Passage - Lois McMaster Bujold [24]
“It’s been a long day,” Fawn seconded. “Dag’s still recovering, you know.” Dag smiled at her from lidded eyes that looked anything but sleepy, dark and a bit glittery, and she dimpled back at him.
“Oh, yeah,” said Whit vaguely. “And you weren’t doing too well yourself, earlier. Tomorrow, then.” He contented himself with going off to visit the horses and maybe chat with the hotel stable’s horse boys.
Fawn and Dag went straight to bed, but not to sleep. Where Fawn made the astonishing and delightful discovery that Dag’s ghost hand was starting to come back, at least enough to do a few blissful, blushful things with. Fawn’s opinion of the medicine maker who had predicted such a recovery went up several notches. They did hear Whit come in, mainly because he knocked on the wall and bade them good night. Fawn smothered a giggle as Dag raised his head and drawled back similar good wishes—very blandly, considering his position just then.
The next morning after breakfast the three of them strolled to the town center, where a street off the market square led down to the little river that flowed past Glassforge toward the Grace. Tributary creeks behind dams fed several mill wheels, though at the moment the dry weather, a boon to harvesters and road travelers all over Oleana, had left the water so low in the main stream that only lightly loaded skiffs and narrow boats could take away the handiwork of the town’s artisans. The autumn air was acrid from the wood smoke and coal smoke rising from a forge, a couple of iron furnaces, a wagon-wright’s, a big smithy, a pottery yard, and, of course, the town’s celebrated glass-makers.
At one of these, as Fawn had hoped, they found Sassa Clay, one of her best friends from the summer’s misadventures with the malice. Red-haired Sassa seemed equally delighted to see them, and pleased to meet Whit. He had a refreshing masculine disinterest in marriage customs of any kind, but was very keen on glass and local trade, proudly leading a tour of his glassworks for the new audience. Sassa was not much older than Whit, and the two young men hit it off so well Fawn had no guilt about leaving them to each other’s company after lunch and retiring with Dag back to the hotel for—he said—a nap. It wasn’t a lie; she was sure a nap would ensue eventually.
She became concerned when Whit did not show up at the hotel for dinner, but Dag sensibly pointed out that Sassa knew perfectly well how to find them here if there were any emergencies to report, and Fawn relaxed. She wondered if she might parlay their two planned nights of rest here into three, but Dag was of the opinion that the dry spell couldn’t last much longer, and truly, the night’s chill breathed of the coming change.
Whit returned so late, they were actually sleeping. Fawn woke muzzily in the dark to hear him clumping around on attempted tiptoe, and the creak of his bed as he climbed into it. She cuddled back into the warmth of Dag’s grip, reassured.
She was less reassured when she went out to the stable in the frosty dawn to tell the horse boys to have Warp and Weft ready after breakfast—Dag would saddle Copperhead himself—only to find the team gone. And so, she discovered when she checked his room, was Whit. She muffled her panic when she spotted his saddlebags still in a heap by his bed. Descending the staircase wondering whether to drag out Dag and his groundsense for a search, she met Whit breezing back in through the hotel’s stable-yard door.
“Where have you been?” demanded Fawn in some exasperation.
“Where are the horses?”
“Sold ’em,” said Whit smugly.
“What? We still have two days of riding ahead of us!”
“I know that. I’ve made arrangements.” At her look of disbelief, he added in a stung tone, “I sold Warp and Weft to Sassa’s boss. He gave