Legacy

5

D ag left on a mumbled errand soon after it was light, leaving Fawn to pack up. She had the bags and bedrolls stacked tidily on the porch, the cabin swept out, and even the fireplace ashes hauled away and scattered in the wet woods, with no sign of his return. She collected from the abundant new deadfall to replace the pile they’d burned last night, and then some, and finally sat on the porch steps with her chin in her hand, waiting. The flock of wild turkeys—or another flock, as there seemed to be a lot more of them this morning, upwards of forty—stalked through the clearing, and Fawn and they eyed each other gloomily.

A figure appeared on the path, and the turkeys ambled off. Fawn sat up eagerly, only to slump in disappointment. It was Dar, not Dag.

He glowered at her without approval but without surprise; likely his groundsense had told him where she and Dag had gone to hole up last night.

“Morning,” she tried cautiously.

She received a grunt and a grudging nod in return. “Where’s Dag?” he asked.

“He went off.” She added warily, “He told me to wait here for him till he got back.”

Another grunt. Dar inspected his lathe, wet but undamaged by the storm, and went around the cabin fastening open the shutters. He trod up the steps, stared down at her, slipped off his muddy shoes, and went inside; he came back out in a few minutes looking faintly frustrated, perhaps because she’d left nothing to complain of.

He asked abruptly, “You didn’t couple in there last night, did you?”

Fawn stared up in offense. “No, but what business is that of yours?”

“I’d have to do a ground cleansing if you did.” He stared at the firewood stack. “Did you collect that, or Dag?”

“I did, of course.”

He looked as though he was reaching for a reason to reject it, but couldn’t come up with one. Fortunately, at that point Dag came striding up the path. He looked reasonably cheerful; perhaps his errand had prospered?

“Ah.” He paused when he saw his brother; they exchanged equally laconic nods.

Dar waited a moment as if for Dag to speak, then when nothing was forthcoming, said, “That was a clever retreat last night. You didn’t have to listen to the complaints.”

“You could’ve gone for a walk.”

“In the rain? Anyway, I thought that was your trick—patroller.”

Dag lowered his eyelids. “As you say.” He nodded to Fawn and hooked his saddlebags and hers up over his shoulder. “Come along, Spark. G’day, Dar.”

Fawn found herself trotting at his heels, casting a farewell nod over her shoulder at Dar, who by the opening and tight closing of his mouth clearly had wanted to say more.

“Were you all right?” Dag asked, as soon as they were out of earshot. “With Dar, I mean.”

“I guess. Except that he asked one really rude question.”

“Which was?”

Fawn flushed. “He asked if we’d made love in his cabin.”

“Ah. Well, he actually does have a legitimate reason for wanting to know that, but he should have asked me. If he really couldn’t trust me to know better.”

“I hadn’t worked round yet to asking him if your mama had softened any overnight. Didn’t you want to ask?”

“If she had,” Dag said distantly, “I’m sure Dar was able to stiffen her up again.”

Fawn asked more quietly, looking down at her feet pacing along the muddy, leaf-and-stick-strewn path, “Did this—marrying me—mess things up any between you and your brother?”

“No.”

“Because he seems pretty angry at you. At us.”

“He’s always annoyed at me for something. It’s a habit. Don’t worry about it, Spark.”

They reached the road and turned right. Dag barely glanced aside as they passed his family’s clearing. He made no move to turn in there. The road followed the shoreline around the island and curved south, running between the woods and more groups of cabins hugging the bank. The dripping trees sparkled in the morning light, and the sun, now well up above the farther shore, sent golden beams between the boles through the cool, moist air, which smelled of rain and moss.

Not a quarter mile along, Dag turned left into a clearing featuring three tent-cabins and a dock much like all the others. It was set a little apart from its neighbors by a stand of tall black walnut trees to its north and an orchard of stubbier fruit trees to its south; Fawn could see a few beehives tucked away among the latter. On a stump in front of one of the cabins sat an aging man dressed only in trousers cut off above the knees and held up by a rope belt, and leather sandals. His gray hair was knotted at his nape. He was carving away with long strokes on what looked to be some sort of oar or paddle in the making, but when he saw them he waved the knife in amiable greeting.

