"You"re right, Spark," Dag said, closing the screen door again. "He doesn"t much care for witnesses. You can sort of see why."

Nattie wandered into the kitchen. "h.e.l.lo, Fawn, lovie. h.e.l.lo, Dag. My, that apple b.u.t.ter smells good." Her face turned, following the retreating footsteps rounding the house and fading. "Young fool," she added reflectively. "Sunny always thinks if I can"t see him, I can"t hear him. You have to wonder, really you do."

Fawn gulped, dropped the pan on the table, and flew into Dag"s embrace. He wrapped his left arm around her in a rea.s.suring hug. Aunt Nattie"s head tilted toward them, a smile touching her lips. "Thank you kindly for that bit o" housecleaning, patroller."

"My pleasure, Aunt Nattie. Here, now." Dag folded Fawn closer. "For what it"s worth, Spark, he was more afraid of you than you were of him." He added reflectively, "Sort of like a snake, that way."

She gave a shaken giggle, and his grip eased. "I was about to hit him with the frying pan, just before you came in."

"Thought something like that might be up. I was having a few daydreams along that line myself."

"Too bad you couldn"t really have cut his tongue out..." She paused. "Was that a joke or not?

I"m not too sure sometimes about patroller humor."

"Eh," he said, sounding faintly wistful. "Not, in any case, currently practical. Though I suppose I"m right glad to see Sunny doesn"t believe any of those ugly rumors about Lakewalkers being black sorcerers."

Her trembling diminished, but her brows pinched as she thought back. "I"m so glad you were there. Though I wish your arm wasn"t broken. Is it all right?" She touched the sling in worry.

"That wasn"t especially good for it, but I haven"t unset it. We"re lucky for your aunt Nattie and Sunny"s, ah, sudden shyness."

She drew back to stare up at his serious face, her eyes questioning, and he went on, "See, despite whatever hog butchering he"s done, Sunny"s never been in a lethal fight. I"ve been in no other kind since I was younger than him. He"s used to puppy sc.r.a.ps, the sort you have with brothers or cousins or friends or, in any case, folks you"re going to have to go on living with. Age, weight, youth, muscle, would all count against me in that sort of scuffle, even without a broken arm. If you truly want him dead, I"m your man; if you want less, it"s trickier."

She sighed and leaned her head against his chest. "I don"t want him dead. I just want him behind me. Miles and years. I suppose I just have to wait for the years. I still think of him every day, and I don"t want want to. Dead would be even worse, for that." to. Dead would be even worse, for that."

"Wise Spark," he murmured.

Her nose wrinkled in doubt. How seriously had he meant meant that lethal offer, to be so relieved that she hadn"t taken him up on it? Remembering, she fetched him his drink, which he accepted with a smile of thanks. that lethal offer, to be so relieved that she hadn"t taken him up on it? Remembering, she fetched him his drink, which he accepted with a smile of thanks.

Nattie had drifted to the hearth to stir the apple b.u.t.ter which, by the smell, was on the verge of scorching. Now she tapped the wooden spoon on the pot rim to shake off the excess, set it aside, turned back, and said, "You"re a smart man, patroller."

"Oh, Nattie," said Fawn dolefully. "How much of that awfulness did you hear?"

"Pretty much all, lovie." She sighed. "Is Sunny gone yet?"

That funny look Dag got when consulting his groundsense flitted over his face. "Long gone, Aunt Nattie."

Fawn breathed relief.

"Dag, you"re a good fellow, but I need to talk with my niece. Why don"t you take a walk?"

He looked down to Fawn, who nodded reluctantly. He said, "I expect I could stand to go check on Copperhead, make sure he hasn"t bitten anybody yet."

"I "spect so," Nattie agreed.

He gave Fawn a last hug, bent down to touch his cider-scented lips to hers, smiled in encouragement, and left. She heard his steps wend through the house to the front door, and out.

Fawn wanted to put her head down in Nattie"s lap and bawl; instead, she busied herself raking the coals under the oven for the pies. Nattie sat on a kitchen chair and rested her hands on her cane. Haltingly at first, then less so, the story came out, from Fawn"s foolish tumble at the spring wedding to her growing realization and fear of the consequences to the initial horrid talk with Sunny.

"Teh." Nattie sighed in regret. "I knew you were troubled, lovie. I tried to get you to talk to me, but you wouldn"t."

"I know. I don"t know if I"m sorry now or not. I figured it was a problem I"d bought all on my own, so it was a problem to pay for all on my own. And then I thought my nerve would fail if I didn"t plunge in."

For Nattie today, Fawn resolved to leave out nothing of her journey except the uncanny accident with Dag"s sharing knife-partly because she was daunted by the complicated explanations that would have to go with, partly because it made no difference to the fate of her pregnancy, but mostly because Lakewalker secrets were so clearly not hers to give away.

