Passage - Lois McMaster Bujold [56]
Tension leaked from the trio, infecting Dag. He couldn’t decide between a belligerent What’s this all about? or a cool So, what can I do for you? He tilted his head instead. “Dag Bluefield.”
Their return stares remained dubious.
Amma Osprey drew breath. “First off, I want to get down to the bottom of those rumors flying around Pearl Bend. Is it true you healed some Glassforge wagon-man’s broken leg, couple of days back?”
Dag hesitated, then said, “Yes. I was obliged. It was my horse kicked him.”
The medicine maker put in anxiously, “Was it really groundwork, or just a bonesetting?”
For answer, Dag held up his hook. But not his ghost hand, tightly furled with the rest of his ground. “I don’t do many two-handed chores.”
“Ah. I suppose not,” said the medicine maker. “Sorry. Did the wagon-men realize what you were doing?”
“Yes. I didn’t make a secret of it.” He’d just about made it a show, in fact.
Amma hissed through her teeth and muttered, “Blight it.”
Various premature defenses sprang to Dag’s mind, fighting with a desire to demand of the medicine maker everything he knew about beguilement. He settled more cautiously on, “Why do you ask?”
Verel Owlet straightened, laying his injured hand on his left knee. “The first I heard about your stunt was when some farmer fellow from Pearl Bend—I think he’s a carpenter by trade—turned up at my tent this morning insisting I come see his sick wife. When I told him Lakewalkers could only heal other Lakewalkers, he started babbling about the wagon-men’s story, which was evidently being passed around the tavern down there last night. First he begged, then he offered money, then he drew a knife on me and tried to force me to walk to the Bend. Some of the off-duty patrollers were able to jump us and take the knife away from him, and escort him to the crossroads. He went back down the road crying and swearing.”
Verel wasn’t just shaken by the knife attack, Dag guessed, but also by his distraught attacker. Medicine makers tended to be sensitive, given their need to be open to their patients. How sick had that carpenter’s wife been? A picture of a deathly ill Fawn rose unbidden in Dag’s head, and he thought, I’d have done a lot worse than pull a knife on you. “But it’s not true.”
“What’s not true?” said Nicie.
“It’s not true that Lakewalkers can’t do groundwork on farmers.”
“It’s what we tell ’em around here,” said Amma impatiently. “Absent gods, man, use your head. All we have is one good medicine maker and two apprentices, barely enough for our own.”
“Not even enough,” muttered Verel.
“We’ll sell the farmers what remedies we make and can spare, yes,” Amma continued. “But they would drain poor Verel dry, if they knew. And then they would keep coming, and scenes like this morning would be the least of our troubles.”
“They’d never understand groundwork,” said Verel. “What it costs us, what it lays us open to.”
“Not if they’re never taught, no,” said Dag dryly. “Funny, that.”
Amma eyed him sharply. “It’s all fine for you; you’ll be moving on at the next rise. We have to stay here and deal every day with these people.”
Verel was frowning at Dag with fresh speculation. “Your partner Saun said you were unusually strong in groundwork. For a patroller, I mean.”
Ye gods, yes, the medicine maker here would certainly have treated and talked with the convalescent Saun last spring, and Reela as well. “I did what I could with what I had. Patrol healing can get pretty rough-and-ready.” Granted, since Dag’s ghost hand had emerged, he’d seemed to have…more. Whether it was new-grown strength, or just new access to strength long crippled, even Hickory Lake’s medicine maker, the remarkable Hoharie, had been unable to say.
Verel hadn’t mentioned inadvertent beguilement as a reason not to do groundwork on farmers. Did he even know about it, if he’d never healed