Dag dumped their saddlebags atop another stump and led Fawn over to the fellow. By his gnarly feet, she suspected he was an old patroller. He’d clearly been a big man once, now going a little stringy with age, except around his—for a Lakewalker—ample middle. He eyed Fawn as curiously as she eyed him.

Dag said, “Fawn, this is Cattagus Redwing, Mari’s husband.”

Making him Dag’s uncle, then. So, this marriage hadn’t estranged Dag from quite all his family. Fawn dipped her knees and smiled anxiously, looking around covertly for Mari. It would be wonderful to see a familiar face. She saw no one else, but heard cheery voices coming from down over the bank.

Cattagus tilted his head in dry greeting. “So, this is what all the fuss is about. Cute as a kitten, I’ll grant you that.” His voice was wheezy, with a sharp whistling running through it. He looked her up and down, a little smile playing around his lips, shook his head wryly, drew breath again, and added, “Absent gods, boy. I’d never have got away with something like this. Not even when I was thirty years younger.”

Dag snorted, sounding more amused than offended. “’Course not. Aunt Mari would’ve have had your hide for a tent flap.”

Cattagus chuckled and coughed. “That’s a fact.” He waved aside with his knife. “The girls from Stores brought your tent by.”

“Already?” said Dag. “That was quick.”

Fawn tracked their gazes to a large handcart set at the side of one cabin, piled high with what appeared to be old hides, with a stack of long poles sticking out the back.

“They said, bring back their cart soon as you get it empty.”

“That I can do. Where do Mari and Sarri want me to set up?”

“Better go ask ’em.” Cattagus gestured toward the shore.

Fawn followed Dag to peek over the bank. To the left of the dock, at which two narrow boats were tied, a sort of wooden cradle lay in the water, perhaps ten feet long and six feet wide. A woman wearing long black hair to her hips and nothing else, and a black-haired girl-child, were tromping vigorously up and down in it. Marching with them, Razi, equally nude, was clapping his hands and calling to the little girl, who looked to be about four, “Jump, Tesy! Jump!” She squealed with laughter and hopped like a frog, splashing the woman, who ducked and grinned. The cradle was apparently for retting some sort of long-stemmed plant, and the treaders were engaged in kicking off the rotting matter to clean the fibers. Beyond them, Utau, standing in water to his waist, was supporting the clutching fists of a small boy of perhaps two, whose fat little legs kicked up a fountain of foam. Mari, dressed in only a simple sleeveless shift hemmed at the calf and sandals like her husband’s, stood on the dock with her hands on her hips watching them, smiling. She seemed to be halfway through either loading or unloading a couple dozen coils of rough-looking rope from one of the boats, much like the rope netting Fawn had seen on the plunkin panniers.

Dag called down over the bank, “Hey, Mari! We’re back.”

Indicating that he’d been here once already this morning, likely to arrange this. Fawn wondered if this had been his first idea, or his third, and just how he had gone about explaining his needs. His ability to persuade had not entirely deserted him, it seemed.

Mari waved back. “Be right with you!”

Steps laid from flat stones made a stairway down the steep bank to the dock. In a few moments, Fawn was treated to the somewhat startling sight of a whole family of nude, wet Lakewalkers climbing up from the shore. They seemed quite unconscious of their undress. Fawn, who had never done more than wade in the shallows of the river with her skirts rolled up, supposed it made sense, given that these people were likely in and out of the water a dozen times a day for various purposes. She was nonetheless relieved when they streamed past her with only the briefest greetings and emerged a few minutes later from the cabin on the north of the clearing dressed, if simply: Razi and Utau in truncated trousers like Cattagus’s, and Sarri and her daughter in shifts. The little boy, escaping, streaked past still in his skin in a beeline for the water, only to be scooped up and tickled into distraction from his purpose by Utau.

Mari followed up the steps and stopped by Dag. “Morning, Fawn.” Her expression today was ironic but not unsympathetic. “Dag, Sarri thought you could set up under the apple tree over there. There’s a bit of rising ground there, though you can hardly see it. It’ll be the driest spot.”

