Behind his back, his right hand gripped the arm cuff till he could hear the wood creak, and he forced his clench to loosen lest he break what had been so recently mended. He tried clamping his teeth down just as tight on any response, but one leaked out nonetheless: “Borrow my mother’s jawbone, did you?”

“I expect I could do her whole speech by rote, I’ve had to listen to her complaints often enough, but no. This is my own, hard-won with my life’s blood. Look, I know your mother pushed you too soon and too hard after Kauneo and set your back up good and stiff, I know you needed more time to get over it all. But time’s gone by, Dag, time and past time. That little farmer girl’s the proof of it, if you needed any. And I don’t want to be caught underneath when you come crashing down.”

“You won’t be; we’re leaving.”

“Not good enough. I want your word.”

You can’t have it. And was that, itself, some decision? He knew he wavered, but had he already gone beyond some point of no return? And what would that point be? He scarcely knew, but his head was pounding with the heat, and a bone-deep exhaustion gripped him. His drying clothing itched and stank. He longed for a cold bath. If he held his head under for long enough, would the pain stop? Ten or fifteen minutes ought to do it.

“If I had died at Wolf Ridge, I would be childless now just the same,” he snarled at Mari. And not even my kin could complain. Or leastways, I wouldn’t have to listen. “I have a plan. Why don’t you just pretend that I’m dead?”

He turned on his heel and marched out.

Which would have made a grander exit if she hadn’t shouted so furiously and so accurately after him, “Oh, certainly—why not? You do!”

11

Dag thought he’d had his groundsense strapped down tight, but whatever of his vile mood still leaked through the cracks was enough to clear the bathhouse of the three convalescent patrollers idling there within five minutes of his entry. Still, at length both his body and his wits cooled, and he went off to find some useful task to occupy himself, preferably away from his comrades. He found it in taking a saddle with a broken tree uptown to the harnessmaker’s to trade in for a replacement, and retrieving some other mended gear there, which filled the time till dinner and the arrival of the anxious Utau and the rest of his swamp-slimed patrol.