Though still shaken by her sudden miscarriage, Fawn had thought all decisions about her personal disaster were behind her, and had been wearily grateful that no more were to be faced. It was a kind of relief, curled within the grief. Not so, it seemed. “Could you use it to kill another malice?” Some redemption, in all this chain of sorrows?

“I would want to take it to my camp’s best maker, first. See what he has to say. I’m just a patroller. I am out of my experience and reckoning, here. It’s a strange knife, could do something unknown. Maybe unwanted. Or not work at all, and as you have seen, to get right up to a malice and then have your tools fail makes a bit of a problem.”

“What should we do? What can we do?”

He gave a rough nod. “On the one hand, we could destroy it.”

“But won’t that waste…?”

“Two sacrifices? Yes. It wouldn’t be my first pick. But if you speak it, Spark, I will break it now in front of you, and it will be over.” He laid his hand over the hilt, his face a mask but his eyes searching hers.

Her breath caught. “No—no, don’t do that. Yet, anyhow.” And on the other hand, there is no other hand. She wondered if his sense of humor was gruesome enough to have had exactly that thought as well. She suspected so.

She gulped and continued, “But your people—will they care what some farmer girl thinks?”

“In this matter, yes.” He rolled his shoulders, as though they ached. “If it’s all right with you, then, I’ll speak of this first with Mari, my patrol leader, see what notions she has. After that, we’ll think again.”

“Of course,” she said faintly. He means it, that I should have a say in this.

“I would take it kindly if you would take charge of it till then.”

“Of course.”

He nodded and handed her the leather pouch, leaving her to resheathe the knife. The linen bag, however, he picked up to put with his arm contraption. His joints crackled and popped as he stood up and stretched, and he winced. Fawn sank back down on the tick and stole a closer look at the bone blade. The faint, flowing lines burned brown into the bone’s pale surface read: Dag. My heart walks with yours. Till the end, Kauneo.