Legacy - Lois McMaster Bujold [88]
He was still staring when Saun knelt to undo one boot, and Dirla the other. It was surely a measure of…something, that he let them.
“Can I bring you anything to eat? Drink?” asked Dirla.
Dag shook his head. While riding he had gnawed down a number of leathery strips of dried plunkin, on the theory that he might so dispose of two tedious chores at the same time. He wasn’t hungry. He wasn’t anything.
Saun set his boots aside and squinted out into the afternoon light upon the silent, wasted marsh. “How long do you suppose till this place recovers? Centuries?”
“It looks bad now,” said Dag, “but the malice was only here a few days, and the blight’s not deep. Decades at most. Maybe not in my life, but in yours, I’d say.”
Saun’s eyes pinched, and he traded an unreadable look with Dirla. “Can I get—do you want anything at all, Captain?”
I want Spark. A mistake to allow himself the thought, because it bloomed instantly into a near-physical ache. In his heart, yes—as if there were any part of him not hurting already. Instead, he said, “Why am I captain all at once, here? You call me Dag, I call you Hey, you, boy. It’s always worked before.”
Saun grinned sheepishly, but didn’t answer. He and Dirla scrambled up; Dag was asleep before the pair left the grove.
Fawn, who hadn’t been able to fall to sleep till nearly dawn, woke in the midmorning feeling as though she had been beaten with sticks. Mint tea and plunkin did little to revive her. She turned to her next hand task, weaving string from her spun plunkin flax to make wicks for a batch of beeswax candles Sarri was planning. An hour into it her eyes were blurring, and the throbbing in her left hand and arm was a maddening distraction that matched the throbbing in her head. Was it her heartbeat or Dag’s that kept the time? At least his heart’s still beating. She set down her work, walked up the road to where the path to Dar’s bone shack led off, and stood in doubt.
Dag’s his brother. Dar has to care. Fawn considered this proposition in light of her own brothers. No matter how furious she might be with them, would she drop her gripe if they were hurt and needed help? Yes. Because that’s what family was all about, in her experience. They pulled together in a crisis; it was just too bad about the rest of the time. She set her shoulders and walked down the path into the green shade.
She hesitated again at the edge of the sun-dappled glade. If she was truly parading about ground-naked, as Cumbia accused, Dar must know she was here. Voices carried around the corner of the shack. He wasn’t, then, deep in concentration upon some necromantic spell. She continued around to find Dar sitting on the top porch step with an older woman dressed in the usual summer shift, her hair in a knot. Dar was holding a sharing knife. He drew a peeved breath and looked up, reluctantly acknowledging Fawn.
Fawn clenched her left wrist protectively to her breast. “Mornin’, Dar. I had a question for you.”
Dar grunted and rose; the woman, with a curious glance at Fawn, rose too.
“So what is it?” Dar asked.
“It’s kind of private. I can come back.”
“We were just finishing. Wait, then.” He turned to the woman and hefted the knife. “I can deconsecrate this in the afternoon. Do you want to come back tonight?”
“Could. Or tomorrow morning.”
“I have another binding tomorrow morning.”
“I’ll make it tonight, then. After supper?”
“That would do.”
The woman nodded briskly and started away, then paused by Fawn, looking her up and down. Her brows rose. “So you’re the famous farmer bride, eh?”
Fawn, unable to figure her tone, gave a safe