Legacy - Lois McMaster Bujold [13]
First Dag, and then Fawn, had to repeat the tale for Fairbolt, each in their own words. They touched but lightly on how Dag had come upon Fawn, kidnapped off the road by bandits in the thrall of the malice. How he’d tracked her to the malice’s cave. And come—Dag bit his lip—just too late to stop the monster from ripping the ground of her two-months-child from her womb. Fawn did not volunteer, nor did Fairbolt ask, how she came to be alone, pregnant—and unwed—on the road in the first place; perhaps Mari, who’d had the tale from Fawn back in Glassforge, had given him the gist.
Fairbolt’s attention and questions grew keener when they described the mix-up with Dag’s malice-killing sharing knives. How Dag, going down under the malice’s guard of mud-men, had tossed the knife pouch to Fawn, how she’d stuck the monster first with the wrong, unprimed knife, then with the right one, shattering it in its use. How the terrifying creature had dissolved, leaving the first knife so strangely charged with the mortality of Fawn’s unborn daughter.
By the time they were half-through, Mari had pulled up a chair, and Dag leaned against the table. Fawn found she preferred to stand, though she had to lock her knees against an unwelcome trembling. Fairbolt did not, to Fawn’s relief, inquire into the messy aftermath of that fight; his interest seemed to end with the mortal knives.
“You are planning to show this to Dar,” Fairbolt said when they’d finished, nodding to the knife still in his lap; from his tone Fawn wasn’t sure if this was query or command.
“Yes.”
“Let me know what he says.” He hesitated. “Assuming the other matter doesn’t affect his judgment?” He jerked his head toward Dag’s left arm.
“I have no idea what Dar will think of my marriage”—Dag’s tone seemed to add, nor do I care, but he didn’t say it aloud—“but I would expect him to speak straight on his craft, regardless. If I have doubts after, I can always seek another opinion. There are half a dozen knife makers around this lake.”
“Of lesser skill,” said Fairbolt, watching him closely.
“That’s why I’m going to Dar first. Or at all.”
Fairbolt started to hand the knife back to Dag but, at Dag’s gesture, returned it to Fawn. She put the cord back over her head and hid the sheath away again between her breasts.
Fairbolt, almost eye to eye with her, watched this coolly. “That knife doesn’t make you some sort of honorary Lakewalker, you know, girl.”
Dag frowned. But before he could say anything, Fawn, despite the heat flushing through her, replied calmly, “I know that, sir.” She leaned in toward him, and deepened her voice. “I’m a farmer girl and proud of it, and if that’s good enough for Dag, the rest of you can go jump in your lake. Just so you know this thing I have slung around my neck wasn’t an honorary death.” She nodded curtly and stood straight.
A little to her surprise, he did not grow offended, merely thoughtful, if that was what rubbing his lips that way signified. He stood up with a grunt that reminded her of a tired Dag, and strode across the room to the far side of the fireplace.
Covering the whole surface between the chimney stone and the outer wall and nearly floor to ceiling was a panel made of some very soft wood. It was painted with a large grid pattern, each marked with a place name. Fawn realized, looking at the names she recognized, that it was a sort of map, if lines on a map could be pulled about and squared off, of parts of the hinterland—all the parts, she suspected. To the left-hand side was a separate column of squares, labeled Two Bridge Island, Heron Island, Beaver Sigh, Bearsford, and Sick List. And, above them all, a smaller circle in red paint labeled Missing.
About a third of the squares had hard wooden pegs stuck in them. Most of them were in groups of sixteen to twenty-five, and Fawn realized she was looking at patrols—some squares were full of little holes as though they might have been lately emptied. Each peg had a name inked onto the side in tiny, meticulous writing, and a number on its end.