Passage - Lois McMaster Bujold [3]
Papa and Fletch clumped in from wherever they’d been working—with the sheep, from the smell—when the greetings were all still at the babbling stage. Plump Clover, announcing that the food wouldn’t wait, sent Fawn and Dag off to put down their bags and wash up. She hurried to set extra places, and wouldn’t let Fawn help serve—“Sit, sit! You two must be tired from all that ridin’. You’re a guest now, Fawn!” Aren’t you? her worried eyes added silently. Fletch looked as if he were wondering the same thing, though he greeted his sister and her unlikely husband affably enough.
They sat eight around the long kitchen table, filled with the variety and abundance of farm fare that Fawn had always taken for granted but that still seemed to take Dag aback; having seen the austerity of life in a Lakewalker camp, Fawn now understood why. Dag certainly did not disapprove, praising the cooks and filling his plate in a way that demonstrated the ultimate compliment of a good appetite.
Fawn was glad for his returning appetite, worn thin as he’d been by this past summer’s gruesome campaign. And he’d been pretty lean to start with. With his height, coppery skin, striking bony face, tousled dark hair, and strange metallic-gold eyes, Dag looked as out of place at a table full of farmers as a heron chick set down in a hen’s nest, even without the faint air of menace and danger from his missing hand and the enigmatic fact of his being a Lakewalker sorcerer. Or Lakewalker necromancer as the bigoted—or frightened—would have it. Not without cause, she admitted to herself.
Fletch, possibly in response to the penetrating looks he was getting from his bride, was the first to ask the question, “I’m surprised to see you two back so soon. You’re not, um…planning to stay, are you?”
Fawn chose to ignore the wary tone. “Just a visit. We’re traveling through. Though I admit, it would be good to rest up for a few days.”
“Oh, of course you can,” cried Clover, brightening with relief.
“That’ll be a treat. I’d love to hear all about your new place.” She added in an arch voice, “So do you two have any good news yet?”
“Beg pardon?” said Dag blankly.
Fawn, who decoded this without effort as Aren’t you pregnant yet?, returned the correct response: “No, not yet. How about you and Fletch?”
Clover smirked, touching her belly. “Well, it’s early days yet. But we’re sure tryin’. Our betrothal ran so long, what with one thing and another, there seemed no reason not to start a family right away.”
Fletch gave his bride a fond, possessive smile, as a farmer might regard his prize broodmare, and Clover looked smug. Fawn didn’t always hit it off with Clover, but she had to admit that the girl was the perfect wife for stodgy Fletch, even without her dowry of a forty-acre field and large woodlot, linked to Bluefield land by a quite short footpath. Fletch put in, “We hope for news by winter, anyhow.”
Fawn glanced at Dag. Despite the unhealed damage to his ground-sense, at this range he would surely know if Clover were pregnant already. He gave Fawn a wry smile and a short headshake. Fawn touched the malice scars on her neck, darkening now to carmine, and thought, Leave it be.
Mama asked, in a more cautious tone, “So…how did things go with your new people at Hickory Lake, Fawn? With your new family?”
Dag’s family. After a perhaps too-revealing hesitation, Fawn chose, “Mixed.”
Dag glanced down at her and swallowed, not only to clear his mouth of his last bite, but said plainly enough: “Truth to tell, not well, ma’am. But that’s not why we’re on this road.”
Nattie said anxiously, “Those Lakewalker wedding cords we made up—didn’t they work?”
“They worked just fine, Aunt Nattie,” Dag assured her. He glanced up and down the table. “I should likely explain to the rest of you something that only Nattie knew when Fawn and I were wed here. Our binding strings”—he touched the dark braid above his left elbow and nodded to Fawn’s, wrapping her left wrist—“aren’t just fancy cords. Lakewalkers weave