Fawn sat up, offended for him. “Careful what you wish after. If Dag’s patrol had got there anytime before I—we—before the bogle died and the mud-men ran off, there’d have been a big fight. Lots of folks might have gotten killed, and that little boy, too.”
Sassa, brow furrowed, turned to her. “Yes, but—et? Doesn’t it bother you extra?
It sure bothers me.”
“It’s what mud-men do,” murmured Dag.
Sassa eyed him, disconcerted. “Used to it, are you?”
Dag shrugged.
“But it was a child.”
“Everyone’s someone’s child.”
Petti, who’d been staring wearily at her plate, looked up at that.
In a tone of cheery speculation, Jay said, “If they’d have been five days faster, we’d not have been raided. And our cows and sheep and dogs would still be alive. Wish for that, while you’re at it, why don’t you?”
With a grimace that failed to quite pass as a smile, Dag pushed himself up from the table. He gave Petti a nod. “ ‘Scuse me, ma’am.”
He closed the kitchen door quietly behind him. His booted steps sounded across the porch, then faded into the night.
“What bit him?” asked Jay.
Petti took a breath. “Jay, some days I think your mama must have dropped you on your head when you was a baby, really I do.”
He blinked in bewilderment at her scowl, and said less in inquiry than protest,
“What?”
For the first time in hours, Fawn found herself chilled again, chilled and shaking. Her wan droop did not escape the observant Petti. “Here, girl, you should be in bed. Horse, help her.”
Horse, mercifully, was much quieter than his younger relations; or perhaps his wife had given him some low-down on their outlandish guests in private. He propelled Fawn through the darkening house. The loss of light was not from her going woozy, this time, though her skull was throbbing again. Petti followed with a candle in a cup for a makeshift holder.
The ground floor of one of the add-ons consisted of two small bedrooms opposite each other. Horse steered Fawn inside to where her feather tick had been laid across a wooden bed frame. The slashed rope webbing had been reknotted sometime recently, maybe by Dag and Tad. A moist summer night breeze wafted through the small, glassless windows. Fawn decided this must be a daughter’s bedchamber; the girls would likely be arriving home tomorrow with the wagon.
As soon as the transport was safely accomplished, Petti shooed Horse out.
Awkwardly, Fawn swapped out her dressings, half-hiding under a light blanket that she scarcely needed. Petti made no comment on them, beyond a “Give over, here,” and a “There you go, now.” A day ago, Fawn reflected, she would have given anything to trade her strange man helper for a strange woman. Tonight, the desire was oddly reversed.
“Horse ‘n me have the room across,” said Petti. “You can call out if you need anything in the night.”
“Thank you,” said Fawn, trying to feel grateful. She supposed it would not be understood if she asked for the kitchen floor back. The floor and Dag. Where would these graceless farmers try to put the patroller? In the barn? The thought made her glower.
Long, unmistakable footfalls sounded in the hall, followed by a sharp double rap against the door. “Come in, Dag,” Fawn called, before Petti could say anything.
He eased inside. A stack of dry garments lay over his left arm, the laundry Fawn had seen draped over the pasture fence earlier, Fawn’s blue dress and linen drawers; underneath were his own trousers and drawers that had been so spectacularly bloodied yesterday. He had her bedroll tucked under his armpit.
He laid the bedroll down in a swept corner of the room, with her cleaned clothes atop. “There you go, Spark.”
“Thank you, Dag,” she said simply. His smile flickered across his face like light on water, gone in the instant. Didn’t anyone ever just say thank you to patrollers? She was really beginning to wonder.
With a wary nod at the watching Petti, he stepped to Fawn’s bedside and laid his palm on her brow. “Warm,” he commented. He traded the palm for the inside of his wrist. Fawn tried to feel his pulse through their skins, as she had listened to his heartbeat, without success. “But not feverish,” he added under his breath.
He stepped back a little, his lips tightening. Fawn remembered those lips breathing in her hair last night, and suddenly wanted nothing more than to kiss and be kissed good night by them. Was that so wrong? Somehow, Petri’s frowning presence made it so.
“What did you find outside?” she asked, instead.
“Not my patrol.” He sighed. “Not for a mile in any direction, leastways.”
“Do you suppose they’re all still looking on the wrong side of Glassforge?”
“Could be. It looks like it’s fixing to rain; heat lightning off to the west. If I really were stuck in a ditch, I wouldn’t be sorry, but I hate to think of them running around in the woods in the dark and wet, in fear for me, when I’m snug inside and safe. I’m going to hear about that later, I expect.”
“Oh, dear.”
“Don’t worry, Spark; another day it will be the other way around. And then it will be my turn to be, ah, humorous.” His eyes glinted in a way that made her want to laugh.
“Will we really go to Glassforge tomorrow?”
“We’ll see. See how you’re doing in the morning, for one.”
“I’m doing much better tonight. Bleeding’s no worse than a monthly, now.”
“Do you want your hot stone again?”
“Really, I don’t think I need it anymore.”
“Good. Sleep hard, then, you.”
She smiled shyly. “I’ll try.”
His hand made a little move toward her, but then fell back to his side. “Good night.”
“G’night, Dag. You sleep hard too.”
He gave her a last nod, and withdrew; the farmwife carried the candle out with her, closing the door firmly behind. A faint flash of the heat lightning Dag had mentioned came through the window, too far away even to hear the thunder, but otherwise all was darkness and silence. Fawn rolled over and tried to obey Dag’s parting admonishment. “Hold up,” murmured the farmwife, and since she carried the only light, the stub melting down to a puddle in the clay cup, Dag did so. She shouldered past and led him to the kitchen. Another candle, and a last dying flicker from the fireplace, showed the trestle table and benches taken down and stowed by the wall, and the plates and vessels from dinner stacked on the drainboard by the sink, along with the bucket of water refilled.
The farmwife looked around the shadows and sighed. “I’ll deal with the rest of this in the morning, I guess.” Belying her words, she moved to cover and set aside the scant leftover food, including a stack of pan bread she had apparently cooked up with breakfast in mind.
“Where do you want me to sleep, ma’am?” Dag inquired politely. Not with Fawn, obviously. He tried not to remember the scent of her hair, like summer in his mouth, or the warmth of her breathing young body tucked under his arm.
“You can have one of those ticks that little girl mended; put it down where you will.”
“The porch, maybe. I can watch out for my people, if any come out of the woods in the night, and not wake the house. I could pull it into the kitchen if it comes on to rain.”
“That’d be good,” said the farmwife.
Dag peered through the empty window frame into the darkness, letting his groundsense reach out. The animals, scattered in the pasture, were calm, some grazing, some half-asleep. “That mare isn’t actually mine. We found it at the bogle’s lair and rode it out. Do you recognize it for anyone’s?”
Petti shook her head. “Not ours, anyways.”
“If I ride it to Glassforge, it would be nice to not be jumped for horse thieving before I can explain.”
“I thought you patrollers claimed a fee for killing a bogle. You could claim it.”
Dag shrugged. “I already have a horse. Leastways, I hope so. If no one comes forward for this one, I thought I might have it go to Miss Bluefield. It’s sweet-tempered, with easy paces. Which is part of what inclines me to think it wasn’t a bandit’s horse, or not for long.”