Their plates arrived, piled with carrots and mashed potatoes with cream gravy and a generous portion of pork chops. After an exchange of silent looks—Fawn could see Dag working to keep his frayed temper—she leaned over and efficiently cut his meat, leaving the rest to him. The fork-spoon worked tolerably well, although it did involve his extending his elbow awkwardly. Thoughtfully, she kept the beer coming. It might just have been getting a good hot meal into him after a too-long day, but he slowly relaxed. The stout scullion then brought thick wedges of cherry pie, which threatened to push relaxation into sleep right there on the benches.

Fawn said, “So…should we stay here and rest up tomorrow, or push on and rest at West Blue? Will you be able to ride so far?” He had ridden from the bonesetter’s, his reins wrapped around his hook, but that had only been a mile.

“I’ve done more with worse. The powder will help.” He’d prudently picked up what he said was a Lakewalker remedy for pain from the medicine shop before they’d left the town square. Fawn wasn’t sure if the faint glaze in his eyes was from the drug or the ache in his arm; but on reflection, it was just as well the medicine didn’t work better, or there would be no slowing him down at all. Confirming this, he stretched, and said, “I wouldn’t mind pushing on. There’s folks at Hickory Lake who can do things to help this heal faster.”

“Is it set all right?” she asked anxiously.

“Oh, yes. That bonesetter might have been a ham-handed torturer, but he knew his trade. It’ll heal straight.”

Dag had called him much worse things than that during the setting, but the fellow had just grinned, evidently used to colorful invective from his patients. Possibly, Fawn thought, he collected the choice bits.

“If you don’t knock it around.” Fawn felt a little sick with anticipation of her homecoming. But if she had to do it at all, better to get it over with. Dag clearly thought it her duty, the right thing to do; and not even for Stupid Sunny and all her brothers put together would she risk Dag thinking her craven. Even if I am. “All right. We’ll ride on.”

Dag rubbed his chin with his left sleeve. “In that case, we’d best get our tales straight. I want to leave out the primed knife in front of your family, just as we did for my patrol all but Mari.”

That seemed both fair and prudent. Fawn nodded.

“Anything else is up to you, but you have to tell me what you want.”

She stared down at the red streaks and crumbs on her empty plate. “They don’t know about me and Sunny. So they’re going to be mad that I scared them for seemingly nothing, running off like that.”