“Betrayal? You’ve shamed our tent! Mama’s become a laughingstock to the ill willed over this, and she hates it. You know how she values her dignity.”
Dag tilted his head. “Huh. Well, I’m sorry to hear it, but I suspect she brought that on herself. I’m afraid what she calls dignity others see as conceit.” On the other hand, perhaps it was the accident of Cumbia’s having so few children that made her insist on their particular value, to hold her head up against women friends who could parade a more numerous get. Although it was plain fact that Dar’s skills were rare and extraordinary. Remembering to placate, Dag added, “Some of it is pride in you, to be fair.”
“It could have been in you, too, if you’d bestirred yourself,” Dar grumbled. “Still just a patroller, after forty years? You should have been a commander by now. Anything that Mama and Mari agree on must be true, or the sky’s like to fall.”
Dag gritted his teeth and did not reply. His family’s ambition had been a plague to him since he’d returned from Luthlia and recovered enough to begin patrolling again. His own fault, perhaps, for letting them learn he’d turned down patrol leadership despite, or perhaps because of, the broad hint that it could soon lead to wider duties. Repeatedly, till Fairbolt had stopped asking. Or had that leaked out through Massape, reflecting her husband’s plaints? At this range, he could no longer remember.
Dar’s lips compressed, then he said, “It’s been suggested—I won’t say who by—that if we just wait a year, the problem will solve itself. The farmer girl’s too small to birth a Lakewalker child and will die trying. Have you realized that?”
Dag flinched. “Fawn’s mama is short, too, and she did just fine.” But her papa wasn’t a big man, either. He fought the shiver that ran through him by the reflection that the size of the infant and the size of the grown person had little relation; Cattagus and Mari’s eldest son, who was a bear of a fellow now, was famous in the family for having been born little and sickly.
“That’s more or less what I said—don’t count on it. Farmers are fecund. But have you even thought it through, Dag? If a child or children survived, let alone their mother, what’s the fate of half-bloods here? They couldn’t make, they couldn’t patrol. All they could do would be eat and breed. They’d be despised.”
Dag’s jaw set. “There are plenty of other necessary jobs to do in camp, as I recall being told more than once. Ten folks in camp keep one patroller in the field, Fairbolt says. They could be among that ten. Or do you secretly despise everyone else here, and I never knew?”
Dar batted this dart away with a swipe of his hand. “So you’re saying your children could grow up to be servants of mine? And you’d be content with that?”
“We would find our way.”
“We?” Dar scowled. “So already you put your farmer get ahead of the needs of the whole?”
“If that happens, it won’t be by my choosing.” Would Dar hear the warning in that? Dag continued, “We actually don’t know that all cross-bloods lack groundsense. If anything, the opposite; I’ve met a couple who have little less than some of us. I’ve been out in the world a good bit more than you. I’ve seen raw talent here and there amongst farmers, too, and I don’t think it’s just the result of some passing Lakewalker in a prior generation leaving a present.” Dag frowned. “By rights, we should be sifting the farmers for hidden groundsense. Just like the mages of old must have done.”
“And while we’re diverting ourselves in that, who fights the malices?” Dar shot back. “Nearly good enough to patrol isn’t going to do the job. We need the concentration of bloodlines to reach the threshold of function. We’re stretched to the breaking point, and everyone knows it. Let me tell you, it’s not just Mama who is maddened to see you wasting the talent in your blood.”
Dag grimaced. “Yeah, I’ve heard that song from Aunt Mari, too.” He remembered his own reply. “And yet I might have been killed anytime these past four decades, and my blood would have been no less wasted. Pretend I’m dead, if it’ll make you feel better.”
Dar snorted, declining to rise to that bait. They had reached the point where the road from the bridge split to cut through the woods to the island’s north shore. At Dar’s gesture, they turned onto it. The earth was dappled golden-green in the late sun, leaf shadows barely flickering in the breathing summer air. Their pacing sandals kicked up little spurts of dirt in the stretches between drying puddles.
