He broke off; a tinge of color heated his cheeks. “Er…”

“Fawn, lend me your hands over here,” said Dag.

She nodded understanding, rose, licked her finger to pick up a couple of tiny fragments still left across the table, deposited them again in front of Dag, and gripped the cup and handle, fitting them back together. “Just like the bowl, huh?” Her dimple flashed at him, as if to say, You can do it.

“Uh-huh.” Dag shot Arkady a challenging glance, but the maker made no comment. Surfaces, eh? Dag closed his eyes, reached out till his hook clinked, and dropped down and in, finding the ground of the bowl, of the handle. Of the two interfaces. This fired clay had a rougher voice than the high chime of the glass bowl, a mumbling little growl.

The recent break still vibrated with the rupture, though the clay was far more inert than the ends of broken blood vessels that Dag had several times worked back together. But they still had a good catch. The two flakes rose through the air, seeking their slots. Catch. Catch. Finer and finer, catchcatchcatchcatch… And finer still…

“Good,” said Arkady. “Stop.”

Dag gulped and opened his eyes.

Gingerly, Fawn released the handle, which remained in place.

Even more gingerly, she grasped the handle and released the cup. The mending held. “It’s warm,” she reported, “but not near so hot as that bowl was, Dag. You could barely touch that bowl, even after it stopped glowing.” She peered more closely. “I can just see a line in the glaze.”

The two crumbs of stray clay were also back in place, faintly outlined.

“How do you feel?” Arkady asked Dag. His voice and gaze were both level.

“Not… bad,” said Dag, a little surprised. “Something’s taken out of me, sure, but I don’t feel dizzy or cold. And my lunch is staying put.”

This mending lacked the soaring exaltation and violent collapse of his prior ones, of the glass bowl or Hod’s knee or Chicory’s head; it was more like… interest and ease. Less exciting, to be sure. But less wearing, I do admit.

Arkady rose and returned with another wrinkled note. He sat, tore it in half, and shoved the pieces across to Dag once more. “Try again. Less hard.”

Dag nodded understanding and aligned the scraps. Fawn slipped back into her chair, still clutching the cup, and watched wide-eyed. In anticipation of another conflagration her hand crept toward the damp dishcloth she’d been using to wipe the table, but then returned bravely to her lap.

This time, Dag deliberately slowed himself down, drawing his ghost hand back until it was barely projecting. He took his time, easing along the rip, peering warily through his lashes for any untoward flash of flame. Finishing, he opened his eyes, staring down at the repaired paper. Good as… old.

“Strange…” he said. “In a way, this is harder than Hod’s knee. The body seems to cooperate with its own healing in ways that dead objects don’t.”

“Huh,” said Arkady. “You already know that, do you…?” Dag glanced up to catch an unblinking frown. Arkady went on, “Do that one more time. More gently still, if you can.”

Dag ripped the page in half himself this round, smoothed it, pulled it back together once more. Handed it to Arkady.

“Good,” said the maker simply. “Something of the same technique works to hold together skin, as well. Best to save it for tissues you can’t reach with a needle, however.”

“That… would be all of them, in my case,” Dag noted gently.

“Ah.” Caught out for the second time, the maker grimaced. “My apologies. Habit, I’m afraid. I’ll try to be more heedful.”

“I’m used to it,” said Dag.

Did Arkady wince? Hard to tell. But he only said, “That does bring up… Have you ever attempted a ground projection from your right hand? ”

Dag shook his head. “It came out from the left side all on its own, seemed like. I thought it was… well, I’m not just sure what I thought it was.”

Fawn said loyally, “To me, it didn’t seem any stranger than the rest of what you did.”

“Yes… it was you first guessed it was something I should have, that got delayed.” He smiled to remember just when she’d said it, too.

“Seems you were square on.”

She shrugged. “Stood to reason, I thought.”

“Try now,” said Arkady. “Right hand.”

Dag did; nothing happened. His ground on the right side remained firmly intertwined with the flesh that generated it, just as always.

“Did Dag mention,” said Fawn, “that at the time his ghost hand first came out, his right arm was busted? All tied up with splints in a sling. Though I had to keep making him put it back in the sling.”

Arkady sat back. “Really? ” It was more a noise of surprise than disbelief.

“That’s… interesting.” After a moment, and another glance at the hook, his brows drew down in puzzlement. “My word. How in the world did you manage everything? ”

“I had a little help,” said Dag.

“Who you callin’ little? ” Fawn breathed at him, dimpling deeply. He couldn’t help smiling back.

Arkady rubbed his brow and sighed.

Dag straightened self-consciously, clearing his throat. “Besides me bein’ so lopsided,” he said, “you talked about doing something to, ah, cleanse my dirty ground. What did you have in mind?” Or was the cure for contamination, like that for the aftereffects of groundsetting, to be simple, tedious self-regulation? Pace yourself could be pretty useless advice, in the midst of some pressing emergency.

“Well… I admit, I don’t know yet. You’re an odd collection of puzzles to turn up at my gate.”

“At first it seemed to me that my ground cleansed, or healed, or remade itself all by itself, over time. The way anyone absorbs a ground reinforcement-or the ground of their food, for that matter. Figured the problem was that I’d just taken in too much, too fast.”

“Both of those, certainly. Though one might argue that any farmer ground is too much.”

Anyone, or Arkady? Dag frowned at the evasive wording. “Except the ground I most choked on was pure Lakewalker.” Or, considering Crane, impure Lakewalker. “I actually found the ground of food strengthening. At least after I learned to limit myself to the life-ground of things like seed grains, instead of ripping right down to the matter.”

Fawn said, “Yeah, that mess you made of my pie didn’t sit too well, did it? Because it was cooked and dead, do you reckon? ”

“Maybe,” said Dag. “Which reminds me, I meant to try a live fish- minnow!” he corrected hastily at her dismayed look.

Arkady swallowed a noise of horror. “No! No! For the next several days-in fact, till I give you permission-don’t ground-rip anything! At least until I can get some sense of whether your disruptions are clearing on their own. Which reminds me…”

He rose and went to his shelves, returning with a quill, a bottle of ink, and what Dag now recognized as a medicine maker’s casebook.

He laid them all out, opened the book to a fresh page, dipped his quill, and scribbled. He glanced up and added in an abstracted tone, “Open yourself, please.” A couple more minutes passed while he jotted what Dag, squinting sideways, read as notes upon the present condition of his ground, although between the handwriting and the abbreviations he could hardly guess what Arkady thought it was. Arkady’s own strange bright-shadowed ground was equally unrevealing.

“There,” said Arkady, finishing. “I should have done this yesterday. It goes without saying that-no, I suppose it doesn’t. You are to do no ground-gifting till I tell you, either, understood? ”

“Sir? ” said Dag uncertainly. No medicine making at all? Observation could only go so far as a teaching method… It’s only the beginning, Dag chided himself. You’d think you were a sixteen-year-old on your first patrol again, stupid with daydreams of instant achievement. He couldn’t even argue, But now there’s the problem of Greenspring! since the problem of Greenspring had been sitting out there all his life, unnoticed. Yet all this attention to the particulars of his own ground, here in this quiet southern camp, seemed a long way from becoming help for the beleaguered north.