Utau, with the boy now riding atop his shoulders, small hands pulling his hair from its knot, came up with the long-haired woman. To Fawn’s eyes, she looked to be about thirty; Fawn added the accustomed fifteen years to her guess. “Hello, Fawn,” Utau greeted her, without surprise. Clearly, he’d been given the whole tale by now. “This is our wife, Sarri Otter.” A nod at Razi, who had been inspecting the cart and now strode over to join them, confirmed the other part of that our.

Fawn had twigged that they were on Sarri’s territory, and maybe Mari’s; she gave her knee-dip, and said to the women, “Thank you for having us here.”

Sarri folded her arms and nodded shortly, face not unfriendly, eyes curious. “Dag…well, Dag,” she said, as if that explained something.

Dag, Razi, Utau, and Mari, with Cattagus following along and supplying wheezing commentary, then turned their attention to the alleged tent. The men hauled the cart to the orchard and swiftly unloaded it. The bewildering mess of poles and ropes was transformed with startling speed into a square frame with hides over its arching top and hanging down for walls, neatly staked to the earth. It had a sort of miniature porch, more hides raised up on poles, for an awning in front, which they arranged facing the lakeshore, canted so that the rising sun would not shine in directly. They rolled up and tied the front walls beneath the awning, leaving the little room open to the air much like the more solid structures.

“There!” said Dag in a satisfied voice, standing back and regarding the results. “Tent Bluefield!”

Fawn thought it looked more like Pup-Tent Bluefield; it made the other cabins seem positively palatial. She ventured near and peered in dubiously. It’s all right, I’m just temporary, the tent seemed to say of itself. But temporary on the way to what?

Dag followed, looking down at her a shade anxiously. “Many’s the young couple who starts with no more,” he said.

Likely, but you aren’t young. “Mm,” said Fawn, and nodded to show willing. There was space inside for a double bedroll and a few possessions, but little else. At least the stubby apple tree was not likely to drop lethal branches atop.

“Don’t lay anything out in it yet—let the ground dry a while more,” said Dag. “We’ll get reeds for bedding, rocks for a fire pit, maybe do something for flooring.” He strode back to the clearing and collected a pair of short logs, hooking up the smaller and rolling the larger along with his foot, and set them upright beneath the awning for seats. “There.”

Excited by this novelty, the little girl Tesy went inside and pranced and danced about, singing to herself. Truly, the tent seemed more playhouse-sized than Dag-sized, though the curved roof would allow him to stand upright, barely. Sarri made to call her daughter back out, but Fawn said, “No—let her. It’s a sort of house blessing, I guess,” which earned her a grateful and suddenly shrewd look from Sarri.

“If I might borrow your husbands once more,” said Dag to Sarri, “I thought we’d go get my things before I take the cart back.”

“Sure thing, Dag.”

“Mari”—his gaze seemed to test his patrol-leader-and-relative’s willingness—“maybe you could show Fawn around while we’re gone?”

Implying, among other things, that Fawn was not invited on this expedition. But Mari nodded readily enough. It seemed Fawn was to be accepted by this branch of Dag’s family, at least. If temporarily, like the tent. The three men went off with the cart, not altogether unloaded, as both children immediately scrambled atop for the ride. Or rather, Tesy scrambled up, and her little brother wailed in dismay till Razi popped him aboard with her.

“It’s normally a bit livelier than this,” Mari told Fawn, who was gazing around the clearing. “But as soon as I got back from patrol and could take charge of Cattagus, my daughter took her family across to Heron Island to visit with her husband’s folks. They’re building a new boat for her.” A wave of her hand indicated the third cabin as belonging to this absent family. Was the daughter Mari’s name-heiress? What else did Lakewalkers inherit, if they did not own land? Besides their fair share of malices. Was this site apportioned out like tents and horses from some camp pool?

Mari, with Sarri trailing in silent curiosity, took Fawn out back and showed her where the privy was hidden among the trees: not a shed but a slit trench with a hide blind, very tentlike. Water was drawn from the lake, and kettles kept permanently on the hob to boil that intended for drinking. Inside Mari’s cabin, Fawn saw that the fireplace had a real oven, which she eyed enviously. Lakewalker women were not limited to pan bread cooked over an open fire, evidently. Though it seemed futile to ask to borrow the oven when Fawn owned no flour, baking pans, lard, butter, eggs, milk, or yeast.

