Lois Bujold - Passage

By unspoken agreement, the topic was tabled as Whit waved and they waded out within earshot of the males again. Fawn wondered if Whit had heard yet about the bed boat. She couldn’t help thinking he’d be even more curious than she was. And he had money in his pocket, just now. She resolved not to mention it in front of him. Then she wondered if Lakewalker men from the camp ever snuck down there. Dag might know. And if she asked him straight out, he would likely tell her straight out, though she bet he wouldn’t bring up the subject.

She emptied Whit’s sack onto their coal pile as Berry emptied Bo’s and Hawthorn’s; Berry waded back out in the water to toss them again to the fellows. Whit grinned thanks through purple-blue lips. The shade was already creeping over this patch of bank as the sun sank, and Fawn rubbed her chilly legs together, wondering how long Berry and Bo meant to go on. Dag straightened up and turned his head; he bent one knee and lurched up to a seat on the stump. Fawn followed his gaze.

Coming down the track along the bank were three older Lakewalkers: two women and a man. One woman was dressed like a patroller, the other wore a woolen skirt and buckskin slippers decorated with dyed porcupine quills, and the man was tidy in a simple shirt and trousers, with hair in a very neat queue tied down his back, undecorated. His braid wasn’t shot with gray like the others’, but his face was not young. His left hand was bandaged. They all wore matching frowns.

They came to a halt in front of Dag. The patroller-looking woman said, “Dag Red-Blue whatever you are, we need a word with you.”

Dag opened his hand to indicate welcome to his patch of grass and tree roots.

As Berry came to Fawn’s side to stare, the patroller woman glanced at them both and jerked her head over her shoulder. “In private.”

Dag’s eyelids lowered, opened. “Very well.” He heaved to his feet. “I’ll be back in a bit, Spark, or I’ll find you at the Fetch.”

All the Lakewalker looks dismissed Berry and focused on Fawn, especially her left wrist. She wrapped her right hand around her wedding cord and lifted her chin. She expected Dag to introduce her, but he didn’t, merely giving her a touch to his temple in farewell, and a nod something between grave and grim. Did he know what this was all about? If he did, he sure hadn’t told her. He’d said nothing about his visit to the camp when he’d caught up with her yesterday, and in the flurry of news about the boat, Fawn hadn’t asked. She’d assumed he simply hadn’t found the friends he’d been looking for. Plainly, there was more to it. Fawn watched in concern as Dag trod up the river path after the frowning Lakewalkers.

With his groundsense locked down, Dag could not read the moods of the three Pearl Riffle Lakewalkers directly, but he hardly needed to. Amma Osprey and Nicie Sandwillow were plainly not happy, even more not-happy than when he’d left them yesterday. The man seemed shaken, his right hand protecting the bandaged left held to his chest. He bore no tool bag, but his cleanliness and bearing bespoke his craft.

Captain Osprey turned aside and climbed the bank through the trees till they were out of sight and earshot of anyone happening along the path. The three took seats on a fallen cottonwood trunk, and Amma waved Dag to a place on a recently cut oak stump opposite. As he sank down, her wave continued to the new man, whom she introduced laconically: “Verel Owlet. Pearl Riffle’s medicine maker.”

Tension leaked from the trio, infecting Dag. He couldn’t decide between a belligerent What’s this all about? or a cool So, what can I do for you? He tilted his head instead. “Dag Bluefield.”

Their return stares remained dubious.

Amma Osprey drew breath. “First off, I want to get down to the bottom of those rumors flying around Pearl Bend. Is it true you healed some Glassforge wagon-man’s broken leg, couple of days back?”

Dag hesitated, then said, “Yes. I was obliged. It was my horse kicked him.”

The medicine maker put in anxiously, “Was it really groundwork, or just a bonesetting?”

For answer, Dag held up his hook. But not his ghost hand, tightly furled with the rest of his ground. “I don’t do many two-handed chores.”

“Ah. I suppose not,” said the medicine maker. “Sorry. Did the wagon-men realize what you were doing?”

“Yes. I didn’t make a secret of it.” He’d just about made it a show, in fact.

Amma hissed through her teeth and muttered, “Blight it.”

Various premature defenses sprang to Dag’s mind, fighting with a desire to demand of the medicine maker everything he knew about beguilement. He settled more cautiously on, “Why do you ask?”

Verel Owlet straightened, laying his injured hand on his left knee. “The first I heard about your stunt was when some farmer fellow from Pearl Bend—I think he’s a carpenter by trade—turned up at my tent this morning insisting I come see his sick wife. When I told him Lakewalkers could only heal other Lakewalkers, he started babbling about the wagon-men’s story, which was evidently being passed around the tavern down there last night. First he begged, then he offered money, then he drew a knife on me and tried to force me to walk to the Bend. Some of the off-duty patrollers were able to jump us and take the knife away from him, and escort him to the crossroads. He went back down the road crying and swearing.”

Verel wasn’t just shaken by the knife attack, Dag guessed, but also by his distraught attacker. Medicine makers tended to be sensitive, given their need to be open to their patients. How sick had that carpenter’s wife been? A picture of a deathly ill Fawn rose unbidden in Dag’s head, and he thought, I’d have done a lot worse than pull a knife on you. “But it’s not true.”

“What’s not true?” said Nicie.

“It’s not true that Lakewalkers can’t do groundwork on farmers.”

“It’s what we tell ’em around here,” said Amma impatiently. “Absent gods, man, use your head. All we have is one good medicine maker and two apprentices, barely enough for our own.”

“Not even enough,” muttered Verel.

“We’ll sell the farmers what remedies we make and can spare, yes,” Amma continued. “But they would drain poor Verel dry, if they knew. And then they would keep coming, and scenes like this morning would be the least of our troubles.”

“They’d never understand groundwork,” said Verel. “What it costs us, what it lays us open to.”

“Not if they’re never taught, no,” said Dag dryly. “Funny, that.”

Amma eyed him sharply. “It’s all fine for you; you’ll be moving on at the next rise. We have to stay here and deal every day with these people.”

Verel was frowning at Dag with fresh speculation. “Your partner Saun said you were unusually strong in groundwork. For a patroller, I mean.”

Ye gods, yes, the medicine maker here would certainly have treated and talked with the convalescent Saun last spring, and Reela as well. “I did what I could with what I had. Patrol healing can get pretty rough-and-ready.” Granted, since Dag’s ghost hand had emerged, he’d seemed to have…more. Whether it was new-grown strength, or just new access to strength long crippled, even Hickory Lake’s medicine maker, the remarkable Hoharie, had been unable to say.

Verel hadn’t mentioned inadvertent beguilement as a reason not to do groundwork on farmers. Did he even know about it, if he’d never healed anyone but Lakewalkers? Was Dag’s effect on Hod something unique? Dag suddenly wondered if Amma knew that Hod hadn’t gone home with the other wagon-men. It seemed not, since she didn’t ask after him.

Nicie Sandwillow rubbed her lined face in a weary gesture. “Just what all have you been telling these farmers and flatties, Dag?”