Dar gathered himself, and continued, “It’s not just your own family you put to shame. This stunt of yours creates disruption and a bad example in the patrol, as well. You’ve a reputation there, I don’t deny. Youngsters like Saun look up to you. How much harder will this make it for patrol leaders to prevent the next ill-fated farmer romance? I swear, you’re thinking only of yourself.”
“Yes,” said Dag, and added meditatively, “it’s a new experience.” A slow smile turned his lips. “I kind of like it.”
“Don’t make stupid jokes,” snapped Dar.
I wasn’t. Absent gods help me. In fact, it grew less funny the longer he thought about it. Dag took a long breath. “What are you after, Dar? I married Fawn for true—mind, body, and ground. That isn’t going to change. Sooner or later, you’ll have to deal with it.”
“Dealing with it is just what I’m trying to avoid.” Dar’s scowl deepened. “The camp council could force a change. They’ve ruled on string-cuttings before.”
“Only when the couple was divided and their families couldn’t negotiate an agreement. No one can force a string-cutting against the will of both partners. And no one of sense would tolerate the precedent if the council tried. It would put everyone’s marriage at risk—it would fly against the whole meaning of string-binding!”
Dar’s voice hardened. “Then you’ll just have to be forced to will it, eh?”
Dag let ten steps pass in silence before he replied. “I’m stubborn. My wife is determined. You’ll break your knife on that rock, Dar.”
“Have you grasped what you risk? Shunning—banishment? No more patrolling?”
“I’ve a lot of patrol years left in me. We’re stretched, you say—and yet you’d throw those years away into a ditch? For mere conceit?”
“I’m trying for exactly the reverse.” Dar swiped an angry hand across his brow. “You’re the one who seems to be galloping blindly for the ditch.”
“Not by my will. Nor Fairbolt’s. He’ll stand up for me.” Actually, Fairbolt had said only that he didn’t care to defend this before the camp council—not whether he would overcome his understandable distaste if he had to. But Dag was disinclined to confide his doubts to Dar at this point.
“What,” scoffed Dar, “with all the trouble this will make for patrol discipline? Think again.”
Had Dar and Fairbolt been talking? Dag began to be sorry he had held himself aloof from camp gossip these past days, even though it had seemed wiser not to present his head for drumming on or let himself be drawn into arguments. He countered, “Fawn’s a special case anyway. She’s not just any farmer, she’s the farmer girl who slew a malice. As contrasted with, for example, your malice count. What was it, again? Oh, yes—none?”
Dar’s lips thinned in an unfelt smile. “If you like, brother. Or maybe the count is, every malice that any knife of my making slew. Without a sharing knife no patroller is a malice killer. You’re just malice food walking around.”
Dag drew breath through his nostrils and tried to get a better grip on his temper. “True. And without hands to wield them, your knives are just—what did you call them?—wall decorations. I think we need to cry truce on this one.”
Dar nodded shortly. They paced beside each other for a time.
When he could trust himself to speak again, Dag went on, “Without Fawn’s hand, I would be dead now, and maybe a good part of my patrol with me. And you’d have spent the past weeks having memorial rites and making tender speeches about what a fine fellow I was.”
Dar sighed. “Almost better, that would be
. Simpler, at least.”
“I appreciate that almost. Almost.” Dag gathered his wits, or attempted to. “In any case, your bird won’t fly. Fairbolt’s made it clear he’ll tolerate this for the sake of need and won’t take it to the council. And neither will Mama. Get used to us, Dar.” He let his voice soften to persuasion, almost plea. “Fawn is her own sort of worthy. You’d see it if you’d let yourself look at her straight. Give her a chance, and you won’t be sorry.”
“You’re besotted.”
Dag shrugged. “And the sun rises in the east. You’re not going to change either fact. Give up the gloom and set your mind to some more open view.”
“Aunt Mari was a feckless fool to let this get by.”
