Legacy - Lois McMaster Bujold [11]
Fawn smiled brightly, clutched her hands together making sure her left wrist showed, and gave a polite dip of her knees. “How de’, ma’am.”
Massape just stared, her lower lip drawn in over her teeth. “You…” She held up a finger for a long, uncertain moment, drawling out the word, then swung and pointed past the room’s fireplace, central to the inner wall, to a door beyond. “See Fairbolt.”
Dag returned her a dry nod and shepherded Fawn to the door, opening it for her. From the room beyond, Fawn heard Mari’s voice saying, “If he’s stuck to his route, he should be somewhere along the line here.”
A man’s rumbling tones answered: “If he’d stuck to his route, would he be three weeks overdue? You haven’t got a line, there, you’ve got a huge circle, and the edges run off the blighted map.”
“If you’ve no one else to spare, I’ll go.”
“You just got back. Cattagus would have words with me till he ran out of breath and turned blue, and then you’d be mad. Look, we’ll put out the call to every patroller who leaves camp to keep groundsense and both eyes peeled…”
Both patrollers, Fawn realized, must have their groundsenses locked down tight in the heat of their argument not to be flying to the door by now. No—she glanced at Dag’s stony face—all three. She grabbed Dag by the belt and pushed him through ahead of her, peeking cautiously around him.
This room was a mirror to the first, at least as far as the shelving packed to the ceiling went. A plank table in the middle, its several chairs kicked back to the wall, seemed to be spread with maps. A thickset man was standing with his arms crossed, a frown on his furrowed face. Iron-colored hair was drawn back from his retreating hairline into a single plait down his back; he wore patroller-style trousers and shirt but no leather vest. Only one knife hung from his belt, but Fawn noticed a long, unstrung bow propped against the cold fireplace, together with a quiver of arrows.
Mari, similarly clad, had her back to the door and was leaning over the table pointing at something. The man glanced up, and his gray brows climbed toward what was left of his hairline. His leathery lips twisted in a half grin. “Got that coin, Mari?”
She looked up at him, exasperation in the set of her neck. “What coin?”
“The one you said we’d flip to see who got to skin him first.”
Mari, taking in his expression, wheeled. “Dag! You…! Finally! Where have you been?” Her eyes, raking him up and down, caught as usual first on the sling. “Ye gods.”
Dag offered a short, apologetic nod, seemingly split between both officers. “I was a bit delayed.” He motioned with his sling by way of indicating reasonable causes. “Sorry for the worry.”
“I left you in Glassforge pretty near four weeks ago!” said Mari. “You were supposed to go straight home! Shouldn’t have taken you more than a week at most!”
“No,” Dag said in a tone of judicious correction, “I told you we’d be stopping off at the Bluefield farm on the way, to put them at ease about Fawn, here. I admit that took longer than I’d planned. Though once the arm was busted there seemed no rush, as I figured I wouldn’t be able to patrol again for nigh on six weeks anyway.”
Fairbolt scowled at this dodgy argument. “Mari said that if your luck was good, you’d come to your senses and dump the farmer girl back on her family, but if it ran to your usual form, they’d beat you to death and hide the body. Did her kin bust your bone?”
“If I’d been her kin, I’d have broken more of them,” Mari muttered. “You still got all your parts, boy?”
Dag’s smile thinned. “I had a run-in with a sneak thief in Lumpton Market, actually. Got our gear back, for the price of the arm. My visit to West Blue went very pleasantly.”
Fawn decided not to offer any adjustment to this bald-faced assertion. She didn’t quite like the way the patrollers—all three of them—kept looking right at her and talking right over her, but they were on Dag’s land here; she waited for guidance, or at least a hint. Though