Legacy - Lois McMaster Bujold [80]
The two women followed his stare uneasily.
“Look, now,” he said, as if in persuasion, “if Utau, Razi, Mari, and Dag are all still alive, the company can’t be in that much trouble. Because you know that bunch’d find the manure pile first.”
Sarri blew out her breath in not quite a laugh, accepting the thin reassurance as much, Fawn guessed, for his sake as her own.
“’Specially Dag,” Cattagus added under his breath. “You wonder what Fairbolt thought he was about, to put…”
“Cattagus.” Fawn took a deep breath and thrust out her arm. “My cord feels funny. Can you figure out anything from it?”
His gray brows rose. “Not likely.” But he took her wrist gently in his hand anyway. His lips moved briefly as if in surprise, but then schooled away a scowl to some more guarded line. “Well, he’s alive. There’s that. Can’t have got himself ground-ripped if he’s alive.”
More Lakewalker secrets no one had bothered to mention? “What’s ground-ripped?”
Cattagus exchanged a look with Sarri, but before Fawn could grit her teeth in frustration, relented, and said, “Same as what that malice down in Glassforge did to your childie, I take it. ’Cept Lakewalkers-grown can resist, close their grounds against it. If the malice is a sessile, or is not too strong yet.”
“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