Lois Bujold - Sharing Knife 4 Horizon

“We told her Whit had shot the malice, but I don’t know as she really believed us. She rode around and looked at the wings, anyway. Never got down off her horse. Then she was gone at a gallop before Vio even got to ask about Owlet.”

Neeta started to speak, but, at Dag’s upflung hand, fell silent. Her eyes pinched. Did she see what was coming? Dag was afraid so.

Dag said, “Did she know you were about to bury Fawn? ”

“Oh, sure,” said Finch. “That is… we didn’t talk about it, but it was all laid out there, the corpses and the grave half dug and all. I wouldn’t think you could miss it.”

Ash gave a slow blink, and started to open his mouth. Dag cut in: “Thanks, boys. That’ll be all.”

The two wandered upstream toward the wagons, looking curiously over their shoulders.

Dag scowled across at Neeta.

She raised her chin. “She looked dead! Ground-ripped, I figured. How was I to know those shields of yours would do such a crazy thing? And anyway, I had my ground veiled on account of the malice blight.”

Dag said slowly, “It’s your word alone as to whether you were open or closed. I can’t prove you’re lying. You can’t prove you’re telling the truth.” Can you, Neeta?

Red spots flared in Neeta’s fair cheeks: indignant, or scared? “Well, I like that!”

“She could open now,” said Remo doubtfully.

Dag and Neeta traded a long, long stare. His heartbeats felt hot, and too far apart. Odd. He’d thought his world would be tinged with red by this point, but it was just blue and distant. “No,” said Dag at last. “I think not. Unveiled, I could kill her with a thought, you know. Just like I did Crane. It’d be almost as easy as murder by silence.”

A ripple of dismay ran through Remo and Tavia, a flinch from Sumac, but no one spoke. Or dared speak?

Neeta’s gaze fell, slid away. It was all the answer Dag needed. Or wanted, really. And you thought this was your duty, old patroller, why?

Wearily, he ran his hand over his face, rubbing at the numbness. “Go home, Neeta. Patrol there. You owe New Moon for your raising, and Luthlia for your training. You’ll be a long time paying that debt back. At the end of your lifetime, share if you will. Just don’t come north. The north does not need you.”

Remo stared at her in bleak doubt.

“It’s not fair!” she began, then clamped her jaw shut. Right. Best advice for someone at the bottom of a deep, deep hole: stop digging. Apt turn of phrase, that. Well, he’d never thought the girl was stupid.

“What about me? ” said Tavia. She had gone very pale, staring at her partner.

Sumac stirred on her tree bole. “I’d recommend you to Fairbolt Crow at Hickory Lake, if you want to take a turn exchanging north. My word with Fairbolt is pretty good coin. I’ll be speaking for Rase as well, you can bet-I expect he’ll be all recovered by the time I get him up there. His recent malice experiences are going to make him very much in demand, I can tell you. Yours, too.”

Tavia looked at the ground, looked narrowly at Neeta, who stirred uncomfortably but said nothing. Tavia finally replied, “I think I’ll report in at home, first. Be sure the story is told straight. Make my good-byes properly. But I’ll take you up on your good word after that, if the offer holds.”

“It holds.”

“Tell Rase I’ll be along come fall, then.”

Sumac nodded.

Rase? thought Dag. So much for poor Barr’s hopes. Well, Barr was resilient. Remo looked downcast, again. Blight, that boy can’t win for losing.

Both were so very young…

“And you, Remo? Which way you ridin’, tomorrow? ” asked Sumac.

Remo let out a long breath. He did not look at Neeta anymore.

“North,” he said.

No one spoke on the short walk back to camp.

–-

In the morning, when they’d finally wrestled the wagons back down the creek bed and onto the Trace, two silent riders turned south. Arkady had lent Tavia a horse, also lading her with a long list of his possessions to bring back with her when she returned. Dag didn’t know what all Sumac had confided to Arkady last night, but he was formidably chilly to Neeta in parting. Tavia turned once in her saddle to wave farewell, a gesture earnestly returned by Rase. Neeta, her back rigid, did not look around.

–-

To Fawn’s joy, Blackwater Mills harbored a hotel almost as fine as the one in Glassforge, if smaller. Better still, it had a spanking new bathhouse.

She gladly pried open their purse for a room-as, after one look at the bathhouse, did Arkady. Doubling up with Sumac for frugality, no doubt.

As for Fawn, she looked forward to a few days of eating food someone else had fixed, and no squinting in the cook smoke. The swelling in Dag’s foot had gone down in the four days of travel since they’d left the burned-over valley, but its color-colors-were even uglier. They both could use some time in a real bed, she reckoned. All to themselves.

The town held sadness, too, for this was a place of parting. It lay on a barely navigable tributary of the Grace River, but more importantly it was where the Tripoint Trace crossed the old straight road that cut up toward Pearl Riffle, with its Lakewalker ferry and camp. Sage, Calla, and Indigo would point their wagon east up the Trace; the rest of them would take the northern way, from which in turn sprouted the back road that led to Clearcreek.

The Basswoods stopped abruptly short, when Vio dug in her heels and declared she’d had enough and wouldn’t go one more step. Well, in this busy place Grouse would have no trouble finding day labor, likely more successful for him now he was cured of his recurrent bog ague, and, really, Fawn expected the couple would do better with town life than with the demands of homesteading. Selling their rickety wagon and a pair of their mules would give them enough to start out on. She grinned, though, to overhear the phrase Our Lakewalkers fall from Grouse’s lips when he was explaining their adventures to the hotel horseboys.

She would miss Plum, who had somehow ended up under her wing, and she rather thought Dag would miss Owlet. He seemed vastly amused by his grubby Little Brother of the mud-bat adventure, and Owlet seemed to return the compliment. Though she suspected Dag used his groundsense to cheat-unless it was his arm rig that so enthralled the child, who had developed a passion for buckles. Well, I’ll just give Dag a toddler or two of his own, and he’ll do fine. Could she really object when the cheating would be on her side?

But the most important thing that happened in their stopover in Blackwater Mills, almost as good as a bow-down in Fawn’s view, was when a patrol that had come from a neighboring camp to reinforce the Laurel Gap folks-though they’d arrived after the fight was over-rode miles out of their way home to catch up with Dag and Arkady to have the tale firsthand. They seemed a little taken aback to get it mostly from Fawn and Whit and Berry, complete with a display of the sharing-bolt shards and crossbow. But their captain, as shorthanded as every other patrol leader, was highly interested in the notion of farmer help that couldn’t be mind-slaved by a malice, even if the farmers did no more than hold the horses. Dag tried to make it very clear that his walnut shields weren’t quite perfected yet, but the captain left with a gleam in his eye nonetheless, after making sure of the directions to where Dag and Arkady planned to roost.

–-

Later that night, Fawn rolled over on clean sheets atop a yielding feather mattress and snuggled up to Dag. The bedside lamp cast a gentle glow over their quiet room. Slow spring rain sounded through the real glass windows, open just enough for a cool breeze to stir the cloth curtains.