“Where is your room?” Fawn asked.
Dag gestured at the closed door. “Through there.”
“Oh, good. Will you take a rest? Don’t tell me you aren’t owed some healing too.
I saw your bruises.”
He shook his head. “I’m going out to find a harnessmaker. I’ll come back and take you down to dinner later, if you’d like.”
“I’d like that fine.”
He smiled a little at that and backed himself out. “Seems all I do in this place is tell folks to go to sleep.”
“Yes, but I’m actually going to do it.”
He grinned—that grin should be illegal—and shut the door softly.
On the wall beside the washstand hung a shaving mirror, fine flat Glassforge glass. Reminded, Fawn slid up to it and turned down the collar of her blue dress.
The bruise masking most of the left side of her face was purple going greenish around the edges, with four dark scabs from the mud-man’s claws mounting to her cheekbone, still tender but not hot with infection. The pattern of the malice’s hand on her neck, four blots on one side and one on the other, stood out in sharp contrast to her fair skin. The marks had a peculiar black tint and an ugly raised texture unlike any other contusion Fawn had ever seen. Well, if there was any special trick to their healing, Dag would know it. Or might have experienced it himself, if he had got close enough to as many malices as Mari’s inventory of his past knives suggested.
Fawn went to the window and just caught a glimpse of Dag’s tall form passing below, arm harness tossed over his shoulder, striding up the street toward the town square. She gazed out at Glassforge after he’d made his way out of sight along the boardwalk, but not for long; yawning uncontrollably, she slipped off her dress and shoes and crawled into the bed.
Chapter 10
Dag returned at dinnertime as promised. Fawn had put on her good dress, the green cotton that her aunt Nattie had spun and woven; she followed him downstairs. The raucous noises coming out of the room where they’d eaten their quiet lunch gave her pause.
Seeing her hesitate, Dag smiled and bent his head to murmur, “Patrollers can be a rowdy bunch when we all get together, but you’ll be all right. You don’t have to answer any questions you don’t want. We can make out you’re still too shaken by our fight with the malice and don’t want to talk about it. They’ll accept that.” His hand drifted to her collar as if to arrange it more tidily, and Fawn realized he was not covering up the strange marks on her neck, but rather, making sure they showed. “I think we don’t need to mention what happened with the second knife to anyone besides Mari.”
“Good,” said Fawn, relieved, and allowed him to take her in, his arm protective at her back.
The tables this evening were indeed full of tall, alarming patrollers, twenty-five or so, variously layered with road dirt. Given Dag’s warning, Fawn managed not to jump when their entrance was greeted with whoops, cheers, table pounding, and flying jibes about Dag’s three-day vanishing. The roughness of some of the jests was undercut by the real joy in the voices, and Dag, smiling crookedly, gave back: “Some trackers! I swear you lot couldn’t find a drink in a rain barrel!”
“Beer barrel, Dag!” someone hooted in return. “What’s wrong with you?”
Dag surveyed the room and guided Fawn toward a square table on the far side where only two patrollers sat, the Utau and Razi she’d met earlier. The two waved encouragement as they approached, and Razi shoved out a spare chair invitingly with his boot.
Fawn was not sure which patrollers were Mari’s and which were Chato’s; the two patrols seemed to be mingled, not quite at random. Any sorting seemed to be more by age, as there was one table with half a dozen gray heads at it, including Mari; also two other older women Fawn had not seen at the well-house, so presumably from the Log Hollow patrol. The young woman with her arm in the sling was at a table with three young men, all vying to cut her meat for her; she was presently holding them off with jabs of her fork and laughing. The men patrollers seemed all ages, but the women were only young or much older, Fawn noticed, and remembered Mari’s account of her life’s course. In the home camps would the proportions be reversed?
Breathless serving maids and boys weaved among the tables lugging trays laden with platters and pitchers, rapidly relieved by reaching hands. The patrollers seemed more interested in speed and quantity than in decorum, an attitude shared with farmhouse kitchens that made Fawn feel nearly comfortable.
They sat and exchanged greetings with Razi and Utau; Razi leaped up and acquired more plates, cutlery, and glasses, and both united to snag passing food and drink to fill them. They did ply Dag with questions about his adventures although, with cautious glances, spared Fawn. His answers were either unexcitingly factual, vague, or took the form that Fawn recognized from the Horsefords’ table of effectively diverting counterquestions. They finally desisted and let Dag catch up with his chewing.
Utau glanced around the room, and remarked, “Everyone’s a lot happier tonight.
Especially Mari. Fortunately for all of us downstream of her.”
Razi said wistfully, “Do you suppose she and Chato will let us all have a bow-down before we go back out?”
“Chato looks pretty cheerful,” said Utau, nodding across the room at another table of patrollers, although which was the leader Fawn could not tell. “We might get lucky.”
“What’s a bow-down?” asked Fawn.
Razi smiled eagerly. “It’s a party, patroller-style. They happen sometimes, to celebrate a kill, or when two or more patrols chance to get together. Having another patrol to talk to is a treat. Not that we don’t all love one another”—Utau rolled his eyes at this—“but weeks on end of our own company can get pretty old. A bow-down has music. Dancing. Beer if we can get it…”
“We could get lots of beer, here,” Utau observed distantly.
“Lingerrrring in dark corners—” Razi trilled, catching up the tail of his braid and twirling it.
“Enough—she gets the idea,” said Dag, but he smiled. Fawn wondered if it was in memory. “Could happen, but I guarantee it won’t be till Mari thinks the cleanup is all done. Or as done as it ever gets.” His eye was caught by something over Fawn’s shoulder. “I feel prophetic. I predict chores before cheer.” “Dag, you’re such a morbid crow—” Razi began.
“Well, gentlemen,” said Mari’s voice. “Do your feet hurt?”
Fawn turned her head and smiled diffidently at the patrol leader, who had drifted up to their table.
Razi opened his mouth, but Dag cut in, “Don’t answer that, Razi. It’s a trick question. The safe response is, ‘I can’t say, Mari, but why do you ask?’ ”
Mari’s lips twitched, and she returned in a sugary voice, “I’m so glad you asked that question, Dag!”
“Maybe not so safe,” murmured Utau, grinning.
“How’s the arm-harness repair coming?” Mari continued to Dag.
Dag grimaced. “Done tomorrow afternoon, maybe. I had to stop at two places before I found one that would do it for free. Or rather, in exchange for us saving his life, family, town, territory, and everyone in it.”
Utau said dryly, “Naturally, you forgot to mention it was you personally who took their malice down.”
Dag shrugged this off in irritation. “Firstly, that wasn’t so. Secondly, none of us could do the job without the rest of us, so all are owed. I shouldn’t…
none of us should have to beg.”
“It so happens,” said Mari, letting this slide by, “that I have a sitting-down job for a one-handed man tomorrow morning. In the storeroom here is a trunkful of patrol logs and maps for this region that need a good going-over. The usual.