“And, ah…” Arkady said, “the other kind of why? ”

What gave Dag the right, does he mean? Fawn wondered.

Dag regarded him steadily back. “I needed a knife. I hate walking bare.”

A little silence fell, all around the table.

“You know, Dag,” said Fawn slowly, “we’ve spent since last spring being knocked from pillar to post so bad it’s a wonder we’ve had time to breathe. But when you lay it all out in a row like this… don’t you see a kind of pattern to things? ”

“No,” said Dag.

She looked up at Arkady. “Do you, sir? ”

She thought his face said yes, but he pushed back his chair instead of answering. He said, “You folks look as though you all slept in a ditch last night.”

“Pretty near,” Fawn admitted. Infested with scary swamp lizards, at that.

“I’d think you’d all enjoy a hot bath, then,” said Arkady.

This won blank looks from all three patrollers. Fawn, appalled by a vision of heating pots and pots of water on the hearth, said hastily, “Oh, we couldn’t put you to so much trouble, sir!”

“It’s no trouble. I’ll show you.”

A little… smugly? Arkady led them outside and down some stairs from the lakeside porch to an area of flagged pavement. At the far side was a remarkable setup: a shower bucket with a pull rope on a post, made private by a cloth-hung screen, and a big barrel, its bottom lined with copper, over a fire pit. Coals still glowed underneath.

“You can take the path down to the lake to get more water, all you want”-Arkady pointed to a pair of buckets on a yoke-“and heat it in the barrel. More wood’s in the stack behind those forsythia bushes. Put the hot water in the shower bucket, soap up and rinse down, soak in the barrel after. Take your time. I need to go talk with some folks, but I’ll be back in a while.” He paused and studied Dag. “Er… do you shave? ”

“Now and then,” said Dag dryly.

“Now, then.”

Arkady went back in, popped out a few moments later with a stack of towels and a new cake of soap, and disappeared again, this time for good. Fawn stared after him, bewildered by this turn, though not ungrateful.

“Do we stink that bad? ” asked Remo, sniffing his shirt. Barr was too busy delightedly examining the mechanism of the shower to answer.

“We aren’t too pretty, compared to Arkady,” Fawn allowed.

“And this keeps us occupied here for as long as he wants to talk to… folks. How many folks, I wonder? ” said Dag, sounding less impressed.

Oh. Of course. Fawn’s gratitude faded in new worry. How many people in the camp had more authority than this groundsetter, that he needed to consult them? It answered Dag’s question, if in an unsettling fashion: not many.

But Dag assisted Fawn to take the first turn, and then took one himself with apparent enjoyment. She thought Barr very gallant to volunteer for the last turn, till he refused to come out again. Granted, soaking in the barrel, which steamed in the chill air, was blissful. He was still pickling in there when Arkady returned, to find the rest of them dressed and clustered around the hearth drying their hair. Dag’s system was to run a towel over his head once, but Remo fussed more over his than Fawn did over hers.

Arkady put his hands on his hips and looked Dag over. “Better,” he allowed. “I can’t have you following me around the camp looking like some starveling vagabond, after all.”

“Am I to do so? ” asked Dag warily. “Why? ”

“It’s how apprenticing is done, normally.”

Fawn almost whooped with joy, but Dag merely rubbed his newshaved chin. “I take your offer kindly, sir, but I’m not sure how long we can stay. My work is up north, not down here.” He glanced at Fawn.

Arkady answered the question beneath the question. “You can all stay here at my place for the moment. Including your farmer bride, though it’s asked that she not wander around the camp unescorted.”

Fawn nodded glad acceptance of the rule, though Dag frowned a trifle, which made Fawn wonder belatedly, Asked by who?

“You’ll just be watching and listening at first, you understand,” said Arkady, “at least till I can figure out some way to cleanse your dirty ground. If I can.”

Dag flicked an eyebrow upward. “I’m good at listenin’. So am I to be your apprentice-or your patient? ”

“A bit of both,” Arkady admitted. “You asked-no, she asked,” he corrected under his breath, “if I saw a pattern in your tale. I did. I saw a man coming late and abruptly into groundsetter powers, totally unsupervised, making the wildest mess of himself.”

“You know, sir, you don’t sound too approving, but my two top notions were that I was going mad, or that I was turning into a malice. I like your version better.”

Arkady snorted. “Normally, the development you’ve experienced would have unfolded over five or six years, not five or six months. Naturally you found it confusing. And-how old are you? Mid-fifties? ”

Dag nodded.

“Well, your talent’s around fifteen years late showing, to boot. I don’t know what you were doing all that time-”

“Patrolling,” said Dag briefly.

“Or why it’s all released now,” Arkady continued.

Dag smiled across at Fawn.

“Do you think your farmer girl has something to do with it? ” demanded Arkady. “I admit, I don’t see how.”

Dag’s smile deepened. “My tent-brother Whit, who I grant has a mouth on him that’s going to get his teeth busted one of these days, once said he didn’t know if I was robbin’ cradles or if Fawn was robbin’ graves. I think it was the second. I’d pretty much lain down in mine just waiting for someone to come along and throw the dirt in on top. Instead, she came along and yanked me out of it. I will say, sir, it was a lot more restful than what I’ve been doing since, but it was pinching narrow. I don’t hanker to go back in.”

Fawn’s heart lifted.

Arkady just shook his head. He turned toward the door, took two steps, then turned back. “Oh, Dag?” He held up both his hands.

Fawn saw it only by reflection, but well enough at that; Barr and Remo looked startled and impressed and Dag-Dag’s face lit right up.

Arkady has ghost hands, too!

“We’ll have to see what we can do about your little asymmetry problem, later,” said Arkady. “Among other things.” He jerked his chin at Remo. “Come along, patroller boy. I’ll show you where to take your horses.”

Dag’s apprenticeship began sooner than he or, he guessed, even Arkady expected. They were all at the table finishing breakfast from a basket sent to sustain the enlarged household-bread, plunkin, and hard-boiled eggs, with more tea-when after the briefest knock at the door, a breathless boy burst in and blurted, “Maker Arkady, sir! Maker Challa says to tell you they’re bringing in a hurt patroller, an’ if you would be pleased to step ’round.”

“Very well,” said Arkady calmly. “Tell her I’ll be right along.”

The boy nodded and departed as abruptly as he’d arrived.

Arkady swallowed his tea. Dag said uneasily, “Shouldn’t we go at once? ”

“If the patroller’s condition were that dire, I doubt he’d have lived to arrive,” said Arkady. “You have time to finish your drink.” He set down his mug, rose without haste, and added, “For the real emergencies, Challa rings a big bell she has up on a post in front of the medicine tent. Two rings and three. All the makers’ tents are within earshot, one direction or another. Then, we run.”

Now, evidently, they strolled. Dag gave Fawn a hug good-bye, nodded thanks at her whisper of “Good luck!,” shrugged on his jacket, and followed Arkady out. The morning was not young; weary from their thirty-mile trudge, Barr, Remo, and Fawn had all slept in, although even so they were up before their host. Dag had wakened at first light, with all of the uncertainties that had chased one another around in his head last night ready for more laps.