Beguilement

by Lois McMaster Bujold

  “Dag! You made it!” He laughed, coughed, grimaced, and moaned. “Ow. Knew you would!”

  The patroller woman raised her eyebrows at this broad claim but grinned indulgently.

  Dag walked to the bedside and smiled down, adopting a cheerful tone. “Now, I know you had six broken ribs at least. I ask you, is this the time for speeches?”

  “Only a short one,” wheezed the young man. His hand found Dag’s and grasped it. “Thank you.”

  Dag’s brows twitched, but he didn’t argue. Such sincere gratitude shone in the young man’s eyes, Fawn warmed to him at once. Finally, somebody seemed to be taking Dag at his worth. Saun turned his head to peer somewhat blearily at her, and she smiled at him with all her heart. He blinked rapidly and smiled back, looking a bit flummoxed.

  Dag gave the hand a little shake from side to side, and asked more softly, “How’re you doing, Saun?”

  “It only hurts when I laugh.”

  “Oh? Don’t let the patrol know that.” The dry light in Dag’s eyes was mirth, Fawn realized.

  Saun sputtered and coughed. “Ow! Blast you, Dag!”

  “See what I mean?” He added more sternly, “They tell me you haven’t been sleeping. I said, couldn’t be—this is the patroller we have to roll out of his blankets by force in camp in the morning. Feather beds too soft for you now? Shall I bring you a few rocks to make it more homelike?”

  Saun held a hand to his bandaged chest and carefully refrained from chuckling. “Naw. All I want is your tale. They said”—his face grew grave in memory, and he moistened his lips—“they found your horse yesterday miles from the lair, found the lair, found half your gear and your bow abandoned in a pile. Your bow. Didn’t think you’d ever leave that on purpose. Two rotting mud-men and a pile of something Mari swore was the dead malice, and a trail of blood leading off to nothing. What were we supposed to think?”

  “I was rather hoping someone would think I’d found shelter at the nearest farm,” Dag said ruefully. “I begin to suspect I’m not exciting enough for you all.”

  Saun’s eyes narrowed. “There’s more than that,” he said positively.

  “Quite a bit, but it’s for Mari’s ears first.” Dag glanced at Fawn.

  Saun slumped in apparent acceptance of this. “As long as I get more sometime.”

  “Sometime.” Dag hesitated, then added diffidently, “So… did they also find the body I’d left in the tree?”

  Three faces turned to stare.

  “Evidently not yet,” Dag murmured.

  “See what I told you? See?” said Saun to his companions in a voice of vindication. He added to Dag through slightly gritted teeth, “Sometime soon, all right?”

  “As I can.” Dag nodded at the two from the other patrol. “Did Mari say when she’d be back?”

  They shook their heads. “She left at dawn,” the woman offered.

  “Need anything more right now, Saun?” asked the patroller man.

  “You just brought me what I wanted most,” said Saun. “Take a break, eh?”

  “I think I will.” With a barely audible grunt of pain, the patroller man sat down on the other bed, evidently his own, shed his boots, and used his hands to swing the stiff leg inboard. “Ah.”

  Dag nodded in farewell. “Sleep hard, Saun. Try and wake up smarter, eh?”

  A faint snort and a muffled Ow! followed the three out. Dag’s face, turning away, softened like a man finding grace in an unexpected hour. “Yeah, he’ll be all right,” he muttered in satisfaction.

  The patroller woman closed the door quietly behind them.

  “So, was that Saun the Sheep?” asked Fawn.

  “Aye, the very lamb,” said Dag. “If he lives long enough to trade in some of that enthusiasm for brains, he’ll be a good patroller. He’s made it to twenty, so far. Must be luck.” His smile took a twist. “Same as you, Little Spark.”

  As they started down the hall, a woman’s voice called weakly from a room with an open door.

  “That’s Reela,” said the patroller woman quickly. “Do you have all you need, sir?”

  “If not, I’ll find it.” Dag gave a dismissing wave. “I’ve known this place for years.”

  “Then if you’ll excuse me, I’ll go see what she wants.” She nodded and stepped away.

  As they made their way down the stairs, Fawn heard Dag mutter under his breath, “Stop sir-ing me, you dreadful puppies!” He paused at the bottom, his hand on the rail, and looked back upward, his face going distant.