No, not just Lakewalker secrets-Dag"s privacy. She grasped, now, what an intimate and personal possession his dead wife"s bone had been. It was the only confidence he"d asked her to keep.

Taking a breath, Fawn plunged in anew. She described her lonely trudge to Gla.s.sforge, her terrifying encounter with the young bandit and the strange mud-man. Her first flying view of the startled Dag, even more frightening, but in retrospect almost funny. The Horsefords" eerie abandoned farm, the second abduction. The whole new measure for terror she"d learned at the malice"s hands. Dag at the cave, Dag that night at the farm.

She did end up with her head in Nattie"s lap then, though she managed to keep her tears down to a choked sniffling. Nattie petted her hair in the old way she hadn"t done since Fawn had been small and weeping in pain for some minor hurt to her body, or in fury for some greater wound to her spirit. "Sh. Sh, lovie."

Fawn inhaled, wiped her eyes and nose on her ap.r.o.n, and sat up again on the floor next to Nattie"s chair. "Please don"t tell Mama and Papa any of this. They"re going to have to go on living with the Sawmans. There"s no point in making bad blood between the families now."

"Eh, lovie. But it gars me to see Sunny get off free of all this."

"Yes, but I couldn"t stand for my brothers to know. They"d either try to do something to Sunny and cause trouble, or they"d make a mock of me for being so stupid, and I don"t think I could bear that about this." She added after a moment of consideration, "Or both."

"I"m not sure even your brothers are thoughtless enough to make mock of this this." Nattie hesitated, then conceded reluctantly, "Well, perhaps half-Whit."

Fawn managed a watery smile at the old jibe. "Poor Whit, maybe it"s that old joke on his name that drives him to be such an awful thorn to everyone. Maybe I should start calling him Whitesmith instead, see if it helps."

"There"s a thought." Nattie sat up, staring into her personal dark. "I think maybe you"re right about the bad blood, though. Oh my, yes. All right. This story will stop with me unless some other problem comes from it."

Fawn breathed relief at this promise. "Thank you. Talking with you eases me, more than I expected." She thought over Nattie"s last words, then said more firmly, "You have to understand, I"m going away with Dag. One way or another."

Nattie did not immediately burst into objections and dire warnings, but said only, "Huh." And then, after a moment, "Curious fellow, that Lakewalker. Tell me more."

Fawn, busying herself once more about the kitchen, was only too glad to expand on her new favorite subject to an unexpectedly sympathetic, or at least not immediately outraged, ear. "I met his patrol in Gla.s.sforge..." She described Mari and Saun and Reela-if touching only lightly on Dirla and Razi and Utau-and Sa.s.sa"s proud tours to show off his town, and all the fascinating things folks found for work there that did not involve cows, sheep, or pigs. The bow-down, and Dag"s unexpected talents with a tambourine-a word picture that made Nattie laugh along with Fawn. At that point, Fawn came to a sudden stop.

"You"re heels-up in love with him, then," Nattie said calmly. And, at Fawn"s gasp, "Come, girl, I"m not that that blind." blind."

In love. It seemed too weak a term. She"d imagined herself in love in love back when she was mooning over Sunny. "More than that. I trust him... right down to the ground." back when she was mooning over Sunny. "More than that. I trust him... right down to the ground."

"Oh, aye? After all that tale, I think I"m half in love with him myself." Nattie added after a thoughtful moment, "Haven"t heard such joy in your voice for a long, long time, lovie.

Years."

Fawn"s heart sprang up as though weights had been shifted from it, and she laughed aloud and gave Nattie a hug and a kiss that made the old woman smile foolishly. "Now, now.

There"s still some provin" to be done, you know."

But then the pies were baked, and Fawn"s mother returned to start the rest of supper, sending Fawn to milk the cows so the boys could keep cutting hay while the light lasted. She went by the front porch on the way, but Dag had not yet returned to his thinking seat there.

Dag made his way back to the house after a stroll around the lower perimeter of the farm, in part to stretch his legs and mind and in part to be certain Sunny had indeed packed off.

Resentful and ripe for trouble, that boy, and his abrupt and satisfying removal from Fawn"s presence had likely been dangerously self-indulgent for a Lakewalker alone in farmer country, but Dag could not regret the act, despite the renewed throbbing of his jostled arm.

Dag"s last veiled fear that, once back in the safety of her home, Fawn might repent her patroller and double back to her first love, faded altogether.

Once upon a time, Sunny had held star fire in his hand, and thrown it away in the mud of the road. He wouldn"t be getting that fortune back, ever. There seemed nothing in the wide green world Dag could do to him worse than what he had already done to himself. Smiling crookedly, Dag dismissed Sunny from his thoughts in favor of more urgent personal concerns.

