The Sharing Knife: Beguilement

by Lois McMaster Bujold

  “I saw that thing,” said Fawn lowly. “I don’t know what it was, but it sure wasn’t a bug.”

  He shrugged. “It’s just a way of trying to think about them. I’ve seen a few dozen of them in my life, so far. I could as well say the first was like a mirror that shattered into ten thousand splinters to make ten thousand little mirrors. Malices aren’t material at all, in their inner nature. They just pull matter in from around them to make themselves a house, a shell. They seem to feed on ground itself, really.”

  “How did it shatter?”

  “It lost the first war. They say.”

  “Did the gods help?”

  Dag snorted. “Lakewalker legends say the gods abandoned the world when the first malice came. And that they will return when the earth is entirely cleansed of its spawn. If you believe in gods.”

  “Do you?”

  “I believe they are not here, yes. It’s a faith of sorts.” “Huh.” She rolled up the last maps and tied their strings before handing them to him. He settled them in place and closed the trunk.

  He sat with his hand on the latch a moment. “Whatever their part really was,”

  he said finally, “I don’t think it was just the sorcerer-lords who built all those towers and laid those roads and sailed those ships. Your ancestors did, too.”

  She blinked at this, but what she was thinking, he could not guess.

  “And the lords didn’t come from nowhere, or elsewhere, either,” Dag continued tenaciously. “One line of thought says there was just one people, once, and that the sorcerers rose out of them. Except that then they bred up for their skills and senses, and then used their magic to make themselves more magical, and lordly, and powerful, and so grew away from their kin. Which may have been the first mistake.”

  She tilted her head, and her lips parted as if to speak, but at that point a pair of footsteps echoed from the hall. Razi stuck his head through the doorframe.

  “Ah, Dag, there you are. You should smell this.” He thrust out a small glass bottle and pulled off the leather stopper plugging its neck. “Dirla found this medicine shop up in town that sells the stuff.”

  Dirla smiled proudly over his shoulder.

  “What is it?” asked Fawn, leaning in and sniffing as the patroller waved the bottle past her. “Oh, pretty! It smells like chamomile and clover flowers.”

  “Scented oil,” he answered. “They have seven or eight kinds.”

  “What do you use it for?” Fawn asked innocently.

  Dag mentally consigned his comrade to the middle of the Dead Levels. “Sore muscles,” he said repressively.

  “Well, I suppose you could,” said Razi thoughtfully.

  “Scented back rubs,” breathed Dirla in a warm voice. “Mm, nice idea.”

  “How useful of you two to stop by,” Dag overrode this before it could grow more interesting still, either to himself, who didn’t hanker after a repeat of the discomforts of his ride from the Horsefords’, or to Fawn, who would undoubtedly ask more questions. “Happens I need this trunk taken back downstairs to the storeroom.” He stood up and pointed. “Lug.”

  They grumbled, if lightheartedly, and lugged.

  Dag closed the door behind them, shooed Fawn to her own room, and followed.

  Wondering if he dared ask just where that shop was located, and if it might be on the way to the harnessmaker’s. Walking the patterns in the marshes west of Glassforge took six days.

  Dag chose the closest section first, and so was able to bring the patrol back to the hotel’s comforts that night, and to check on Fawn.

  After an increasingly worried search of the premises, he found her shelling peas in the kitchen and making friends with the cooks and scullions. With some relief, he gave over his vision of her as distressed and lonely among condescending Lakewalker strangers although not his fear of her imprudently overtaxing her strength.

  For the next section he chose the most distant, of necessity a three-day outing, to get it out of the way. Dag met the complaints of the younger patrollers with a few choice tales of swamp sweeps norm of Farmer’s Flats in late winter, icily gruesome enough to silence all but the most determined grumblers. The patrol was able to leave most of their gear with the horses, but the need for skin protection meant that boots, shirts, and trousers took the brunt of the muck and mire. When they draggled back to Glassforge late the following night, they were greeted by the attendants of the hotel’s pleasant bathhouse, conveniently sited with its own well between the stable and the main building, with a marked lack of joy; the laundresses were growing downright surly at the sight of them.

