The Sharing Knife: Beguilement

by Lois McMaster Bujold

  The room grew so quiet, Fawn thought she could hear the candles burning.

  She lifted her face to his and said a little wryly, “You know, you’ve either got to finish those sorts of sentences or not start them.”

  He sighed and nodded. “I think I can say this to you. If I can’t I’ve no business… anyway. I was about to say, when I woke up in the medicine tent after Wolf Ridge with my hand gone, so was Kauneo’s binding string, which I wore on that side. Lost on the ridge. I guess I made some difficulties trying to find it, being fairly mixed up in the head right about then. They hadn’t wanted to tell me she was gone till I was stronger, but they pretty much had to, and then I wouldn’t believe them. It was like, if I could just find that binding string, I could prove them wrong. I got over it in due course.”

  He was looking away from her as he said this. Fawn drew her breath in and let it out gently between her teeth. He looked back down at her and smiled, sort of, and tried to move his hand to grasp hers in reassurance, wincing as the sling brought him up short in painful reminder. “It was a long time ago,” he murmured.

  “Before I was born.”

  “Indeed.” He added after a moment, “I don’t know why I find that an easing thought, but I do.”

  Nattie had her head cocked to one side with the intensity of her listening; when he did not go on, she put in, “Now, I do know this, patroller. Without those binding strings, you aren’t married in Lakewalker eyes.”

  He nodded cautiously, then remembered to say aloud, “Yes. That is to say, they are a visible proof of a valid marriage, like your village clerk’s record and writing your name in the family book with all the witnesses’ signatures below.

  The string-binding is the heart and center of a wedding. The food and the music and the dancing and the arguments among the relatives are all extra.”

  “Uh-huh,” said Nattie. “And there’s the problem, patroller. Because if Fawn and you stand up in the parlor before the family and all like you say you want, and sign your names and make your promises, seems to me she’d be getting married, but you wouldn’t. I said I had a question, and this is it. I want to know exactly what you are about, that you think this won’t twist around somehow and leave her cryin’.”

  Fawn wondered for a moment why he was being held responsible for her future tears but not her for his. She supposed it was the, the blighted age thing again. It seemed unfairly unbalanced, somehow.

  Dag was silent for several long breaths. He finally raised his chin, and said,

  “When I first rode in here, I had no thought of a farmer wedding. But it didn’t take long to see how little her family valued Spark. Present company excepted,”

  he added hastily. Nattie nodded grimly, not disagreeing. “Not that they don’t love her and try to look out for her, in a sort of backhanded, absentminded way.

  But they don’t seem to see her, not as she is. Not as I see her. Of course, they don’t have groundsense, but still. Maybe the past fogs the present, maybe they just haven’t looked lately, maybe they never have looked, I don’t know. But marriage seems to raise a woman’s standing in a farmer family. I thought I could give her that, in an easy way. Well, it seemed easy at the time. Not so sure now.” He sighed. “I was real clear about the widowhood business, though.”

  “Seems like a hollow gift, patroller.”

  “Yes, but I can’t do a string-binding here. I can’t make the string, for one; it takes two hands and I’ve got none, and I’m not sure Fawn can make one at all, and we’ve no one to do the blessing and the tying. I was thinking that when we reached Hickory Lake I might try for a string-binding there, despite the difficulties.”

  “Think your family will favor this idea?”

  “No,” he said frankly. “I expect trouble about it. But I’ve outstubborned everything my life has thrown at me so far.”

  “He’s got a point there, Aunt Nattie,” Fawn dared to say.

  “Mm,” said Aunt Nattie. “So what happens if they pitch her out on her ear?

  Which Lakewalkers have done to farmer suitors before, I do believe.”

  Dag fell very quiet for a little, then said, “I’d walk with her.”

  Nattie’s brows went up. “You’d break with your people? Can you?”

  “Not by choice.” His shrug failed to conceal deep unease. “But if they chose to break with me, I couldn’t very well stop them.”

  Fawn blinked, suddenly disquieted. She’d dreamed only of what joy they might bring to each other. But that keelboat seemed to be towing a whole string of barges she hadn’t yet peeked into. Dag had, it seemed.