In the kitchen, he found Fawn gone but her mother, Tril, buzzing about putting together supper for eight. A clicking and whirring from the next chamber proved to be Nattie at her spinning wheel, within sight and call of her sister, and he made sure to say how de'; how de'; she returned a friendly but unenlightening, "Evening, patroller," and carried on. Evidently the incident with Sunny was not to be discussed. On the whole, Dag was relieved. she returned a friendly but unenlightening, "Evening, patroller," and carried on. Evidently the incident with Sunny was not to be discussed. On the whole, Dag was relieved.

He greeted Tril amiably and attempted to make himself useful hooking pots on and off the fire for her, while trying to think his way to other possibilities for a half-handed man to show his worth to the female who was, in Lakewalker terms, the head of Tent Bluefield. Tril watched him in such deep alarm, he began to fear he was looming, too tall for the room, and he finally just sat down and watched, which seemed to ease her. His comment about the weather fell flat, as did a leading question about her chickens; alas, Dag knew little about farm animals beyond horses. But a few questions about Fletch"s upcoming wedding led by a short route to West Blue marriage customs generally, which was exactly where Dag wanted her to go. The best way to keep her going, he quickly discovered, was to respond with comments on Lakewalker customs on the same head.

Tril paused in kneading biscuit dough to sigh. "I was afraid last spring Fawn was yearning after the Sawman boy, but that was never a hope. His papa and Jas Stonecrop had had it fixed between them for years that Sunny would marry Violet and the two farms would come together in the next generation. It"s going to be a rich spread, that one. If Violet has more than one boy, there may be enough to divide among them without the younger ones having to go off homesteading the way Reed and Rush keep talking of."

The twins spoke of going to the edge of the cultivated zone, twenty miles or so west, and breaking new land between them, after Fletch married. It was a plan much discussed but so far little acted upon, Dag was given to understand. "Fathers arrange marriages, among farmers?"

"Sometimes." Tril smiled. "Sometimes they just think they do. Sometimes the fathers have to be arranged. The land, though, or the family due-share for children who aren"t getting land- that has to be understood and written out and kept by the village clerk, or you risk bad blood later."

Land again; farmers were all about land. Other wealth was thought of as land"s equivalent, it seemed. He offered, "Lakewalker couples usually choose each other, but the man is expected to bring bride-gifts to her family, which he is considered to be joining. Horses and furs, traditionally, though it depends on what he has acc.u.mulated." Dag added, as if casually, "I have eight horses at the moment. The other geldings are on loan to the camp pool, except for Copperhead, who is too evil-tempered to foist on anyone else. The three mares I keep in foal.

My brother"s wife looks after them along with her mares."

"Camp pool?" Tril said, after a puzzled moment.

"If a man has more than he needs, he can"t just sit on it and let it rot. So it goes to the camp pool, usually to outfit a young patroller, and the camp scribe keeps a record of it. It"s very handy if you go to switch camps, because you can carry a letter of record and draw for your needs when you get there, instead of carrying all that burden along. At the hinterland meetings every two years, one of the jobs for the camp scribes is to meet and settle up any lingering differences. I have a long credit at Stores." How to translate that into acreage temporarily defeated him, but he hoped she understood he was not by any measure dest.i.tute, despite his present road-worn appearance. He rubbed his nose reflectively with the side of his hook. "They tried me as a camp scribe for a while after I lost my hand, but I didn"t take to the fiddly work and all the writing. I wanted to be moving, out in the field."

"You can read and write?" Tril looked as though this was a point in Dag"s favor-good.

"Pretty much all Lakewalkers can."

"Hm. Are you the oldest in your family, or what?"

"Youngest by ten years, but I"ve only the one brother living. It was a great sorrow to my mother that she had no daughter to carry on her tent, but my brother married a younger sister of the Waterstriders-they had six-and she took our tent name so"s it wouldn"t be lost, and moved in so"s my mother wouldn"t be alone." See, I'm a nice tame fellow, I have a family See, I'm a nice tame fellow, I have a family too. Of a sort too. Of a sort. "My brother is a very gifted maker at our camp." He decided not to say of what. The production of sharing knives was the most demanding of Lakewalker makings, and Dar was highly respected, but it seemed premature to introduce this to the Bluefields.

"Doesn"t he patrol?"

"He did when he was younger-nearly everyone does-but his making skills are too valuable to waste on patrolling." Dag"s, needless to say, weren"t.

"So what of your father? Was he a maker or a patroller?"

"Patroller. He died on patrol, actually."

