If not precisely trapped by his menace, she did find herself pinned by his exhaustion. Her attempt to slip out without waking him failed. There followed disjointed mumbled arguments in the dark about a trudge to the privy versus a chamber pot (he won), the change and care of blood-soaked dressings (he won again), and where he would go to sleep next (hard to tell who won that one, but he did end up on the tick between her and the door as before). Despite a new hot stone, her gnawing cramps ordained that he was asleep again before her. But the unlikely comfort of that bony body, wrapped like a fort wall around her hurting, assured that it wasn’t so very much before. When next she awoke it was broad day outside, and she was alone. Yesterday’s agony in her belly was reduced to a knotting ache, but her dressings were soaked again. Before she had time to panic, boot steps sounded on the porch, accompanied by a tuneless chirping whistle. She had never heard Dag whistle, but it could be no one else. He ducked in through the door and smiled at her, gold eyes bright from the light.
He must have been out bathing by the well, for his hair was wet and his damp skin free of blood and grime, leaving all his scratches looking tidier and less alarming. Also, he smelled quite nice, last night’s reek—although it had been reassuring to know exactly where he was even from several feet away in the dark—replaced with the clean sharpness of the lost farmwife’s homemade soap, rough brown stuff that she had nonetheless scented with lavender and mint.
He was shirtless, wearing a pair of unbloodied gray trousers clearly not his own cinched around his waist with a stray bit of rope. She suspected they came about a foot short lengthwise, but with the ends tucked into his boots, no one could tell. He had an uneven tan, his coppery skin paler where his shirt usually fell, although not nearly as pale as hers. He favored long sleeves even in summer, it seemed. His collection of bruises was almost as impressive as her own. But he was not so bony underneath as she’d feared; his long, strappy muscles moved easily under his skin. “Morning, Spark,” he said cheerily.
The first order of business was the repellent medical necessities, which he took on with such straightforward briskness that he left her almost feeling that blood clots were an achievement rather than a horror. “Clots are good. Red, spurting blood is bad. Thought we’d agreed on that one, Spark. Whatever the malice ripped up inside you is starting to mend, that says to me. Good work.
Keep lying down.”
She lay dozily as he wandered in and out. Things happened. A ragged white shirt appeared on his back, too tight across the shoulders and with the sleeves rolled up. More tea happened, and food: the remains of the pan bread she made yesterday rolled around some meat stew from the cellar. He had to coax her to eat, but miraculously, it stayed down, and she could feel strength starting to return to her body almost immediately because of it. Her hot stones were swapped out regularly. After a second longish expedition outside, he returned with a cloth full of strawberries from the farm woman’s kitchen garden and sat himself down on the floor beside her, sharing them out in mock exactitude.
She woke from a longer doze to see him sitting at the kitchen table, mulling glumly over his hand contraption laid out atop it.
“Can you fix it?” she asked muzzily. “Afraid not. Not a one-hand job even if I had the tools here. Stitching’s all ripped, and the wrist cap is cracked. This is beyond Dirla. When we get to Glassforge, I’ll have to find a harnessmaker and maybe a woodturner to put it right again.”
Glassforge. Was she still going to Glassforge, when the reason for her flight had been so abruptly removed? Her life had been turned upside down one too many times lately, too fast, for her to be sure of much just now. She turned to the wall and clutched her stone—by the heat, he’d renewed it again while she’d slept—tighter to her aching, emptying womb.
In the past weeks, she had experienced her child as fear, desperation, shame, exhaustion, and vomiting. She had not yet felt the fabled quickening, although she had gone to sleep nightly waiting intently for that sign. It was disquieting to think that this chance-met man, with his strange Lakewalker senses, had gained a more direct perception of the brief life of her child than she had.
The thought hurt, but pressing the rag-wrapped stone to her forehead didn’t help.
She rolled back over and her eye fell on Dag’s knife pouch, set aside last night near the head of her feather mattress. The intact knife with the blue hilt was still in its sheath where she’d shoved it. The other—green hilt and bone fragments—seemed to have been rewrapped in a bit of scavenged cloth, ends tied in one of Dag’s clumsy one-handed knots. The fine linen, though wrinkled and ripped and probably from the mending basket, had embroidery on it, once-treasured guest-day work.
She looked up to see him watching her examine them, his face gone expressionless again.
“You said you’d tell me about these, too,” she said. “I don’t guess it was just any bit of bone that killed an immortal malice.”
“No. Indeed. The sharing knives are by far the most complex of our… tools.
Hard and costly to make.”
“I suppose you’ll tell me they aren’t really magic, again.”
He sighed, rose, came over, and sat down cross-legged beside her. He took the pouch thoughtfully in his hand.
“They’re human bone, aren’t they,” she added more quietly, watching him.
“Yes,” he said a little distantly. His gaze swung back to her. “Understand, patrollers have had trouble with farmers before over sharing knives.
Misunderstandings. We’ve learned not to discuss them. You have earned… there are reasons... you must be told. I can only ask that you don’t talk about it with anyone, after.”
“Anyone at all?” she puzzled.
He made a little jerk of his fingers. “Lakewalkers all know. I mean outsiders.
Farmers. Although in this case… well, we’ll get to that.”
Roundaboutly, it seemed. She frowned at this uncharacteristic loss of straightforwardness on his part. “All right.”
He took a breath, straightening his spine a trifle. “Not just any human bones.
Our own, Lakewalker bones. Not farmer bones, and most especially not kidnapped farmer children’s bones, all right? Adult. Have to be, for the length and strength. You’d think people would—well. Thighbones, usually, and sometimes upper arms. It makes our funeral practices something outsiders are not invited to. Some of the most aggravating rumors have been started around stray glimpses…
we are not cannibals, rest assured!”
“I actually hadn’t heard that one.”
“You might, if you’re around long enough.”
She had seen hogs and cows butchered; she could imagine. Her mind leaped ahead to picture Dag’s long legs—no.
“Some mess is unavoidable, but it’s all done respectfully, with ceremony, because we all know it could be our turn later. Not everyone donates their bones; it would be more than needed, and some aren’t suitable. Too old or young, too thin or fragile. I mean to give mine, if I die young enough.”
The thought made an odd knot in her belly that had nothing to do with her cramping. “Oh.”
“But that’s just the body of the knife, the first half of the making. The other half, the thing that makes it possible to share death with a malice, is the priming.” The quick would-be-reassuring smile with this did not reach his eyes.
“We prime it with a death. A donated death, one of our own. In the making, the knife is bonded, matched to the intended primer, so they are very personal, d’you see.”
Fawn pushed herself up, increasingly riveted and increasingly disturbed. “Go on.”
“When you’re a Lakewalker who means to give your death to a knife and you’re close to dying—wounded in the field beyond hope of recovery, or dying at home of natural causes, you—or more often your comrade or kin—take the sharing knife and insert it into your heart.”