Legacy - Lois McMaster Bujold [27]
With his wet hair plastered to his forehead and his jaw set, Dag attempted to free his hook from the plunkin by grasping the round root under his sling-arm, which made his saddlebags in turn slide off his shoulder and land on his feet. He cursed.
“Here,” said Fawn in exasperation. “Let me.”
She dumped her own bags, wriggled the plunkin free of his hook, set it down, then turned to pluck the latchstring out of its slot and pull the door open. The shuttered cabin was dark, and she peered in doubtfully.
Dag bent down to hook futilely at his bootlaces. “Undo these for me, would you, Spark?” he muttered. “Dar doesn’t like his floor dirtied.”
She knocked the hook aside before he could snarl the laces into inextricable wet knots, undid first his, then hers, and set both pairs beside the door. She wiped her hands in aggravation on her riding trousers and followed him inside. He bent over a workbench; a welcome light flared from a good beeswax candle in a clay holder. He lit a second from the first, and with that and the faint gray light leaking through the shutters and from the door, she was finally able to see clearly.
The space was a bare dozen feet long by ten or so wide, lined with shelves and a couple of scarred but cleared-off workbenches. Stools of various heights made from upended logs, cut away beneath for legs and above for short backrests, were thrust under the benches. The space smelled of old wood and fresh wood, herbs and solvents, the honeyed warmth of the candles, oil, leather, and time. And under it all, something undefinable; she tried not to think, death.
Dag dragged their bags just inside the door, rolling the plunkin along after with his foot. He closed the door against the gusts. Minus the rattling of bones and clatter of ice and nuts on the roof, the threatening creak of the trees in the wind, the howling storm, the interminable day, the harrowing scene, or half scene, they’d just been through, and both their moods, it might have been almost cozy. As it was, Fawn would have burst into tears if she hadn’t been so close to just bursting.
“So,” she said tightly, “what happened to all your smooth Lakewalker persuadin’, back there?”
Dag sighed and stretched his back. “There were only two ways it could go, Spark. Slow and excruciating, or fast and excruciating. Like yanking a tooth, I prefer my pain to go fast.”
“You didn’t even give her a chance to say her piece!”
He cocked an eyebrow at her. “Fewest unforgivable things we had the time to say to each other the better, I’d say.”
“I didn’t get a chance to say my piece! I didn’t even get to try with her! I’m not saying I would have got anywhere either, but at least I’d have known I tried!”
“I know that trying. Spark, it would’ve near broke my heart to watch you turning yourself inside out with it. I couldn’t have stood it.”
He turned to attempt to undo their bedroll strings with his hook; after watching him for a frustrated moment, Fawn reached past and plucked the knots apart, helping him unroll their blankets across the floor. He sat down on his with a weary grunt. She sat down opposite, cross-legged, frowning up at him, and raked her hands through her damp distracted curls.
“Sometimes, once folks have a chance to vent, they’ll calm down and talk more reasonable.” Cumbia had already advanced as far as promoting Fawn from farmer whore to that girl just in the short time she’d been given, scarcely worse than the that fellow that was Dag’s common name in West Blue. Who knew where they might have ended up if they’d just kept at it a bit?
He shrugged. “She won. It’s done.”
“If she won, what was her prize?” Fawn demanded. “I don’t see how anyone won anything much, back there.”
“Look—I didn’t leave,