The farmwife nodded. “Later on. The girls should bring it tomorrow when they come.” The other women and children of the Horseford family were staying in town with Sassa’s wife, it seemed, sorting out recovered goods and waiting for their men to report the farm safe again.

“Will they be making another trip, after?”

“Might. Depends.” She scrubbed the back of her neck, staring around as if a hundred things cried for her attention and she only had room in her head for ten, which, Fawn guessed, was just about the case.

“What can I do for you, ma’am?” Dag inquired.

She stared at him as if taken by surprise by the offer. “Don’t know yet. Everything’s been knocked all awhirl. Just…just wait here.”

She marched off to take a look around her smashed-up house.

Fawn whispered to Dag, “She’s not going to get settled in her mind till she has her things back in order.”

“I sensed that.” He bent over and took up the knife pouch, lying by the head of the pallet. Only then did Fawn realize how careful he’d been not to glance at it while the farmwife was present. “Can you put this somewhere out of sight?”

Fawn nodded, and sat up—slowly—to flip open her bedroll, laid at the pallet’s foot. Her spare skirt and shirt and underdrawers lay atop the one good dress she’d packed along to go look for work in, that hasty night she’d fled home. She tucked the knife pouch well away and rolled up the blanket once more.

He nodded approval and thanks. “Best not to mention the knife to these folks, I think. Bothersome. That one worse than most.” And, under his breath, “Wish Mari would get here.”

They could hear the farmwife’s quick footsteps on the wooden floors overhead, and occasional wails of dismay, mostly, “My poor windows!”

“I noticed you left a lot out of your story,” said Fawn.

“Yes. I’d appreciate it if you would, too.”

“I promised, didn’t I? I sure don’t want to talk about that knife to just anyone, either.”

“If they ask too many questions, or too close of ones, just ask them about their troubles in turn. It’ll usually divert them, when they have so much to tell as now.”

“Ah, so that’s what you were doing out there!” In retrospect, she could spot how Dag had turned the talk so that they had learned so much of the Horsefords’ woes, but the Horsefords had received so little news in return. “Another old patroller trick?”

One corner of his mouth twitched up. “More or less.”