I admit, I never collected more than a handful at one time before.”
She was smiling helplessly. “It’s a bit eerie. But I like it. Not sure about the hair—eh! Dag, they’re tickling my ears!”
“Lucky bugs.” He leaned in and blew off the wanderers from the curve of her ear, kissing the tickle away. “You should be crowned with light like the rising moon.”
“Well,” she said, in a gruff little voice, and sniffed. Her gaze traced the bending lantern-flowers above, and returned to his face. “What do you want to go and do a thing like that for anyhow? I’m already as full of joy for you as my body can hold, and there you go and put more in. Downright wasteful, I say. It’s just going to spill over…” The light shimmered in her swimming eyes.
He pulled her up and across him, and let the warm drops spatter across his chest like summer rain. “Spill on me,” he whispered.
He released her twinkling tiara and let the tiny creatures fly up into the tree again. In the scintillant glow, they made slow love till midnight brought silence and sleep.
Lumpton Market was a smaller town than Glassforge, but lively nonetheless. It lay at the confluence of two rocky rivers, which flanked a long shale-and-limestone ridge running northward. Two old straight roads crossed there, and it had surely been the site of a hinterland city when the lords ruled. As it was, much of the new town was made of ancient building blocks mined out of the encroaching woods, and dry-stone walls of both ordinary fieldstone and much less identifiable rubble abounded around both outlying fields and house yards. Now that Dag’s eye was alerted to it, however, he noticed a few newer, finer houses on the outskirts built of brick. The bridges were timber, recent, and wide and sturdy enough for big wagons.
The hostelry familiar and friendly to patrollers for which Dag was aiming lay on the north side of Lumpton, so he and Fawn found themselves in early afternoon riding through the town square, where the day market was in full swing. Fawn turned in her saddle, looking over the booths and carts and tarps as they passed around the edge of the busy scene.
“I have that glass bowl for Mama,” she said. “I wish I had something to bring Aunt Nattie. She hardly ever gets taken along when my parents come down here.” A yearly ritual, Dag had been given to understand.
Aunt Nattie was Fawn’s mother’s much older sister, blind since a childhood infection had stolen her sight at age ten. She had come along with Fawn’s mother when she’d married years ago, in some sort of dowry deal. Semi-invalid but not idle, she did all the spinning and weaving for the farm, with extra to sell for cash money sometimes. And was the only member of her family Fawn spoke of without hidden strain in her voice and ground.
Obligingly, now that he understood her purpose, Dag followed Fawn’s gaze. One would not, presumably, carry food to a farm. The cloth and clothing for sale, new and used, likewise would seem foolish. His eye ran over the more permanent shops lining the square. “Tools? Scissors, needles? Something for her weaving or sewing?”
“She has a lot of those.” Fawn sighed.
“Something that gets used up, then. Dyes?” His voice faded in doubt. “Ah. Likely not.”
“Mama did most of the coloring, though I do it nowadays. Wish I could get her something just for her.” Her gaze narrowed. “Furs… ?”
“Well, let’s look.” They dismounted, and Fawn looked over the tarp where a farmwoman offered some, in Dag’s expert view, rather inferior pelts; all common local beasts, raccoon and possum and deerhide.
“I can get her something much better, later,” Dag murmured, and with a grimace of agreement Fawn gave over poking through the sad piles. They strolled onward side by side, leading their horses.
Fawn stopped and wheeled, lips pursing, as they passed a narrow medicine shop tucked between a shoemaker and a barber-toothdrawer-scribe—it was unclear if the latter was all one man. The medicine shop had a broad window, with small square glass panes set in a bowed-out wooden frame to make a larger view. “I wonder if they sell scent water like what your patroller girls found in Glassforge?”
Or oil, Dag could not help wondering. They could stand to restock for future use, although the likelihood of immediate future use at the Bluefield homestead seemed remote. Whatever gratitude her family might feel for his bringing their only daughter back alive was unlikely to extend to letting them sleep together there. In any case, they tied their horses to one of the hitching rails conveniently lining the cobblestone sidewalk and went inside.