Against the wall in Sarri’s cabin stood a simple vertical loom loaded with work in progress, some tough-looking tight-woven fabric Fawn recognized from Lakewalker riding trousers. Fawn wondered at the thread; Sarri explained it was from the ever-useful plunkin, the stems of which, when retted, yielded up a long, strong, durable fiber, which accounted for the retting cradle in the lake. Fawn didn’t see a spinning wheel. Little furniture met her eye, apart from some trestle tables and the common upended-log seats. There were no bed frames inside at all; by the bundles of bedding stacked along a wall, it seemed Lakewalkers slept in bedrolls even at home, and Fawn realized why Dag had taken so happily to the floor of Aunt Nattie’s weaving room.

They went outside again to find that Dag and the cart had returned. Besides their saddles and bridles, a sword in a worn leather sheath, and a spear, it held only one trunk.

“Is this all you have?” Fawn asked him, as he set it all in a pile beside the tent for later stowage. The trunk hardly seemed large enough to contain, for example, surprise kitchen tackle. It barely seemed large enough for spare boots.

Dag stretched his back and grimaced. “My winter gear’s in storage at Bearsford.”

Fawn suspected it amounted to little more.

He added, “I also have my camp credit. You’ll see tomorrow how that works.”

And he was off again, dragging the emptied cart with his hook.

“What shall I do?” Fawn asked rather desperately after him.

“Take a rest!” he called unhelpfully over his shoulder, and turned onto the road.

Rest? She’d been resting, or at least, traveling, which while not restful was certainly not useful work. Her hand traced her wrist cord, and she looked up at the two Lakewalker women, looking down—dubiously? — at her. Sarri’s cord, she saw, was two cords wrapped around each other.

“I aim to be a good wife to Dag,” Fawn said resolutely, then her voice wavered. “But I don’t know what that means here. Mama trained me up. If this were a farm, I could run it. I could make soap and candles, but I have no tallow or anything to make lye in. I can cook and preserve, but there’s no jars and no storage cellars. If I had a cow, I could milk her, and make cheese and butter, if I had a churn. Aunt Nattie gave me spindles and knitting needles and scissors and needles and pins. Never saw a man more in need of socks than Dag, and I could make good ones, but I have no fiber. I can keep accounts, and make a fair ink, but there’s no paper nor anything to record.” Although those turkeys, she considered, could be forced to yield up quills. “I have knowing hands, but no tools. There must be more for me to do here than sit and eat plunkin!”

Mari smiled. “Let me tell you, farmer child, when you come back from weeks out on patrol, you’re right glad to sit and eat plunkin for a time. Even Dag is.” She added after a moment’s reflection, “For about three days, then he’s back badgering Fairbolt for a place in the next patrol going out. Fairbolt figures that the reason he has three times the malice kills of anyone else is that he spends twice the time looking for ’em.”

Sarri said curiously, “What accounts for the rest?”

“Fairbolt wishes he knew.” Mari scratched her head and regarded Fawn in bemusement. “Yeah, Dag said you’d get resty-testy if anyone tried to make you sit still. You two may have more in common than you look.”

Fawn said plaintively, “Can you show me how to go on? Please, I’ll do anything. I’ll even crack nuts.” One of her most hated tedious chores back home.

“We’re a bit between on that one,” said Sarri, with a lopsided smile. “The old falls are rotten and the new ones are too green. We leave ’em for the pigs to clean up, just this season. In a month, now, when the elderberries and the fruit trees come on, we’ll all be busy. Cattagus and his wine-making, and nuts in plenty. Rope and baskets, now, that’s for doing.”

“I know how to make baskets,” said Fawn eagerly, “if I had something to make them of.”

“When that next batch of retting’s done, I’ll be glad for help with the spinning,” said Sarri judiciously.

“Good! When?”

“Next week.”

