Lois Bujold - The Sharing Knife - Beguilement

She perched cross-legged on the bed’s head, smoothing her skirt over her knees, and watched the two patrollers. Mari had gold eyes much like Dag’s, if a shade more bronze, and she wondered if she really was his aunt and his use of the title not, as she’d first thought, just a joke or a respectful endearment.

Mari set the bag back down. “Do you plan to send it up to be buried with the rest of her uncle’s bones? Or burn it here?”

“Not sure yet. It will keep with me; it has so far.” Dag drew a deeper breath, staring down at the other knife. “Now we come to the long story.”

Mari sat down at the bed’s foot and crossed her arms, listening closely as Dag began his tale again, this time starting with the night raid on the bandit camp.

His descriptions of his actions were succinct but very exact, Fawn noticed, as though certain details might matter more, though she was not sure how he sorted which to leave in or out. Until he came to, “I believe the mud-man lifted Miss Bluefield from the road because she was two months pregnant. And came back and took her from the farm for the same reason.”

Mari’s lips moved involuntarily, Was?, then compressed. “Go on.”

Dag’s voice stiffened as he described his risky raid on the malice’s cave. “I was just too late. When I hit the entrance and the mud-men, the malice was already taking her child.”

Mari leaned forward, her brows drawing down. “Separately?”

“So it seems.”

“Huh…” Mari leaned back, shook her head, and peered at Fawn. “Excuse me. I am so sorry for your loss. But this is new to me. We knew malices took pregnant women, but then, they take anyone they can catch. Rarely, the women’s bodies are recovered. I did not know the malice didn’t always take both grounds together.”

“I don’t think,” said Fawn distantly, “it would have kept me around very long.

It was about to break my neck when I finally got the right knife into it.”

Mari blinked, glanced down at the blue-hilted bone knife lying on the bedroll, and stared up again at Dag. “What?”

Carefully, Dag explained Fawn’s mix-up with his knives. He was very kind, Fawn thought, to excuse her from any blame in the matter.

“The knife had been unprimed. You know what I was saving it for.”

Mari nodded.

“But now it’s primed. With the death of Spark’s—of Miss Bluefield’s daughter, I believe. What I don’t know is if that’s all it drew from the malice. Or whether it will even work as a sharing knife. Or… well, I don’t know much, I’m afraid.

But with Miss Bluefield’s permission, I thought you could examine it too.”

“Dag, I’m no more a maker than you are.”

“No, but you are more… you are less… I could use another opinion.”

Mari glanced at Fawn. “Miss Bluefield, may I?”

“Please. I want to understand, and… and I don’t, really.”

Mari leaned over and picked up the bone knife. She cradled it, ran her hand along its smooth pale length, and finally, much as Dag had, held it to her lips with her eyes closed. When she set it down again, her mouth stayed tight for a moment.

“Well”—she took a breath—“it’s certainly primed.”

“That, I could tell,” said Dag.

“It feels… hm. Oddly pure. It’s not that souls go into the knives—you did explain that to her, yes?” she demanded of Dag.

“Yes. She’s clear on that part.”

“But different people’s heart’s knives do have different feels to them. Some echo of the donor lingers, though they all seem to work alike. Perhaps it’s that the lives are different, but the deaths are all the same, I don’t know. I’m a patroller, not a lore-master. I think”—she tapped her lips with a forefinger—“you had better take it to a maker. The most experienced you can find.”

“Miss Bluefield and I,” said Dag. “The knife is properly hers, now.”

“This isn’t any business for a farmer to be mixed up in.”

Dag scowled. “What would you have me do? Take it from her? You?”

“Explain, please?” Fawn said tightly. “Everyone is talking past me again.

That’s all right mostly, I’m used to it, but not for this.”

“Show her your knives, Mari,” Dag said, a rasp of challenge in his voice, for all that it was soft.

She looked at him, then slowly unbuttoned her shirt partway down and drew out a dual knife pouch much like Dag’s, though of softer leather. She pulled the strap over her head, pushed the bedroll aside, and laid out two bone knives side by side on the quilt. They were nearly identical, except for different-colored dye daubed on the lightly carved hilts, red and brown this time.

“These are a true pair, both bones from the same donor,” she said, caressing the red one. “My youngest son, as it happens. It was his third year patrolling, up Sparford way, and I’d just got to thinking he was getting over the riskiest part of the learning… well.” She touched the brown one. “This one is primed. His father’s aunt Palai gave her death to it. Tough, tough old woman—absent gods, we loved her. Preferably from a safe distance, but there’s one like that in every family, I think.” Her hand drifted again to the red one. “This one is unprimed, bonded to me. I keep it by me in case.”

“So what would happen,” said Dag dryly, “to anyone who tried to take them from you?”

Mari’s smile grew grim. “I’d outstrip the worst wrath of Great-aunt Palai.”

She sat up and slipped the knives away, then nodded at Fawn. “But I think it’s different for her.”

“It’s all strange to me.” Fawn frowned, staring at the blue-hilted knife. “I have no happy memories about this to balance the sorrows. But they’re my memories, all the same. I’d rather they weren’t… wasted.”

Mari raised both hands in a gesture of frustrated neutrality.

“So could I have leave from the patrol to travel on this matter?” asked Dag.

Mari grimaced. “You know how short we are, but once this Glassforge business is settled, I can’t very well refuse you. Have you ever drawn leave? Ever? You don’t even get sick!”

Dag thought a moment. “Death of my father,” he said at last. “Eleven years ago.”

“Before my time. Eh! Ask again when we’re ready to decamp. If there’s no new trouble landed in our laps by then.”

He nodded. “Miss Bluefield’s not fit to travel far yet anyway. You can see by her eyelids and nails she’s lost too much blood, even without how her knees give way. No fever yet, though. Please, Mari, I did all I could, but could you look her over?” His hand touched his belly, making his meaning clear.

Mari sighed. “Yes, yes, Dag.”

He stood expectantly for a moment; she grimaced and sat up, waving to a set of saddlebags leaning in the corner. “There’s your gear, by the by. Luckily your fool horse hadn’t got round to scraping it off in the woods. Go on, now.”

“But will you… can’t I… I mean, it’s not as though you have to undress her.”

“Women’s business,” she said firmly.

Reluctantly, he made for the door, though he did scoop up his arm harness and recovered belongings. “I’ll see about getting you a room, Spark.”

Fawn smiled gratefully at him.

“Good,” said Mari. “Scat.”

He bit his lip and nodded farewell. His boot steps faded down the hall.

Fawn tried not to be too unnerved by being left alone with Mari. Scary old lady or not, the patrol leader seemed to share some of Dag’s straightforward quality.

She had Fawn sit quietly on the bed while she ran her hands over her. She then sat behind Fawn and hugged her in close for several silent minutes, her hands wrapped across Fawn’s lower belly. If she was doing something with her groundsense, Fawn could not feel it, and wondered if this was what being deaf among hearing people was like. When she released Fawn, her face was cool but not unkind.