Passage

by Lois McMaster Bujold

The keeler boss, at least, looked as though he knew what this entailed, and his lips went round in an unvoiced whistle.

  “The infection spread too fast for even the maker’s best ground reinforcements to stop it, and he died about three days on. Funny thing was, when his gut busted, his pain actually eased for a while, since the pressure went down. I guess it fooled him into thinking he was getting better, till it was too late.”

  The carpenter’s voice went hushed. “Is Cress’s belly going to bust inside like that, then?”

  “It hasn’t yet,” said Dag. “This is a right dangerous sickness. But the groundwork to fix it isn’t really that deep. There’s a host of belly-ills no medicine maker born can cure, especially in women, but this…” He let out his breath. “I can try, leastways.” He nudged Fawn. “Spark, would you take off my arm harness, please?”

  Dag could manage that himself, but having Fawn do it directed their spectators’ eyes to her, the patroller’s farmer bride. Purposely? She unbuckled the straps and drew off the wooden cuff and the fine cotton sock beneath that she’d lately knitted for Dag to stop the cuff rubbing up blisters, and set them aside. The presence or absence of the arm harness made no difference to Dag’s ghost hand as far as she knew, but she supposed Dag thought it would alarm the carpenter less not to have that wicked hook waving over his wife’s belly.

  “What I can do—what I can try to do…” Dag looked up and around, and Fawn suspected only she realized how much uncertainty and fear his stern face was masking. “First I want to wrap a ground reinforcement around the swelling. Most of you don’t know what ground is, but anyway, you won’t see anything. Then I want to try and pry that swollen end open so’s the pocket will drain back into the gut the way it’s supposed to. That part I think may hurt, but then it ought to ease. There’s a danger. Two dangers. Look at me, you husband, sister.” His voice softened, “Cress.” He smiled down at her; her pain-pinched eyes widened a trifle. When he was sure he had their attention, he continued, “That little pocket’s stretched really tight right now. There’s a chance it’ll bust while I’m trying to drain it. But I think it’s like to bust anyway pretty soon. Do you still want me to try this?”

  They looked at each other; the sick woman squeezed her husband’s hand, and he wet his lips and nodded.

  “There’s another hitch. For later. Subtler.” Dag swallowed hard. “Sometimes, when Lakewalkers do deep groundwork on farmers, the farmers end up beguiled. It’s not on purpose, but it’s part of why the Lakewalkers here won’t treat you. Now, I’ll be gone on the rise. There’s a good chance that a touch of beguilement would do no worse to Cress than leave her sad for something she can never have, which can happen to a person whether they’re beguiled or not. So, I don’t know if you’re a stupid-jealous sort of fellow, Mark-carpenter, or more sensible. But if that mood should come on her, later, it’d be your husband-job to help her ease it, not to harry her about it. Do you understand?”

  The carpenter shook his head no, then yes, then puffed out his breath in confusion. “Are you saying my Cress would run off? Leave me, leave her baby?” He stared wildly across at Fawn. “Is that what you did?”

  Fawn shook her head vigorously, making her black curls bounce. “Dag and I killed a blight bogle together. That’s how we met.” She thought of adding, I’m not beguiled, just in love, then wondered how you could demonstrate the difference. Cress’s breath was coming in shallow pants; Fawn caught up her other hand and squeezed it. “She wouldn’t run off lessn’ you drove her.”

  The carpenter gulped. “Do it, Lakewalker. Whatever you’re going to do. Help her, make the hurting stop!”

  Dag nodded, leaned forward, and placed his spread right hand over the apparent gap of his left atop the woman’s lower belly. His face got that no-look-at-all Fawn had witnessed while he’d been healing Hod, as if he had no attention to spare for animating it. Absent in a very real sense. He paused; his merely expressionless expression returned.

  “Oh,” breathed Cress. “That eases me…”

  Fawn wondered if anyone else was thinking of the man who’d been fooled, uncertain if this was the ground reinforcement working or a sudden disaster. Could Dag hope to be gone on the rise before a soaring fever made the difference apparent?

  “That was the ground reinforcement,” said Dag. His brief grimace was meant to be a reassuring smile, Fawn guessed. “It needs a few minutes to set in.”

  “Magic?” whispered the carpenter hopefully.