  This time Dag found Fawn waiting up for him, filling the time and her hands by helping to mend hotel linens and coaxing stories from a pair of seamstresses.

  He returned the next night to exchange tales with her over a late supper. He held her fascinated with his account of a roughly circular and distinctively flat stretch of marsh some six miles across that he was certain was a former patch of blight, recovering and again supporting life—most of it noxious, not to mention ravenous, but without question thriving. He thought the slaying of that malice must have predated the arrival of farmer settlers in this region by well over a century. She entertained him in turn with a long, involved account of her day’s adventures in the town. Sassa the Horseford brother-in-law, now home again, had stopped by and made good on his promise to show her his glassworks.

  They had capped the tour with a visit to his brother’s papermaking shop, and for extras, the back premises of the ink maker’s next door.

  “There are more kinds of work to do here than I ever dreamed,” she confided in a tone of thoughtful speculation.

  She had also, clearly, overdone; when he escorted her to her door, she was drooping and yawning so hard she could scarcely say good night. He spent a little time persuading her ground against an incipient cold, then checked the healing flesh beneath the ugly malice scabs for necrosis or infection and made her promise to rest on the morrow.

  The next day’s pattern walk was truncated for Dag in the early afternoon when one patroller managed to trade up from mere muck and leeches to a willow root tangle, water over his head, and a nest of cottonmouths. Leaving the patrol to Utau, Dag rode back to town supporting the very sick and shaken man in front of him. Dag was not, happily, called upon to do anything unadvised and perilous with their grounds on the way, though he was grimly aware Utau had urged the escort upon him against just that chance. But the snakebit man survived not only the ride, but also being dipped briskly in the bathhouse, dried, and carried up and slung into bed. By that time, Chato and Mari had been found, allowing Dag to turn the responsibility for further remedies over to them.

  Some news Mari imparted sent Dag in search of Fawn even before a visit to the bathhouse on his own behalf. The sound of Fawn’s voice raised in, what else, a question, tugged his ear as he was passing down the end stairs, and he about-faced into the second-floor corridor. A door stood open—Saun’s—and he paused outside it as Saun’s voice returned:

  “My first impression of him was as one of those grumpy old fellows who never talks except to criticize you. You know the sort?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “He rode or walked in the back and never spoke much. The light began to dawn for me when Mari set him at the cap—that’s the patroller in the end or edge position of a grid with no one beyond. We don’t spread out to the limits of our vision, d’you see, but to the limits of our groundsenses. If you and the patrollers to your sides can just sense each other, you know you aren’t missing any malice sign between you. Mari sent him out a mile. That’s more than double the best range of my groundsense.”

  Fawn made an encouraging noise.

  Saun, suitably rewarded, continued, “Then I got to noticing that whenever Mari wanted something done out of the ordinary way, she’d send him. Or that it was his idea. He didn’t tell tales often, but when he did, they were from all over, I mean everywhere. I’d start to add up all the peo
ple and places in my head, and think, How? I’d thought he had no humor, but finally figured out it was just maddening-dry. He didn’t seem like much at first, but he sure accumulated.

  And you?”

  “Different than yours, I’ll say. He just arrived. All at once. Very…

  definitely there. I feel like I’ve been unpacking him ever since and am nowhere near the bottom yet.”

  “Huh. He’s like that on patrol, in a way.”

  “Is he good?”

  “It’s like he’s more there than anyone… no, that’s not right. It’s like he’s so nowhere-else. If you see?”

  “Mm, maybe. How old is he really? I’ve had trouble figuring that out—”

  Suppressed ground or no, someone was bound to notice the swamp reek wafting from the hall on the humid summer air pretty soon. Dag unquirked his lips, knocked on the doorframe, and stepped inside.