Fawn sighed. Razi and Utau were just finishing digging a fire pit in front of their tent, and Tesy and her brother were being kept usefully busy hauling stones to line it. Maybe Fawn could at least go gather more deadfall for their future fire. While her back was turned, she noticed, a split-wood basket with three fresh plunkins in it had appeared under her awning.

“Go along, fire-eater,” said Mari, sounding amused. “Take a rest till Dag gets back from the medicine tent. Go for a swim.”

Fawn hesitated. “In that big lake?” Naked?

Mari and Sarri stared at each other. “Where else?” said Sarri. “It’s safe to dive off the end of the dock; the water’s well over your head there.”

This sounded the opposite of safe to Fawn.

Mari added, “Don’t dive off the sides, though, or we’ll have to pull your head out of the mud like a plunkin.”

“I, um…” Fawn swallowed, and continued in a much smaller voice, “don’t know how to swim.”

Mari’s brows shot up; Sarri pursed her lips. Both of them gazed at Fawn as though she were a freak of nature like a two-headed calf. That is, even more than most Lakewalkers looked at her that way. Fawn reddened.

“Does Dag know this?” demanded Sarri.

“I…I don’t know.” Would being so readily drownable disqualify one from being a Lakewalker’s spouse? When she’d said she wanted to be taught how to go on here, she hadn’t imagined swimming lessons being at the top of anyone’s list.

“Dag,” said Mari in a definite voice, “needs to know this.” And added, to Fawn’s increasing alarm, “Right away!”

The Two Bridge Island medicine tent was in fact three cabins with its own dock a few hundred paces past patroller headquarters. It seemed not very busy this morning, Dag saw as he neared after dropping the cart at Stores. Only a couple of horses were hitched to the rails out front. Good. No pestilence this week, no patrols dragging home too many smashed-up comrades.

As he mounted the porch to the main building, he met Saun coming out. Ah, one smashed-up comrade, then—if clearly on the path to recovery. The boy looked well, standing up straight and moving only a little stiffly, although he was looking down and touching his chest gingerly. Saun’s face lit with delight as he glanced up and saw Dag, which turned to the usual consternation as he took in the sling.

“Dag, man! They said you were missing, then there was a crazy rumor going around you’d come back with the little farmer girl—married, if you can believe! Some people!” His voice trailed off in an oh as he took in the cord wrapping Dag’s left arm, just visible below his rolled-up sleeve and above his arm-harness strap.

“We got back yesterday afternoon,” said Dag, letting the last remark pass. “And you? Last I saw, you were bundled up in a wagon heading south from Glassforge.”

“When I could ride again, one of the Log Hollow fellows brought me up to rendezvous with Mari’s patrol, and they brought me home. Medicine maker says I can go out again when the patrol does if I rest up good the next couple of weeks. I’m still a little ouchy, but nothing too bad.” His stare returned to Dag’s left arm. “How did you…I mean, Fawn was cute and all, and she sure cheered you up, but…all right, there was the malice, maybe she…Dag, is your family going to accept this?”

“No.”

“Oh.” Saun fell silent in dismay. “If…what…where will you go?”

“That’s to be seen. We’ve set up our tent at Mari’s place for the moment.”

“I suppose that makes sense. Mari’s bound to defend her own…um.” Saun shook his head, looking wary and confused. “I never heard tell of anything like this. Well, there was a fellow they told me about down at Log Hollow. He got into big trouble a few years back for secretly passing goods and coin along to his farmer lover and her half-blood child, or children—I guess it had been going on for some time when they caught up with him. He argued the goods were his, but the camp council maintained they were the camp’s, and it was theft. He wouldn’t back down, and they banished him.”

Dag tilted his head.

“It was no joke, Dag,” Saun said earnestly. “They stripped him to his skin before they turned him out. In the middle of winter. Nobody seemed to know what had happened to him after that, if he made it back to her, or…or what.”

He was staring at Dag in deep alarm, as if picturing his mentor so used. Was Saun’s hero worship of Dag finally to be called into question? Dag thought it a good thing if so, but not for this reason.

“Hardly the same situation, Saun.” For one thing, it’s summer. “In any case, I’ll handle it.”