“She made all the same arguments that you just did.” Rather better phrased, but Dar had never been a diplomat. “Dar, let it ride. It’ll work out in time. Folks will get used to it. Fawn and I may always be an oddity, but we won’t start a stampede any more than Sarri did with her two husbands. Hickory Lake will survive us. Life will go on.”
Dar inhaled, staring straight ahead. “I will go to the camp council.”
Dag covered the chill in his belly with a slow blink. “Will you, now. What will Mama say? I thought you hated rows.”
“I do. But it’s come down to me. Someone has to act. Mama cries, you know. It has to be done, and it has to be done soon.” Dar grimaced. “Omba says if we wait till you get your farmer girl pregnant, you’ll never be shifted.”
“She’s right,” said Dag, far more coolly than he felt.
Dar bore the look of a man determined to do his duty, however repugnant. Yes, Dar would stiffen Cumbia, even against her better judgment. Did both imagine Dag would cave in to these threats—or did they both realize he wouldn’t? Or was it one of each?
“So,” said Dag, “I’m a sacrifice you’re willing to make, am I? Is Mama so willing?”
“Mama knows—we all know—your passion for patrolling. How hard you fought to get back in after you lost your hand. Is dipping your wick in this farmer girl worth casting away your whole life?”
Dar was remembering the brother from eighteen years back, Dag thought. Agonized, exhausted, seeking only to deal death in turn to that which had made him the walking corpse he’d felt himself to be. And then, with luck, to be reunited in death with all that he’d lost, because no other course seemed possible or even imaginable. Something strange and new had happened to that Dag in the malice cave near Glassforge. Or—something that had been happening below the surface had finally been brought to light. I’m not who you think I am anymore, Dar. You look at me yet don’t see me. Dar seemed curiously like Fawn’s kin, in that way. So who am I? For the first time in a long time, Dag wasn’t sure he knew the answer, and that was a lot more disturbing than Dar’s old assumptions.
Dar misinterpreted Dag’s uneasy look. “Yeah, that’s got you thinking! About time. I’m not going to back off on this. This is your warning.”
Dag touched the cord below his rolled-up left sleeve. “Neither am I. That’s yours.”
They both maintained a stony silence as they reached the shore road again and turned right. Dar managed a nod when he turned off at the Redwing campsite, but he spoke no word of farewell, of further meetings, or of any other indication of his intent. Dag, fuming, returned an equally silent nod and walked on.
On the mere physical level, Dag thought he need have no fear for either Fawn or himself. It wasn’t Dar’s style to gather a bunch of hotheads like Sunny and his friends to deliver violent rebuke. A formal charge before the camp council was precisely what Dar would do, no question there. His was no idle threat. Dag felt a curious blankness within himself at the thought, in a way like the familiar empty moment before falling into attack on a malice lair.
He considered the current makeup of the camp council. There were normally a representative and an alternate from each island, chosen yearly by rotation from the heads of the various clans and other elders, plus the camp captain as a permanent member on behalf of the patrol and its needs. Cumbia had been on the council herself once, and Dag’s grandfather, before he’d grown too fragile, had been an alternate twice.
Dag had scarcely paid attention to who was in the barrel on council this year, or to tell the truth any other year, and suddenly it mattered.
The council resolved most conflicts by open discussion and binding mediation. Only in matters involving banishment or a death sentence did they make their votes secret, and then the quorum was not the usual five, but the full seven. There had only been two murders in Hickory Lake Camp in Dag’s lifetime, and the council had settled the more ambiguous by ordering a payment between the families; only one had led to an execution. Dag had never yet witnessed a banishment like the one at Log Hollow that Saun had gossiped about. Dag couldn’t help feeling that there must have been a more unholy mess backing up behind that incident than Saun’s short description suggested. Like mine? Maybe not.
Dag had deliberately steered clear of camp gossip in the past days if only to avoid the aggravation, keeping to himself with Fawn—and healing, don’t forget that—but in any case he doubted very many of his friends would repeat the most critical remarks to his face. He could think of only one man he could trust to do so without bias in either direction. He made plans to seek Fairbolt after supper.