  “Huh-huh-hm,” said Nattie. She tapped her cane gently on the floorboards.

  “I’m thinkin’ too, patroller. I got two hands. So does Fawn, actually.”

  Dag seemed to freeze, staring at Nattie sharply. “I’m… not at all sure that would work.” He added after a longer moment, “I’m not at all sure it wouldn’t.

  I have some know-how. Fawn knows this land, she can help gather the necessaries.

  Hair from each of us, other things. Mine’s a bit short.”

  “I have tricks for dealing with short fibers,” said Nattie equitably.

  “You have more than that, I think. Spark…” He turned to her. “Give me a piece your aunt has made. I want to hold something of her making. Something especially fine, you know?”

  “I think I know what he’s wanting. Look in that trunk at the foot of my bed, lovie,” said Nattie. “Fletch’s wedding shirt.”

  Fawn hopped up, went around to the wooden trunk, and lifted the lid. The shirt was right on top. She picked it up by the shoulders, letting the white fabric fall open. It was almost finished, except for the cuffs. The smocking around the tops of the sleeves and across the yoke in back was soft under her touch, and the buttons, already sewn down the front placket, were carved of iridescent mussel shell, cool and smooth.

  She brought it to Dag, who laid it out in his lap, touching it clumsily and gingerly with his right fingertips and, more hesitantly, letting his hook hand drift above it, careful not to snag. “This isn’t just one fiber, is it?”

  “Linen for strength, cotton for softness, a bit of nettle flax for the shimmer,”

  Nattie said. “I spun the thread special.”

  “Lakewalker women never spin or weave thread so fine. It takes too much time, and we never have enough of that.”

  Fawn glanced at his coarse shirt, which she had thought shoddy, with a new eye.

  “I remember helping Nattie and Mama set up the loom for that cloth, last winter.

  It took three days, and was so tedious and finicky I thought I’d scream.”

  “Lakewalker looms are little hanging things, which can be taken down and carried easy when we move camp. We could never shift that big wooden frame of your aunt’s. That’s a farmer tool. Sessile, as bad as barns and houses. Targets…”

  He lowered his gaze to the cloth again. “This is good ground, in this. It used to be plants, and… and creatures. Now its ground is wholly transformed. All shirt, whole. That’s a good making, that is.” He raised his face and stared at Nattie with a new and keen curiosity. “There’s a blessing worked in.”

  Fawn would have sworn Nattie’s lips twitched in a proud smirk, but the expression fleeted away too fast to be sure. “I tried,” Nattie said modestly.

  “It’s a wedding shirt, after all.”

  “Huh.” Dag sat up, indicating with a nod that Fawn should take the shirt back.

  She folded it away again carefully and sat on the trunk. A tension hung between Nattie and Dag, and she hesitated to walk between them, lest something delicate tear and snap like a spiderweb.

  Dag said, “I’m willing to try for the binding strings if you are, Aunt Nattie.

  It sure would change the argument, up home. If it doesn’t work, we’re no worse off than we were, except for the disappointment, and if it does… we’re that much farther along.”

  “Farther along to where?”
asked Nattie.

  Dag gave a wry snort. “We’ll all find out when we arrive, I expect.”

  “That’s a fair saying,” allowed Nattie amiably. “All right, patroller. You got yourself a bargain.”

  “You mean you’ll speak for us to Mama and Papa?” Fawn wanted to jump up and squeal. She stopped it down to a more demure squeak, and leaped to the bed to give Nattie a hug and a kiss.

  Nattie fought her off, unconvincingly. “Now, now, lovie, don’t carry on so.

  You’ll be giving me the heebie-jeebies.” She sat up straight and turned her face once more toward the man across from her. “One other thing… Dag. If you’d be willing to hear me out.”

  His brows twitched up at the unaccustomed use of his name. “I’m a good listener.”

  “Yeah, I noticed that about you.” But then Nattie fell silent. She shifted a little, as if embarrassed, or… or shy? Surely not… “Before that young Lakewalker fellow left, he gave me one last present. Because I said I was sorry to part never having seen his face. Well, actually, his lady gave it me, I suppose.

