“What if it is strong?” Fawn asked in worry.

“Well…they say it’s a quick death. No chance to share, though.” Cattagus frowned sternly. “But, see here, girlie, don’t you go imagining things all night. Your boy’s alive, isn’t he now, eh?”

Fawn had trouble thinking of Dag as a boy, but the your part she clutched hard to her heart, her wrists crossed over her chest. Dag’s mine, yes. Not some blighting malice’s.

“Maybe it’s over,” said Sarri in a low voice. “I hope it’s over.”

“When would we know?” asked Fawn.

Cattagus shrugged his ropy shoulders. “From the middle of Raintree, good news could get here in three days. Bad news in two. Very bad news…well, we won’t worry about that. Ah, go back to bed, girlies!” He shook his head and set the example by ducking back inside, wheezing. Pointedly, Fawn thought.

Sarri shook her head in unwitting echo of her testy uncle, sighed deeply, and made her way back to her tent and her sleeping children. Fawn picked her way slowly back to little Tent Bluefield.

She dutifully lay down, but returning to sleep was beyond futile. After tossing for a time, she rose again and took out her drop spindle and a bundle of plunkin flax, and went out in the moonlight to clamber up on her favorite tall spinning-stump. At least she might have something to show for her night-restlessness. The tap of the gold beads flicking on her wrist as she spun was normally cheerful and soothing, but tonight felt more like fingers drumming. Flick, spin, shape.

She wished she could put spells for protection into her trouser cloth, the way a Lakewalker wife likely could. She could spin her thread strong, weave it tight, sew it soundly, double-stitched and secure. She could make with all her heart, but it would only give the ordinary expected armoring of cloth on skin. Not enough. Flick, spin, shape.

Three days till any news, huh. I don’t like this waiting part. Not one bit. The helpless anxiety was worse than she’d expected it to be, and she felt pushed off-balance. No more do Sarri or Cattagus like it, either, that’s plain enough, but you don’t catch them carrying on about it, do you? Her own unease wasn’t special just for being new to her. She felt she suddenly had more insight into Lakewalker moodiness. Her assurances to Dag before he’d ridden off seemed in retrospect unduly blithe and—well, if not stupid, a word he’d tried to forbid her, certainly ignorant. I’m learning now. Again. Flick, spin, shape.

If Dag died on patrol—her eyes went to her wrist cord, still alive, yes, it was a safely theoretical thought. She could dare to think it. If something happened to him out there, what would become of me? Despite Hickory Lake’s fascinations, without Dag she knew she had no roots here. While these Lakewalkers seemed unlikely to cast her out naked, she had no doubt Fairbolt would whisk her back to West Blue in two shakes of a lamb’s tail, likely with a patroller to make sure she arrived. Seemed like his idea of responsible. But she had no roots in West Blue now either; she’d cut them off, if not without a pang, without compunction. Twice. Cutting them a third time wasn’t a task she wished to face. If she couldn’t stay here, and she wouldn’t go back…

It was a measure, perhaps, of what this sometimes-horrendous year had done for her that she found this thought curiously undaunting. There was Glassforge. There was Silver Shoals, beyond on the Grace River, an even finer town by Dag’s descriptions. There was a world of possibility for an un—grass widow with determination and her wits held close about her. She was practical. She knew how to walk down strange roads, now. She’d come this far. She didn’t have to cling to Dag like a drowning woman clutching the only branch in the torrent.

Everybody, it seemed, wanted Dag for something. Fairbolt Crow wanted him for a patroller. His mother wanted him to demonstrate the high value of her bloodline, maybe, to prove her worth through his. His brother Dar wanted him to not make a fuss or be a distraction—to stay quiet, safe inside the rules, ignorable. Fawn wasn’t sure but what she should add herself into that tally, because she certainly wanted Dag for the father of her children someday, except Dag seemed to be thinking along those lines himself, so maybe that one was mutual and didn’t count. Didn’t anyone want Dag just for Dag? Without justification, like a milkweed or a water lily or, or…a summer night with fireflies.

Because later, in some very dry places, the memory of that hour was enough for going on with.

She had to stop spinning then, because she couldn’t see through the silver light blurring in her eyes. She dashed her hand against her hot eyelids to clear her vision. Twice. Then just let the tears run down, sitting bent to her knees with her wrist cord pressed to her forehead. It took a long time to make her breathing stop hitching.

My heart’s prize my best friend my true consolation…what trouble have you gone and found this time?

Her arm was still throbbing, though more faintly. Alive, yes, but…she might be just a farmer girl, without a speck of groundsense in her body, she might be any one of a hundred kinds of fool. She might be ignorant of a thousand Lakewalkerish things, but of this she was increasingly certain. This is not good. This is something very wrong.

The insides of his eyelids were red. Not black. There was light out there somewhere, warm dawn or warm fire. His curiosity as to which was not enough to make him drag open the heavy weights his lids had become.

He remembered panicked voices, and thinking he should get up and fix the cause, whatever it was. He should. Someone had been shouting about Utau, and Razi—of course it would be Razi—trying to match grounds. Mari’s voice, sharp and scared, Try to get in! Blight it, I’m not losing our captain after all that! Fairbolt was here? When had that happened? Someone else, I can’t! His ground’s too tight! and later, Can’t, oh gods that hurts! And, So if it does that to you, what do you figure it’s doing to him? — Mari’s tart voice at its least sympathetic; Dag felt for her victim, whoever he was. More gasping, I can’t, I can’t, I’m sorry… The panicked voices had faded then, and Dag had been glad. Maybe they would all go away and leave him be. I’m so tired…

He breathed, twitched; his gluey eyes opened on their own. Half-dead tree branches laced the paling blue of a new dawn. On one side, orange flames crackled up from a roaring campfire, deliciously warm. Dawn and fire both, ah, that solved the mystery. On his other side, Mari’s face wavered into view between him and the sky.

Her dry voice spoke: “’Bout time you reported for duty again, patroller.”

He tried to move his lips.

Her hand pressed his brow. “That was a joke, Dag. You just lie there.” Her hand went to his, under blankets it seemed. “Finally warming up, too. Good.”

He swallowed and found his lost voice. “How many?”

“Eh?”

“How many died? Last night?” Assuming the malice kill was last night. He had mislaid days before, under unpleasantly similar conditions.

“Now you’ve seen fit to grace us with your gloomy face again—none.”

That couldn’t be right. Saun, what of Saun, left with the horses? Dag pictured the youth attacked in the dark by mud-men, alone, bloodied, overwhelmed…“Saun!”

“Here, Captain.” Saun’s anxiously smiling face loomed over Mari’s shoulder.

That must have been a dream or a hallucination. Or this was. Did he get to pick which? He drew breath enough to get out, “What’s happened?”

“Dirla took the malice—” Mari began.

“I got that far. Saw you drop your knife to her.” Mari’s son’s bone. He managed to moisten his lips. “Didn’t think you’d ever let that out of your hand.”

“Aye, well, I remembered your tale of how you and the little farmer girl got the Glassforge malice. Dirla was closer, and the malice was intent on Utau. I saw the chance and took it.”