Beguilement

by Lois McMaster Bujold

  “Have you ever?”

  “Not about that. Although all talks with Fairbolt tend to be memorable.” In the shadows, he scratched his nose and smiled, then leaned his head back and let his eyes rest on the mellow windows across the yard. The singing had stopped, and dance tunes had begun again; feet thumping on the floor made the whole building pulse like a drum.

  “Let’s see, what else? On warm summer nights, gathering firewood is always a popular activity.”

  Fawn considered this, and the amusement underlying his voice. “Should think that would be wanted on cold nights, more.”

  “Mm, but you see, on warm nights, no one complains if folks are gone for two hours and come back having forgotten the firewood. Bathing in the river, that’s another good one.”

  “In the dark?” said Fawn doubtfully.

  “In the river is even more the question. Especially when the season’s turned frosty. Walks, oh sure, that’s believable, when everyone’s been out slogging since dawn. Scouting around, too—that draws many selfless volunteers. Some dangerous squirrels out in those woods, they could mount an attack at any time. You can’t be too prepared.” A rumbling chuckle escaped his chest.

  “Oh,” said Fawn, finally understanding. Her lips curled up, if only for the rare sight of the laugh lines at the corners of his eyes.

  “Followed by the breakups and the makeups and the people not talking to each other, or worse, going over it all again till you’re ready to stuff your head in your blanket and scream for the listening to it. Ah, well.” He vented a tolerant sigh. “The older patrollers generally have things worked out smooth, but the younger ones can be downright restive. It’s not as though folks’ lives stop for patrol. Walking the patterns isn’t some emergency where you can drop everything, deal heroically, and then go home for good and all. It all starts again tomorrow at dawn. And you’ll have to get up and walk your share just the same.” He stretched, joints creaking a bit, as if in contemplation of such an early start.

  “It’s not that we’re all mad, you know, although sometimes it seems like it,” he went on in a lower voice. “Groundsense makes our moods very contagious. Not just by speech and gestures; it’s like it gets in the air.” His hand traced an upward spiral. “Now, for instance. Once a certain number of people open their grounds to each other, there starts to be… leakage. Bow-downs are really good for that. That building over there’s downright awash, right now. All sorts of things can start to seem like a good idea. Absent gods be thanked for the beer.”

  “The beer?”

  “Beer, I have concluded”—he held up an edifying finger, and Fawn began to realize that he was slightly drunk; people had kept the musicians well supplied with encouraging refreshment, earlier—“exists for the purpose of being blamed the next day. Very regrettable beverage, beer.”

  “Farmers use it for that, too,” Fawn observed.

  “A universal need.” He blinked. “I think I need some more.”

  “Are you thirsty?”

  “No.” He slumped down, staring at her sidelong. His eyes were dark pools in this light, like night condensed. The lanternlight made glimmering orange halos around his hair, and slid across his faintly sweat-sheened features like a caress. “Just considering the potential of regret…”

  He leaned toward her, and Fawn froze in hope so strong it felt like terror. Did he mean to kiss her? His breath was tinged with beer and exertion and Dag. Hers stopped altogether.

  Stillness. Heartbeats.

  “No,” he sighed. “No. Mari was right.” He sat up again. Fawn nearly burst into unfathomable tears. Nearly reached for him.

  No, you can’t. Daren’t. He’ll think you’re that… that awful word Sunny used. It burned in her memory like an infected gash, Slut. It was an ugly word that had somehow turned her into an ugly thing, like a splash of ink or blood or poison discoloring water. For Dag, I would be only beautiful. And tall. She wished herself taller. If she were taller, no one could call her names just for, for wanting so much.

  He sighed, smiled, rose. Gave her a hand up. They went back inside.

  In the entry hall Dag’s head turned, listening. “Good, someone’s using the tambourine. They can get along without me for what’s left of this.” Truly, the music coming through the archway seemed slower and sleepier. He made for the staircase.

  Fawn found her voice. “You going up?”

  “Yeah. It was good, but it’s been enough for one night. You?”