  “It’s not magic. It’s groundwork. It’s…” Dag looked up for the first time at the ring of faces looking down at him: the two boat bosses, another curious keeler who might be Wain’s right-hand man, a worried Pearl Bend couple who could be relatives or relatives-in-law; behind them, Whit and Hod and Hawthorn. “Huh.” He set his hand on the deck and levered himself to his feet. Fawn scrambled up with him. He turned slowly, looking at the restive crowd still milling on the shore, craning their necks and muttering. Bending, he murmured to Fawn, “You know, Spark, it’s just dawned on me that I got a captive audience, here.”

  She whispered back, “I figured they were just fixing to beat you to a pulp and then set the pulp on fire.”

  His grin flitted past. “Then I’ll have their full attention while they’re waiting their chance, won’t I? Better ’n six cats at one mouse hole.”

  He stepped to the bow in front of the chicken coop. A wide wave of his left arm invited the folks on the foredeck to attend to him, and ended catching Fawn around the waist and hoisting her up to stand on a step-rail beside him, a head higher than usual. He left his stump hidden behind her back, but raised his hand in a temple-touch, half-greeting, half-salute, and began loudly, “Did you all out there hear what I just told Mark-carpenter and Cress? No? I explained that I just set a ground reinforcement around the infection in Cress’s gut. Now, I reckon most of you don’t know what a ground reinforcement is, nor ground neither, so I’m going to tell you…”

  And then, to Fawn’s astonishment, he went off into much the same explanation of ground and groundwork that he had practiced so haltingly around the dinner table in West Blue. Only this time, it wasn’t nearly so halting: smoother, more logically connected, with all the details and comparisons that had seemed to work best for his dubious Bluefield in-laws. His talk was in what Fawn thought of as his patroller-captain voice, pitched to carry.

  Whit came up behind her shoulder, wide-eyed, and whispered in her ear, “Are they following all this?”

  She whispered back, “I’m guessing one in three are smart or sober enough. That makes a good half-dozen, by my reckoning.” But the crowd of keelers and townsmen had all stopped muttering and rustling amongst themselves, and the folks leaning on the nearby boat rails looked as entertained as if Dag were a stump speaker.

  To Fawn’s greater astonishment, when Dag finished with groundwork and malice blight, he glanced over his shoulder and went right on with sharing knives. And then the silence grew as rapt as if folks were listening to a ghost story. “Which was why,” Dag finished, “when that fool patroller boy broke his bone knife in the fight up behind the landing the other night, all those Pearl Riffle Lakewalkers acted like someone had murdered his grandmother. Because that’s pretty near just what happened. That’s why they’ve all been so blighted touchy with you lately, see…”

  And, Fawn thought, at least some of the men listening did seem to see. Or at least, they nodded wisely and murmured canny comments, or parted their lips in wonder, round-mouthed and silent.

  “Some of you may be wondering why no Lakewalker has told you these things before. The answer is standing beside you, or maybe it’s in your own hand. You say you’re afraid of us, our sorcery and our secrets. Well, we’re mortal afraid of you, too. Of your numbers, and of your misunderstandings. Ask poor Verel, the camp medicine maker, if he’d dare to go near a farmer again soon. The reasons Lakewalkers don’t explain things to you as we should aren’t our fault alone.”

  A number of the men clutching c
udgels looked at one another and lowered them discreetly to their sides, or even behind their backs. One shamefaced townsman dropped his altogether, glanced to either side, and folded his arms somewhat defiantly.

  Dag drew a long breath, letting his gaze pass over the crowd; each fellow whose eyes he met rose a bit on his toes, so that a ripple passed along them in response, as though Dag had run his hand through the still water of a horse trough. “Now, Mark-carpenter here asked if groundwork was magic, and I told him no. Ground is part of the world, and groundwork works best running with the grain of the world and not against it. Like the difference between splitting a log or cutting it crossways. And it isn’t miracle either, at least no more than planting corn is a miracle, which it kind of is, really. Farmer puts four kernels in the ground, and hopes one will sprout, or two will let him break even, or three will let him get ahead, and if it ever came up all four, he’d likely call it a miracle. Groundwork doesn’t make miracles any oftener than planting, but some days, we do break even.”

