“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