  “I’m a little tired, too.” She followed after him. What had happened, or not happened, out on the bench felt a lot like that moment on the road, some turn she had somehow missed.

  As they exited the staircase on the second floor, bumping and laughter echoed up behind them. Dirla and two young patrollers from Chato’s group burst out giggling, saluted Dag with cheerful hellos, and swung down the adjoining hallway. Fawn stopped and stared as they paused at Dirla’s door, for one fellow looped his arm around her neck and kissed her, but she was still holding the other’s hand to her… chest. Dirla—tall Dirla—extended one booted foot and pushed the door open, and they all fell through; it closed, cutting off some jest.

  “Dag,” Fawn said hesitantly, “what was that?”

  He cocked an amused eyebrow at her. “What did it look like to you?”

  “Is Dirla taking that… I mean, them… is she going to bed with those fellows?”

  “Seems likely.”

  Likely? If his groundsense did half what he said, he likely knew very well. “Both of them?”

  “Well, numbers are generally uneven, out on patrol. People make adjustments. Dirla is very… um… generous.”

  Fawn swallowed. “Oh.”

  She followed him up their hallway. Razi and Utau were just unlocking the door to their room; Utau looked, and smelled, distinctly the worse for beer, and Razi’s hair, escaping his long braid, hung plastered in sweaty strands across his forehead from the dancing. They both bade Dag a civil good night and disappeared within.

  “Well,” said Fawn, determined to be fair, “it’s too bad they weren’t lucky enough to find ladies, too. They’re too nice to be lonely.” She added after a suspicious glance upward, “Dag, why are you biting your wrist?”

  He cleared his throat. “Sometime when I am either a lot more sober or a lot more drunk, Spark, I shall attempt to explain the exceedingly complicated story of how those two came to both be married to the same accommodating woman back at Hickory Lake Camp. Let’s just say, they look out for each other.”

  “Lakewalker ladies can marry more than one fellow? At a time? You’re gulling me!”

  “Not normally, and no, I’m not. I said it was complicated.”

  They fetched up before his door. He gave her a slightly strained smile.

  “Well, I think Dirla is greedy,” Fawn decided. “Or else those fellows are awfully pushy.”

  “Ah, no. Among Lakewalkers of the civil sort, which you know we all are, the woman invites. The man accepts, or not, and let me tell you, saying no gracefully without giving offense is a burden. I guarantee, whatever is going on back there was her idea.”

  “Among farmers, that would be thought too forward. Only bad girls, or, or” stupid “foolish ones would, well. Good girls wait to be asked.” And even then they’re supposed to say no unless he comes with land in hand.

  He stretched his right arm out, supporting himself on the wall, half sheltering her. He stared down at her. After a long, long, thoughtful pause, he breathed, “Do they, now?” He scraped his teeth over his lower lip, the chip catching briefly. His eyes were lakes of darkness to fall into, going down for fathoms. “So, um, Spark… how many nights would you say we have wasted, here?”

  She turned her face upward, swallowed, and said tremulously, “Way too many?”

  They did not exactly fall into each other’s arms. It was more of a mutual lunge.

  He kicked his door open and kicked it closed again after them, because his arms were too full of her. Her feet did
not touch the floor, but that was not the only reason she felt as though she was flying. Half his kisses missed her mouth, but that was all right, almost any part of his skin sliding beneath her lips was joy. He set her down, reached for the door bar, and stopped himself, wheezing slightly. No, don’t stop now…

  His voice recaptured seriousness. “If you mean this, Spark, bar the door.”

  Not taking her eyes from his dear, bony, faintly frenzied face, she did so. The oak board fell into place in its brackets with a solid, satisfying clunk. It seemed a sufficient compromise of customs.

  His hand, reluctantly, slid from her shoulder and let her go just long enough for him to stride over and turn up the oil lamp on the table beside his bed. Dull orange glow became yellow flare within the glass chimney, filling the room with light and shadow. He sat rather abruptly on the edge of his bed, as if his knees had given way, and stared at her, holding out his hand. It was shaking. She climbed up into the circle of his arm, then folded her knees under her to raise her face to his again. His kisses slowed, as if tasting her lips, then, startlingly, tasting in truth, his tongue slipping inside her mouth. Odd, but nice, she decided, and earnestly tried to do it back. His hand wound in her hair, undid her ribbon, and let her curls fall down to her shoulders.

