Free Beguilement by Lois McMaster Bujold Page B

was a natural enough process, even if this one was most unnaturally triggered; women survived them all the time, he was fairly sure. He just wished they had discussed them more, or that he had listened more closely. Lie flat, check, they’d got that far.
    Make her comfortable? Cruel joke… peace. He supposed she’d be more comfortable cleaned up than filthy; at any rate, he’d always been grateful for that when recovering from a serious injury. What, you can’t fix the real problem, so you’ll fix something else instead? And which of you is this supposed to aid?
    Peace. And a bucket and an unfouled well, with luck.
    It took more time than he’d have liked, during which to his swallowed aggravation she insisted on lying on the blighted kitchen floor, but he eventually assembled a clean gownlike garment, rather too large for her, some old mended sheets, an assortment of rags for pads, actual soap, and water. In a moment of ruthless inspiration, he broke through her reticence by persuading her to wash his hand first, as though he needed help.
    She still had the shakes, which she seemed to take for residual fear but which he recognized as one with the chilled skin and grayness in her ground, and which he treated by piling on whatever blanket-like cloths he could find, and building up the fire. The last time he’d seen a woman coiled around her belly that hard, a blade had penetrated almost to her spine. He heated a stone, wrapped it in cloth, and gave it to Fawn to clutch to herself, which to his relief seemed finally to help; the shakes faded and her ground lightened. Eventually, she was arranged all tidy and sweet and patient-like, her curl around the stone relaxing as she warmed, blinking up at him in the candlelight as he sat cross-legged beside the tick.
    “Did you find any clothes you could use?” she asked. “Though I suppose you’d be lucky to find a fit.”
    “Haven’t looked, yet. Got spares in my saddlebags. Which are on my horse.
    Somewhere. If I’m lucky, my patrol will find him and bring him along sometime.
    They had better be looking for me by now.”
    “If you could find something else to wear, I bet I could wash those tomorrow.
    I’m sorry that—”
    “Little Spark,” he leaned forward, his ragged voice cracking, “do not apologize to me for this.”
    She recoiled.
    He regained control. “Because, don’t you see, a crying patroller is a very embarrassing sight. M’ face gets all snivelly and snotty. Combine that with this blue eye I’ve got starting, and it’d be like to turn your stomach. And then there’d just be another mess to clean up, and we don’t want that now, do we.”
    He tweaked her nose, which was on the whole an insane thing to do to a woman who’d just saved the world, but it worked to break her bleak mood; she smiled wanly.
    “All right, we’re making great progress here, you know. Food, what about food?”
    “I don’t think I could, yet. You go ahead.”
    “Drink, then. And no arguments with me about that one, I know you need to drink when you’ve lost blood.” Are losing blood. Still. Too much, too fast. How long was it supposed to go on?
    Candlelight explorations in the rather astonishing cellar yielded a box of dried sassafras; uncertain of the unknown well water, he boiled some up for tea and dosed them both. He was thirstier than he’d thought, and set Fawn an example, which she followed as docilely as a naive young patroller. Why, why do they do whatever you tell them like that? Except when they didn’t, of course.
    He sat against the wall facing her, legs stretched out, and sipped some more.
    “There would be more I could do for you on the inside, patroller tricks with my groundsense, if only…”
    “Groundsense.” She uncurled a little more and regarded him gravely. “You said you’d tell me about that.”
    He blew out his breath, wondering how to explain it to a farmer girl in a way she wouldn’t take wrong. “Groundsense. It’s a sense of…