Fawn realized she hadn’t quite known that, for all she knew of Dag. Whit was reduced to blinking. Silently, praise be.
Whit inhaled. “Folks don’t know this. They say Lakewalkers are cannibals. That you rob graves. Eat your dead to make magic.”
Dag said gently, “But now you know better.”
“Um. Yeah.” Whit brightened. “So, that’s one farmer boy who’s learned something, huh?”
“One down.” Dag sighed. “Thousands to go. It’s a start.”
“Sure enough,” said Whit valiantly. Actually, he looked as if he were afraid Dag was about to put his head down and cry.
Fawn was a little afraid of that as well, but Dag just smiled crookedly and creaked to his feet. “Let’s go see Glassforge, ducklings.”
4
Even in the late afternoon, the straight road approaching Glassforge was busy with traffic. Fawn watched Whit’s head turn as he took in the sight of strings of pack mules, goods-wagons gaily painted with the names of their businesses and their owners, and a big brick dray, returning empty from somewhere. The team of eight huge dun horses thundered past at a lumbering trot, hopeful for home, the bells on their harness shaking out bright sounds like salt along their path. The teamster and his brakeman, too, were impressive in fringed leather jackets decorated with tiny mirrors that flashed in the westering sun, red scarves knotted around their necks. Fawn thought the couple of burly loaders who rode with their legs dangling over the wagon’s tail might have been inclined to whoop at her, had she been a girl riding alone, but the presence of her escort turned their lewd stares into self-conscious nods, cheerily returned by Whit. Copperhead pretended to shy at this noisy vision, checked by a growl from his tired rider, and even gentle Warp and Weft swiveled their ears and looked faintly astonished.
Whit patted his mount’s neck. “There, there, Warp. Don’t let those big bruisers discourage you. Nobody’s going to make you pull a ton of bricks.” His face rose to stare after the receding wagon. “That’d be a life, though, wouldn’t it, Fawn? I bet some of those wagons go as far as Tripoint or Silver Shoals or, or who knows where? Think of it! You’d get to see everywhere, talk to the whole world, and get paid for it. Sleep in a different place every night, I bet.”
“The novelty of that wears off,” Dag advised, sounding amused.
Scorning this with a look that said Old-people talk! Whit went on, “I never thought of it, but I bet a town like Glassforge needs lots of horses, too. And drivers. I know how to drive a team. I wonder if I could get me one of those fancy jackets in town? I wonder if…” He trailed off, but Fawn had a clear sense of the mill wheels continuing to turn in his head, even if he’d temporarily disconnected them from his mouth.
I bet you’re never going back to West Blue, Fawn thought. Any more ’n I am. She grinned in anticipation of showing off Glassforge to Whit, as pleased as if she’d invented the place herself, and wondered if this was anything like the pleasure Dag took in her. Dag never seemed to tire of showing her new things…no. It was a little more complicated than that. In her open delight, she made the world new to him again, and so drove his weariness away. It seemed a fair trade.
Whit was gratifyingly amazed by the hotel in Glassforge, three stories high, built of local brick softened by trails of ivy, “bigger,” as he cried, “than Uncle Hawk’s new barn!” The corners of Dag’s mouth tucked up as Fawn earnestly explained to Whit how it was that patrols and couriers were always allowed to stay there for free, on account of some old malice the Lakewalkers had put down in these parts in the time of the present owner’s papa, which Whit thought a very good deal.
Fawn was secretly uncertain if the deal would extend to an ex-patroller of dodgy status traveling privately with a tail of farmer relatives, but when they dismounted in the hotel’s stable yard, she found she was still remembered from the past summer as the farmer heroine who’d slain the malice. She was welcomed by name by the excited horse boys and made much of by the owner’s wife when they went inside. Even more agreeable than having the best available rooms instantly offered up to them was the way Whit’s eyes grew wide as he took in her local fame. He didn’t even crack a joke about it.
They hauled their bags upstairs to their chambers. By request, Fawn and Dag’s room was the same they had slept in before, full of happy memories. Better, it had a nice thick plank door between it and Whit’s room, with an oak bar that promised a night free of brothers, mosquitoes, or any other interruptions. Fawn was left with an hour before supper to run around and say hello to all the friends she’d made here in the summer: seamstresses, chambermaids, the cook and scullions. Whit trailed amiably. Fawn wasn’t quite sure who she was showing off to which, as several of the younger girls perked up no end at Whit, alarming him enough to make him very polite. The charm he unleashed upon Sal the cook was pure stomach-interest, though, as she was both married and motherly.
“Sal let me do sitting-down chores while I was getting better and waiting for Dag to finish some patroller duties,” Fawn explained, inhaling deeply of the mouthwatering aromas of the hotel’s kitchen. Pots bubbled, a roast turned on a spit, pies cooled; a scullion ran a hopeful horse boy back outside to wait for scraps till after the patrons were fed.
“I must have shelled ten thousand peas, but it kept me from going stir-crazy.”
“You were so pale, at first!” agreed Sal. “I think my cookin’ helped put those roses back in your cheeks.” She patted one, leaving a smudge of flour.
“I think it did, too,” said Fawn, brushing at the flour and smiling.
“That ’n Dag.”
Sal’s smile thinned a bit, and she glanced appraisingly at Whit. “So that patroller fellow with the missin’ hand must have got you home all right, after all.”
Fawn nodded.
“We weren’t too sure on him,” Sal admitted. “Some of us was afraid he’d gone and beguiled you, like they say Lakewalkers can. Though it’s true the ones we get here are usually pretty well-behaved. How they carry on with each other being not our business.”
Fawn raised her chin. “If there was any beguiling going on, I’d say it was mutual. We married each other.”
“He never!” said Sal in astonishment.
Fawn gestured at her brother. “Whit stood witness.”
“Yep,” said Whit. “They said their promises in the parlor in West Blue in front of the whole family, and signed the family book, and everything.”
“Oh, honey…” Sal hesitated, looking troubled. “He was a right disturbin’ fellow, the way all patrollers are, though it was plain he’d took a shine to you, but…I thought better o’ him than that. Don’t you two know that Lakewalkers don’t recognize marriages to us folks? I’m afraid he was pulling the wool over your eyes, and your family’s, too.”
“No, he didn’t,” said Fawn. “We were married Lakewalker-style at the same time—we wove and swapped our binding strings as sound as any Lakewalker couple ever did. See?” She held out her left wrist, wrapped in the dark braid, and wriggled it to let the gold beads on the cord-ends bounce and glimmer, showing it off for the third or fourth time in this evening’s rounds.
“Is that what those are?” said Sal doubtfully. “I’ve seen them hair bracelets on some of the patrollers here, time and time.”
“Wedding cords, yes.”
Whit said, “It’s like they got married twice over. I don’t think Dag was taking any chances by that time. I will say, when he ties a knot, it stays tied.”
Sal’s eyes grew as round as her mouth. “And his people accepted it?”
Fawn tossed her head. “I won’t claim his kin were all happy, but they didn’t say we weren’t married.”
“Well, I never!”
The serving boys bounced in, the scullions called, and Sal had to set aside her fascinated pursuit of this gossip in favor of getting supper ready. She shooed her guests out of her kitchen with visible regret.