Lois Bujold - The Sharing Knife - Beguilement

“Oh,” she said, rising on one elbow and staring upward. “Oh…”

“Wait. I can do more.” He concentrated, and drew down a lambent swirl of insects to spiral around and land in her dark hair, lighting it like a coronet of candles.

“Dag… !” She gave a wild laugh, half delight, half indignation, her hands rising to gently prod her curls. “You put bugs in my hair!”

“I happen to know you like bugs.”

“I do,” she admitted fairly. “Some kinds, anyhow. But how… ? Did you learn to do this up in the woods of Luthlia, too?”

“No, actually. I learned it in camp, back when my groundsense first came in—I was about twelve, I guess. The children learn it from each other; no adult ever teaches it, but I think most everyone knows how to catch fireflies this way.

We just forget. Grow up and get busy and all. Though I admit, I never collected more than a handful at one time before.”

She was smiling helplessly. “It’s a bit eerie. But I like it. Not sure about the hair—eh! Dag, they’re tickling my ears!”

“Lucky bugs.” He leaned in and blew off the wanderers from the curve of her ear, kissing the tickle away. “You should be crowned with light like the rising moon.”

“Well,” she said, in a gruff little voice, and sniffed. Her gaze traced the bending lantern-flowers above, and returned to his face. “What do you want to go and do a thing like that for anyhow? I’m already as full of joy for you as my body can hold, and there you go and put more in. Downright wasteful, I say.

It’s just going to spill over…” The light shimmered in her swimming eyes.

He pulled her up and across him, and let the warm drops spatter across his chest like summer rain. “Spill on me,” he whispered.

He released her twinkling tiara and let the tiny creatures fly up into the tree again. In the scintillant glow, they made slow love till midnight brought silence and sleep. Lumpton Market was a smaller town than Glassforge, but lively nonetheless. It lay at the confluence of two rocky rivers, which flanked a long shale-and-limestone ridge running northward. Two old straight roads crossed there, and it had surely been the site of a hinterland city when the lords ruled. As it was, much of the new town was made of ancient building blocks mined out of the encroaching woods, and dry-stone walls of both ordinary fieldstone and much less identifiable rubble abounded around both outlying fields and house yards. Now that Dag’s eye was alerted to it, however, he noticed a few newer, finer houses on the outskirts built of brick. The bridges were timber, recent, and wide and sturdy enough for big wagons.

The hostelry familiar and friendly to patrollers for which Dag was aiming lay on the north side of Lumpton, so he and Fawn found themselves in early afternoon riding through the town square, where the day market was in full swing. Fawn turned in her saddle, looking over the booths and carts and tarps as they passed around the edge of the busy scene.

“I have that glass bowl for Mama,” she said. “I wish I had something to bring Aunt Nattie. She hardly ever gets taken along when my parents come down here.”

A

yearly ritual, Dag had been given to understand.

Aunt Nattie was Fawn’s mother’s much older sister, blind since a childhood infection had stolen her sight at age ten. She had come along with Fawn’s mother when she’d married years ago, in some sort of dowry deal. Semi-invalid but not idle, she did all the spinning and weaving for the farm, with extra to sell for cash money sometimes. And was the only member of her family Fawn spoke of without hidden strain in her voice and ground.

Obligingly, now that he understood her purpose, Dag followed Fawn’s gaze. One would not, presumably, carry food to a farm. The cloth and clothing for sale, new and used, likewise would seem foolish. His eye ran over the more permanent shops lining the square. “Tools? Scissors, needles? Something for her weaving or sewing?”

“She has a lot of those.” Fawn sighed.

“Something that gets used up, then. Dyes?” His voice faded in doubt. “Ah.

Likely not.”

“Mama did most of the coloring, though I do it nowadays. Wish I could get her something just for her.” Her gaze narrowed. “Furs… ?”

“Well, let’s look.” They dismounted, and Fawn looked over the tarp where a farmwoman offered some, in Dag’s expert view, rather inferior pelts; all common local beasts, raccoon and possum and deerhide.

“I can get her something much better, later,” Dag murmured, and with a grimace of agreement Fawn gave over poking through the sad piles. They strolled onward side by side, leading their horses.

Fawn stopped and wheeled, lips pursing, as they passed a narrow medicine shop tucked between a shoemaker and a barber-toothdrawer-scribe—it was unclear if the latter was all one man. The medicine shop had a broad window, with small square glass panes set in a bowed-out wooden frame to make a larger view. “I wonder if they sell scent water like what your patroller girls found in Glassforge?”

Or oil, Dag could not help wondering. They could stand to restock for future use, although the likelihood of immediate future use at the Bluefield homestead seemed remote. Whatever gratitude her family might feel for his bringing their only daughter back alive was unlikely to extend to letting them sleep together there. In any case, they tied their horses to one of the hitching rails conveniently lining the cobblestone sidewalk and went inside.

The shop had four kinds of scent water but only plain oil, which made Dag’s selection immediate. He occupied himself looking over the shop’s actually impressive stock of herbals, several of which he recognized as of high quality and coming from Lakewalker sources, while Fawn made herself redolent with happy indecision. Her choice finally made, they waited while their small purchases were wrapped. Or not so small in proportion to Fawn’s thin purse, Dag noted as she braced herself to trade out some of her few coins for the little luxury.

Outside, Dag tucked the packets away in his saddlebags and turned to give Fawn a leg up on the bay mare. She was standing staring at her saddle in dismay.

“My bedroll’s gone!” Her hand went to the dangling rawhide strings behind her cantle. “Did it drop on the road? I know I tied it on better than…”

His hand followed hers, and his voice tightened. “These are cut. See, the knots are still tied. Sneak thief.”

“Dag, the knife was in my bedroll!” she gasped.

He snapped open his groundsense, flinching as it was battered by the uproar pouring from all the people nearby. He searched through the noise for a faint, familiar chime. Just… there. His head came up, and he looked along the square to where a slight figure was disappearing between two buildings, the roll cast casually over his shoulder as though he owned it.

“I see it,” he said thickly. “Wait here!” His legs stretched as he followed after, not quite running. Behind him, he could hear Fawn demanding of passersby, Did you see anyone fooling around by our horses?

Dag tamped outrage down to annoyance, mostly at himself. If he’d been traveling through here with a group of patrollers, someone would always have been left with the horses as a routine precaution. So what had made him drop his guard?

Some misplaced sense of anonymity? The fact that if only he’d bothered to glance out the window, he could have kept an eye on the horses himself? If he’d left his groundsense more open, he might have picked up some restive response from Copperhead as a stranger came too near. Too late, never mind.

In an alley in back of the buildings he closed with his quarry. The boy was crouched behind a woodpile, and not alone; a much larger and older companion—brother, friend, thief-boss?—knelt with him as they spread open the bedroll to examine their prize.