"Killed by one of those bogles Fawn talks of?" It was not entirely clear to Dag if Tril had believed in bogles before, but on the whole he thought she"d come to now, and was rendered very uncomfortable thereby.

"No. He went in after a younger patroller who was swept away in a bad river crossing, late in the winter. I wasn"t there-I was patrolling in a different sector of the hinterland, and didn"t hear for some days."

"Drowned? Seems an odd fate for a Lakewalker."

"No. Or not just then. He took a fever of the lungs and died about four nights later. Drowned in a sense, I suppose." Actually, he"d died of sharing; the two comrades who were trying to fetch him home in his dire illness had entered the tent to find him rolled over on his knife.

Whether he"d chosen that end in shrewd judgment or delirium or despair or just plain exhaustion from the struggle, Dag would never know. The knife had come to him, anyway, and he"d used it three years later on a malice up near Cat Lick.

"Oh, aye, lung fever is nasty," Tril said sympathetically. "One of Sorrel"s aunts was carried off by that just last winter. I"m so sorry."

Dag shrugged. "It was eleven years ago."

"Were you close?"

"Not really. He was away when I was smaller, and then I was away. I knew his father well, though; Grandfather had a bad knee by then, like Nattie"-Nattie, listening through the doorway as she spun, lifted up her head and smiled at her name-"and he stayed in camp and helped look after me, among other things. If I"d lost a foot instead of a hand, I might have ended like that, Uncle Dag to my brother"s pack." Or I might have shared early Or I might have shared early. "So, um...

are there any one-handed farmers?"

"Oh, yes, accidents happen on farms. Folks deal with it, I expect. I knew a man with a wooden leg, once. I"ve never heard tell of anything like that rig of yours, though."

Fawn"s mother was relaxing nicely in his presence now and didn"t jump at all anymore when he moved. On the whole, Dag suspected that it was easier to coax wild animals to take food from his hand than to lull Bluefields. But he was clearly making progress. He wondered if his Lakewalker habits were betraying him, and if he ought to have started with Fawn"s papa instead of with the women. Well, it hardly mattered where he started; he was eventually going to have to beguile the whole lot of them in order to get his way.

And in they clumped, sweaty and ravenous. Fawn followed, smelling of cows, with two covered buckets slung on a yoke, which she set aside to deal with later. The crowd, minus Clover tonight, settled down happily to heaping portions of ham, beans, corn bread, summer squash, a.s.sorted pickled things, biscuits, b.u.t.ter, jams, fresh apple b.u.t.ter, cider, and milk.

Conversation lagged for a little. Dag ignored the covert glances as he dealt with biscuits by stabbing them whole with his fork-spoon; Tril, if he read her aright, was simply pleased that he seemed to like them. Happily, he did not need to feign this flattery although he would have if necessary.

"Where did you go while I was milking?" Fawn finally asked him.

"Took a walk down to the river and back around. I am pleased to say there"s no malice sign within a mile of here, although I wouldn"t expect any. This area gets patrolled regularly."

"Really?" said Fawn. "I"ve never seen patrollers around here."

"We cross settled land at night, mostly, to avoid disturbing folks. You wouldn"t notice us."

Papa Bluefield looked up curiously at this. It was quite possible, over the years, that not all patrols had pa.s.sed as invisibly to him as all that.

"Did you ever patrol West Blue?" Fawn asked.

"Not lately. When I was a boy just starting, from about age fifteen, I walked a lot in this area, so I might have. Don"t remember now."

"We might have pa.s.sed each other all unknowing." She looked thoughtful at this notion.

"Um... no. Not then." He added, "When I was twenty I was sent on exchange to a camp north of Farmer"s Flats, and started my first walk around the lake. I didn"t get back for eighteen years."

"Oh," she said.

"I"ve been all over this hinterland since, but not just here. It"s a big territory."

Papa Bluefield sat back at the table"s head and eyed Dag narrowly. "Just how old are you, Lakewalker? A deal older than Fawn, I daresay."

"I daresay," Dag agreed.

Papa Bluefield continued to stare expectantly. The sound of forks sc.r.a.ping plates was suddenly obtrusive.

Cornered. Must this come out here? Perhaps it was better to get it on the table sooner than later. Dag cleared his throat, so that his voice would come out neither squeaking like a mouse"s nor too loud, and said, "Fifty-five."

Fawn choked on her cider. He probably should have glanced aside first to see she wasn"t trying to swallow anything. His fork-spoon hand was no good for patting her on the back, but she recovered her breath m a moment. "Sorry," she wheezed. "Down the wrong pipe." She looked up sideways at him in m.u.f.fled, possibly, alarm. Or dismay. He hoped it wasn"t horror.

"Papa," she muttered, "is fifty-three."

All right, a little horror. They would deal with it.