  Dag glanced again over his shoulder. “Now, if you folks will excuse me, I have some groundwork to try. And if you all are the hoping sort, you can hope with me that tonight I can break even.”

  He finished with his old self-deprecating head-duck and salute, and turned back to his waiting—patient, Fawn decided. He’s sure not fooling now.

  “Absent gods,” he breathed to Fawn’s ear alone. “If there’s any rules left to bust, I can’t think of ’em.”

  “Flyin’, patroller?” she breathed back. That had been Aunt Nattie’s shrewd description of Dag the night he’d mended that glass bowl so gloriously, surprising himself even more than he’d surprised the Bluefields.

  His lips tweaked up in shared memory, but then his gaze grew grave again. He went back to Cress’s side and lowered himself, folding his long legs awkwardly. Hitching his shoulders, he leaned forward and went absent again.

  Just as quick as that: here, then gone…there, wherever there was. Fawn made mental inventory as she settled again in her place beside him. There was a pot of hot water still on the hearth, blankets just inside the cabin.

  A whimper from Cress became a stuttering groan. Fawn grabbed her hand and held it hard as it tried to jerk defensively toward her belly. Fawn was afraid to touch Dag lest she spoil his concentration, but the color draining from his skin made her think he was chilling down awfully fast. The night air was growing raw despite the torches and lanterns held up by their spellbound audience.

  The minutes crept by, but in not nearly so many as it had taken for Hod’s knee, Dag sat up and blew out his breath. He stretched his shoulders, rubbed his face. Cress had stopped crying and was staring up at him with her lips parted in awe.

  “I’ve done what I can for now. The pocket drained well and the swelling’s eased.” Dag’s brow wrinkled. “I think…maybe Cress and her sister and Mark had best stay the night here on the boat. That infection’s still pretty warm, could do with another ground reinforcement in the morning. A Lakewalker who’d had gut work, they’d give him boiled water with a little sugar and salt in it to drink, and then maybe tea, but nothing else for a couple of days. Rests up your sore innards while they heal, see. Wrap her up warm by the fire tonight, too.”

  “But I didn’t see you do nothing,” said Boss Wain, in a tentative voice that contrasted remarkably to his earlier bellowing.

  “You can take my word or leave it, for all of me,” Dag told him. He glanced down at Cress, and the ghost of a smile tugged his lips. “If you’d been a Lakewalker, you’d have seen plenty.”

  He was shivering. Fawn said firmly, “It’s time to get you inside and warmed up, too, maker mine. I think you might do with some of that hot tea inside you.”

  He bent his head to smile at her, then held her tight with his left arm and swooped in for a long, hard kiss. His lips were cold as clay, but his eyes were bright as fire. Clay and fire makes a kiln, Fawn thought woozily. What new thing are we shaping here?

  Despite all the excitement, their exhaustion assured that the boat’s visitors were asleep on hides and furs in front of the hearth almost as soon as they’d been tucked in. Dag fell into the bedroll in their curtained retreat as if bludgeoned, and was soon snoring into Fawn’s fluttering curls. In the morning, after tea, Dag laid one more ground reinforcement in Cress, then sent the couple and their supporters on their way. Bleary, hungover keelers in the gray mist of dawn were much less threatening than drunken, wound-up keelers by torchlight, though to their credit, they repeated their good deed with the door in the opposite direction without audible complaint.

  As soon as the much-reduced parade was out of sight, Dag told Fawn, “Pack up a picnic lunch, Spark. We’re going for a ride.”

  “But it looks to be a nasty, chilly day,” Fawn pointed out, bewildered at this sudden scheme.

  “Then bring lots of blankets.” Dag lowered his voice. “The Pearl Riffle Lakewalkers made it real clear yesterday that they didn’t favor me rocking their boat. I think I just turned it turtle. I expect Captain Osprey will hear all about it by breakfast at the latest. I don’t know if you ever saw Massape Crow in a real bad mood, but Amma puts me horribly in mind of her. By the time she makes it across on the ferry, I aim to be elsewhere.”

  And at Fawn’s protest, added only, “I’ll explain as we ride.” He went off to saddle Copperhead.