  “Now what are you thinking?” Fawn asked softly.

  “I’m thinking… that when our walking wounded are set to look after our carrying-wounded, it’s a sure sign we’re too short-rostered. Mari’s patrol is sixteen, four by four. It should be twenty-five, five by five. I wonder how many Chato’s patrol is down by? Ah, well.” He vented a sigh. “Let’s rustle us up some food, Spark.”

  Dag led her to a rather astonishing little commode chamber, where she was able to swap out her dressings and wash up in the pretty painted tin basin provided. When she emerged, he escorted her in turn to one of the big downstairs rooms, full of tables with benches or chairs but, at this hour, empty of other people. In a few minutes, a serving girl came out of the kitchen in back with a tray of ham, cheese, two kinds of bread, cream-and-rhubarb pie, and strawberries, with a pitcher of beer and a jug of milk, fresh, the girl informed them, from the hotel’s own cows kept out back. Fawn mentally added serving girl to her list of potential Glassforge jobs, as well as milkmaid, and set to under Dag’s benign eye. More relaxed than she’d ever seen him, he plowed in heartily, she noted with satisfaction.

  They were contesting the last strawberry, each trying to press it on the other, when Dag’s head came up, and he said “Ah.” In a moment, Fawn could hear through the open windows the clatter of horses and echo of voices in the stable yard. In another minute, the door slammed open and booted footsteps rapped across the floorboards. Mari, trailed by two other patrollers, swept into the dining room, halted by their table, planted her fists on her hips, and glowered at Dag.

  “You,” she uttered, and never had Fawn heard one syllable carry so much freight.

  Deadpan, Dag topped up his beer glass and handed it to her. Not taking her exasperated eyes from him, she raised it to her lips and gulped down half. The other two patrollers were grinning broadly.

  “Were you trying to give me the fright of my life, boy?” she demanded, plunking the glass back down almost hard enough to crack it.

  “No,” Dag drawled, rescuing the glass and filling it again, “I suspect that was just a bonus. Sit down and catch your breath, Aunt Mari.”

  “Don’t you Aunt Mari me till I’m done reaming you out,” she said, but much more mildly. One of the patrollers at her shoulder, catching Dag’s eye, pulled out a chair for her, and she sat anyhow. By the time she’d blown out her breath and stretched her back, her posture had grown much less alarming. Except for the underlying exhaustion creeping to the surface; Dag’s brows drew down at that.

  He reached across the table and gripped her hand. “Sorry for any false scares. Saun told me about you finding my messes yesterday. I kind of had my hand full, though.”

  “Aye, so I heard.”

  “Oh, did you find the Horsefords’ farm, finally?”

  “About two hours ago. Now, there was a garbled tale and a half.” She glanced speculatively at Fawn, and her frown at Dag deepened.

  Dag said, “Mari, may I present Miss Fawn Bluefield. Spark, this is my patrol leader, Mari Redwing Hickory. Mari’s her personal name, Redwing is our tent name, and the Hickory is for Hickory Lake Camp, which is our patrol’s home base.”

  Fawn ducked her head politely. Mari returned an extremely provisional nod.

  Gesturing, Dag continued, “Utau and Razi, also of Hickory Camp.” The two other patrollers made friendly salutes of greeting to her not unlike Dag’s. Utau was older, shorter, and burlier, and wore his thinning hair in a knot like Mari’s. Razi was younge
r, taller, and gawkier; his hair hung down his back in a single plait almost to his waist, with dark red and green cords woven in.

  The older one, Utau, said, “Congratulations on the malice, Dag. The youngsters were all hopping mad that they’d missed their first kill, though. I’d suggested we have you take them all out to the lair and walk them through it, for consolation, and to show them how it’s done.”

  Dag shook his head, caught between a low laugh and a wince. “I don’t think that would be all that useful to them, really.”

  “So just how much of a foul-up was it?” Mari inquired tartly.

  The residue of amusement drained from Dag’s eyes. “Foul enough. The short tale is, Miss Bluefield, here, was kidnapped off the road by the pair I’d trailed from the bandit camp. When I caught up with them all at the lair, I was outmatched by the mud-men, who got a good way into taking me apart. But I noticed that the malice, mud-men, and all, were making the interesting mistake of ignoring Miss Bluefield in the scuffle. So I tossed my sharing knives to her, and she got one into the malice. Took it down. Saved my life. World too, for the usual bonus.”