  How did people get rid of their clothes, at times like these? Sunny had merely lifted her skirts and shoved down her drawers; so had the malice, come to think.

  “Sh, now, what dark thought went past just now?” Dag chided. “Be here. With me.”

  “How did you know what I thought?” she said, trying not to be unnerved.

  “I don’t. I read grounds, not minds, Spark. Sometimes, all groundsense does is give you more to be confused about.” His hand hesitated on the top button of her dress. “May I?”

  “Please,” she said, relieved of a procedural worry. Of course Dag would know how to do this. She had only to watch and copy.

  He undid a few more fastenings, gently pulled down one sleeve, and kissed her bared shoulder. She gathered her courage and went after the buttons of his shirt. Mutual confidence established, things went faster after that, cloth tumbling to the floor over the side of the bed. The last thing he undid, after a hesitation and a glance at her from under his lashes, was his arm harness, unbuckling the straps around his lower arm and above his elbow, and setting it on the table. His hand rubbed the red marks left by the leather. For him, she realized dimly, it was a greater gesture of vulnerability and trust than removing his trousers had just been.

  “Light,” Dag muttered, hesitating. “Light? Farmers are supposed to like it dark, I’ve heard.”

  “Leave it on,” Fawn whispered, and he smiled and lay back. When all that height was laid out flat, it stretched a long way. His bed was not as narrow as hers in the next room, but still he filled it from corner to corner. She felt like an explorer facing a mountain range that crossed her whole horizon. “I want to look at you.”

  “I’m no rose, Spark.”

  “Maybe not. But you make my eyes happy.”

  The corners of his eyes crinkled up enchantingly at that, and she had to stretch up and kiss them. Skin slid on skin for the length of her body. His muscles were long and tapering, and the skin of his torso was unevenly tanned where his shirts had been on or off, paler still below his waist along his lean flank. A faint dusting of dark hair across his chest narrowed and thickened, going down in a vee below his belly. Her fingers twined in it, brushing with and against the grain. So, with his odd Lakewalker senses, what more of her did he touch?

  She swallowed, and dared to say, “You said you could tell.”

  “Hm?” His hand spiraled around her breast, and how could such a soft caress make it suddenly ache so sweetly?

  “The time of the month a woman can get a child, you said you could tell.” Or wait, no, was that only Lakewalker ladies? “A beautiful pattern in her ground, you said.” Yes, and she’d believed Sunny, hadn’t she, on a piece of bed lore that, if not a mean lie, had turned out to be a costly untruth, and Sunny’s tale had seemed a lot less unlikely than this. A shiver of unease, Am I being stupid again… ? was interrupted when Dag propped himself up on his left elbow and looked at her with a serious smile.

  His hand traced her belly, crossing the malice marks there that had turned to thin black scabs. “You’re not at risk tonight, Spark. But I should be right terrified to try to make love to you that way so soon after your injuries. You’re so dainty, and I’m, um, well, there are other things I’d very much like to show you.”

  She risked a peek down, but her eye caught on the parallel black lines beneath his beautiful hand, and a flash of sorrow and guilt shook her. Would she ever be able to lie down with anyone without these cascades of unwelcome memory washing through her? And then she wondered if Dag—with, it seemed, so many more accumulated memories—had a similar problem.

  “Sh,” he soothed, and his thumb crossed her lips, though she had not spoken. “Reach for lightness, bright Spark. You do not betray your sorrow to set it aside for an hour. It’ll be waiting patiently for you to pick it up again on the other side.”

  “How long?”

  “Time wears grief smooth like a river stone. The weight will always be there, but it’ll stop scraping you raw at the slightest touch. But you have to let the time flow by; you can’t rush it. We wear our hair knotted for a year for our losses, and it is not too long a while.”

