who come here to trade. Has its own well and all. Your farmer friend can wait there.”
“She’s with me,” said Dag.
Tavia gave him a politely embarrassed smile; her blond partner frowned.
“Farmers aren’t allowed in camp,” said Neeta. “The shelter’s not bad, and there should be a stack of firewood for the hearth. Nobody else is there just now.”
Dag’s jaw set. “We go in together or not at all.”
Remo and Barr exchanged alarmed looks. “Dag,” said Remo uneasily, “we just walked two days to get here.”
“If Fawn isn’t allowed in, neither this place nor its people are any use to me. If we start now, we can be halfway home to the Fetch by nightfall.”
“Wait, wait!” said Barr as Dag made to turn away. But when Dag paused and raised his eyebrows, he could not immediately come up with a counter.
Fawn, who’d listened to this exchange with her fist stuffed in her mouth, took it away to say placatingly, “It’s all right, Dag. Doesn’t sound like anybody would bother me at that shelter, and I could build a fire. I could wait out there for a while, anyhow, while you go in and talk to the man. And then we’d see.”
“No,” said Dag.
“Um… who is she, to you?” asked Tavia.
“My wife,” said Dag.
The two patroller women looked at each other; the blonde rolled her eyes. The alarm in Barr’s eyes was shading over into panic. Blight it, boy, I don’t know what bur is getting under your saddle. I’m closed down as tight as that walnut. I can’t possibly be leaking any mood. Vile as that mood was growing…
Tavia glanced at Dag and addressed herself prudently to Remo.
“What did he want to see Arkady for, anyway?”
“It’s… complicated,” said Remo helplessly.
“A complicated problem with groundwork,” Fawn put in. “And medicine making. Likely not something to discuss in the middle of the road. You two aren’t either of you makers, are you?”
The blonde looked offended, but Barr added hastily, “Yes, probably this Arkady fellow should be the one to decide. A couple of patrollers really aren’t fit to guess what a maker would want. I know I’m not! That’s why we’re here!” He blinked and smiled winningly at the women. “I thought it was important enough to walk two days for, and in bad boots at that. It seems crazy to stop just half a mile short. If you can’t let Fawn in, and believe me I know how stuffy patrol leaders can be about camp rules, couldn’t one of you go in and ask him to come out here and talk? And then whatever got decided would be off you and on him, where it belongs.” Barr blinked eyes gone liquid as a soulful puppy’s; Dag could have sworn his blond queue grew fluffier even as his smile brightened to near blinding. Remo pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed.
Tavia’s brow wrinkled, but a crooked smile was drawn unwillingly from her in response. “Well…” she said weakly.
“All,” growled Dag, “or none.”
Barr made pleading hand gestures and kept smiling in a way that reminded Dag of Bo’s story about the fellow who grinned a bear out of a tree. Some forms of persuasion, it seemed, had nothing to do with illicit groundwork, because Tavia rubbed her neck and repeated, “Well… I suppose I could walk down quick and ask him, sure. Mind, after that it’ll be up to him.”
“Tavia, you are a jewel among gate guards!” cried Barr.
“Barr, it’s just the sensible thing to do,” said Remo quellingly. He gave Tavia a respectful salute of thanks. She strode off with a saucy glance over her shoulder that seemed equally divided between the two patroller boys. Neeta shook her head.
Silence fell for a time as Neeta retreated to a more firm-chinned patrol stance, and Remo rubbed his chapped hands and stole glances at her. At length Fawn said, “I suppose we could go water the horses at that well while we wait. Take a look around.”
Dag grunted, but didn’t balk when she reined her mare around and led off. Barr followed, grabbing Remo and bringing him along. The farmer trade camp proved to be a large clearing, the shelter three log walls with a fieldstone hearth, snugly roofed, all tidy and in reasonable repair. Remo and Barr drew up several buckets of water and emptied them into a trough, where Copperhead and Magpie gulped enough to make it seem worthwhile.