  “She got that close to a malice?” asked Razi, in a voice somewhere between disbelief and amazement. “How?”

  For answer, Dag leaned over and, after a glance at her for permission, gently folded back the collar of her dress. His finger traced over numb spots of flesh around her neck that Fawn realized belatedly must be the bruises from the malice’s great hands, and she shuddered involuntarily despite the summer warmth of the room. “Closer than that, Razi.”

  The two patrollers’ lips parted. Mari leaned back in her chair, her hand going to her mouth. Fawn had not seen a mirror for days. Whatever did the marks look like?

  “The malice misjudged her,” Dag continued. “I trust you all will not. But if you want to repeat those congratulations to the right person, Utau, feel free.”

  Under Dag’s cool eye, Utau unscrewed his face and slowly brought his hand to his temple. After groping a moment for his voice, he managed, “Miss Bluefield.”

  “Aye,” Razi seconded, after a stunned moment.

  “Wildly demonstrative bunch, you know, we patrollers,” Dag murmured in Fawn’s ear, his dry amusement flickering again.

  “I can see that,” she murmured back, making his lip twitch.

  Mari rubbed her forehead. “And the long tale, Dag? Do I even want to hear it?”

  The grim look he gave her locked all her attention. “Yes,” he said. “As soon as may be. But in private. Then Miss Bluefield needs to rest.” He turned to Fawn. “Or do you want to rest up first?”

  Fawn shook her head. “Talk first, please.”

  Mari braced her hands on her trousered knees and rolled her shoulders. “Ah. All right.” She peered around, eyes narrowing. “My room?”

  “That would do.”

  She pushed to her feet. “Utau, you were up all night. You’re now off duty. Razi, get some food in you, then ride out to Tailor’s Point and let them know Dag’s been found. Or shown up, anyway.” The patrollers nodded and turned away.

  Dag murmured to Fawn, “Bring your bedroll.”

  Mari’s room proved to be on the third floor. Fawn found herself dizzy and shaky by the time she’d climbed the second flight of stairs, and she was grateful for Dag’s supporting hand. Mari led them into a narrower room than Saun’s, with only one bed, though otherwise similar right down to the messy pile of gear and saddlebags at the foot. Dag gestured for Fawn to lay her bedroll across the bed. Fawn untied the bindings and unrolled it; the contents clinked.

  Mari’s brows rose. She picked up Dag’s ruptured hand harness and held it out like the sad carcass of some dead animal. “That took some doing. I see now why you didn’t bother to take your bow along. You still got your arm?”

  “Just barely,” said Dag. “I need to get that thing restitched with stronger thread, this time.”

  “I’d rethink that idea if I were you. Which do you want to have come apart first, you or it?”

  Dag paused a moment, then said, “Ah. You have a point, there. Maybe I’ll get it fixed just the same.”

  “Better.” Mari set the harness back down and picked up the makeshift linen bag and let it drift through her hand, feeling the contents shift within. Her expression grew sad, almost remote. “Kauneo’s heart’s knife, wasn’t it?”

  Dag nodded shortly.

  “I know how long you’ve kept it aside. This fate was worthy.”

  Dag shook his head. “They’re all the same, really, I’ve come to believe.” He took a breath and advanced to the bed, motioning Fawn to sit.

  She perched cross-legged on the bed’s head, smoothing her skirt over her knees, and watched the two patrollers. Mari had gold eyes much like Dag’s, if a shade more bronze, and she wondered if she really was his aunt and his use of the title not, as she’d first thought, just a joke or a respectful endearment.

  Mari set the bag back down. “Do you plan to send it up to be buried with the rest of her uncle’s bones? Or burn it here?”

  “Not sure yet. It will keep with me; it has so far.” Dag drew a deeper breath, staring down at the other knife. “Now we come to the long story.”

