The boat carpenter’s wife reminded Fawn a bit of Clover—before this dire sickness had fallen on her, she might have been plump and cheerful. Now her round face was pallid and sheened with cold sweat. The brown hair at her temples curled damply from the tears of pain that leaked from the corners of her eyes. Breathing shallowly, she clawed at her belly, skirts bunching in her sweaty hands. Fawn was aware of Hod creeping out of the cabin door to stare, and Hawthorn as well.
Her husband knelt down and caught up one of her frantic hands; they clutched each other. He looked up at Dag in heartbreaking appeal. “What’s wrong with her, Lakewalker? She didn’t cry like this even when our baby was born!”
Dag rubbed his lips, then knelt down by the woman’s other side, pulling Fawn with him. “Happens I’ve seen this trouble before. In a medicine tent up in Luthlia, a long time ago.” Fawn glanced up at him, knowing just when he’d spent a season in such a tent. “They brought this fellow in, taken sudden with gut pain. Did this come on her sudden?”
The carpenter nodded anxiously. “Two days back.”
“Uh-huh.” Dag rubbed his hand on his knee. “I don’t know if you’ve ever seen a person’s insides”—not the best choice of words, Fawn thought, with maybe half the people here suspecting Lakewalkers of cannibalism—“but down at the corner of most folks’ entrails there’s this slippy blind pocket ’bout the size of a child’s little finger. The medicine makers never could tell me what it does. But this fellow, his had got twisted around or swollen up or something, and took a roaring hot infection that blew it up like a bladder. By the time he came to the medicine maker, it had busted clean open. No, not clean. Dirty. It spilled his guts into his belly just like a knife wound would.”
The keeler boss, at least, looked as though he knew what this entailed, and his lips went round in an unvoiced whistle.
“The infection spread too fast for even the maker’s best ground reinforcements to stop it, and he died about three days on. Funny thing was, when his gut busted, his pain actually eased for a while, since the pressure went down. I guess it fooled him into thinking he was getting better, till it was too late.”
The carpenter’s voice went hushed. “Is Cress’s belly going to bust inside like that, then?”
“It hasn’t yet,” said Dag. “This is a right dangerous sickness. But the groundwork to fix it isn’t really that deep. There’s a host of belly-ills no medicine maker born can cure, especially in women, but this…” He let out his breath. “I can try, leastways.” He nudged Fawn. “Spark, would you take off my arm harness, please?”
Dag could manage that himself, but having Fawn do it directed their spectators’ eyes to her, the patroller’s farmer bride. Purposely? She unbuckled the straps and drew off the wooden cuff and the fine cotton sock beneath that she’d lately knitted for Dag to stop the cuff rubbing up blisters, and set them aside. The presence or absence of the arm harness made no difference to Dag’s ghost hand as far as she knew, but she supposed Dag thought it would alarm the carpenter less not to have that wicked hook waving over his wife’s belly.
“What I can do—what I can try to do…” Dag looked up and around, and Fawn suspected only she realized how much uncertainty and fear his stern face was masking. “First I want to wrap a ground reinforcement around the swelling. Most of you don’t know what ground is, but anyway, you won’t see anything. Then I want to try and pry that swollen end open so’s the pocket will drain back into the gut the way it’s supposed to. That part I think may hurt, but then it ought to ease. There’s a danger. Two dangers. Look at me, you husband, sister.” His voice softened, “Cress.” He smiled down at her; her pain-pinched eyes widened a trifle. When he was sure he had their attention, he continued, “That little pocket’s stretched really tight right now. There’s a chance it’ll bust while I’m trying to drain it. But I think it’s like to bust anyway pretty soon. Do you still want me to try this?”
They looked at each other; the sick woman squeezed her husband’s hand, and he wet his lips and nodded.
“There’s another hitch. For later. Subtler.” Dag swallowed hard. “Sometimes, when Lakewalkers do deep groundwork on farmers, the farmers end up beguiled. It’s not on purpose, but it’s part of why the Lakewalkers here won’t treat you. Now, I’ll be gone on the rise. There’s a good chance that a touch of beguilement would do no worse to Cress than leave her sad for something she can never have, which can happen to a person whether they’re beguiled or not. So, I don’t know if you’re a stupid-jealous sort of fellow, Mark-carpenter, or more sensible. But if that mood should come on her, later, it’d be your husband-job to help her ease it, not to harry her about it. Do you understand?”
The carpenter shook his head no, then yes, then puffed out his breath in confusion. “Are you saying my Cress would run off? Leave me, leave her baby?” He stared wildly across at Fawn. “Is that what you did?”
Fawn shook her head vigorously, making her black curls bounce. “Dag and I killed a blight bogle together. That’s how we met.” She thought of adding, I’m not beguiled, just in love, then wondered how you could demonstrate the difference. Cress’s breath was coming in shallow pants; Fawn caught up her other hand and squeezed it. “She wouldn’t run off lessn’ you drove her.”
The carpenter gulped. “Do it, Lakewalker. Whatever you’re going to do. Help her, make the hurting stop!”
Dag nodded, leaned forward, and placed his spread right hand over the apparent gap of his left atop the woman’s lower belly. His face got that no-look-at-all Fawn had witnessed while he’d been healing Hod, as if he had no attention to spare for animating it. Absent in a very real sense. He paused; his merely expressionless expression returned.
“Oh,” breathed Cress. “That eases me…”
Fawn wondered if anyone else was thinking of the man who’d been fooled, uncertain if this was the ground reinforcement working or a sudden disaster. Could Dag hope to be gone on the rise before a soaring fever made the difference apparent?
“That was the ground reinforcement,” said Dag. His brief grimace was meant to be a reassuring smile, Fawn guessed. “It needs a few minutes to set in.”
“Magic?” whispered the carpenter hopefully.
“It’s not magic. It’s groundwork. It’s…” Dag looked up for the first time at the ring of faces looking down at him: the two boat bosses, another curious keeler who might be Wain’s right-hand man, a worried Pearl Bend couple who could be relatives or relatives-in-law; behind them, Whit and Hod and Hawthorn. “Huh.” He set his hand on the deck and levered himself to his feet. Fawn scrambled up with him. He turned slowly, looking at the restive crowd still milling on the shore, craning their necks and muttering. Bending, he murmured to Fawn, “You know, Spark, it’s just dawned on me that I got a captive audience, here.”
She whispered back, “I figured they were just fixing to beat you to a pulp and then set the pulp on fire.”
His grin flitted past. “Then I’ll have their full attention while they’re waiting their chance, won’t I? Better ’n six cats at one mouse hole.”
He stepped to the bow in front of the chicken coop. A wide wave of his left arm invited the folks on the foredeck to attend to him, and ended catching Fawn around the waist and hoisting her up to stand on a step-rail beside him, a head higher than usual. He left his stump hidden behind her back, but raised his hand in a temple-touch, half-greeting, half-salute, and began loudly, “Did you all out there hear what I just told Mark-carpenter and Cress? No? I explained that I just set a ground reinforcement around the infection in Cress’s gut. Now, I reckon most of you don’t know what a ground reinforcement is, nor ground neither, so I’m going to tell you…”