  Saun lay abed wearing, above, only his bandages; the rest, however clothed, was covered by a sheet. Fawn, in her blue dress, sat leaning back in a chair with her bare feet up on the bed edge, catching, presumably with her wriggling toes, whatever faint breeze might carry from the window. For once, her hands were empty, but Saun’s brown hair showed signs of being recently combed and rebraided into two neat, workmanlike plaits.

  Dag was greeted with broad smiles on two faces equally fresh with youth and pale with recent injury. Both hurt near-fatally on his watch—now, there was a thought to cringe from—but their expressions showed only trust and affection. He tried to muster a twinge of generational jealousy, but their beauty just made him want to weep. Not good. Six days on patrol with nary a malice sign shouldn’t leave him this tired and strange.

  “How de’, Spark. Lookin’ for you. Hello, Saun. How’re the ribs?”

  “Better.” Saun sat up eagerly, his flinch belying his words. “They have me walking up and down the hall now. Fawn here’s been keeping me company.”

  “Good!” said Dag genially. “And what have you two found to talk about?”

  Saun looked embarrassed. “Oh, this and that.”

  Fawn returned more nimbly, “Why were you looking for me?”

  “I have something to show you. In the stable, so find your shoes.”

  “All right,” she said agreeably, and rose.

  Her bare feet thumped away up the hallway, and he called after her, “Slow down!”

  He did not consider himself a wit, but this fetched her usual floating laugh.

  In her natural state, did she ever travel at any pace other than a scamper?

  He studied Saun, wondering if any warning-off might be in order here. That the broad-shouldered youth was attractive to women, he’d had occasion to note, if never before with concern. But in Saun’s current bashed state, he was no menace to curious farmer girls, Dag decided. And cautions might draw counterquestions Dag was ill equipped to answer, such as, What business is it of yours? He settled on a friendly wave farewell and started to withdraw into the hall again.

  “Oh, Dag?” called Saun. “Old patroller?” He grinned from his propping pillows.

  “Yes?” Blight it, when had the boy picked up on that catchphrase? Saun must have paid closer attention to Dag’s occasional mutters than he would have guessed.

  “No need for the fishy glower. All your pet Spark wants to hear are Dag tales.”

  He settled back with a snicker, no, a snigger.

  Dag shook his head and retreated. At least he managed to stop wincing before he exited the stairs. Dag arrived in the stable, its stalls crowded with the horses of the two patrols, barely before Fawn did. He led her to the straight stall housing the placid bay mare, and pointed.

  “Congratulations, Spark. Mari’s made it official. You now own this nice horse.

  Your share of our pay from the Glassforge town fathers. I found you that saddle and bridle on the peg, too; should be about the right size for you. Not new, but they’re in real good condition.” He saw no need to mention that the tack had been part of a private deal with the willing harnessmaker who had done such a fine job repairing his arm-harness.

  Fawn’s face lit with delight, and she slid into the stall to run her hands over the horse’s neck and scratch her star and her ears, which made the mare round her nostrils and drop her poll in pleasure. “Oh, Dag, she’s wonderful, but”—Fawn’s nose wrinkled in suspicion—“are you sure this isn’t your share of the pay? I mean, Mari’s been nice to me and all, but I didn’t think she’d promoted me to patroller.”

  A little too shrewd, that. “If it had been left to me, there would be a lot more, Spark.”

  Fawn did not look entirely convinced, but the horse nudged her for more scratches, and she turned back to the task. “She needs a name. She can’t go on being that mare.” Fawn bit her lip in thought. “I’ll name her Grace, after the river. Because it’s a pretty name and she’s a pretty horse, and because she carried us so smoothly. Do you want to be Grace, sweet lady, hm?” She carried on with the petting and making-much; the mare signified her acceptance of the affection, the name, or both by cocking her hips, easing one hind hoof, and blowing out her breath, which made Fawn laugh. Dag leaned on the stall partition and smiled.

  At length, Fawn’s face sobered in some new thought. She wandered back out of the stall and stood with her arms folded a moment. “Except… I’m not sure if I’ll be able to keep her on a milkmaid’s pay, or whatever.”

  “She’s yours absolutely; you could sell her,” Dag said neutrally.