  Mari sat down at the bed’s foot and crossed her arms, listening closely as Dag began his tale again, this time starting with the night raid on the bandit camp. His descriptions of his actions were succinct but very exact, Fawn noticed, as though certain details might matter more, though she was not sure how he sorted which to leave in or out. Until he came to, “I believe the mud-man lifted Miss Bluefield from the road because she was two months pregnant. And came back and took her from the farm for the same reason.”

  Mari’s lips moved involuntarily, Was?, then compressed. “Go on.”

  Dag’s voice stiffened as he described his risky raid on the malice’s cave. “I was just too late. When I hit the entrance and the mud-men, the malice was already taking her child.”

  Mari leaned forward, her brows drawing down. “Separately?”

  “So it seems.”

  “Huh…” Mari leaned back, shook her head, and peered at Fawn. “Excuse me. I am so sorry for your loss. But this is new to me. We knew malices took pregnant women, but then, they take anyone they can catch. Rarely, the women’s bodies are recovered. I did not know the malice didn’t always take both grounds together.”

  “I don’t think,” said Fawn distantly, “it would have kept me around very long. It was about to break my neck when I finally got the right knife into it.”

  Mari blinked, glanced down at the blue-hilted bone knife lying on the bedroll, and stared up again at Dag. “What?”

  Carefully, Dag explained Fawn’s mix-up with his knives. He was very kind, Fawn thought, to excuse her from any blame in the matter.

  “The knife had been unprimed. You know what I was saving it for.”

  Mari nodded.

  “But now it’s primed. With the death of Spark’s—of Miss Bluefield’s daughter, I believe. What I don’t know is if that’s all it drew from the malice. Or whether it will even work as a sharing knife. Or… well, I don’t know much, I’m afraid. But with Miss Bluefield’s permission, I thought you could examine it too.”

  “Dag, I’m no more a maker than you are.”

  “No, but you are more… you are less… I could use another opinion.”

  Mari glanced at Fawn. “Miss Bluefield, may I?”

  “Please. I want to understand, and… and I don’t, really.”

  Mari leaned over and picked up the bone knife. She cradled it, ran her hand along its smooth pale length, and finally, much as Dag had, held it to her lips with her eyes closed. When she set it down again, her mouth stayed tight for a moment.

  “Well”—she took a breath—“it’s certainly primed.”

  “That, I could tell,” said Dag.

  “It feels… hm. Oddly pure. It’s not that souls go into the knives—you did explain that to her, yes?” she demanded of Dag.

  “
Yes. She’s clear on that part.”

  “But different people’s heart’s knives do have different feels to them. Some echo of the donor lingers, though they all seem to work alike. Perhaps it’s that the lives are different, but the deaths are all the same, I don’t know. I’m a patroller, not a lore-master. I think”—she tapped her lips with a forefinger—“you had better take it to a maker. The most experienced you can find.”

  “Miss Bluefield and I,” said Dag. “The knife is properly hers, now.”

  “This isn’t any business for a farmer to be mixed up in.”

  Dag scowled. “What would you have me do? Take it from her? You?”

  “Explain, please?” Fawn said tightly. “Everyone is talking past me again. That’s all right mostly, I’m used to it, but not for this.”

  “Show her your knives, Mari,” Dag said, a rasp of challenge in his voice, for all that it was soft.

  She looked at him, then slowly unbuttoned her shirt partway down and drew out a dual knife pouch much like Dag’s, though of softer leather. She pulled the strap over her head, pushed the bedroll aside, and laid out two bone knives side by side on the quilt. They were nearly identical, except for different-colored dye daubed on the lightly carved hilts, red and brown this time.

  “These are a true pair, both bones from the same donor,” she said, caressing the red one. “My youngest son, as it happens. It was his third year patrolling, up Sparford way, and I’d just got to thinking he was getting over the riskiest part of the learning… well.” She touched the brown one. “This one is primed. His father’s aunt Palai gave her death to it. Tough, tough old woman—absent gods, we loved her. Preferably from a safe distance, but there’s one like that in every family, I think.” Her hand drifted again to the red one. “This one is unprimed, bonded to me. I keep it by me in case.”

  “So what would happen,” said Dag dryly, “to anyone who tried to take them from you?”

  Mari’s smile grew grim. “I’d outstrip the worst wrath of Great-aunt Palai.” She sat up and slipped the knives away, then nodded at Fawn. “But I think it’s different for her.”