The shop had four kinds of scent water but only plain oil, which made Dag’s selection immediate. He occupied himself looking over the shop’s actually impressive stock of herbals, several of which he recognized as of high quality and coming from Lakewalker sources, while Fawn made herself redolent with happy indecision. Her choice finally made, they waited while their small purchases were wrapped. Or not so small in proportion to Fawn’s thin purse, Dag noted as she braced herself to trade out some of her few coins for the little luxury.
Outside, Dag tucked the packets away in his saddlebags and turned to give Fawn a leg up on the bay mare. She was standing staring at her saddle in dismay.
“My bedroll’s gone!” Her hand went to the dangling rawhide strings behind her cantle. “Did it drop on the road? I know I tied it on better than…”
His hand followed hers, and his voice tightened. “These are cut. See, the knots are still tied. Sneak thief.”
“Dag, the knife was in my bedroll!” she gasped.
He snapped open his groundsense, flinching as it was battered by the uproar pouring from all the people nearby. He searched through the noise for a faint, familiar chime. Just… there. His head came up, and he looked along the square to where a slight figure was disappearing between two buildings, the roll cast casually over his shoulder as though he owned it.
“I see it,” he said thickly. “Wait here!” His legs stretched as he followed after, not quite running. Behind him, he could hear Fawn demanding of passersby, Did you see anyone fooling around by our horses?
Dag tamped outrage down to annoyance, mostly at himself. If he’d been traveling through here with a group of patrollers, someone would always have been left with the horses as a routine precaution. So what had made him drop his guard? Some misplaced sense of anonymity? The fact that if only he’d bothered to glance out the window, he could have kept an eye on the horses himself? If he’d left his groundsense more open, he might have picked up some restive response from Copperhead as a stranger came too near. Too late, never mind.
In an alley in back of the buildings he closed with his quarry. The boy was crouched behind a woodpile, and not alone; a much larger and older companion—brother, friend, thief-boss?—knelt with him as they spread open the bedroll to examine their prize.
The big man was saying disgustedly, “This is just some girl’s clothes. Why didn’t you pinch those saddlebags, you fool?”
“That
red brute of a horse tried to kick me, and people were looking,” the boy replied in a surly tone. “Wait, what’s that?”
The big man lifted the sharing knife sheath by its broken strap; the pouch swung, and his hand went toward the bone hilt.
“Your death, if you touch it,” Dag snarled, coming up on them. “I’ll see to that.”
The boy took one look at him, yelped, and sprang away, casting a panicked glance over his shoulder as he ran. The big man, his eyes widening, shoved to his feet, hand closing on a stout log from the pile. It was plain that they were far past the point of lame explanations and apologies, sir, about mistaken ownership, even if the burly thief had possessed the wits and nerve to try to escape that way. He came around already swinging.
Dag flung up his arm to protect his face from a blow that would have caved it in. As it was, the oak log connected with his forearm with a sickening thud, and he was bashed by his own arm-plus-log so hard as to be knocked half off his feet. Hot agony burst in his forearm. No chance to go for his knife, but the hook-and-spring presently attached to his left arm cuff doubled as a weapon of no small menace; the big man ducked back in fright as Dag’s return swing grazed his throat. Rapidly revising his chances against this unexpected unhanded reprisal—brighter than he looked?—the would-be thief dropped both knife pouch and log and galloped after his smaller partner.
Fawn and a party of three or four Lumpton locals rounded the corner as Dag staggered upright again. Quietly, he flipped a corner of the blanket over the leather pouch with a booted toe.
“Dag, are you all right?” Fawn cried in alarm. “Your nose is bleeding!”
Dag could feel a wet trickle over his lip, and licked at it, unmistakable iron tang. He tried to raise his hand to touch his throbbing face but found it would not work properly. Drawing breath through his teeth in a long hiss at the flaring pain, he searched his mind for curses and found none strong enough. His groundsense, turned in upon himself, left him in no doubt. He wheeled away, bent over, and spat blood and fury on the ground before turning back to her. “Nose is all right,” he mumbled in frustrated wrath. “Right arm’s broken. Blight it!”