  Fawn shook her head, but her expression did not lighten.

  “In any case,” Dag continued, “it’s too early for you to be thinking of taking on work. You’re going to need this mare to ride, first.”

  “I’m feeling much better. The bleeding stopped two days ago, if I were going to get a fever I think I would have by now, and I don’t get dizzy anymore.”

  “Yes, but… Mari has given me leave to take the sharing knife back to camp and have it looked at by a maker. I know the best. I was thinking, since Lumpton Market and West Blue are more or less on the way to Hickory Lake from here, we ought to stop in at your farm on the way and put your folks out of their cruel suspense.”

  Her eyes flashed up at him with an unreadable look. “I don’t want to go back.”

  Her voice wavered. “I don’t want my whole stupid story to come out.” And firmed:

  “I don’t want to be within a hundred miles of Stupid Sunny.”

  Dag took a breath. “You don’t have to stay. Well, you can’t stay; your testimony will be needed on the matter of the knife. Once that’s done, the choice of where to go next is yours.”

  She sucked on her lower lip, eyes downcast. “They’ll try to make me stay. I know them. They won’t believe I can be a grown…” Her voice grew more urgent. “Only if you promise to go with me, promise not to leave me there!”

  His hand found its way to her shoulder in attempted reassurance of this odd distress. “And yet I might with your goodwill leave you here?”

  “Mm…”

  “Just trying to figure out if it’s the here or the there or the me leaving that’s being objected to.”

  Her eyes were wide and dark, and her moist lips parted as her face rose at these words. Dag felt his head dipping, his spine bending, as his hand slipped around her back, as if he were falling from some great height, falling soft…

  A throat cleared dryly behind him, and he straightened abruptly.

  “There you are,” said Mari. “Thought I might find you here.” Her voice was cordial but her eyes were narrowed.

  “Oh, Mari!” said Fawn, a bit breathlessly. “Thank you for getting me this nice horse. I wasn’t expecting it.” She made her little knee-dip.

  Mari smiled at her, managing to give Dag an ironic eyebrow-cock at the same time. “You’ve earned much more, but it was what I could do. I am not entirely without a sense of obligation.”

  This crushed conversation briefly. Mari continued blandly, “Fawn, would you excuse us for a whi
le? I have some patrol business to discuss with Dag, here.”

  “Oh. Of course.” Fawn brightened. “I’ll go tell Saun about Grace.” And she was off again at a scamper, flashing a grin over her shoulder at Dag.

  Mari leaned against the end post of the stall and crossed her arms, staring up at Dag, till Fawn had vanished through the stable door and out of ear shot.

  The aisle was cool and shady compared to the white afternoon outside, redolent with horses, quiet but for the occasional champing and shifting of the heat-lazy animals and the faint humming of the flies. Dag raised his chin and clasped his hand and hand replacement behind his back, winding his thumb around the hook-with-spring-clamp presently seated in the wooden cuff, and waited. Not hopefully.

  It wasn’t long in coming. “What are you about, boy?” Mari growled.

  Any sort of response that came to, Whatever do you mean, Mari? seemed a waste of time and breath. Dag lowered his eyelids and waited some more.

  “Do I need to list everything that’s wrong with this infatuation?” she said, exasperation plain in her voice. “I daresay you could give the blighted lecture yourself. I daresay you have.”

  “A time or two,” he granted.

  “So what are you thinking? Or are you thinking?”

  He inhaled. “I know you want to tell me to back away from Fawn, but I can’t.

  Not yet anyway. The knife binds us, till I get it up to camp. We’re going to have to travel together for a time yet; you can’t argue with that.”

  “It’s not the traveling that worries me. It’s what’s going to happen when you stop.”

  “I’m not sleeping with her.”

  “Aye, yet. You’ve had your groundsense locked down tight in my presence ever since you got in. Well, that’s partly just you—it’s such a habit with you, you stay veiled in your sleep. But this—you’re like a cat who thinks it’s hiding because it’s got its head stuck in a sack.”