Taking this heavy hint—anything lighter would not have penetrated, Dag thought—Saun managed an embarrassed laugh. “Yeah, I suppose you will.” After a moment he added in a more chipper tone, turning the subject, “I’m something in the same line myself. Well, of course not with a…I’m thinking of asking Fairbolt for a transfer to Log Hollow this fall. Reela”—Saun’s voice went suddenly shy—“said she’d wait for me.”

Dag recognized that sappy look; he’d seen it in his own shaving mirror. “Congratulations.”

“Nothing is fixed yet, you understand,” Saun said hastily. “Some people think I’m too young to be, well. Thinking about anything permanent. But how can you not, when…you know?”

Dag nodded sympathetically. Because either snickering or pity would be a tad hypocritical, coming from him just now. Was I ever that feckless? Dag was very much afraid the answer was yes. Possibly even without the rider at his age.

Saun brightened still further. “Well. Looks like you need the makers more than I did. I won’t hold you up. Maybe I’ll stop by and say hi to Fawn, later on.”

“I expect she’d be glad for a familiar face,” Dag allowed. “She’s had a rough welcome, I’m afraid.”

Saun gave a short nod and took himself off. When in camp, Saun stayed with a family farther down the shore who had a couple of their own children out on exchange patrol at present; Dag gathered that the boy, away from home for the first time, did not lack for mothering.

Dag pushed open the door and made his way into the anteroom. The familiar smell of herbs—sharp, musty, deep, pungent—was strong today, and he glanced through the open door to the next room on this side to see two apprentices processing medicines. Pots bubbled on the fire, piles of dried greenery were laid out on the big table in the room’s center, and one girl busied herself with a mortar. They were making up packets: for patrols, or to be sold to farmers for coin or trade goods. Dag didn’t doubt that some of what he smelled would end up in that shop at Lumpton Market, at double the price the Lakewalkers received for them.

Another apprentice looked up from the table crammed up to the anteroom’s window, where he was writing. He smiled at the patroller, regarding Dag’s sling with professional interest. But before he could speak, the door to the other chamber opened and a slight, middle-aged woman stepped out, her summer shift cinched at the waist by a belt holding half a dozen tools of her trade. She was rubbing her chest and frowning.

The medicine maker looked up. “Ah! Dag! I’ve been expecting you.”

“Hello, Hoharie. I saw Saun coming out just now. Is he going to be all right?”

“Yes, he’s coming along nicely. Thanks to you, he says. I understand you did some impressive emergency groundwork on him.” She eyed Dag in speculation, but at least she refrained from comment on his marriage cord.

“Nothing special. In and out for a quick match at a moment he needed it, was all.”

Her brows twitched, but she didn’t pursue the point further. “Well, come on in, let’s have a look at this.” She gestured at his sling. “How in the world have you managed?”

“I’ve had help.”

Dag followed her into her workroom, closing the door behind them. A tall bed, onto which he’d helped lift more than one hurt comrade over the years, stood out in the room’s center, but Hoharie gestured him to a chair beside a table, taking another around the corner from it. He slipped his arm out of its sling and laid it out, and she pulled a pair of sharp scissors from her belt and began undoing the wrappings. Upon inquiry, he favored her with a much-shortened tale of how he’d come by the injury back in Lumpton Market. She ran her hands up and down the bared forearm, and he could feel the press of her ground on his own, more invasive than the long probing fingers.

“Well, this is a clean break and a straight setting,” she reported. “Doing well, for what, two weeks?”

“Nearer three.” It seemed a lot more than that.

“If not for that”—she nodded at his hook—“I’d send you home to heal on your own, but you’d like these splints off sooner, I’d imagine.”

“Oh, yes.”

She smiled at his heartfelt drawl. “I’ve done all the groundwork I can for today on your young friend Saun, but my apprentice will be pleased to try.”

Dag gave this the grimace it deserved; she grinned back unrepentantly. “Come, Dag, they have to practice on someone. Youth to experience, experience to youth.” She tapped his arm cuff. “How’s the stump? Giving you any trouble?”

“No. Well…no.”

She sat back, eyeing him shrewdly. “In other words, yes. Off with the harness, let me see.”

