“Whatever he brings, I imagine it’ll turn a profit. I don’t know how he does it.”
“Nobody in our family would have guessed that talent of his back home. Neither one of us had much chance to shine there, I reckon.” The town of Clearcreek was only about twice the size of the village of West Blue; Fawn wasn’t sure how it managed to seem worlds larger.
Barr cleared his throat. “You, ah… ever hear anything more from Calla and Indigo? And Sage,” he added in afterthought.
“Oh, yes! Calla sent letters twice. I’ll let you read them, later. We get mail up and down the river fairly regular.”
“How are they getting on? ”
“Well, Sage got work in a foundry, and he’s learning lots of new things, just as he’d hoped. Calla says he still wants his own place in due time. Indigo found a job driving a delivery wagon, and his boss thinks the world of his way with the horses, though Indigo doesn’t much care for town life-too crowded. He says it makes him feel funny and tense. We wrote back that he’d be welcome in Clearcreek, but he hasn’t taken us up yet. But here’s the best thing-Calla got so interested in medicine making in her time with Arkady, she went and apprenticed herself to this midwife in Tripoint. Her bit o’ groundsense gave her such an edge, she finally ’fessed up to her half blood. And instead of throwing her out on her ear, the woman took her to someone who knew one of the local Lakewalkers, and now Calla goes and trains one week in the month with the medicine makers at the Tripoint camp-same place Fairbolt was born, if you can believe it!”
“Oh!” said Barr, brightening. “That’s… good.” His brow wrinkled.
“Unexpected.”
“Was to me, too, till I got to thinking about it. Seems Calla was tested to be let in to her papa’s camp back south, but she wouldn’t join up because they wouldn’t take Indigo, too.”
“Huh. I didn’t know that.” Barr looked very pensive, which was not an expression Fawn was used to seeing on him. Before she could ask what was troubling him, another set of clumps sounded from the stoop.
Fawn looked up eagerly. “Ah, here’s Dag!”
As the door swung open, Barr cast her a crooked smile. “You developing groundsense these days? ”
“No, but I’d know those boot steps anywhere.” Like my child’s cry, or my own hand in the dark.
Dag ducked through, straightened up, and grinned broadly. “Hey, Barr! What brings you here? ” Things must have gone well with his patients; he wasn’t drooping with fatigue, or low with gloom, or spattered with blood.
Before Barr could answer, Nattie-Mari stirred in her basket and meeped. “Be right with you, Sparkle,” Dag called to her, and hastily slipped off his jacket and went to wash his hand in the basin in the sink.
The meeping grew more anxious, if not yet a full-throated cry. Dag tossed the towel over the sink rim and went to gaze down into the basket a moment, his expression curious and tender. Barr, brow furrowing, watched him pick up his child and position her on his left shoulder, hand spread securely over her little back, and take a comfortable seat in the rocker on the other side of the hearth.
“Is she wet? ” asked Fawn. “Hungry? ”
“No, she just wants to join the party.”
“She likes the rumble of Dag’s voice,” Fawn informed Barr, and, reassured, went back to her stirring. “I do wonder that Lakewalker children ever learn to talk, with the grown-ups able to figure out everything they want by groundsense.”
Dag shook his head. “Not everything, I assure you. The little ones have to train us up just like farmer babies train their parents. Don’t you, Sparkle? You’re teaching your old papa all kinds of tricks, aren’t you? ”
Nattie-Mari settled in her new perch with an air of ownership, little fingers flexing, eyelids half shutting. Her eyes had been rather muddy at birth, but lately had cleared to a deep brown, with exciting redgold flecks. Dag added to Barr, “How are things at Pearl Riffle? How’s Maker Verel doing with my ground shields? ”
“Better, since Whit came by last fall, puffed off his walnut pendant and his malice kill in every tavern in the Landing and the Bend, and had Verel quadruple the price. Which last also settled the camp council- and increased the number of farmers wanting to try one, which I don’t understand but Whit said would work.”
“Whit has that knack,” said Fawn complacently. She tapped her wooden spoon on the pot edge, readjusted the pot’s distance to the coals, and settled on the hearth edge by Dag’s knees to listen.