  She reached up and ran her hand through his dark tousle, petting and winding it through her fingers. Gratified fingers. She gave a lock a little tug. “So what was this supposed to mean?”

  “Shaved for head lice?” he offered, breaking the bleakness as she giggled, no doubt his intent.

  “Go on, you did not either have head lice!”

  “Not lately. They’re another story, but I have better things to do with my lips right now…” He began kissing his way down her body, and she wondered what magic was in his tongue, not just for his kisses and how they seemed to lay trails of cool fire across her skin, but for how, with his words, he seemed to lift stones from her heart.

  Her breath caught as his tongue reached the tip of her breast and did exhilarating things there. Sunny had merely pinched her through her dress, and, and blight Sunny for haunting her head like this, now. Dag’s hand drifted up, his thumb caressing her forehead, then he sat up.

  “Roll over,” he murmured. “Let give you a back rub. Think I can bring your body and ground into better tune.”

  “Do you—if you want—”

  “I won’t say, trust me. I will say, try me,” he whispered into her curls. “Try me.”

  For a one-handed man, he did this awfully well, she thought muzzily a few minutes later, her face pressed into the pillow. Memory seemed to melt out of her brain altogether. The bed creaked as he moved off it briefly, and she opened one eye, don’t let him get away, but he returned in a moment. A slight gurgle, a cool splash pooling on the inward curve of her back, the scent of chamomile and clover…

  “Oh, you got some of that nice oil.” She thought a moment. “When?”

  “Seven days ago.”

  She muffled a snicker.

  “Hey, a patroller should be prepared for any emergency.”

  “Is this an emergency?”

  “Just give me a bit more time, Spark, and we’ll see… Besides, it’s good for my hand, which tends to get rough. You don’t want hangnails catching in tender places, trust me on that.”

  The oil did change the texture of his touch as he worked his way smoothly down to her toes, turned her over, and started back up.

  Hand. Soon supplemented with tongue, in very tender and surprising places indeed. His touch was like silk, there, there, there? ah! She jerked in surprise, but eased back. So, this was making love. It was all very nice, but it seemed a bit one-sided.

  “Shouldn’t it be your turn?” she asked anxiously.

  “Not yet,” he said, rather muffled. “ ‘M pretty happy where I am. And your ground is f
lowing almost right, now. Let me, let me just…”

  Minutes flew. Something was swirling through her, like some astonishingly sweet emergency. His touch grew firmer, swifter, surer. Her eyes closed, her breath came faster, and her spine began to arch. Then her breath caught, and she went rigid, silent, openmouthed, as the sensation burst from her, climbing up to white out her brain, to rush like a tide to her fingers and toes, and ebb.

  Her back eased, and she lay shaking and amazed. “Oh.” When she could, she raised her head and stared down over her body, strange new landscape that it had become. Dag was up on one elbow, watching her in return, eyes black and bright, with a grin on his face bordering on smug.

  “Better?” he inquired, as if he didn’t know.

  “Was that some… some Lakewalker magic?” No wonder folks tried to follow these people to the ends of the world.

  “Nope. That was Little Spark magic. All your own.”

  A hundred mysteries seemed to fly up and away like a flock of startled birds into the night. “No wonder people want to do this. It all makes much more sense now…”

  “Indeed.” He crawled up the bed to kiss her again. The taste of herself on his lips, mixed with the scent of chamomile and clover, was a little disturbing, but she valiantly kissed him back. Then brushed her lips across his enthralling cheekbones, his eyelids, definite chin, and back to his mouth, as she giggled helplessly. She could feel an answering rumble from deep in his chest as she lay across him.

  She had brushed against him, but she had not yet touched him. It was surely his turn now. Hands should work two ways. She sat up, blinking against dizziness.

  He stretched out straight and smiled up, his crinkling eyes now resting inquiringly on her, downright inviting, in an unhurried sort of way. He lay open to her, to her gaze, in a way that astonished her anew. All but his mysterious ground, of course. That was beginning to seem an unfair advantage. Where to begin, how to begin? She recalled how he had started.