“Yes. She’s clear on that part.”

“But different people’s heart’s knives do have different feels to them. Some echo of the donor lingers, though they all seem to work alike. Perhaps it’s that the lives are different, but the deaths are all the same, I don’t know. I’m a patroller, not a lore-master. I think”—she tapped her lips with a forefinger—“you had better take it to a maker. The most experienced you can find.”

“Miss Bluefield and I,” said Dag. “The knife is properly hers, now.”

“This isn’t any business for a farmer to be mixed up in.”

Dag scowled. “What would you have me do? Take it from her? You?”

“Explain, please?” Fawn said tightly. “Everyone is talking past me again.

That’s all right mostly, I’m used to it, but not for this.”

“Show her your knives, Mari,” Dag said, a rasp of challenge in his voice, for all that it was soft.

She looked at him, then slowly unbuttoned her shirt partway down and drew out a dual knife pouch much like Dag’s, though of softer leather. She pulled the strap over her head, pushed the bedroll aside, and laid out two bone knives side by side on the quilt. They were nearly identical, except for different-colored dye daubed on the lightly carved hilts, red and brown this time.

“These are a true pair, both bones from the same donor,” she said, caressing the red one. “My youngest son, as it happens. It was his third year patrolling, up Sparford way, and I’d just got to thinking he was getting over the riskiest part of the learning… well.” She touched the brown one. “This one is primed. His father’s aunt Palai gave her death to it. Tough, tough old woman—absent gods, we loved her. Preferably from a safe distance, but there’s one like that in every family, I think.” Her hand drifted again to the red one. “This one is unprimed, bonded to me. I keep it by me in case.”

“So what would happen,” said Dag dryly, “to anyone who tried to take them from you?”

Mari’s smile grew grim. “I’d outstrip the worst wrath of Great-aunt Palai.”

She sat up and slipped the knives away, then nodded at Fawn. “But I think it’s different for her.”

“It’s all strange to me.” Fawn frowned, staring at the blue-hilted knife. “I have no happy memories about this to balance the sorrows. But they’re my memories, all the same. I’d rather they weren’t… wasted.”

Mari raised both hands in a gesture of frustrated neutrality.

“So could I have leave from the patrol to travel on this matter?” asked Dag.

Mari grimaced. “You know how short we are, but once this Glassforge business is settled, I can’t very well refuse you. Have you ever drawn leave? Ever? You don’t even get sick!”

Dag thought a moment. “Death of my father,” he said at last. “Eleven years ago.”

“Before my time. Eh! Ask again when we’re ready to decamp. If there’s no new trouble landed in our laps by then.”

He nodded. “Miss Bluefield’s not fit to travel far yet anyway. You can see by her eyelids and nails she’s lost too much blood, even without how her knees give way. No fever yet, though. Please, Mari, I did all I could, but could you look her over?” His hand touched his belly, making his meaning clear.

Mari sighed. “Yes, yes, Dag.”

He stood expectantly for a moment; she grimaced and sat up, waving to a set of saddlebags leaning in the corner. “There’s your gear, by the by. Luckily your fool horse hadn’t got round to scraping it off in the woods. Go on, now.”

“But will you… can’t I… I mean, it’s not as though you have to undress her.”

“Women’s business,” she said firmly.

Reluctantly, he made for the door, though he did scoop up his arm harness and recovered belongings. “I’ll see about getting you a room, Spark.”

Fawn smiled gratefully at him.

“Good,” said Mari. “Scat.”

He bit his lip and nodded farewell. His boot steps faded down the hall.

Fawn tried not to be too unnerved by being left alone with Mari. Scary old lady or not, the patrol leader seemed to share some of Dag’s straightforward quality.

She had Fawn sit quietly on the bed while she ran her hands over her. She then sat behind Fawn and hugged her in close for several silent minutes, her hands wrapped across Fawn’s lower belly. If she was doing something with her groundsense, Fawn could not feel it, and wondered if this was what being deaf among hearing people was like. When she released Fawn, her face was cool but not unkind.

“You’ll do,” she said. “It’s clear you were ripped up unnatural, which accounts for the suddenness of the bleeding, but you’re healing about as quick as could be expected for someone so depleted, and your womb’s not hot. Fever’s a commoner killer in these things than bleeding, though less showy. You’ll have some blight-scarring in there, I guess, slow to heal like the ones on your neck, but not enough to stop you having other children, so you be more careful in future, Miss Bluefield.”

“Oh.” Fawn, looking back through clouds of regret, had not even thought ahead to her future fertility. “Does that happen to some women, after a miscarriage?”

“Sometimes. Or after a bad birth. Delicate parts in there. It amazes me the process works at all, when I think about all the things I’ve seen can go wrong.”

Fawn nodded, then reached to put away Dag’s blue-hilted knife, still lying on her bedroll atop her spare clothes.

“So,” said Mari in a carefully bland tone, “who’s the other half owner sides you of that knife’s priming? Some farm lout?”

Fawn’s jaw set. “Just me. The lout made it very clear he was giving it all to me. Which was why I was out on the road in the first place.”

“Farmers. I’ll never understand ‘em.”

“There are no Lakewalker louts?”

“Well…” Mari’s long, embarrassed drawl conceded the point.

Fawn reread the faded brown lettering on the bone blade. “Dag meant to drive this into his own heart someday. Didn’t he.” This Kauneo had intended that he should.

“Aye.”

Now he couldn’t. That was something, at least. “You have one, too.”

“Someone has to prime. Not everyone, but enough. Patrollers understand the need better.”

“Was Kauneo a patroller?”

“Didn’t Dag say?”

“He said she was a woman who’d died twenty years ago up northwest someplace.”

“That’s a bit close-mouthed even for him.” Mari sighed. “It’s not my place to tell his tales, but if you are to have the holding of that knife, farmer girl, you’d better understand what it is and where it comes from.”

“Yes,” said Fawn firmly, “please. I’m so tired of making stupid mistakes.”

Mari twitched a—provisionally—approving eyebrow at this. “Very well. I’ll give you what Dag would call the short tale.” Her long inhalation suggested it wasn’t going to be as short as all that, and Fawn sat cross-legged again, intent.

“Kauneo was Dag’s wife.”

A tremor of shock ran through Fawn. Shock, but not surprise, she realized. “I see.”

“She died at Wolf Ridge.”

“He hadn’t mentioned any Wolf Ridge to me. He just called it a bad malice war.”

Though there could be no such thing as a good malice war, Fawn suspected.

“Farmer girl, Dag doesn’t talk about Wolf Ridge to anyone. One of his several little quirks you have to get used to. You have to understand, Luthlia is the biggest, wildest hinterland of the seven, with the thinnest population of Lakewalkers to try to patrol it. Terrible patrolling—cold swamps and trackless woods and killing winters. The other hinterlands lend more young patrollers to Luthlia than to anywhere, but they still can’t keep up.

“Kauneo came from a tent of famously fierce patrollers up that way. She was very beautiful I guess—courted by everyone. Then this quiet, unassuming young patrol leader from the east, walking around the lake on his second training tour, stole her heart right out from under all of them.” A hint of pride colored her voice, and Fawn thought, Yes, she’s really his aunt. “He made plans to stay. They were string-bound—you farmers would say, married—and he got promoted to company captain.”