“Verel’s taken on two new apprentices to help out,” Barr continued.
“So the shield work doesn’t put him too far behind.”
“Good,” said Dag. “And Captain Amma? Was she willing to try our experiment yet? ”
“Yeah, finally. She sent four farmer boys out with my patrol, with me detailed to ride herd on ’em, since she said I knew farmers better than any other patroller she had. Two of ’em quit after their first stint, when they found out how boring and uncomfortable it is, especially in the winter, and no sign of a malice anywhere, of course. And all the dirty work piled on, though I kept explaining that all new patrollers get the dirty work. But the others stuck it out, and two more came on.
We’re to go again next week.”
Dag said, “You know, Arkady trained Hoharie in shield making when he was up to visit Hickory Lake Camp with Sumac, same as I trained Verel.”
Barr nodded.
“Well, half a dozen Raintree boys-survivors of their malice outbreak- heard the rumors and turned up at the gate to volunteer. Fairbolt claimed it was a patrol matter, and made sure the camp council was too divided to overrule him. He had the boys partner with Rase and Remo to teach them how to go on, which answered fairly well. The boredom and grind didn’t daunt them, with kinfolk to avenge. I had a letter from Remo just last week-they’ve survived their first test with a real malice. It was just a little sessile, but Hoharie’s shields held, and none of the dire predictions of the naysayers came true. So far, so good.”
“Will you ever go back there? To Hickory Lake? ”
Dag shook his head. “Not soon. I don’t have time. So far, Arkady and I have had eleven different makers from nine different camps turn up here to learn our tricks, shields and unbeguiling and more. New folks come every week, seems like.”
“We got so we keep a bunk room ready for visitors,” Fawn added.
“We’ll put you up in there tonight.”
Barr nodded gratefully.
“That’s in addition to all those long descriptions Arkady wrote up for Hoharie and Verel to send out all over the hinterland with their medicine-tent circulars, and for Fairbolt and Amma with their patrol circulars. Even if Copperhead achieves his lifelong ambition of bashing me into a tree tomorrow, the ideas are out there.”
“Does Remo sound happy there, up at Hickory? As happy as Remo ever gets, that is,” Barr added.
“Seems to be.” Dag smiled slowly. “Tioca Crow got mentioned three times in the letter. She was a good-looking girl, in a strappy sort of way, as I recall.”
Barr shook his head. “I hope he has better luck in love this time.”
“If it’s really Tioca, I expect she’ll see to that.”
“He didn’t have to go, you know. Amma was all ready to put him back in the Pearl Riffle patrol. I suppose it was better that he did things in order and transferred properly, though. He’s always happier when he thinks he’s following the rules.”
Dag’s eyebrow twitch made provisional agreement. “Rules aren’t actually made to be broken. They’re generally invented because someone made a mistake or a mess, and folks didn’t ever want to have to clean up after another one like it.”
Barr cleared his throat. “Yeah. About that.”
Now he’s getting to it, thought Fawn. She didn’t think Barr would’ve ridden a day and a half in this raw weather just to party with Nattie-
Mari. Something was preying on his mind, for sure.
“You know, I could be a bit of a blight,
when I was a younger patroller.”
Fawn supposed it would not be polite to agree too wholeheartedly.
She hunkered on the hearth, don’t let me interrupt. Dag limited himself to an encouraging, “Hm? ”
“I thought most of the rules were stupid. And, I suppose, I was still new to my powers, wanting to test them out. Like boys running races, or lifting logs, or something. Anyway, I did this thing…” His eyes shifted Fawn’s way. “Fawn’s not going to like this.”
Fawn rubbed her lips. Not that she exactly wanted to make it easy for him, but… “If you’re talking about the time you persuaded some farmer girl to go out to the woodpile with you, and then tried to talk Remo into seducing her sister, I already heard.”
Barr’s lips made a silent Oh. “Uh… when? ”
“Remo told us, back before you first came on the Fetch. When we were all trying to work out unbeguilement.”
“Remo said!” Barr sat up, looking betrayed.
