He tilted his head for a long moment, eyeing Dag in a shrewd way that made him feel even more of a fool.
“Ye-es,” Arkady drawled. “Perhaps…” Taking the second length of rope, he knelt by Dag’s chair. “Fawn, give me a hand, here. I want to tie his feet firmly to the chair legs.”
“Why? ” asked Dag. “No one does ground projections from their feet.”
“Safety precaution.”
Fawn touched Dag’s shoulder in encouragement and knelt on his other side; she and Arkady passed the rope back and forth and consulted on the knots. Fawn was inclined to be thorough. Dag craned his neck and tried to see what they’d done, but couldn’t quite. He flexed his ankles against their restraints, which held tight, and waited while the pair seated themselves, flanking him once more. Arkady cooked his knife blade in the candle flame again, looking bland.
Then, abruptly, he pounced across the table, yanked Fawn’s hand down in front of Dag, and sliced across its back. “Ow!” she cried.
Dag nearly fell over, trying to lunge out of his chair. Safety for who, you blighter? He strained at his bindings, clawed at the knot in front, thought wildly of ground-ripping the rope apart, then barely controlled his rocking as Arkady continued to press Fawn’s hand down, squeezing to make it drip. Her eyes were wide, and she gasped a little, but she did not struggle to withdraw. Instead, she looked hopefully at Dag.
“You can fix this. Can’t you?” Arkady purred in Dag’s right ear.
“Blight your eyes…” Dag growled. Arkady hadn’t plotted this with Fawn in advance, hadn’t asked her permission; her surprise and distress had been spontaneous and loud in Dag’s groundsense, for all that she’d quickly overcome both. Her pain lingered, shivery sharp like shards of glass.
Arkady let Fawn’s hand go and leaned back as Dag extended his right hand above it, fingers not quite touching her pale skin. The slice was barely half an inch long, precisely placed across the blue vein. Dag forced himself to breathe, to open his ground, to concentrate. Down and in. The back of Fawn’s hand expanded in his perceptions, the wider world tilted away. He felt for the shuddering vein ends. The ground of his right hand seemed to spurt and sputter. Blight you, Arkady, I’ve no skill on this side…!
Skill or no, Dag managed to push his ground beyond the confines of his skin. Clumsily, he caught up the two cut ends of the biggest vessel, guided them back together-they seemed to seek each other, which helped-and shaped a strong-no, not quite that strong, right-ground reinforcement to hold them there. There. He forced himself to calm, lest he set Fawn’s hand afire and do more damage than Arkady had. Down and in… he found the living fibers of skin, and began weaving them back together. Farther down, farther in…
He was broken from his beginning trance not by a ground-touch, but by Arkady simply slapping him on the side of his head. Dag came back blinking and shaken to the morning light of the room. He inhaled, looked down. Fawn was wiping the blood from her hand with Arkady’s napkin. Nothing showed of the attack but a faint pink line.
Dag drew a deep breath. “You like living dangerously, do you, Arkady? ”
Arkady’s shrug was devoid of apology. “It was time to move you along. It worked, didn’t it? Now, let’s see that projection again.”
His right-side projection felt weak and clumsy, but it was there. And again. And again. Dag was light-headed and nauseated when Arkady at last ceased his badgering and allowed Fawn to untie him.
Dag shook out both his arms, stretching his aching back. The only reason he didn’t then stand up and slug the maker across his closeshaved jaw was the sudden thought-Does this mean I’m almost over my quarantine?
7
On a bright day that breathed promise of an early southern spring, Fawn helped Nola and Cerie, the herb master’s apprentices, pack up a handcart to take to the New Moon Camp farmer’s market. The three young women dragged their load around through the sapling gate and down over the hill to the clearing where the horses had been watered that first day. The tree branches were still bare against the cool blue sky, but the buds swelled red, and a few low weeds winked green in the flattened and brownish grass.
It was at last made plain to Fawn why the medicine tent’s kitchen was always so busy. After concocting enough remedies for the needs of the camp, the herb master and his helpers produced yet more for the local trade. Some medicines were not so different from what Fawn’s mama and aunt Nattie compounded, but Maker Levan himself did groundwork on others that made them much more effective and-he seemed to think this an important point-uniform. Unlike the cureall nostrums Fawn had seen hawked in the Drowntown market, which Dag claimed were mostly spirits-you might still be sick, but you’d be too drunk to care, Barr had quipped-the Lakewalkers made limited claims for their medicines. Dewormers for people, horses, cattle, and sheep; effective remedies for bog ague and hookworm, neither plague to be found in West Blue but common here, especially in the long, hot summers; a bitter pain powder from willow bark and poppy just like the northern one Fawn had seen Dag use when his arm had been broken; a tincture of foxglove for bad hearts; a gray powder much trusted by the locals to sprinkle on wounds to fight infection.
In the clearing, a number of Lakewalkers unrolled awnings from under the eaves of the shelter and set up trestle tables beneath them.
Today they offered mostly handwork of a sort Fawn had seen before: fine leathers that would not rot, nearly unbreakable rope and cord, a small but choice selection from the camp blacksmith-tools that would not rust, blades that would hold their edge. Fawn helped the two apprentices lay out the medicine tent’s offerings fetchingly on their table, then they all settled down on upended logs to await their customers.
It wasn’t long. As the sun marked noon, a few farmers began to trickle in to the clearing, some driving rumbling carts or wagons, some with packhorses or mules. It would be a slow day, Nola informed Fawn; the market was busier in the summer, when the roads were better. Most people here on both sides seemed to already know their business, as well as one another’s names, and deals were struck quickly and efficiently, as when two cartloads of fat grain sacks were traded for several kegs of animal dewormer and some sets of unbreakable traces.
A well-sprung wagon drawn by a pretty team of four matched palomino horses swung into the clearing, and five people climbed down: a very well-dressed farmer with streaks of gray in his hair, a maidservant shepherding a small boy, a horseboy, who went immediately to unhitch and rub down the animals, and what had to be the graying man’s wife.
She was half a head taller than he, but equally well dressed, in a traveling skirt, close-fitting jacket, and fine boots, with her sandy hair coiled up in tidy braids. She strode without hesitation to one of the armed patrollers lurking around the edge of the clearing, and spoke to him. After a moment he nodded, if a trifle reluctantly, and trotted away up the road.
“Look! She’s back,” muttered Nola.
“I see,” murmured Cerie.
The little boy grabbed his father’s hand and towed him around the shelter to see the fascinating contents of all the tables. The tall woman glanced over the array and walked straight to the medicine table. Fawn sat up and blinked as she drew closer. Despite her farmer dress, the woman had the fine-boned features and bright silvery-blue eyes of a fullblooded Lakewalker.
She looked down at Fawn, on the other side of the table, with quite as much surprise as Fawn looked up at her.
“Absent gods,” she said, in an amused alto voice. “Is New Moon taking in farmers now? Wonders and marvels!”
“No, ma’am,” said Fawn, raising her chin. She almost touched her temple the way Dag did; then, afraid it might be mistaken for some sort of mockery, gripped her hands in her lap. “I’m just visiting. My husband’s a Lakewalker from Oleana, though, studying groundsetting with Maker Arkady for a stretch.”