Fawn glanced up from the perfect coals in the fire pit to see Dag stride back into the clearing, his scowl black. She had never seen so much quiet joy in Dag as this afternoon out in the lily marsh, and she set her teeth in a moment of fury for whatever his brother had done to wreck his happiness. She also bade silent good-bye to her hope, however faint, that Dar had come as a family peacemaker, dismissing the little fantasy she had started to build up about maybe a dinner invitation from Dag’s mama, and what Fawn could bring and how she could act to show her worth to that branch of the Redwings.
At her eyebrows raised in question, Dag shook his head, adding an unfelt smile to show his scowl was not for her. He sat on the ground, picked up a stick, and dug it into the dirt, his face drawn in thought.
“So what did Dar want?” Fawn asked. “Is he coming around to us?” She busied herself with the bass, gutted, cleaned, stuffed with herbs begged from Sarri’s garden, and ready to grill. It sizzled gently as she laid it on the rack above her coals, and she stirred the pot of mashed plunkin with onions she’d fixed to go with. Dag looked up at the enticing smells pretty soon, his eyes growing less pinched, although he was still a long time answering.
“Not yet, anyway,” Dag said at last.
Fawn pursed her lips. “If there’s some trouble, don’t you think I need to know?”
“Yes,” he sighed. “But I need to talk to Fairbolt first. Then I can say more certainly.”
Say what? “Sounds a little ominous.”
“Maybe not, Spark.” Attracted by his supper, he got up and sat again by her, giving her neck a distracting nuzzle as she tried to turn the fish.
She smiled back, to show willing, but thought, Maybe so, Dag. If something wasn’t a problem, he usually said so, with direct vigor. If it was a problem with a solution, he’d cheerfully explain it, at whatever length necessary. This sort of silence, she had gradually learned, betokened unusual uncertainty. Her vague conviction that Dag knew everything about everything—well, possibly not about farms—did not stand up to sober reflection.
As she’d hoped, feeding him did brighten him up considerably. His mood lightened still further, to a genuine grin, when she came out from their tent after supper with her hands behind her back, and then, with a flourish, presented his new cotton socks.
“You finished them already!”
“I used to have to help make socks for my brothers. I got fast. Try them under your boots,” she said eagerly. “See if they help.”
He did so at once, walking experimentally around the dying fire, looking pleased, if a little mismatched in the boots with the truncated trousers that Lakewalker men seemed to wear here in hot w
eather, when they weren’t called on to ride.
“These should be better in summer than those awful lumpy old wool things you were wearing—more darns than yarn, I swear. They’ll keep your feet dryer. Help those calluses.”
“So fine! Such little, smooth stitches. I’ll bet my feet won’t bleed with these.”
“Your feet bleed?” she said, appalled. “Eew!”
“Not often. Just in the worst of summer or the worst of winter.”
“I’ll spin up some of that wool for winter later. But I thought you could use these first.”
“Indeed.” He sat again and removed his boots, drawing the socks off carefully, and kissed her hands in thanks. Fawn glowed.
“I’m going to help Sarri start to spin her plunkin stem flax tomorrow, now the retting’s all done,” she said. “These women need a wheel to speed things up, they really do. Surely a little one wouldn’t be so hard to cart back and forth, and we could all share it around the camp. I could teach them how to use it, give something back for all the help Sarri and Mari have been giving me. Do you think you could bring one back next time you patrol around Lumpton or Glassforge—or West Blue, for that matter? Mama and Nattie could make sure you got a good one,” she added in a burst of prudence.
“I could sure try, Spark.” And won her heart anew by not protesting a bit about the sight he would present hauling such an unwieldy object atop Copperhead.
She drew him into a promissory sort of cuddle for a time, but at length he recalled whatever Dar had brought to trouble him, and stood up with a sigh.
“Will you be gone long?” she asked.
“Depends on where Fairbolt’s got off to.”
She nodded, struggling to be content with the vague answer and what all it left out. The dark mood seemed to settle over his shoulders again like a cloak as he strode out to the road and vanished beyond the trees.