Fawn wasn’t at all sure how to take the skeptical lift of Arkady’s brows, but his tension eased; he accepted Dag’s assurance with a nod.

The maker opened his mouth as if to add something, but then apparently thought better of it, taking a belated bite of his dinner instead.

–-

It wasn’t till they were settling down in their bedroll, laid out in the spare room at the house’s farthest end, that Fawn found the chance to ask more.

“So what was all that about Missus Arkady? Missus Maker Arkady, I guess. For a horrible minute I thought Arkady was going to tell us she’d been murdered by farmers, but seemingly not.”

Dag sighed and folded her in close to him. “I had the tale from Challa a few days back. Seems Arkady and his wife worked together happily in the medicine tent here for years and years. They were partners, as well as spouses, close as close. But they had some of the same problems that Utau and Sarri had.”

“No children?” A sorrow that the Hickory Lake couple had solved radically by taking another member into their marriage, Utau’s cousin Razi; not the usual course, Fawn had gathered. But their toddlers were darling, however many parents they possessed.

Dag nodded. “Not just no conceptions. Miscarriage after miscarriage, getting worse as she grew older. Arkady was especially frustrated, Challa says, because as a senior medicine maker he thought he ought to be able to fix it somehow. Seems that’s why the miscarriages got more dangerous, actually. When the troubles weren’t let go early, they were worse when they did break. It’s not an uncommon problem-I’ve seen it in camps all over the north. Two exceptional people get string-bound, and their tent-kin settle back happily to wait for the exceptional children to start popping out, and nothing happens. Kauneo and I…” He bit his lip.

She stroked his brow. “You don’t have to say.”

He nodded gratefully, but went on anyhow. “We didn’t have long enough together to find out if we’d be more of that. There was one month we had hopes… anyway, Arkady’s wife Bryna. She was getting older, time was running out, then suddenly she asked him to cut strings with her.”

Lakewalker divorce. Fawn nodded.

“Arkady wasn’t too happy, I reckon, but he didn’t fight it. They divided up New Moon and Moss River medicine tents between them, more or less, and very soon after, she got string-bound with a widowed patroller from over there. They had two children before she had her change of life. I guess they’re nearly grown by now.”

Fawn tried to decide if this was a happy ending or not. Half a one, maybe. “You wonder why Arkady didn’t remarry.”

“Even my groundsense doesn’t help me figure what goes on in his head. I do see he’s a right sensitive man, and maybe only partly from training his groundsense to a pitch like I’ve never seen.”

“Do you think that’s why he’s so… I don’t know how to say it- tidy? Maybe turmoil hurts him in his ground.”

He raised his brows at her. “Could be, Spark.”

She cuddled in closer, planting a kiss on his collarbone. His hand tightened on her hip. Before they gave over talking in favor of other sorts of exchange, she said, “So, what should I write to Whit and Berry? ”

He sighed uncertainly. “What do you want to do, Spark? ”

She went still beneath his warm grip, stemming her first thought before it could leap off her tongue. I want to go home made no sense. The West Blue farmhouse would belong to her eldest brother’s wife, in due course. Dag had been all but banished from Hickory Lake. All the home she had was right here beneath her, a square of blanket on somebody else’s floor. And Dag. It was enough for two.

But not for three.

Or maybe even more; twins ran in Fawn’s family. Two years in this place? It seemed a huge stretch of time to her, though Dag no doubt saw it as a hiccup in his much longer existence. A lot could happen in two years. Births. Deaths. Both.

Her thoughts were spinning too wide and loose to snag sense. She coiled them in. A day, a week, a month, that was all she could plan right now. “I’ve seen the rivers, and it was all good except for that one mile. And I’ve seen the sea. I’d still like to see the Trace in that lingerin’ spring you…”-she caught the word promised before it could escape to wound him-“told me about. Whichever spring that turns out to be.”

He ducked his head, but didn’t speak.

Arkady had said how much time it would take to turn Dag into a real medicine maker. He hadn’t exactly said outright that Dag and his farmer bride were invited to stay here that long. Was that I’d give you two years an observation or an offer?

She drew breath. “I’ll write Whit and Berry that we’re not coming back to the Fetch, anyhow.” That floating home might already be passed to its new owner, their things transferred to the keelboat. “Is it possible to send a letter from here all the way up to Clearcreek? ”

Dag pursed his lips, seeming to check his mental map-courier routes and camp locations, likely. “Yes. No guarantee of how quick it’d get there, though.”

Fawn nodded understanding. It was a slow, hard slog to wrestle a keelboat upriver: four months or more from Graymouth to Tripoint, compared to the six or so weeks it took to float down. The overland route on the Tripoint Trace cut off the corner of the river route, many miles shorter, quicker for the horsed or the lightly burdened, but unfriendly to heavy cargo. They could leave New Moon weeks or even months from now and still beat Whit and Berry… home, her thought faltered. Or to Clearcreek, anyhow. Where Whit at least had achieved a real home now, with Berry and Hawthorn. She and Dag would be welcome guests there, Fawn had no doubt. She swallowed. “I’ll tell him if we don’t all meet up back at Clearcreek by strawberry season, to look for another letter.”

Dag nodded again.

It was plain that tonight even he couldn’t answer the question Dag, what will happen to us? She didn’t ask it. She tilted back her head instead, finding his lips for a wordless kiss.

–-

Dag took Fawn along with him to Vayve’s place to work on his new sharing knife, feigning to need her clever fingers even more than he actually did. By the time Vayve had watched Fawn help carve and polish the cured femur, wait in apprehensive but attentive silence while Dag anchored the involution into the bone, and slice his skin with a hot knife to let his blood trickle onto the blade for bonding, the maker had lost her rigidity at having a farmer in her work shack. Another little victory for Fawn’s good nature and bright ground; or, considering how far into the core of Lakewalker secrets this making was, maybe not so little.

It didn’t take Dag as long to recover from the shuddering pain of setting this involution as it had when he’d done Crane’s knife-if not elegant, at least this one was not so anxiously overbuilt. He set Fawn to burning his name and the donor’s into the sides of the bone with an awl heated in a candle flame, then borrowed her birthday walnut back from her skirt pocket to place before Vayve.

Vayve’s lips pursed as she took it up and examined it. “What was this? Practice in setting involutions? It’s far too dense, if so.”

Dag shook his head. “I’d another notion altogether. Hoped you might have some ideas. It’s been in my mind for a while that I’d like to make something for Faw-farmers that would work to protect them from malices like ground veiling does a patroller. Not the same way, mind; I don’t see how farmers could twist their grounds sideways to the world the way we do. It would have to be something else. Something any good maker could produce.”

Vayve looked startled. “You would have Lakewalker makers expend themselves creating these shields for farmers? How could we afford the time? ”

“Make and sell them, like other groundworked objects.”

“You know we only sell trivial things. These shields of yours-if they could be made at all-would not be trivial work.”