When they returned to the gate, Tavia was just turning onto the bottom of the road, a tall man striding at her shoulder.
“Blight, Barr,” muttered Remo. “This is the first time I’ve seen your talents have a use.”
“Yeah?” Barr muttered back. “I find them useful. This is just the first time you’ve ever appreciated them.”
As the pair climbed nearer, Dag studied the groundsetter warily.
Arkady Waterbirch wore clean trousers, shirt, and an undyed wool coat to the knees, open in this moderate chill. His hair was blond streaked with gray, pulled back in a neat mourning knot at his nape; in the pale light of this winter noon, it shone silver gilt. His hairline was not thinning yet, but seemed to be thinking about it. As he drew nearer still, Dag eyed his tawny skin, with fine lines at the corners of his eyes and around his mouth, and found himself unable to guess the man’s age; his silvering hair said older, his unweathered skin suggested younger; in any case, he was likely not far off from Dag’s own generation. His hands, too, were smooth, with the cleanest fingernails Dag had ever seen even on a medicine maker. His eyes were bright copper shot with gold. The general effect was a trifle blinding.
What the man’s ground was like Dag could not tell until he opened his own, shuttered most of the time since… since Crane, really. As the maker’s gaze swept him in turn, Dag grew conscious of his own travel-worn appearance. Two days of trudging through the mire and sleeping rough last night had returned him to his patrol look: clothing shabby and sweat-stained-although, thanks to Fawn, neatly mended; cropped hair uncombed; jaw unshaved, because they’d all been eager to leave last night’s damp camp and move along. Most of his old scars were covered by his clothing, but for the first time in a while Dag felt an impulse to hold his maimed left arm behind his back.
The boys were tidy enough, for patrollers; their youth, Dag thought with an inward sigh, could have made rags look good on them, though they did not know it. Fawn, still atop Magpie, was her own fair, small, strong self, brown eyes bright with hope and worry, every scant inch a farmer girl. He was reminded of the day she’d told the formidable Captain Fairbolt Crow to go take a jump in Hickory Lake, during another not-altogether-easy introduction, and almost smiled.
As the maker came to a halt and took in the folks awaiting him, he seemed more and more nonplussed. After a second sweeping look over the party, pausing on Remo, he addressed himself to Dag: “Tavia’s tale seems a trifle confused. But if that’s your boy, there, I can tell you right now he hasn’t the ground to apprentice for a medicine maker. He’s a patroller born. If you’ve come all this way for a different answer than you had at home, I’m sorry for it, because I can’t give it to you.”
Remo looked taken aback. “No, sir,” he said hastily, “that’s not what we’re here for. And Dag’s not my father, he’s my… um. Captain, I guess.”
Captain No-Camp, the ill-fated Crane had dubbed Dag; the name seemed to be sticking, along with a few more unwanted gifts.
The copper-gilt eyes narrowed on Dag’s hook. Arkady said more gently, “Ah. You may have been misled by rumor. On a day with the right wind at my back, I can do some useful things, but I don’t make miracles. I’m afraid there’s not much I can do for your arm. That injury’s far too old.”
Dag unlocked his voice. “I’m not here about my missing hand, sir.”
I’m here about the hand that came back. So bluntly confronted, Dag found it hard to explain his needs. “It’s not Remo who’s interested in training for medicine maker. It’s me.”
Arkady’s eyes flew wide. “Surely not. Maker’s talents, if you have them, should have shown by age twenty. Even a groundsetter’s potential should be starting to show by age forty.”
“I was long gone for patroller by then, and no one much could have stopped me. My maker’s calling was… delayed. But everything changed for me this year, from my name to my ground.” Dag swallowed.
“Anyhow,” Fawn put in, “Dag doesn’t just think he can be a medicine maker, he’s been healing folks, all down the Grace and Gray valleys. He fixed Hod’s busted kneecap where the horse kicked him, and Cress’s infected gut,
