Lois Bujold - The Sharing Knife - Beguilement

Dag, by this time very thirsty, was most interested in the drink. The food was a well-cooked stew, and Dag silently rejoiced at being confronted with something he could handle by himself, though he wondered who in the household had bad teeth.

“The fork-spoon, I think,” he murmured in Fawn’s ear, and she nodded and rummaged it out of his belt pouch.

“What happened to your arm?” asked Rush, across from them.

“Which one?” asked Dag. And endured the inevitable moment of rustling, craning, and stunned stares as Fawn calmly unscrewed his hand and replaced it with the more useful tool. “Thank you, Spark. Drink?” He smiled down at her as she lifted the cup to his lips. It was fresh cider, very tart from new summer apples.

“And thanks again.”

“You’re welcome, Dag.” He licked the spare drop off his lower lip, so she didn’t have to chase it with her napkin, yet.

Rush finally found his voice, more or less. “Er… I was going to ask about the, er, sling…”

Fawn answered briskly, “A sneak thief at Lumpton Market lifted my bedroll yesterday. Dag got it back, but his arm was broken in the fight before the thieves got scared and ran off. Dag gave a real good description to the Lumpton folks, though, so they might catch the fellows.” Her jaw set just a trifle.

“So I kind of owe him for the arm.”

“Oh,” said Rush. Reed and Whit stared across the table with renewed, if daunted, interest.

Tril Bluefield, looking hungrily and now more carefully at her restored daughter, frowned and let her hand drift to Fawn’s cheek where the four parallel gouges were now paling pink scars. “What are those marks?”

She glanced sidelong at Dag; he shrugged, Go on. She said, “That’s where the mud-man hit me.”

“The what?” said her mother, face screwing up.

“A… sort of bandit,” Fawn revised this. “Two bandits grabbed me off the road near Glassforge.”

“What? What happened?” her mother gasped. The assorted brothers, too, sat up; on Dag’s right, he could feel Fletch tense.

“Not too much,” said Fawn. “They roughed me up, but Dag, who was tracking them, came up just then and, um. Ran them off.” She glanced at him again, and he lowered his eyelids in thanks. He did not especially wish to begin his acquaintance with her family with a listing of all the dead bodies he’d left around Glassforge, the human ones at least. Far too many human ones, this last round. “That’s how we first met. His patrol had been called to Glassforge to deal with the bandits and the blight bogle.”

Rush asked, “What happened to the bandits after that?”

Fawn turned to Dag, who answered simply, “They were dealt with.” He applied himself to his stew, good plain farm food, in the hope of avoiding further expansion on this subject.

Fawn’s mother bent her head, eyes narrowing; her hand went out again, this time to the left side of Fawn’s neck and the deep red dent and three ugly black scabs. “Then what are those nasty-looking things?”

“Um… well, that was later.”

“What was later?”

In a desperately bright voice, Fawn replied, “That’s where the blight bogle lifted me up. They make those sorts of marks—their touch is deadly. It was big.

How big, would you say, Dag? Eight feet tall, maybe?”

“Seven and a half, I’d guess,” he said blandly. “About four hundred pounds.

Though I didn’t have the best vantage. Or light.”

Reed said, in a tone of growing disbelief, “So what happened to this supposed blight bogle, if it was so deadly?”

Fawn’s look begged help, so Dag replied, “It was dealt with, too.”

“Go on, Fawn,” said Fletch scornfully. “You can’t expect us to swallow your tall tales!”

Dag let his voice go very soft. “Are you calling your sister a liar… sir?” He let the and me? hang in implication.

Fletch’s thick brows wrinkled in honest bewilderment; he was not a man sensitive to implication, either, Dag guessed. “She’s my sister. I can call her anything want!”

Dag drew breath, but Fawn whispered, “Dag, let it go. It doesn’t matter.”

He did not yet speak this family dialect, he reminded himself. He had worried about how to conceal the strange accident with the sharing knife; he’d not imagined such feeble curiosity or outright disbelief. It was not in his present interest—or capacity—to bang Bluefield heads together and bellow, Your sister’s courage saved my life, and dozens, maybe thousands, more. Honor her! He let it go and nodded for more cider.

Blatantly changing the subject, Fawn asked Clover after the progress of her wedding plans, listening to the lengthy reply with well-feigned interest. The addition in progress on the south end of the house, it appeared, was intended for the soon-to-be-newlyweds. The true purpose of the question—camouflage—was revealed to Dag when Fawn added casually, “Anyone hear from the Sawmans since Saree’s wedding?”

“Not too much,” said Reed. “Sunny’s spent a lot of time at his brother-in-law’s place, helping clear stumps from the new field.”

Fawn’s mother gave her a narrow-eyed look. “His mama tells me Sunny’s betrothed to Violet Stonecrop as of midsummer. Hope you’re not disappointed. I thought you might be getting kind of sweet on him at one point.”

Whit piped up, in a whiny, practiced brotherly chant, “Fawn is sweet on Suh-nee, Fawn is sweet on Suh-nee…”

Dag cringed at the spate of deathly blackness that ran through Fawn’s ground.

He does not know, he reminded himself. None of them do. Although he would not have cast bets on Tril Bluefield’s unvoiced suspicions, because she now said in a flat voice unlike any he’d yet heard from her, brooking no argument, “Stop that, Whit. You’d think you were twelve.”

Dag could see the little ripple in Fawn’s jaw as she unset her teeth. “Not sweet in the least. I think Violet deserves better.”

Whit looked disappointed at not having drawn a more spectacular rise out of his sister from his expert lure but, glancing at his mother, did not resume his heckling.

“Perhaps,” Dag suggested gently, “we should go see to Grace and Copperhead.”

“Who?” asked Rush.

“Miss Bluefield’s horse, and mine. They’ve been waiting patiently out there.”

“What?” said Reed. “Fawn doesn’t have a horse!”

“Hey, Fawn, where’d you get a horse?”

“Can I ride your horse?”

“No.” Fawn thrust back her chair. Dag rose more quietly with her.

“Where did you get a horse, Fawn?” asked Papa Bluefield curiously, staring anew at Dag.

Fawn stood very straight. “She was my share for helping deal with the blight bogle. Which Fletch here doesn’t believe in. I must have ridden all the way from Glassforge on a wish horse, huh?”

She tossed her head and marched out. Dag cast a polite nod of farewell in the general direction of the table, thought to add a spoken, “Good evening, Aunt Nattie,” and followed. Behind him, he could hear her father’s growl, “Reed, go help your sister and that fellow with their horses.” Which in fact launched a general migration of Bluefields onto the porch to examine the new horse.

Grace was exhaustively discussed. At last Dag swapped back for his hook and led his own horse in an escape to the old barn, where spare stalls were to be found.

He lingered looking over the stall partition, keeping a light contact with his groundsense so the gelding wouldn’t snake around and attempt to savage Reed, his unfamiliar groom. Copperhead was not named for his chestnut color, despite appearances. When both horses were at last safely rubbed down, watered, and fed, Dag walked back to the house through the sunset light with Fawn, temporarily out of earshot of the rest of her relations.