Fairbolt gave a slow, conceding nod. He added after a moment, “Has anyone said thank you for Raintree, company captain?”
“Not as I recollect,” Dag said dryly, then was a little sorry for the tone when he caught Fairbolt’s wince. He added more wistfully, “Though I do hope Dirla got her bow-down.”
“Yes, they had a great party for her over on Beaver Sigh, I heard from the survivors.”
Dag’s smile tweaked. “Good.”
Fairbolt stretched his back, which creaked faintly in the cool silence of the shade. Between the dark tree boles, the lake surface glittered in a passing breeze. “I like Fawn, yet…I can’t help imagining how much simpler all our lives could be right now if you were to take that nice farmer girl back to her family down in West Blue and tell them to keep the bride-gifts and her.”
“Pretty insulting, Fairbolt,” Dag observed. He didn’t say who to. It would take a list, he decided.
“You could say you’d made a mistake.”
“But I didn’t.”
Fairbolt grimaced. “I didn’t think that notion would take. Had to try, though.”
Dag’s nod of understanding was reserved. Fairbolt spoke as if this was all about Fawn, and indeed, it had all begun with her. Dag wasn’t so sure his farmer bride was all it was about now. The all part seemed to have grown much larger and more complex, for one. Since Raintree? Since West Blue? Since Glassforge? Or even before that, piling up unnoticed?
“Fairbolt…”
“Mm?”
“This was a bad year for the patrol. Did we have more emergences, all told, or just worse ones?”
Fairbolt counted silently on his fingers, then his eyebrows went up. “Actually, fewer than last year or the year before. But Glassforge and Raintree were so much worse, they put us behind, which makes it seem like more.”
“Both bad outbreaks were in farmer country.”
“Yes?”
“There is more farmer country now. More cleared land, and it’s spreading. We’re bound to see more emergences like those. And not just in Oleana. You’re from Tripoint, Fairbolt, you know more about farmer artificers than anyone around here. The ones I watched this summer in Glassforge, they’re more of that sort”—Dag raised his arm in its harness—“doing more things, more cleverly, better and better. You’ve heard all about what happened at Greenspring. What if it had been a big town like Tripoint, the way Glassforge is growing to be?”
Fairbolt went still, listening. Listening hard, Dag thought, but what he was thinking didn’t show in his face.
Dag pushed on: “Malice takes a town like that, it doesn’t just get slaves and ripped grounds, it gets know-how, tools, weapons, boats, forges and mills already built—power, as sure as any stolen groundsense. And the more such towns farmers build, and they will, the more that ill chance becomes a certainty.”
Fairbolt’s grim headshake did not deny this. “We can’t push farmers back south to safety by force. We haven’t got it to spare.”
“Then they’re here to stay, eh? I’m not suggesting force. But what if we had their help, that power, instead of feeding it to the malices?”
“We cannot let ourselves depend. We must not become lords again. That was our fathers’ sin that near-slew the world.”
“Isn’t there any other way for Lakewalkers and farmers to be with each other than as lords and servants, malices and slaves?”
“Yes. Live apart. Thus we avert lordship.” Fairbolt made a slicing gesture.
Dag fell silent, his throat thick.
“So,” said Fairbolt at length. “What is your plan for dealing with the camp council?”
Dag shook his head.
Fairbolt sat back in some exasperation, then continued, “It’s like this. When I see a good tactician—and I know you are one—sit and wait, instead of moving, as his enemy advances on him, I figure there could be two possible reasons. Either he doesn’t know what to do—or his enemy is coming into his hand exactly the way he wants. I’ve known you for a good long time…and looking at you right now, I still don’t know which it is you’re doing.”
Dag looked away. “Maybe I don’t either.”
After another silence, Fairbolt sighed and rose. “Reasonable enough. I’ve done what I can. Take care of yourself, Dag. See you at council, I suppose.”
“Likely.” Dag touched his temple and watched Fairbolt trudge wearily away through the walnut grove.
The next day dawned clear, promising the best kind of dry heat. The lake was glassy. Dag lay up under the awning of Tent Bluefield and watched Fawn finish weaving hats, the result of her finding a batch of reeds of a texture she’d declared comparable to more farmerly straw. She took her scissors and, tongue caught fetchingly between her teeth, carefully trimmed the fringe of reeds sticking out around the brim to an even finger length. “There!” she said, holding it up. “That’s yours.”
He glanced at its mate lying beside her. “Why isn’t it braided up all neat around the rim like the other?”
“Silly, that’s a girl’s hat. This is a boy’s hat. So’s you can tell the difference.”
“Not to question your people, but that’s not how I tell the difference between boys and girls.”
This won a giggle, as he’d hoped. “It just is, for straw hats, all right? So now I can go out in the sun without my nose coming all over freckles.”
“I think your nose looks cute with freckles.” Or without…
“Well, I don’t.” She gave a decisive nod.
He leaned back, his eyes half-closing. His bone-deep exhaustion was creeping up on him, again. