Barr, apparently wrenching his mind away from a disturbing vision of Arkady as a cow, said to Dag, “So what was the groundwork?”
“Ah,” said Dag. “This may prove to come under what Arkady calls medicine tent work. Which means if I explain it to you, it’s in aid of someone, and not for tale-telling.”
Barr took this in. “This means if I gossip about it, you pound me?”
“This means you don’t gossip about it. Period.”
Barr opened his free hand in cautious agreement, and set it again to his thigh.
“I believe Calla tried to persuade or beguile her sweetheart Sage,” said Dag. “And failed, near as I can tell.”
“Persuade him to do what?” asked Barr.
“It seemed to be what a farmer might call a love spell.”
Arkady snorted. “Pointless. The boy’s besotted with her.”
“I wonder if she realizes that?” Dag was put in mind of Fawn when he’d first met her, lumbered with desperate self-doubts. How could all these young women not know how lovely they were? “I don’t see my way clear yet, but I figure if I wait and watch, it will all lay itself open to me. Meanwhile, we have these two youngsters here with more than a touch of groundsense, and no one at all to instruct them how to go on with it. They seem to be”—he glanced at Arkady and picked his word—“damaged.”
“Oh?” said Arkady, straightening in his saddle.
Hooked you. Dag repeated Finch’s tale, more or less, of the two young half bloods blundering between worlds, finding no clear path. Or paths deliberately blocked? Dag’s curiosity grew.
In a baffled voice, Barr said, “But you just met them yesterday, Dag. They don’t even like us. Why are you taking them up?” Dag’s and Arkady’s matching looks had barely intersected on his skull when he continued, “Oh. Fawn’s pregnancy. Of course you want to study half bloods now.”
Dag drew breath. “That, too. But do you also remember when I met you and Remo? Why did I take you two up?”
“I don’t know,” said Barr. Reminded, he glanced back over his shoulder at the empty road where, to his obvious discouragement, no wayward partner galloped to catch up. “I…don’t know.”
He looked for aid to Arkady, who merely shrugged. “I don’t know that I can put a name to it, either. But it touches the heart of what marks a true maker. I promise that you didn’t get me out on this mad road just because Dag can do some tricks.”
Dag exchanged a salute even-all for Arkady’s considering nod, then turned Copperhead to catch up with Fawn.
Fawn was glad for the invitation to nap in the wagon, and hardly needed Dag’s hint to want to make friends with Calla. But the Trace so fascinated her, she stayed upright on Magpie for the whole of that afternoon. The landscape was much the same as it had been since Graymouth—now fifty-odd miles behind them—a succession of swamps, woods, woods in swamps, cleared fields on the higher ground, and little villages. The good weather brought out not only local traffic—farm wagons and riders and pack mules—but road crews. They passed gangs of men and boys shoveling up barrows of dirt from the verges to raise the crown above the wet, or filling in low spots with wagonloads of gravel. It seemed to be a point of pride for each village to maintain the famous road in its vicinity; Fawn learned to spot the debatable boundaries between townships by the ruts.
During a midafternoon break, they were passed by what Fawn thought of as real Trace traffic, a caravan of some forty northbound mules loaded high with crates of valuable black tea. A muleteer strode along for every three beasts, fellows whose rough looks would have alarmed her before her time on the river, though now she could see they were merely ex–flatboat crews working their way home. They stared back at the bright wagon, and at her and Calla, but didn’t make rude hoots or anything. Indigo complained that the caravan would grab off the best campsites and their beasts eat all the new spring grass, and leave a lot of alarming-sounding mule diseases in their trampled wake, but Sage allowed amiably that their party could likely find other sites.
Some farms bordering the road made a bit of coin renting fenced pastures by the night for just this purpose. With seventeen animals to feed, this was tempting despite everyone’s youthfully slim purses, although the Smith women had loaded on enough gift grub for people that no one was going to have to cook for the first three days. But just before sunset they came upon an open meadow along a watercourse that no one seemed to be demanding payment for, not too eaten down by prior visitors, so they pulled off.
The still, brown channel was overhung with creeper-laced cypresses and thick with mysterious shadows and birdcalls, and Fawn was grateful for the Lakewalkers making an alligator patrol before bed. All they stirred up was a family of scurrying animals that looked to be the unlikely offspring of a possum mating with a turtle. Dag, accused, denied that ancient or recent Lakewalker magery had anything to do with the armor-plated possums. When the boys poked them with sticks they rolled up like pill bugs, inspiring a brief round of creature-ball till they unrolled and scampered indignantly away.
Sodden with fatigue, Fawn fell into their bedroll, pleased to learn the night song of a mockingbird from the circle of Dag’s arms; the next thing she knew, morning light tickled her eyes.
This day’s start was quicker but not so lively. She wasn’t the stiffest, climbing up onto her horse again; Arkady seemed creakier, but his chill squint defied anyone to comment. Dag and Barr mirrored each other in a series of patroller stretches accompanied by a rude, rhyming challenge chant that set them both laughing, but allowed them to lunge up onto their mounts without groans. Indigo was fun to watch, helping Sage hitch up their mules. When he talked to the beasts, coaxing and cajoling and praising, Fawn could almost imagine them talking back, or at least signaling with their big floppy ears. It wasn’t near the overwhelming effect Dag had on mice—fortunately, as being followed about by half a dozen entranced mules might get awkward—but put her in mind of it.
But by that afternoon, not all the charms of the Trace could keep her upright in her saddle. She crawled into the warm and creaking shadow of the wagon’s canvas roof with a thankful moan, and didn’t wake till the light was growing golden. Her mouth felt as if she’d been chewing on cotton, but at least her limbs didn’t seem to be dripping off. Recalling her mandate to make friends, she went forward to the box. Calla stiffened at her greetings, but Sage obligingly scooted over so she might sit up on his other side.
“Long way to Tripoint,” Fawn observed invitingly, gazing down over the harnessed backs of the mules. She liked the way their ears bobbed like swaying branches as they walked briskly along.
“Yep,” agreed Sage. “Though we have a good pace going, so far. If we can keep it up, it might take us a week to hit the Barrens, and maybe two after that to make the Hardboil River ferry. Which will be about the halfway mark, folks say.”
The Barrens, Dag had explained to Fawn, were a two-hundred-mile-wide tongue of ancient blight extending due east from the Western Levels that had for long divided north from south. For most of a millennium, the only way across had been around, either down the Gray River or up the eastern seaboard. It had only become safely passable again a few hundred years ago. Because malices did not come up on old blight, no Lakewalkers patrolled that waste, and no farmers attempted to wrest a living from its still-bitter soils. Without camp or village markets, folks crossing it had to pack all their own supplies. Rumor made it bandit country, which went with the lack of patrols, Fawn supposed.
“I saw a bit of the Barrens when we were passing down the Gray on the Fetch,” Fawn offered. “Scrubby country, all sandy and flat, and no river towns at all. Quiet stretch, but it was still a relief when we got past it and saw green again.”
This triggered a string of interested questions from Sage about their river journey. Inevitably, their encounter with the awful river bandits infesting Crooked Elbow came out, but Fawn downplayed it in favor of explaining as much as she could about Dag’s dreams for healing the divisions betwe
en her people and his. She’d thought his notion of a Lakewalker medicine maker treating farmers might draw Calla out, but the young woman kept stubbornly silent.
Fawn tried a more direct lure, explaining how Dag, she, Hod, and Remo had among them cracked unbeguilement, that memorable day back up on the Grace. “It wasn’t something either a Lakewalker or a farmer alone could have figured out. It took all of us, working together.”
This finally startled a question from Calla: “Your husband can unbeguile folks?”
“He can do no end of groundwork, these days. Arkady’s even better.”
This news failed to cheer up Calla; if anything, she looked…fearful? Yet Fawn couldn’t see how a girl with a Lakewalker maker for a father could be afraid of groundwork. “Didn’t you ever watch your papa making?”
Calla shrugged. “I was a child. I couldn’t tell that he was doing anything more than sewing leather.”
Oh. Right. Groundsense didn’t come in till a person was more than half grown, and Calla had been barely that when her mama had died and her papa had left her with her farmer kin.
Calla added after a moment, in an oddly wistful tone, “Folks always wanted to buy his work, though. Harness and bridles and saddles. It was plain, but it was extra pretty, somehow. And it never broke.” She straightened, jaw clamping as though she regretted letting even this mild memory escape.
“I remember that,” said Sage.
For a little while Fawn was able to get Sage—but not Calla—to reminisce about growing up in Alligator Hat, and she offered tales of West Blue in trade. Then Indigo cantered back from scouting ahead, claiming to have spotted one of those rentable pastures too fine and cheap to pass up. Arriving at the site, everyone agreed he was right, and they turned off for the night.
Sage drew the wagon to a halt in a stand of pecan trees just coming into leaf, overlooking a sparkling creek much too shallow to conceal alligators. Fawn approved. He went off to find the farmhouse and offer his coins, and Fawn followed Calla down from the box, glad to have unmoving ground under her feet. The two came briefly face-to-face, and Fawn smiled brightly.
“Why do you keep bothering me?” said Calla through her teeth.
“I’d like to be friends. We’ve a long road ahead.” Why Fawn should feel a maternal regard for a girl five or six years older than herself was hard to explain, but she did. Or maybe not so hard. “Seems I’m newly interested in happiness for half bloods.”
“If you really wanted to increase happiness, you wouldn’t be making more half bloods,” snapped Calla, and strode away.
Fawn blinked, a bit discouraged. That did not go well. Yet. Keep trying. She made her way over to the less-prickly Indigo, who was starting to unharness the mules, thinking up some unexceptionable praise for his animal handling.
As darkness fell, Dag walked the perimeter of the pasture in pure patroller habit, but sensed no danger for a mile in any direction. He wandered back to the creek and eased himself down on a rock, listening to the gurgle of the water and the munching of the mules. Copperhead came over and lipped his hair, and Dag took a moment to impress upon the gelding, again, that there were to be no random attacks upon his pasture mates tonight. Magpie, being more ladylike, needed no such persuasion. The two horses wandered away downstream in search of sweeter grass.
Dag became aware that he was being stalked, more or less. A thin figure approached from the shadows as cautiously as a hunter sneaking up on a bear or a catamount, or some other dangerous beast that might turn and rend. He sat still and waited.
Before long, Calla’s hoarse voice demanded, “What do you want?”
“Beg pardon?” said Dag.
“What is it that you’ll take, to leave me and mine alone?”
Dag’s brows drew down. “Missus Smith, I truly do not understand that question.”
“Don’t make mock of me!” Her voice was sharp, but with a quaver at the end.
He reckoned a year of living with Fawn must have made him more fluent in female. He could already tell it was going to be one of those conversations. “Ma’am, I’m not. I’d take it as a privilege to help you out. And your brother, though it’s plain you’re the more gifted in groundsense. Someone should have taken you both in hand before this.”
“We don’t need help. We don’t need Lakewalkers.” Her voice went lower and, if possible, more bitter. “Lakewalkers don’t need us.”
“Maybe not at Moss River, but not all Lakewalkers think like that. What was that test Finch was talking about—weaving your ground into a cord?”
“What about it?”
“You should have passed.”
Her voice went lower still. “Indigo didn’t. So I didn’t.”
Dag’s brows rose. “You deliberately failed?”
“They would have separated us. Kept me, thrown Indigo away. Everyone else had left us, one way or another. I wasn’t going to do that to him, not again.”
“Whose idea was it to go north? Yours, or his, or…?”
“The boys always talked about it. But it was just talk. After Moss River, I wanted to get away from everything so bad, but it was too dangerous to go by ourselves. I had enough magic to make us targets, but not enough to protect us. We had to have the others, we had to.”
“Seems sensible thinking to me,” Dag said cautiously.
“Please”—her voice broke—“don’t take that away from us.”
Dag held his ground open wide, in the hopes she might sense he told no lies. “You talking about that attempt of yours to persuade Sage?”
“You sensed it?” A sharp-drawn breath. “Don’t touch it, you—! I’ll give you—I don’t know what. I don’t have much money, but I can give you some.”
“Absent gods, I don’t want your money!”
A long pause. “I’ve only got one other thing.” And from the scrunch in her shoulders, not something she’d be pleased to part with, not to him.
Dag was startled, bemused, and more than a little offended. “Absent gods! No. You’re young enough to be my daughter, you know.”
“So’s your wife.” A brittle pause. “Oh, full blood, you have to be older than you look. Granddaughter.”
“Now, that’s going a mite too far!” He didn’t know whether to laugh or be horrified.
Calla stood rigid. “It seemed it might be a fixation of yours. Younger women.”
Dag said sternly, “Fawn and I are a long story that you might learn more of if you listen, but in the meanwhile, don’t talk ignorant rubbish. Fawn’s earned every bit of loyalty I can give her.” His voice slowed. “We have a fair trade going on, that way.”
Calla flinched.
It finally clicked in. Oh gods, I’m slow. “I take it you believe you magicked young Sage into marrying you and taking you and your brother north?”
“You know I did, Lakewalker. His family suspected. His sister told me to my face Sage wouldn’t have looked twice at such a horse-faced rack of bones without it.”
Dag began to speak, hesitated, and reversed the order. “You figure your spell is still holding? He hasn’t treated you any different, the past couple of days?” It was a safe question; there had been a couple of happy grounds in that feather bed just last night, together with some faint, distinctive creaking from the wagon that sheltered it.
“Of course it’s holding. Or he’d have cast me off by now.”
“Well, no. If you’d had the training you should have, you’d know those sorts of persuasions are absorbed over time, and have to be renewed to keep working. That groundwork of yours faded weeks ago. In any case, I cleared the last of it out of Sage early yesterday.”
A faint cry, choked off. She quivered like a filly about to bolt.
“Stand still!” Dag used his old patrol captain’s voice; she froze rigid. “Straighten up, girl, and gather the wits you were born with. I’m not saying your initial persuasion didn’t cause Sage to take a second look at you, because I think it likely did. But it was what he saw that made him stay. H
e doesn’t love you because you magicked him.” Dag’s voice softened. “He loves you because you’re lovable.”
The kindness nearly broke her as the sternness never would; once again, Dag was reminded of Fawn. Tears laced her gasp, but she steadied her breathing. And listened; oh my, she was listening with all her heart now. Here’s your chance, old patroller; go carefully.
“More to the point,” he went on, “Sage was never a bit beguiled by you. And for the same reason that my groundwork on Fawn doesn’t beguile her. Your heart was entirely open to him, so your grounds flowed both ways, and he never choked on the imbalance.
“So as he loves you, and as you like him right well, too—and both your grounds prove it—there’s not a reason in the wide green world you can’t rub along as well or better than any other married couple. You could have set your persuasion into any other youth in Alligator Hat. You picked well when you picked Sage. I think you know that.”
“Oh…!”
“Though you might care to clear the air with a confession. It’s bound to make it easier between you not to be hiding that useless secret. And it will straighten out your ground for your next lessons in groundwork.”
“He’ll hate me!”
“Well”—Dag scratched his head for show—“I’m not saying he won’t be a touch unsettled, but he knew about your powers before, and they didn’t scare him off none. He might be flattered. A tall, handsome”—alarming—“older girl plucks him out from all the other fellows…he might even be proud.”
He could tell by her stillness that this was a completely new thought to her.
“And if he has any questions, he can bring them to me or Arkady. I meant it when I said I’ve helped a passel of youngsters learn to manage their groundsense. And trust me, some of them were even more thorny than you. You may not need Moss River—in fact, it seems Moss River was exactly what you didn’t need—but you need someone to show you how to go on.”