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 younger, 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.