“Not the stump itself,” he said, but let her unbuckle the harness and lay it aside, and run her experienced hands down his arm and over its callused end. “Well, it’s sometimes a little sore, but it’s not bad today.”

“I’ve seen it worse. So, go on…?”

He said cautiously, “Have you ever heard of a missing limb still having…ground?”

She rubbed her bony nose. “Phantom limbs?”

“Yes, just like that,” he said eagerly.

“Itching, pain, sensations? I’ve heard of it. It’s apparently very maddening, to have an itch that can’t be scratched.”

“No, not that. I knew about that. Met a man up in Luthlia once, must be twenty-five years back, who’d lost most of both feet to frostbite. Poor fellow used to complain bitterly about the itching, and his toes that he didn’t have anymore cramping. A little groundwork on the nerves of his legs usually cleared it right up. I mean the ground of missing limbs.”

“If something doesn’t exist, it can’t have a ground. I don’t know if someone could have an illusion of ground, like the illusion of an itch; folks have hallucinations about all sorts of bizarre things, though, so I don’t see why not.”

“A hallucination shouldn’t be able to do real groundwork.”

“Of course not.”

“Well, mine did. I did.”

“What’s this tale?” She sat back, staring.

He took a breath and described the incident with the glass bowl in the Bluefield parlor, leaving out the ruckus that had led up to it and concentrating on the mending itself. “The most of it was done, I swear, with the ground of my left hand.” He thumped his left arm on the table. “Which isn’t there. I was deathly sick after, though, and cold all through for an hour.”

She scowled in thought. “It sounds as though you drew ground from your whole body. Which would be reasonable. Why it should take that form to project itself, well, your theory about your right arm being lost to use forcing a, um”—she waved her hands—“some sort of compensation seems like a fair one. Sounds like a pretty spectacular one, I admit. Has it happened again?”

“Couple of times.” Dag wasn’t about to explain the circumstances. “But I can’t make it happen at will. It’s not even reliably driven by my own tension. It’s just random, or so it seems to me.”

“Can you do it now?”

Dag tried, concentrating so hard his brow furrowed. Nothing. He shook his head.

Hoharie bit her lip. “A funny form of ground projection, yes, maybe. Ground without matter, no.”

Dag finally said what he hadn’t wanted to say, even to himself. “Malices are pure ground. Ground without matter.”

The medicine maker stared at him. “You’d know more about that than I would. I’ve never seen a malice.”

“All a malice’s material appearance is pure theft. They snatch ground itself, and matter through its ground, to shape at will. Or misshape.”

“I don’t know, Dag.” She shook her head. “I’ll have to think about this one.”

“I wish you would. I’m”—he cut off the word afraid—“very puzzled.”

She nodded shortly and rose to fetch her apprentice from the anteroom, introducing him as Othan. The lad looked thrilled, whether at being allowed to do a ground treatment upon the very interesting patroller, or simply at being allowed to do one at all, Dag couldn’t quite tell. Hoharie gave up her seat and stood observing with her arms folded. The apprentice sat down and determinedly began tracing his hands up and down Dag’s right arm.

“Hoharie,” he said after a moment, “I can’t get through the patroller’s ground veil.”

“Ease up, Dag,” Hoharie advised.

Dag had held himself close and tight ever since he’d crossed the bridge to the island yesterday. He really, really didn’t want to open himself up here. But it was going to be necessary. He tried.

Othan shook his head. “Still can’t get in.” The lad was starting to look distressed, as though he imagined the failure was his fault. He looked up. “Maybe you’d better try, ma’am?”

“I’m spent. Won’t be able to do a thing till tomorrow at the earliest. Ease up, Dag!”

“I can’t…”

“You are in a mood today.” She circled the table and frowned at them both; the apprentice cringed. “All right, try swapping it around. You reach, Dag. That should force you open.”

He nodded, and tried to reach into the lad’s ground. The strain of his own distaste for the task warred with his frantic desire, now that the opportunity was so provokingly close, of getting the blighted splints off for good. The apprentice was looking at him with the air of a whipped puppy, bewildered but still eager to please. He held his arm lightly atop Dag’s, face earnest, ground open as any gate.

