Fawn, excited, looked into her mother’s palm and picked up one of the four oblong gold beads, peering through the hole. “Nattie, can we? Dag, would it work all right?”

“I think it would be a fine gift,” Dag said, taking one that Fawn pressed upon him to examine. Actually, he wasn’t altogether certain it wasn’t a prayer. He glanced at Tril, who gave him a short, nearly expressionless nod. “Very beautiful. They would look really good against that dark braid and make the ends hang better, too. I’d be honored to accept.”

Beads and cords were put into Nattie’s clever hands, and she made short work of affixing the old gold to the ends, trimming the last bit of cord below the anchoring knots into neat fringes. When she finished, the two lengths—one a little darker, one with a coppery glint—lay glimmering in her lap like live things. Which they were, in a sense.

“That’ll look well, when Fawn goes up to your country,” said Tril. “They’ll know we’re…we’re respectable folks. Don’t you think, patroller?”

“Yes,” he said, hearing the plea in her voice and hoping he didn’t lie.

“Good.” She nodded again.

Nattie took charge of the cords, putting them away until the day after tomorrow when she undertook to bind them about the unlikely pair. Tangled and blessed, the cords would complete the ground link, if both hearts willed it, sign and signifier of a valid union that any Lakewalker with groundsense must witness. Faithfully made. Dag was certain he would remember this hour of making as long as he lived, as long as he wore the cord curled around his arm, and how Spark had poured her heart’s blood so furiously into it. And if her true heart stops, I’ll know.

18

One day was Dag’s first thought upon awakening the next morning.

He’d expected this wedding-eve day to be one of quiet preparation for the small family ceremony, with perhaps time to meditate with proper seriousness on the step he was about to take—also to calm the tiny voice screeching in the back of his mind, What are you doing? How did you end up here? This wasn’t in your plans! Do you have any idea what’s going to happen when you get home? To the last question a simple No seemed to Dag a sufficient answer. More complicated questions, such as, How are you going to protect Spark when you can’t even protect yourself? or What about half-blood children? he tried to ignore, although the last thought led directly to, Would they be sawed-off and fiery? and kept on going from there.