  With Fawn perched on the saddlebags and her arms tight around his waist, Dag sent Copperhead cantering south for a good two miles down the straight road, which was exhilarating but blocked conversation. Despite the double burden, the horse seemed more than willing to stretch his legs after his days of idleness. It wasn’t till Dag turned left and began a winding climb up into the wooded hills designed to thwart trackers that he explained about his fruitless first visit to the Lakewalker camp, and how the tavern gossip and its dangerous aftermath with the medicine maker had drawn yesterday’s hard-eyed delegations down on him. Fawn grew hotly indignant on his behalf, but he only shook his head.

  The gray fog did not burn off as the sun climbed, but rather, thickened. Fawn’s stomach was growling when Dag spotted a huge old tulip tree fallen with its roots in the air, sheltering a scooped-out depression blown full of dry leaves. With their blankets atop and below, they soon arranged a hidey-hole as cozy as a fox’s den, and settled down to share a late, cold breakfast—Dag declined to light a fire, lest the smoke betray their refuge. His burst of energy departed him as abruptly as it had seemed to come on, and he fell into a drained doze. Happily, he woke sufficiently refreshed after a few hours to while away the leaden afternoon in the best slow lovemaking they’d had for weeks. The mist outside turned to drizzle, but did not penetrate their nest. After, they curled up around each other, Fawn thought, like hibernating squirrels.

  Dag woke from another doze with a laugh on his lips. It was the most joyful sound she’d heard from him in a long time. She rolled up on one elbow and poked him. “What?”

  He pulled her to him and kissed her smile. “I really saved that woman’s life!”

  “What, hadn’t you noticed?” She kissed his smile back. “Like this medicine making, do you? I think it suits you.” She added after a moment, “I’m right proud of you, you know.”

  His smile faded into seriousness. “My people are full of warnings about this sort of thing. It’s not that they think it can’t be done, and it’s not the beguilement problem—they hardly mentioned that. It’s that farmers think it’s magic, and that magic should always work perfectly. I won Hod, and I won Cress, but only because I was lucky that she had something I was pretty sure I could get around. I can think of half a dozen illnesses I couldn’t have touched.”

  She curled his chest hair around one finger and set her lips to the hollow at the base of his throat. “What would you have done then?”

  “Not started, I suppose. Been a good boy just as Captain Osprey wanted. Watched that poor woman die.” His brows knotted in thought. “Some young medicine makers get very troubled when the
y first lose patients, but I’m surely past that. Absent gods help me, I used to kill people on purpose. But the greatest danger Lakewalkers fear is that if they try to help and fail, the farmers will turn on them. Because they have, you know. I’m not the first to be tempted down this road. And I don’t know how to handle it. Heal and run? Amma’s complaint wasn’t made-up.”

  “Or maybe,” Fawn said slowly, “if you stayed in one place for a long time, folks would get to know and trust you. And then it would be safe to fail, sometimes.”

  “Safe to fail.” He tasted the phrase. “There’s a strange idea, to a patroller.” He added after a long moment, “It’s never safe to fail hunting malices. Someone has to succeed, every time. And not even at any cost, because you have to have enough left afterward to succeed tomorrow, too.”

  “It’s a good system,” agreed Fawn, “for malices. Not so sure about it as a system for people.”

  “Hm.” He rolled over and stared at the tiny pricks of light coming through the holes in their blanket-tent, held up by the ragged roots. “You do have a way of stirring up the silt in my brain, Spark.”

  “You saying I cloud your thinking?”

  “Or that you get to the bottom of things that haven’t been disturbed in far too long.”

  Fawn grinned. “Now, who’s going to be the first one to say something rude and silly about the bottom of things?”

  “I was always a volunteerin’ sort of fellow,” Dag murmured, and kissed his way down her bare body. And then there was some very nice rudeness indeed, and giggling, and tickling, and another hour went away.

  They arrived back at the Fetch well after dark in a cold drizzle that the boat folk plainly thought a great disappointment, inadequate to the purpose of putting anything bigger than a barrel over the Riffle. Whit reported four visits from tight-lipped Lakewalkers looking for Dag, two from the camp captain, one from the ferry boss, and one from the furtive medicine maker, which Dag said he regretted missing. Dag plainly was keeping his groundsense pricked, Fawn thought from his jumpy mood, but as no one else came by and the night drew on, he relaxed again.