“Nattie’s blind, she won’t see me anyhow. Good.” He loomed nearer, staring hard at her. No—just at her belly. She resisted an impulse to slump and push it out.
His head cocked. “As little as you are, I’d have thought you’d be popping out by now. Clover sure would have bleated about it if she’d noticed.”
“You talk to her?”
“Saw her at noon, down in the village.” He shifted restlessly. “It’s all the talk there, you turning up again.” He turned again, scowling. “So, did you come back to fuss at me some more? It won’t do you any good. I’m betrothed to Violet now.”
“So I heard,” said Fawn, in a flat voice. “I actually hadn’t planned to see you at all. We wouldn’t have stayed on today except for Dag’s broken arm.”
“Yeah, Clover said you had some Lakewalker fellow trailing you. Tall as a flagpole, with one arm wooden and the other broke, who didn’t hardly say boo.
Sounds about useless. You been running around alone with him for three or four weeks, seemingly.” He wet his lips. “So, what’s your plan? Switching horses in the middle of the river? Going to tell him the baby is his and hope he can’t count too good?”
A cast-iron frying pan was sitting on the drainboard. Swung in an appropriate arc, it would just fit Sunny’s round face, Fawn thought through a red haze.
“No.”
“I’m not playing your little game, Fawn,” said Sunny tightly. “You won’t pin this on me. I meant what I said.” His hands were trembling slightly. But then, so were hers.
Her voice went, if possible, even flatter. “Well, you can put your mind and your nasty tongue to rest. I miscarried down near Glassforge the day the blight bogle nearly killed me. So there’s nothing left to pin on anyone, except bad memories.”
His breath of relief was visible and audible; he squeezed his eyes shut with it.
The tension in the room seemed to drop by half. She thought Sunny must have gone into a flying panic when he’d heard of her return, watching his comfortable little world teeter, and felt grimly recompensed. Her world had been turned upside down. But if she could now turn it back upright, make all her misery not have been, at the cost of losing all she’d learned on the road to Glassforge—would she?
She could not, she thought, in all fairness judge Sunny for acting as though his daughter weren’t real to him; she’d scarcely seemed real to Fawn a deal of the time either, after all. She asked instead, “So where did you think I’d gone?”
He shrugged. “I thought at first you might have thrown yourself in the river.
Gave me a turn, for a while.”
She tossed her head. “But not enough of one to do anything about it, seemingly.”
“What would there have been to do at that point? It seemed like the sort of stupid thing you’d do when you get a mad on. You always did have a temper. I remember how your brothers’d get you so wound up you could scarcely breathe for screaming, sometimes, till your pa’d tear his hair and come beat you for making such awful noise. Then the word got around that some of your clothes had gone missing, which made it seem you’d run off, since not even you would take three changes to go drowning. Your folks all looked, but I guess not far enough.”
“You didn’t help look then, either, I take it.”
“Do I look stupid? I didn’t want to find you! You got yourself into this fix, you could get yourself out.”
“Yeah, that’s what I figured.” Fawn bit her lip.
Silence. More staring.
Just go away, you awful lout. “I haven’t forgotten what you said to me that night, Sunny Sawman. You aren’t welcome in my sight. In case you’d any doubt.”
He shrugged irritably. His golden brows drew together over his snub nose. “I figured the blight bogle was a tall tale. What really happened?”
“Bogles are real enough. One touched me. Here and there.” She fingered her neck where the dents glowed an angry red, and, reluctantly, laid her palm over her belly. “Lakewalkers make special knives to kill malices—that’s their name for blight bogles. Dag had one. Between us, we did for the bogle, but it was too late for the child. It was almost too late for the two of us, but not quite.”
“Oh, magic knives, now, as well as magic monsters? Sure, I believe that. Or maybe some of those secret Lakewalker medicines did the job, and the rest is a nice tale to cover it, make you look good in front of your family, eh?” He moved closer to her. She moved back.
“They don’t even know I was pregnant. I didn’t tell them that part.” She drew a long breath. “Do you really care which, so long as it’s not on you? Feh!” She gripped her hair, then drew her hands down hard over her face. “You know, I really don’t give two pennies what you think as long as you go think it somewhere else.” Aunt Nattie had once remarked that the opposite of love was not hate, but indifference. Fawn felt she was beginning to see the point of that.
Sunny edged closer again; she could feel his breath stir the sweat-dampened hairs on her neck. “So… have you been letting that patroller fellow poke you?
Does your family know that?”
Fawn’s breath clogged in rage. She would not scream… “After a miscarriage?
You got no brains at all, Sunny Sawman!”
He did hesitate at that, doubt flickering in his blue eyes.
“Besides,” she went on, “you’re marrying Violet Stonecrop. Are you poking her yet?”
His lips drew back in something like a smile, except that it was devoid of humor. He stepped closer still. “I was right. You are a little slut.” And grinned in countertriumph at the fury she knew was reddening her face. “Don’t give me that scowl,” he added, lifting a hand to squeeze her breast. “I know how easy you are.”
Her fingers groped for the frying-pan handle.
Long footsteps sounded from the weaving room; Sunny jumped back hurriedly.
“Hello, Spark,” said Dag. “Any more of that cider around?”
“Sure, Dag,” she said, backing away from Sunny and escaping across the room to the crock on the shelf. She shifted the lid and drew a cup, willing her hands to stop shaking.
Somehow, Dag was now standing between her and Sunny. “Caller?” he inquired, with a nod at Sunny. Sunny looked as though he was furiously wondering whether Dag had just come in, if they had been overheard, and if the latter, how incriminatingly much.
“This here’s Sunny Sawman,” said Fawn. “He’s leaving. Dag Redwing Hickory, a Lakewalker patroller. He’s staying.”
Sunny, looking unaccustomedly up, gave a wary nod. Dag looked back down without a whole lot of expression one way or another.
“Interestin’ to meet you at last, Sunny,” said Dag. “I’ve heard a lot about you.
All true, seemingly.”
Sunny’s mouth opened and closed—shocked that his slanderous threats had failed to silence Fawn? Well, he had only his own mouth to blame now. He looked toward the weaving room, which had no other exit except into Nattie and Fawn’s bedroom, and did not come up with a reply.
Dag continued coolly, “So… Sunny… has anyone ever offered to cut out your tongue and feed it to you?”
Sunny swallowed. “No.” He might have been trying for a bold tone, but it came out rather a croak.
“I’m surprised,” said Dag. He gently scratched the side of his nose with his hook, a quiet warning, Fawn thought, if both unobserved and unheeded by Sunny.
“Are you trying to start something?” asked Sunny, recovering his belligerence.
“Alas.” Dag indicated his broken arm with a slight movement of the sling.
“I’ll have to take you up later.”
Sunny’s eyes brightened as the apparent helplessness of the patroller dawned on him. “Then maybe you’d better keep a still tongue in your head till then, Lakewalker. Ha! Only Fawn would be fool enough to pick a cripple for a bullyboy!”
Dag’s eyes thinned to gold slits as Fawn cringed. In that same level, affable tone, he murmured, “Changed my mind. I’ll take you up now. Spark, you said this fellow was leaving. Open the door for him, would you?”
Plainly unable to imagine what Dag could possibly do to him, Sunny set his teeth, planted his legs, and glowered. Dag stood quite still. Confused, Fawn hastily set down the cup, slopping cider on the table; she swung the screen door inward and held it.