On impulse, Dag shifted his stump across and slammed it down beside both their arms. Something flashed in his groundsense, strong and sharp. Othan cried out and recoiled.

“Oh!” said Hoharie.

“A ghost hand,” said Dag grimly. “A ground hand. Like that.” His whole forearm was hot with new ground, snatched from the boy. His ghost hand, so briefly perceptible, was gone again. He was shaking, but if he put his arms out of sight below the table, it would only draw more attention to his trembling. He forced himself to sit still.

The apprentice was holding his own right arm to his chest, rubbing it and looking wide-eyed. “Ow,” he said simply. “What was that? I mean—I didn’t do—did I do anything?”

“Sorry. I’m sorry,” mumbled Dag. “I shouldn’t have done that.” That was new. New and disturbing, and far too much like malice magic for Dag’s comfort. Although perhaps there was only one kind of groundwork, after all. Was it theft, to take something someone was trying with all his heart to press upon you?

“My arm is cold,” complained Othan. “But—did it help? Did I actually do any healing, Hoharie?”

Hoharie ran her hands over both her apprentice’s arm and Dag’s, her frown replaced by an oddly expressionless look. “Yes. There’s an extremely dense ground reinforcement here.”

Othan looked heartened, although he was still chafing his own forearm.

Dag wriggled his fingers; his arm barely ached. “I can feel the heat of it.”

Hoharie, watching them both with equal attention, talked her apprentice through a light resplinting of Dag’s arm. Othan gave the flaking, smelly skin a wash first, to Dag’s intense gratitude. The boy’s own right arm was decidedly weak; he fumbled the wrappings twice, and Hoharie had to help him tie off the knots.

“Is he going to be all right?” Dag asked cautiously, nodding at Othan.

“In a few days, I expect,” said Hoharie. “That was a much stronger ground reinforcement than I normally let my apprentices attempt.”

Othan smiled proudly, although his eyes were still a trifle confused. Hoharie dismissed him with thanks, closed the door behind him, and slid back into the seat across from Dag. She eyed him narrowly.

“Hoharie,” said Dag plaintively, “what’s happening to me?”

“Not sure.” She hesitated. “Have you ever been tested for a maker?”

“Yes, ages ago. I’d no knack nor patience for it, but my groundsense range was a mile, so they let me go for a patroller. Which was what I’d desperately wanted anyway.”

“What was that, nigh on forty years ago? Have you been tested lately?”

“No interest, no point. Such talents don’t change after youth…do they?”

“Nothing alive is unchanging.” Her eyes had gone silvery with interest—or was that covetousness? “I will say, that was no ghost, Dag. That was one of the live-est things I’ve ever seen. Could it do shaped reinforcements, I wonder?”

Did she think of training him as a medicine maker, in the sort of subtle groundwork that she herself did? Dag was taken aback. “Dar’s the maker in my family.”

“So?” Her shrewd look that went with this made him shift uncomfortably.

“I don’t control this. It’s more like it works me.”

“What, you can’t remember how wobbly you were when your groundsense first came in? Some days, my apprentices are all over the map. Some days I still am, for that matter.”

“Fifty-five’s a bit old for an apprentice, don’t you think?” Hoharie herself was younger than Dag by a decade. He could remember when she’d been an apprentice. “And any road—a maker needs two good hands.” He waved his left, by way of a reminder.

She started to speak, but then sat back, frowning over this last.

“Patrolling’s what I do. Always have. I’m good at it.” A shiver of fear troubled him at the thought of stopping, which was odd, since hunting malices should be the scariest task there was. But he remembered his own words from Glassforge: None of us could do the job without all of us, so all of us are owed. Makers and patrollers alike, all were essential. All essential, all expendable.

Hoharie shrugged surrender, and said, “In any case, come back and see me tomorrow. I want to look at that arm again.” She added after a moment, “Both of them.”

“I’d take it kindly.” He gestured with his sling. “Do I really still need this splint, now?”

“Yes, to remind you not to try anything foolish. Speaking of experience. You patrollers are all alike, in some ways. Give that ground reinforcement some time to work, and we’ll see.”

Dag nodded, rose, and let himself out, conscious of Hoharie’s curious gaze following him.