The red-haired Sassa, either more garrulous or more observant than his in-laws, was finishing his account of yesterday’s inexplicable uproar at the digging camp: the sudden loss of wits and mad flight of their captor mud-men, followed, not half an hour later, by the arrival from the sunset woods of a very off-balance patrol of Lakewalkers. The Lakewalkers had been trailed in turn by a mob of frantic friends and relatives of the captives from in and around Glassforge. Leaving the local people to each other’s care, the patrollers had withdrawn to their own Lakewalkerish concerns, which seemed mainly to revolve around slaying all the mud-men they could catch and looking for their mysterious missing man Dag, who they seemed to think somehow responsible for the bizarre turn of events.

Dag rubbed his stubbled chin. “Huh. I suppose Mari or Chato must have thought this mining camp might be the lair. Following up traces from that bandit hideout we raided night before last, I expect. That explains where they were all day yesterday. And well into the night, sounds like.”

“Oh, aye,” said the thickset man. “Folks was still trailing into Glassforge all night and into this morning, yours and ours.”

The farmwife slid down off the horse and stood listening to this, her eyes searching her house, Dag, and especially Fawn. Fawn guessed from the farm men’s talk that she must be the woman they’d called Petti. Judging by the faint gray in her hair, she was of an age with her husband, and as lean as he was thick, tough and strappy, if tired-looking. Now she stepped forward. “What blood is all that in the tub out by the well?”

Dag gave her a polite duck of his head. “Miss S—Bluefield’s mostly, ma’am. My apologies for filching your linens. I’ve been throwing another bucket of water on them each time I go by. I’ll try to get them cleaned up better before we leave.”

We not I, some quick part of Fawn’s mind noted at once, with a catch of relief.

“Mostly?” The farmwife cocked her head at him, squinting. “How’d she get hurt?”

“That would be her tale to tell, ma’am.”

Her face went still for an instant. Her eye flicked up to Fawn and then back, to take in his empty cuff. “You really kill that bogle that did all this?”

He hesitated only briefly before replying, precisely but unexpansively, “We did.”

She inhaled and gave a little snort. “Don’t you be troubling about my laundry. The idea.”