“He was still plenty mad at you about the accident with his sharing knife, recall. You two only fell into that ambush in the first place because that flatboat girl led you there by the nose-or whatever she led you by-and he followed you.”
“Oh. Um. Yeah.” Barr shot another look at Fawn. “Was that why you wouldn’t hardly give me the time of day, when I first came aboard?”
“Well, let’s just say it didn’t help your cause.”
Barr gave up betrayal in favor of glum. “Well, it was true. That farmer girl wasn’t unwilling, mind, even before… er. And then Remo pitched such a fit, I never dared it again. And so much has happened since, I’d almost forgotten about it, till this last patrol. Took us back through that same little village. About thirty miles northwest of the Riffle.”
Dag leaned back, looking very bland. Fawn was chilly but silent; she’d get no tale if she rushed to judgment.
“It was a joke, almost. At the time. I thought.”
“I doubt it was such a big laugh for her,” said Fawn.
“Yeah. I found that out.”
Fawn sat up. “She didn’t go and hang herself, did she? ”
Barr’s eyes flew wide. “Hang herself! Do farmer girls really do that? ”
“Sometimes. Or drown themselves.”
“No, it wasn’t that, um… bad. Kind of the opposite. I asked the blacksmith, after I saw her… she’d got married. And had a child.”
“One of those seven-months children with the nine-months hair? ” said Dag. “We get them around these parts, time to time.”
“I think they get them everywhere,” conceded Fawn. I might have had one myself, once, but for some strange mortal chances.
“We ran into each other outside the village smithy. Cold day, but bright, the sort you sometimes get just before the first thaws. My patrol’d stopped to get a couple of cast shoes fixed. She was carting away some tools that had been repaired. She recognized me right off, but she pretended not to know me. Like I was invisible, or she wished I was. She had her little girl toddling after her, about Owlet’s size, blond-headed, curls everywhere, in this knit cap with a long pink tassel. She kept tossing her head to make it fly around, and giggling. Dag, she was mine.”
Fawn scowled. “How can you be sure? Just from her age and hair color? ”
“No, from her ground!”
Fawn cast Dag up a doubtful look; he returned a nod. “Barr would know, yes.”
“Then what did you do? ” Fawn asked in worry.
“Rode after her, of course. I caught up with her cart the first bend out of sight of the village. First she said she didn’t know me, and then she told me to leave off because she hated me, and go away or she’d scream, and I said the little girl was mine, and she said no she wasn’t, and I said yes she was, and then the girl started to cry from the yelling and her mama finally stopped the cart to talk.” He added after a moment, “She’d named her Lily.”
Barr took a breath and went on, as if afraid that if he halted he wouldn’t be able to get started again. “She said she had a good life now, and a good husband, and I didn’t have no call to ride after her and wreck her world.”
“Again,” murmured Fawn.
“And I said, did this fellow think my girl was his? And she said yes. And she offered me all the money in her purse to go away quiet.”
“Did you take it? ” asked Fawn sweetly.
Barr glared, outraged.
“Now, Fawn,” chided Dag.
Fawn sighed. It was much too late for a traditional farmer horsewhipping to do Barr the least good, after all. Or anyone else, she supposed.
He was learning his lessons in other ways, possibly no less painful.
“So she said if I wanted the other favor from her she wasn’t going to give it to me, because she was pregnant now, and this one was her husband’s, and I said no, I didn’t, and yes, I could see, it was a farmer boy, and healthy, too. She seemed glad to learn that, and calmed down a little. But she said that I should ride away and stay away, because I’d done her enough harm for one lifetime.” Barr blinked. “She didn’t actually look like she was suffering that much.”
“How would you know? ” said Fawn tartly. “You weren’t there to see the bad parts. Just because you survive a hurt doesn’t mean you didn’t bleed plenty at the time.”
“So what did you do?” Dag’s deep voice cut in before Fawn could expand on this theme.
Barr’s face scrunched up. “I didn’t know what to do. So I turned around and rode off like she wanted. But Dag-that little girl-she could’ve, should’ve, might have been my, my tent-heiress. In some other world.”