  She was something of a hand at Lakewalker healings, it seemed, of the sort he did for my poor ankle when first we met.”

  “Matching grounds,” Dag interpreted this. “Yes? It’s a bit intimate.

  Actually, it’s a lot intimate.”

  Nattie’s voice fell to almost a whisper, as if confiding dark secrets. “It was like she lent me her eyes for a spell. Now, he wasn’t too different from what I’d pictured, sort of homely-handsome. Hadn’t expected the red hair and the shiny suntan, though, on a fellow who’d been sleeping all day and running around all night. Touch of a shock, that.” She went quiet for a long stretch. “I’ve never seen Fawn’s face, you know.” The offhand tone of her voice would have fooled no one present, Fawn thought, even without the little quaver at the end.

  Dag sat back, blinking.

  In the silence, Nattie said uncertainly, “Maybe you’re too tired. Maybe it’s…

  too hard. Too much.”

  “Um…” Dag swallowed, then cleared his throat. “I am mightily tired this night, I admit. But I’m willing to try for you. Not sure it’ll work, is all. Wouldn’t want to disappoint.”

  “If it don’t work, we’re no worse off than we were. As you say.”

  “I did,” he agreed. He shot a bleak smile at Fawn. “Change places with me, Spark?”

  She scrambled off Nattie’s bed and took his spot on her own, as he sat down beside Nattie. He hitched his shoulders and slipped his arm out of his sling.

  “You be careful with that arm,” warned Fawn anxiously.

  “I think I can lift it from the shoulder all right now, if I don’t try to wriggle my fingers too much or put any pressure on it. Nattie, I’m going to try to touch your temples, here. I can use my fingers for the right side, but I’m afraid I’ll have to touch you with the backside of my hook on the left, if only for the balance. Don’t jump around, eh?”

  “Whatever you say, patroller.” Nattie sat bolt upright, very still. She nervously wet her lips. Her pearl eyes were wide, staring hard into space.

  Dag eased up close to her, lifting his hands to either side of her head. Except for a somewhat inward expression on his face, there was nothing whatsoever to see.

  Fawn caught the moment only because Nattie blinked and gasped, shifting her eyes sideways to Dag. “Oh.” And then, more impatiently, “No, don’t look at that dumpy old woman. I don’t want to see her anyhow, and besides, it isn’t true. Look over there.”

  Obligingly, Dag turned his head, parallel with Nattie’s if rather above it.

  He smiled at Fawn. She grinned back, her breath coming faster with the thrill shivering about the room.

  “My word,” breathed Nattie. “My word.” The timeless moment stretched. Then she said, “Come on, patroller. There isn’t hardly nothing human in the wide green world could be as pretty as that.”

  “That’s what I thought,” said Dag. “You’re seeing her ground as well as her face, you know. Seeing her as I do.” “Do you, now,” whispered Nattie. “Do you. That explains a lot.” Her eyes locked hungrily on Fawn, as if seeking to memorize the sightless vision. Her lids welled with water, which glimmered in the candlelight.

  “Nattie,” said Dag, his voice a mix of strain and amusement and regret, “I can’t keep this up much longer. I’m sorry.”

  “It’s all right, patroller. It’s enough. Well, not that. But you know.”

  “Yes.” Dag sighed and sat back, slumping. Awkwardly, he slipped his splinted arm back in its sling, then bent over, staring at the floor.

  “Are you sick again?” asked Fawn, wondering if she should dash for a basin.

  “No. Bit of a headache, though. There are things floating in my vision.

  There, they’re fading now.” He blinked rapidly and straightened again. “Ow. You people do take it out of me. I feel as though I’d just come off walking patterns for ten days straight. In the worst weather. Over crags.”

  Nattie sat up, her tears smearing in tracks like water trickling down a cliff face. She scrubbed at her cheeks and glared around the room that she could no longer see. “My word, this is a grubby hole we’ve been stuffed in all this time, Fawn, lovie. Why didn’t you ever say? I’m going to make the boys whitewash the walls, I am.”

