Lois Bujold - The Sharing Knife - Beguilement

“ ‘Course!” Sassa promised cheerily.

And then the track curved into the woods, and the farm and all its folk fell out of sight behind. Dag breathed relief as the quiet of the humid summer morning closed in, broken only by the gentle thump of the mare’s hooves, the liquid trill of a red-crest, and the rain-refreshed gurgle of the creek that the road followed. A striped ground squirrel flickered across the track ahead of them, disappearing with a faint rustle into the weeds.

Fawn cuddled down, her head resting on his chest, and allowed herself to be rocked along, not speaking for a while. Ambushed again by the deep fatigue of her blood loss after the dawn’s spate of excitement, Dag judged; like other injured younglings he’d known, she seemed likely to overestimate her capacity, swinging between imprudent activity and collapse. He hoped her recovery would be as swift. She made a warm and comfortable burden, balanced on his lap. The mare’s walk was certainly smoother than a wagon would have been in these muddy ruts, and he had no intention of jostling either of them with a trot. A few mosquitoes whined around them in the damp shade, and he gently bumped them away from her fair skin with a flick of his ground against theirs.

The scent of her skin and hair, the moving curve of her breasts as she breathed, and the pressure of her thighs on his stimulated him, but not nearly so much as the light, the contentment, and the flattering sense of safety swirling through her complex ground. She was not herself aroused, but her air of openness, of sheer physical acceptance of his presence, made him unreasonably happy in turn, like a man warmed by a fire. The deep red note of her inmost injury still lurked underneath, and the violet shadings of her bruises clouded her ground as they did her flesh, but the sharp-edged glints of pain were much reduced.

She could not sense his ground in turn; she was unaware of his lingering inspection. A Lakewalker woman would have felt his keen regard, seeing just as deeply into him if he did not close himself off and keep closed, trading blindness for privacy. Feeling guiltily perverse, he indulged his inner senses upon Fawn without excuse of need—or fear of self-revelation.

It was a little like watching water lilies; rather more like smelling a dinner he was not allowed to eat. Was it possible to be starved for so long as to forget the taste of food, for the pangs of hunger to burn out like ash? It seemed so. But both the pleasure and the pain were his heart’s secret, here.

He was put in mind, suddenly, of the soil at the edge of a recovering blight; the weedy bedraggled look of it, unlovely yet hopeful. Blight was a numb gray thing, without sensation. Did the return of green life hurt? Odd thought.

She stirred, opening her eyes to stare into the shadows of the woods, here mostly beech, elm, and red oak, with an occasional towering Cottonwood, or, in more open areas around the stream, stubby dogwood or redbud, long past their blooming. Splashes of the climbing sun spangled the leaves of the upper branches, sparking off lingering water drops.

“How will you find your patrol in Glassforge?” she asked.

“There’s this hotel patrols stay at—we make it our headquarters when we’re in this area. Nice change from sleeping on the ground. It’ll also be our medicine tent. I’m pretty sure that more patrollers than my partner Saun took blows when we jumped those bandits the other night, so that’s where they’ll be holed up.

They’re used to our ways, there.”

“Will you be there long?”

“Not sure. Chato’s patrol was on their way south over the Grace River to trade for horses when they got waylaid by this trouble, and my patrol was riding a pattern up northeast, when we broke off to come here. Depends on the injured, I suspect.”

She said thoughtfully, “Lakewalkers don’t run the hotel, do they? It’s Glassforge folks, right?”

“Right.”

“What all jobs do they do in a hotel?”

He raised his brows. “Chambermaid, cook, scullion, horse boy, handyman, laundress… lots of things.”

“I could do some of that. Maybe I could get work there.”

Dag tensed. “Did Petti tell you about her cousin?”

“Cousin?” She peered up at him without guile.

Evidently not. “No—never mind. The couple that run the place have owned it for years; it’s built on the site of an old inn, I think, which was his father’s before. Mari would know. It’s brick, three floors high, very fine. They burn brick as well as glass in Glassforge, you know.” She nodded. “I saw some houses in Lumpton Market once, they say were built from Glassforge brick. Must have been quite a job hauling it.”

He shifted a little beneath her. “In any case, there’ll be no work for you till you stop fainting when you jump up. Some days yet, I expect. If you eat up and rest.”

“I suppose,” she said doubtfully. “But I don’t have much money.”

“My patrol will put you up,” he said firmly. “We owe you for a malice, remember.” We owe you for your sacrifice.

“Yes, all right, but I need to look ahead, now I’m on my own. I’m glad I met all those Horsefords. Nice folks. Maybe they’ll introduce me around, help get me a start.”

Would she not go home? Neither the picture of her dragging back to the realm of Stupid Sunny nor the notion of her as a Glassforge chambermaid pleased him much.

“Best see what Mari has to say about that knife, before making plans.”

“Mm.” Her eyes darkened, and she huddled down again.

The peace of the woodland descended again, easing Dag’s spirit. The light and air and solitude, the placid mare moving warmly beneath him, and Fawn curled against him with her ground slowly releasing its accumulation of anguish, put him wholly in a present that required nothing more of him, nor he of it.

Released, for a moment, from an endless chain of duty and task, tautly pulling him into a weary future not chosen, merely accepted.

“How’re you doing?” he murmured into Fawn’s hair. “Pain?”

“No worse than when I was sitting up at breakfast, anyhow. Better than last night. This is all right.”

“Good.”

“Dag…” She hesitated.

“Mm?”

“What do Lakewalker women do who get in a fix like mine?”

The question baffled him. “Which fix?”

She gave a small snort. “I suppose I have been collecting troubles, lately. A

baby and no husband was the one I was thinking of. Grass widowhood.”

He could sense the grating of grief and guilt through her with that reminder.

“It doesn’t exactly work like that, for us.”

She frowned. “Are young Lakewalkers all really, really… um… virtuous?”

He laughed softly. “No, if by virtuous you just mean keeping their trousers buttoned. Other virtues are more in demand. But young is young, farmer or Lakewalker. Pretty much everyone goes through an awkward period of fumbling around finding things out.”

“You said a woman invites a man to her tent.”

“If he’s a lucky man.”

“Then how do…” She trailed off in confusion.

He finally figured out what she was asking. “Oh. It’s our grounds, again. The time of the month when a woman can conceive shows as a beautiful pattern in her ground. If the time and place are wrong for a child, she and her man just pleasure each other in ways that don’t lead to children.”

Fawn’s silence following this extended for a quite a long time. Then she said,

“What?”

“Which what?”

“How do people… people can do that? How?”

Dag swallowed uneasily. How much could this girl not know? By the evidence so far, quite a lot, he reflected ruefully. How far back did he need to begin?

“Well—hands, for one.”