“Too late for that, I think,” said Dag.
“I know. But all the way home, I kept thinking about her. And about Calla and Indigo. I don’t know that I would have understood the problem, before I met Calla and her brother. What if Lily grows up with groundsense? What’s she going to do, come eleven, twelve years old, when all those strange things start happening in her head-you know how it feels when your groundsense first comes in, all in spurts-with no one to tell her how to go on? What if her mama’s husband comes to suspect, and, and… doesn’t treat her right?” He hesitated. “What if I come to some sudden end, out patrolling, and no one knows she exists? ”
Dag said, “You did not, I take it, see fit to inform your parents they have a half-farmer granddaughter? They having the next closest interest by right.”
Barr shuddered. “Absent gods, no!”
Barr was still, Fawn was reminded, very young by Lakewalker standards.
He might change his views on that later.
Dag grimaced. “Well, we don’t know them, you do; I won’t argue with your judgment on that.”
Barr ducked his head gratefully. “But I thought… someone had better know about Lily. In case. And if there was anybody who could tell me what to do next, it would be you two. So… I rode here.”
Dag shifted in his chair, and Nattie-Mari on his shoulder; she whuffled faintly, smacked her lips, and fell back to dozing. “What do you want to do? ”
“Well, first off… no harm.”
“Then you’ll do best to leave that poor woman alone to live her life,” said Fawn. “It seems she’s found a way to survive…” She wasn’t sure whether to say you or without you, so said neither. “You daren’t take that away from her unless you stand ready to replace it, and I don’t think you can. And nor does it sounds like she much wants you to.”
“No, I guess… not.”
Dag sucked on his lower lip, tapping his hook gently on the rocking chair arm. “But you shouldn’t, I think, leave little Lily alone without any watching over at all. Things change. Parents can die-hers or yours, come to think-fortunes reverse. Families up-stakes and move. At the very least, you owe the child a discreet-and if you don’t know how to be discreet, it’s time you learned-check every now and then. So you can spot if she ever needs any help.”
Barr said slowly, “I could do that, I guess.” His strain was easing, now that he had h
is confession out. And if it was replaced by a nearly Remo-like glumness, well, it would do him no permanent harm. Barr’s gaze lifted to Nattie-Mari, flopped happily on her papa’s shoulder, and Fawn finally recognized his odd look as a kind of envy. He added apologetically, “My father is a pretty good one, mostly, for all that we used to butt heads till Mama threatened to drown us both in the Riffle. He spent a lot of time with me and my sisters, teaching us things… it’s strange to think that I won’t ever… well.”
The silence that followed was broken only when Nattie-Mari stirred and squawked. Dag looked down at Fawn and smiled. “Two-handed chore, coming up.”
“Huh. Funny how your dexterity comes and goes, medicine maker.”
She scrambled up, stirred her pot once more, swung it to safety, then bent and retrieved her daughter. Yep, leaking. Dag was entirely unmoved by the damp spot left on his shirt, though he did stretch his arms and roll his shoulders. She might offer to teach Barr how to do this cleanup chore sometime, if he hadn’t yet learned on one of his younger sisters. Not just now, though-later on, when his heartache had eased a bit. Earlier in their acquaintance, she’d often wished for someone to hit Barr over the head with a plank and adjust his self-centered view of the world. It seemed little Lily finally had, but the results weren’t as much fun to watch as she’d imagined.
When Fawn came back, Dag gave up the old rocking chair by the fire for her to sit with Nattie-Mari, taking her place on the hearth to continue his earnest discussion with Barr. New ground-shield designs, and teaching unbeguilement, and how many camps had sent inquiries, and how many makers had promised to pass the word. Arkady blew in then with Sumac, stomping his feet and complaining as usual about the deadly northern cold, which was actually quite mild today, and the talk turned to medicine making Clearcreek-style, and the new apprentices begging for places, and horses in foal, and plans for the spring.
And if hope for their wide green world grew as slowly as a baby grew into a mama, well, no one had ever said raising either was a task for the faint of heart, or the impatient.
Sharing Knife 4 Horizon Page 42
