Rush asked, “What happened to the bandits after that?”
Fawn turned to Dag, who answered simply, “They were dealt with.” He applied himself to his stew, good plain farm food, in the hope of avoiding further expansion on this subject.
Fawn’s mother bent her head, eyes narrowing; her hand went out again, this time to the left side of Fawn’s neck and the deep red dent and three ugly black scabs. “Then what are those nasty-looking things?”
“Um… well, that was later.”
“What was later?”
In a desperately bright voice, Fawn replied, “That’s where the blight bogle lifted me up. They make those sorts of marks—their touch is deadly. It was big.
How big, would you say, Dag? Eight feet tall, maybe?”
“Seven and a half, I’d guess,” he said blandly. “About four hundred pounds.
Though I didn’t have the best vantage. Or light.”
Reed said, in a tone of growing disbelief, “So what happened to this supposed blight bogle, if it was so deadly?”
Fawn’s look begged help, so Dag replied, “It was dealt with, too.”
“Go on, Fawn,” said Fletch scornfully. “You can’t expect us to swallow your tall tales!”
Dag let his voice go very soft. “Are you calling your sister a liar… sir?” He let the and me? hang in implication.
Fletch’s thick brows wrinkled in honest bewilderment; he was not a man sensitive to implication, either, Dag guessed. “She’s my sister. I can call her anything want!”
Dag drew breath, but Fawn whispered, “Dag, let it go. It doesn’t matter.”
He did not yet speak this family dialect, he reminded himself. He had worried about how to conceal the strange accident with the sharing knife; he’d not imagined such feeble curiosity or outright disbelief. It was not in his present interest—or capacity—to bang Bluefield heads together and bellow, Your sister’s courage saved my life, and dozens, maybe thousands, more. Honor her! He let it go and nodded for more cider.
Blatantly changing the subject, Fawn asked Clover after the progress of her wedding plans, listening to the lengthy reply with well-feigned interest. The addition in progress on the south end of the house, it appeared, was intended for the soon-to-be-newlyweds. The true purpose of the question—camouflage—was revealed to Dag when Fawn added casually, “Anyone hear from the Sawmans since Saree’s wedding?”
“Not too much,” said Reed. “Sunny’s spent a lot of time at his brother-in-law’s place, helping clear stumps from the new field.”
Fawn’s mother gave her a narrow-eyed look. “His mama tells me Sunny’s betrothed to Violet Stonecrop as of midsummer. Hope you’re not disappointed. I thought you might be getting kind of sweet on him at one point.”
Whit piped up, in a whiny, practiced brotherly chant, “Fawn is sweet on Suh-nee, Fawn is sweet on Suh-nee…”
Dag cringed at the spate of deathly blackness that ran through Fawn’s ground.
He does not know, he reminded himself. None of them do. Although he would not have cast bets on Tril Bluefield’s unvoiced suspicions, because she now said in a flat voice unlike any he’d yet heard from her, brooking no argument, “Stop that, Whit. You’d think you were twelve.”
Dag could see the little ripple in Fawn’s jaw as she unset her teeth. “Not sweet in the least. I think Violet deserves better.”
Whit looked disappointed at not having drawn a more spectacular rise out of his sister from his expert lure but, glancing at his mother, did not resume his heckling.
“Perhaps,” Dag suggested gently, “we should go see to Grace and Copperhead.”
“Who?” asked Rush.
“Miss Bluefield’s horse, and mine. They’ve been waiting patiently out there.”
“What?” said Reed. “Fawn doesn’t have a horse!”
“Hey, Fawn, where’d you get a horse?”
“Can I ride your horse?”
“No.” Fawn thrust back her chair. Dag rose more quietly with her.
“Where did you get a horse, Fawn?” asked Papa Bluefield curiously, staring anew at Dag.
Fawn stood very straight. “She was my share for helping deal with the blight bogle. Which Fletch here doesn’t believe in. I must have ridden all the way from Glassforge on a wish horse, huh?”
She tossed her head and marched out. Dag cast a polite nod of farewell in the general direction of the table, thought to add a spoken, “Good evening, Aunt Nattie,” and followed. Behind him, he could hear her father’s growl, “Reed, go help your sister and that fellow with their horses.” Which in fact launched a general migration of Bluefields onto the porch to examine the new horse.
Grace was exhaustively discussed. At last Dag swapped back for his hook and led his own horse in an escape to the old barn, where spare stalls were to be found.
He lingered looking over the stall partition, keeping a light contact with his groundsense so the gelding wouldn’t snake around and attempt to savage Reed, his unfamiliar groom. Copperhead was not named for his chestnut color, despite appearances. When both horses were at last safely rubbed down, watered, and fed, Dag walked back to the house through the sunset light with Fawn, temporarily out of earshot of the rest of her relations.
“Well,” she said under her breath, “that could have gone worse.”
“Really?” said Dag.
“Really.”
“I’ll take your word. Truth to tell, I’m finding your family a bit strange.
My nearest kin don’t often like what I have to say, but they certainly hear what I have to say, and not something else altogether.”
“They’re better one at a time than in a bunch like that.”
“Hm. So… what was that about market-day night?”
“What?”
“When Rush said they’d missed you market-day night.”
“Oh. Nothing much. Except that I left market-day morning while it was still dark. Wonder where they thought I was all day?”
A number of Bluefields had collected in the front parlor, including Aunt Nattie, now plying a drop spindle, and Fawn’s mother. Dag set down his saddlebags and let Fawn unpack her gifts. Fletch, about to escort his betrothed home to her nearby farm, paused to watch as well.
Tril held the sparkling glass bowl up to the light of an oil lamp in astonishment. “You really did go to Glassforge!”
Fawn, who had wobbled all evening between trying to put on a good show and what seemed to Dag a most unfamiliar silent shrinking, said only, “That’s what I told you, Mama.”
Fawn pressed the corked scent bottle into her aunt’s hands and urged her to splash some on her wrists, which, smiling agreeably, she did. “Very pretty, lovie, but this sort of foolery is for courtin’ girls to entice their boys, not for lumpy old women like me. Better you should give it to Clover.”
“That’s Fletcher’s job,” said Fawn, with a more Spark-like edged grin at her brother. “Anyhow, all sorts of folks wear it in Glassforge—patroller men and women both, for some.”
Reed, hovering, snorted at the idea of men wearing scent, but Nattie showed willing and eased Dag’s heart by splashing a bit more on both herself and her younger sister Tril, and some on Fawn as well. “There! Sweet of you to think of me, lovie.”
It was growing dark outside. The boys dispersed to various evening chores, and Clover made farewells to her prospective in-laws. The two young women, Fawn and Clover, eyed each other a little stiffly as Clover made more congratulations on Fawn’s safe return, and Dag wondered anew at the strangeness of farmer customs.
A Lakewalker only-girlchild would have been the chief inheritor of her family’s tent, but that position here was apparently held by Fletch; and not Fawn but Clover would take Tril Bluefield’s place as female head of this household in due time. Leaving Fawn to go… where?
“I suppose,” said Papa Bluefield a trifle grudgingly, “if your friend here has a bedroll, he could lay it in the loft. Keep an eye on his horse.”