Dismay shook her, but she narrowed her eyes right back. “What does that mean?” she demanded.
“I should think it was obvious. If not, alas, to my brother’s credit.”
She strove to quell her temper. “If you’re tryin’ to say you think your brother put some kind of love spell on me, well, it won’t wash. Dag didn’t fix my cord, or my ground, or whatever, till the night before he left with his company.”
Dar tilted his head, and asked dryly, “How would you know?”
It was a horrible question. Was he reading her ground the way Cumbia had, to so narrowly target her most appalling possible fears? Doubt swept through her like a torrent, to smack to a sudden stop against another memory—Sunny Sawman, and his vile threats to slander her about that night at his sister’s wedding. That ploy had worked admirably well to stampede Fawn. Once. I may be just a little farmer girl, but blight it, I do learn. Dag says so. She raised her face to meet Dar’s eye square, and suddenly the look of doubt was reversed from her to him.
She drew a long breath. “I don’t know which of you is using malice magic. I do know which of you is the most malicious.”
His head jerked back.
Yeah, that stings, doesn’t it, Dar? Fawn tossed her head, whirled, and stalked out of the clearing. She didn’t give him the satisfaction of looking back, either.
Out on the road again, Fawn first turned right, then, in sudden decision, left. In the time it took her to walk the mile down the shore to patroller headquarters, her courage chilled. The building appeared quiet, although there was a deal of activity across the road at the stables and in the paddocks, some patrol either coming in or going out, or maybe folks getting ready to send the next company west to the war. Maybe Fairbolt won’t be here, she told herself, and climbed the porch.
A strange patroller at the writing table pointed with his free hand without looking up from his scratching quill. “If the door’s open, anyone can go in.”
Fawn swallowed her rehearsed greetings, nodded, and scuttled past. Blight this naked-ground business. She peeked around the doorjamb to the inner chamber.
Fairbolt was sitting across from his pegboard with his feet up on another chair and a shallow wooden box in his lap, stirrings its contents with one thick finger and frowning. A couple more chairs pulled up beside him held more such trays. He squinted up at his board, sighed, and said, “Come in, Fawn.”
Emboldened, she stepped to his side. The trays, unsurprisingly, held pegs. He looked, she thought, very much like a man trying to figure out how to fill eight hundred holes with four hundred pegs. “I don’t mean to interrupt.”
“You’re not interrupting much.” He looked up at last and gave her a grimace that was possibly intended to be a smile.
“I had a question.”
“There’s a surprise.” He caught her faint wince and shook his head in apology. “Sorry. To answer you: no, I’ve had no courier from Dag since his company left. I wouldn’t expect one yet. It’s still early days for any news.”
“I figured that. I have a different question.”
She didn’t think she’d let her voice quaver, but his brows went up, and his feet came down. “Oh?”
“Married Lakewalkers feel each other through their wedding cords—if they’re alive, anyhow. Stands to reason you’d be listenin’ out for any such news from your patrollers—if any strings went dead—and folks would know to pass it on to you right quick.”
He looked at her in some bemusement. “That’s true. Dag tell you this?” “No, I figured it. What I want to know is, couriers or no couriers, have you gotten any such mortal news from Dag’s company?”
“No.” His gaze sharpened. “Why do you ask?”
This was where it got scary. Fairbolt was the camp council, in a way. But I think he’s patrol first. “Before he left, Dag did some groundwork on my cord, or on me, so’s I could feel if he was alive. Same as any other married Lakewalker, just a little different route, I guess.” Almost as briefly as she had for Dar, she described waking up hurting last night, and her moonlit talk with Sarri and Cattagus. “So just now I took my cord to Dar, because he’s the strongest maker I know of. And he allowed as how I was right, my cord spoke true, Dag was hurt somehow last night.” She hardly needed to add, she thought, that for Dar to grant his brother’s farmer bride to be right about anything, it had to be pretty inarguable.
All the intent, controlled alarm she’d missed from Dar shone now in Fairbolt’s eyes. His hand shot out; he jerked it to a stop. “Excuse me. May I touch?”
Fawn mustered her nerve and held out her left arm. “Yes.”
Fairbolt’s warm fingers slid up and down her skin and traced her cord. His face tensed in doubt and dismay. “Well, something’s there, yes, but…” Abruptly, he rose, strode to the doorway, and stuck his head through. His voice had an edge Fawn had not heard before. “Vion. Run over to the medicine tent, see if Hoharie’s there. If she’s not doing groundwork, ask her step down here. There’s something I need her to see. Right now.”
The scrape of a chair, some mumble of assent; the outer door banged before Fairbolt turned back. He said to Fawn, somewhat apologetically, “There’s reasons I went for patroller and not maker. Hoharie will be able to tell a lot more than I can. Maybe even more than Dar could.”
Fawn nodded.
Fairbolt drummed his fingers on his chair back. “Sarri and Cattagus said their spouses were all right, yes?”
“Yes. Well, Sarri wasn’t quite sure about Utau, I thought. But all alive.”
Fairbolt walked over to the larger table and stared down; Fawn followed. A map of north Raintree was laid out atop an untidy stack of other charts. Fairbolt’s finger traced a loop across it. “Dag planned to circle Bonemarsh and drop down on it from the north. My guess was that the earliest they could arrive there was today. I don’t know how much that storm might have slowed them. Really, they could be anywhere within fifty miles of Bonemarsh right now.”
Fawn let her left hand follow his tracing. The directional urge of her cord, alas, did not seem to respond to marks on maps, only to the live Dag. But she stared down with sudden new interest.
Maps. Maps could keep you from getting lost even in places you’d never been before. This one was thick with a veining of roads, trails, rivers, and streams, and cluttered with jotted remarks about landmarks, fords, and more rarely, bridges. Dar might be right that if she just jumped on her horse and rode west, she would likely plunge into disaster. But if she jumped on her horse with an aid like this…she would still be running headlong into a war zone. A mere pair of bandits had been enough to overcome her, before. I would be more wary, now. The map was something to think hard about, though.
“What could have happened to Dag, do you think?” she asked Fairbolt. “Dag alone, and no one else?”
He shrugged. “If you want to start with most likely chances, maybe that fool horse of his finally managed to bash him into a tree. The possibilities for freak accidents after that are endless. But they can’t have closed in for the malice kill yet.”
“Why not?”
His voice went strangely soft. “Because there would be more dead. Dag and I figured, based on Wolf Ridge, to lose up to half the company in this. That’s how I expect to know, when…” He trailed off, shaking his head. “Obio Grayheron will take command. He’s good, even if he doesn’t have that edge that…ah, gods, I hate this helpless waiting.”
“You, too?” said Fawn, her eyes widening.
He nodded simply.
A knock sounded on the doorjamb, and a quiet voice. “Problems, Fairbolt?”
Fairbolt looked up in relief. “Hoharie! Thank you for stopping over. Come on in.”
The medicine maker entered, giving Fairbolt a vague wave and Fawn a curious look. Fawn had been introduced to her by Dag and shown the medicine tent, which to Fawn’s mind nearly qualified as a building, but they had barely spoken then. Hoharie was an indeterminate age to Fawn’s eyes, not as tall as most Lakewalker women. Her summer shift did not flatter a figure like a board, but the protuberant eyes in her bony face were shrewd and not unkind. Like Dag’s eyes, they shifted colors in the light, from silver-gilt in the sun to, now, a fine gray.