“Why shouldn’t we get the credit?” said Razi.

“And the blame as well?” said Dag.

Razi made a face. “I thought we did. Fair’s fair.”

Dag smiled tightly, drew a breath, and pushed himself up. “Well. If I’m to spend tomorrow peering at a bunch of ill-penned, misspelled, and undoubtedly incomplete patrol logs, I’d better get my eyes some rest now. If everyone else is as short on sleep as I am, it’ll be a good quiet night for catching up.”

“Find us lots of local patrols, Dag,” urged Razi. “Weeks’ worth.”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

Fawn rose too, and Dag shepherded her out. He made no attempt to apologize for Razi, but an odd look darkened his eyes, and Fawn did not like her sense of his thoughts receding to someplace barred to her. Outside, the late-summer dusk was closing in. He bade her good night at her door with studied courtesy. The next morning Dag woke at dawn, but Fawn, to his approval, still slept. He went quietly downstairs and nabbed two patrollers from their breakfast to lug the records trunk upstairs to his room. In a short time he had logs, maps, and charts spread out on the room’s writing table, bed, and, soon after, the floor.

He heard the muffled creak of the bed and Fawn’s footsteps through the adjoining wall as she finally arose and rattled around her room getting dressed. At length, she poked her head cautiously around the frame of his door open to the hall, and he jumped up to escort her down to a breakfast much quieter than last night’s dinner, as a last few sleepy patrollers drifted out singly or in pairs.

After the meal, she followed him back upstairs to stare with interest at the paper and parchment drifting across his room. “Can I help?”

He remembered her susceptibility to boredom and itchy hands, but mostly he heard the underlying, Can I stay? He obligingly set her to mending pens, or fetching a paper or logbook from across the room from time to time—make-work, but it kept her quietly occupied and pleasantly near. She grew fascinated with the maps, charts, and logs, and fell to reading them, or trying to. It was not just the faded and often questionable handwriting that made this a slow process for her.

Her claim to be able to read proved true, but it was plain from her moving finger and lips and the tension in her body that she was not fluent, probably due to never having had enough text to practice on. But when he scratched out a grid on a fresh sheet to turn the muddled log entries into a record visible at a glance, she followed the logic swiftly enough.

Around noon, Mari appeared in the open doorway. She raised an eyebrow at Fawn, perched on the bed poring over a contour map annotated with hand corrections, but said only, “How goes it?”

“Almost done,” said Dag. “There is no point going back more than ten years, I think. Quiet around here this morning. What are folks up to?”

“Mending, cleaning gear, gone uptown. Working with the horses. We found a blacksmith whose sister was among those we rescued from the mine, who’s been very willing to help out in the stable.” She wandered in and peered over his shoulder, then leaned back against the wall with her arms folded. “So. How did this malice slip past us?”

Dag tapped his grid, laid out on the table before him. “That section was last walked three years ago by a patrol from Hope Lake Camp. They were trying to run a sixteen-man pattern with just thirteen. Three short. Because if they’d dropped it down to a twelve-pattern, they’d have had to make two more passes to clear the area, and they were already three weeks behind schedule for the season.

Even so, there’s no telling they missed anything; that malice might well not have been hatched out yet.”

“I’m not looking to lay blame,” said Mari mildly.

“I know.” Dag sighed. “Now, as for neglected sections…” His lips peeled back in a dry smile. “That was more revealing. Turns out all sections within a day’s ride of Glassforge that can be patrolled from horseback are up-to-date, or as up-to-date as anything, meaning no more than a year overdue. What’s left are some swampy areas to the west and rocky ravines to the east that you can’t take a horse through.” He added reflectively, “Lazy whelps.”

Mari smiled sourly. “I see.” She scratched her nose. “Chato and I figured he’d lend me two men, and we’d both send out sixteen-groups, dividing up the neglected sections between us. He and I are both going to be stuck here arguing with Glassforgers about what we’re due for our recent work on their behalf, so I’d thought to put you in charge of our patrol. Give you first pick of sections, though.”

“You’re so sweet, Mari. Waist-deep wading through smelly muck, with leeches, or sudden falls onto sharp rocks? They both sound so charming, I don’t know how I can decide.”

“Alternatively, you can roll up your sleeves and come help me arm wrestle with Glassforgers. That works exceptionally well, I’ve noticed.”

Fawn, who had set down the map and was following the talk closely, blinked at this.

Dag grimaced in distaste. In his list of personal joys, parading their wounded to shame farmers into pitching in ranked well below frolicking with leeches and barely above lancing oozing saddle boils. “I swore the last time I put on that show for you, it would be the last.” He added after a reflective moment, “And the time before. You have no shame, Mari.”

“I have no resources,” she returned, her face twisting in frustration.

“Fairbolt once figured it takes at least ten folks back in the camps, not counting the children, to support one patroller in the field. Every bit of help we fail to pull in from outside puts us that bit more behind.” “Then why don’t we pull in more? Isn’t that why farmers were planted in the first place?” The argument was an old one, and Dag still didn’t know the right answer.

“Shall we become lords again?” said Mari softly. “I think not.”

“What’s the alternative? Let the world drift to destruction because we’re too ashamed to call for help?”

“Keep the balance,” said Mari firmly. “As we always have. We cannot ever let ourselves become dependent upon outsiders.” Her glance slid over Fawn. “Not us.”

A little silence fell, and Dag finally said, “I’ll take swamps.”

Her nod was a bit too satisfied, and Dag wondered if he’d just made a mistake.

He added after a moment, “But if you let us take along a few horse boys from the stables here to watch the mounts, we won’t have to leave a patroller with the horse lines while we slog.”

Mari frowned, but said at last, reluctantly, “All right. Makes sense for the day-trips, anyway. You’ll start tomorrow.”

Fawn’s brown eyes widened in mild alarm, and Dag realized the source of Mari’s muffled triumph. “Wait,” he said. “Who will look after Miss Bluefield while I’m gone?”

“I can. She won’t be alone. We have four other injured recovering here, and Chato and I will be in and out.”

“I’m sure I’ll be fine, Dag,” Fawn offered, although a faint doubt colored her voice.

“But can you keep her from trying to overdo?” Dag said gruffly. “What if she starts bleeding again? Or gets chilled and throws a fever?”

Even Fawn’s brow wrinkled at that last one. Her lips moved on a voiceless protest, But it’s midsummer.

“Then I’ll be better fit to deal with that than you would,” said Mari, watching him.

Watching him flail, he suspected glumly. He drew back from making more of a show of himself than he already had. He’d had his groundsense closed down tight since they’d hit the outskirts of Glassforge yesterday, but Mari clearly didn’t need to read his ground to draw her own shrewd conclusions, even without the way Fawn glowed like a rock-oil lamp in his presence.

He rolled up his chart and handed it to Mari. “You can have that to tack on the wall downstairs, and we can mark it off as we go. For whatever amusement it will provide folks. If you hint there could be a bow-down when we reach the end, it might go more briskly.”