  “Sounds like a good idea to me,” said Fawn. “But I won’t be here.”

  “No, but I will.” Nattie sniffed resolutely.

  After a few more minutes to recover her stability, Nattie planted her cane and hoisted herself up. “Well, come on, you two. Let’s get this started.”

  Fawn and Dag followed her out past the weaving room; once through the door to the kitchen, Fawn cuddled in close to Dag’s left side, and he let his arm drift around behind her back and anchor her there, and maybe himself as well. The whole family was seated around the lamplit table, Papa and Mama and Fletch on the near end, Reed and Rush and Whit beyond. They looked up warily. Whatever conference they were having, they’d kept their voices remarkably low; or else they hadn’t been daring to talk to one another at all.

  “Are they all there?” muttered Nattie.

  “Yes, Aunt Nattie.”

  Nattie stepped up to the center of the kitchen and thumped the floor with her cane, drawing herself up in full Pronouncement Mode such as Fawn had very seldom seen, not since the time Nattie had so-finally settled the argument for damages with the irate Bowyers over the twins’ and Whit’s cow-racing episode, years ago.

  Nattie drew a long breath; everyone else held theirs.

  “I’m satisfied,” Nattie announced loudly. “Fawn shall have her patroller. Dag shall have his Spark. See to it, Tril and Sorrel. The rest of you lot”—she glared to remarkable effect, when she put her mind to it, the focused blankness making her eyes seem quite uncanny—“behave yourselves, for once!”

  And she turned and walked, very briskly, back into her weaving room. Just in case anyone was foolish enough to try to challenge that last word, she gave her cane a jaunty twirl and knocked the door closed behind her.

  Chapter 17

  Dag woke late from a sodden sleep to find that his next duty in this dance was to ride with Fawn and her parents to West Blue to register their intentions with the village clerk, and to beg his official attendance on the wedding. Fawn was fussed and nervous getting Dag shaved, washed up, and dressed, which confused him at first, because she’d had the help down to a fairly straightforward routine, and despite his fatigue he wasn’t being gracelessly cranky this morning. He finally realized that at last they would be seeing people outside of her family—ones she’d known all her life. And vice versa. It would be the first view most of West Blue would have of Dag the Lakewalker, that lanky fellow Fawn Bluefield dragged home or however he was now known to local gossip.

  He tried not to let his imagination descend too far into the disagreeable possibilities, but he couldn’t help reflecting that the only resident of West Blue who had met him so far was Stu
pid Sunny. It seemed too much to hope that Sunny was not given to gossip, and it was already proven he’d a habit of altering the facts to his own favor. His humiliation was more likely to make him sly than contrite. The Bluefields could well be Dag’s only allies in the farmer community; it seemed a thin thread to hang from. So he let Fawn carry on in her efforts to turn him out presentably, futile as they seemed.

  The hamlet, three miles south via the shade-dappled river road, appeared peaceful and serene as Sorrel drove the family horse cart down the main, and seemingly only, street. It was a day for fluffy white clouds against a bright blue sky utterly innocent of any intent to rain, which added to the illusion of good cheer. The principal reasons for the village’s existence seemed to be a grain mill, a small sawmill, and the timber wagon bridge, which showed signs of having been recently widened. Around the little market square, presently largely idle, were a smithy, an alehouse, and a number of other houses, mostly built of the native river stone. Sorrel brought the cart to a halt before one such and led the way inside. Dag ducked his head under en excessively low stone lintel, just missing braining himself.

  He straightened cautiously and found the ceiling sufficient. The front room seemed a cross between a farmhouse parlor and a camp lore-tent, with benches, a table, and shelves stuffed with papers, rolled parchments, and bound record books. The litter of records flooded on into the rooms beyond. In through the back hall bustled the clerk himself, who seemed, by the way he dusted the knees of his trousers, to have been interrupted in the midst of gardening. He was on the high side of middle age, sharp-nosed, potbellied, and perky, and was introduced to Dag by the very farmerly name of Shep Sower.