Lois Bujold - The Sharing Knife - Beguilement

“Well,” she said under her breath, “that could have gone worse.”

“Really?” said Dag.

“Really.”

“I’ll take your word. Truth to tell, I’m finding your family a bit strange.

My nearest kin don’t often like what I have to say, but they certainly hear what I have to say, and not something else altogether.”

“They’re better one at a time than in a bunch like that.”

“Hm. So… what was that about market-day night?”

“What?”

“When Rush said they’d missed you market-day night.”

“Oh. Nothing much. Except that I left market-day morning while it was still dark. Wonder where they thought I was all day?”

A number of Bluefields had collected in the front parlor, including Aunt Nattie, now plying a drop spindle, and Fawn’s mother. Dag set down his saddlebags and let Fawn unpack her gifts. Fletch, about to escort his betrothed home to her nearby farm, paused to watch as well.

Tril held the sparkling glass bowl up to the light of an oil lamp in astonishment. “You really did go to Glassforge!”

Fawn, who had wobbled all evening between trying to put on a good show and what seemed to Dag a most unfamiliar silent shrinking, said only, “That’s what I told you, Mama.”

Fawn pressed the corked scent bottle into her aunt’s hands and urged her to splash some on her wrists, which, smiling agreeably, she did. “Very pretty, lovie, but this sort of foolery is for courtin’ girls to entice their boys, not for lumpy old women like me. Better you should give it to Clover.”

“That’s Fletcher’s job,” said Fawn, with a more Spark-like edged grin at her brother. “Anyhow, all sorts of folks wear it in Glassforge—patroller men and women both, for some.”

Reed, hovering, snorted at the idea of men wearing scent, but Nattie showed willing and eased Dag’s heart by splashing a bit more on both herself and her younger sister Tril, and some on Fawn as well. “There! Sweet of you to think of me, lovie.”

It was growing dark outside. The boys dispersed to various evening chores, and Clover made farewells to her prospective in-laws. The two young women, Fawn and Clover, eyed each other a little stiffly as Clover made more congratulations on Fawn’s safe return, and Dag wondered anew at the strangeness of farmer customs.

A Lakewalker only-girlchild would have been the chief inheritor of her family’s tent, but that position here was apparently held by Fletch; and not Fawn but Clover would take Tril Bluefield’s place as female head of this household in due time. Leaving Fawn to go… where?

“I suppose,” said Papa Bluefield a trifle grudgingly, “if your friend here has a bedroll, he could lay it in the loft. Keep an eye on his horse.”

“Don’t be daft, Sorrel,” Aunt Nattie spoke up unexpectedly. “The man can’t climb the loft ladder with that broken arm.”

“He needs to be close by me, so’s I can help him,” said Fawn firmly. “Dag can lay his bedroll in Nattie’s weaving room.”

“Good idea, Fawn,” said Nattie cheerily.

Fawn slept in with her aunt; the boys shared rooms upstairs, as did their parents. Papa Bluefield looked as though he was thinking hard, suddenly, about the implications of leaving Fawn and Dag downstairs with a blind chaperone.

And then—inevitably—of the implications of how long Dag and Fawn had been on the road together. Did he know anything about his aging sister-in-law’s groundsense?

“I’ll try harder not to cut your throat with your razor tomorrow, Dag,” Fawn said.

“I’ve lost more blood for less,” he assured her.

“We should likely try to get on the road early.”

“What?” said Papa Bluefield, coming out of his frowning cogitation. “You’re not going anywhere, girl!”

She turned to him, stiffening up tight. “I told you first thing, Papa. I have an obligation to give witness.”

“Are you stupid, Fawn!”

Dag caught his breath at the hard black rip through Fawn’s ground; his eyes went to Nattie, but she gave no visible reaction, though her face was turned toward the pair.

Papa Bluefield went on, “Your obligations are here, for all you’ve run off and turned your back on them this past month! You’ve had enough gallivanting for a while, believe you me!”

Dag interposed quietly and quite truthfully, “Actually, Spark, my arm’s not doing all that well tonight. I wouldn’t mind a day or two to rest up.”

She turned anxious eyes up at him, as if not sure whether she was hearing support or betrayal. He gave her a small, reassuring nod.

Papa Bluefield gave Dag a sideways look. “You’d be welcome to go on, if you’ve a need.” “Papa!” snapped Fawn, gyrating back to something not strained show, but blazingly sincere. “The idea! Dag saved my life three times, twice at great risk to his own, once from the bandits, once from the malice—the bogle—and once again the night after the bogle… hurt me, because I would have bled to death right there in the woods if he hadn’t helped me. I will not have him turned out on the road by himself with two bad arms! For shame! Shame on this house if you dare!”

She actually stamped her foot; the parlor floor sounded like a drum.

Papa Bluefield had stepped backward. His wife was staring at Dag with eyes wide, holding the glass bowl tightly. Nattie… was amazingly hard to read, but she had a strange little smile on her lips.

“Oh.” Papa Bluefield cleared his throat. “You hadn’t exactly made that plain, Fawn.”

Fawn said wearily, “How could I? No one would let me finish a story without telling me I must be making things up.”

Her father glanced at Dag. “He’s a quiet one.”

Dag could not touch his temple; he had to settle for a short nod. “Thinking.

Sir.”

“Are you, now?”

It was not, in the Bluefield household, apparently possible to finish a debate.

But when the squabbling finally died into assorted mumblings, drifting away up stairs or down halls in the dark, Dag ended up with his bedroll set down beside Aunt Nattie’s loom, with an impressive pile of quilts and pillows arranged for his ease. He could hear the shortest two women of the family rustling around in the bedroom beyond in low-voiced preparation for bed, and then the creak of the bed frames as they settled down.

Dag disposed his throbbing arm awkwardly, grateful for the pillows. Save for the night on the Horsefords’ kitchen floor, he had never slept inside a farmer’s house, certainly not as an invited guest, though his patrols had sometimes been put up, by arrangement, in farmers’ barns. This beat a drafty hayloft with snow sifting in all hollow. Before he’d met Fawn’s family, he would scarcely have understood why she would want to leave such comforts.

He wasn’t sure if it was worse to be loved yet not valued than valued but not loved, but surely it was better to be both. For the first time, he began to think a farm’s brightest treasure need not be furtively stolen; it might be honestly won. But the hopes forming in his mind would have to wait on tomorrow for their testing.

The next morning passed quietly. To Fawn’s eye Dag looked tired, moved slowly, and said little, and she thought his arm was probably troubling him more than he let on. She found herself caught up, will or nil, in the never-ending rhythm of farm chores; cows took no holidays even for homecomings. She and Dag did take a walk around the place in the midmorning, and she pointed out the scenes and sites from her tales of childhood. But her guess about his arm was confirmed when, after lunch, he took some more of the pain powder that had helped him through yesterday’s long ride. He slipped out—wordlessly—to the front porch overlooking the river valley and sat leaning against the house wall, nursing the arm and thinking… whatever he was thinking about all this. Fawn found herself assigned to stirring apple butter in the kitchen, and while you are about it, dear, why don’t you make up some pies for supper?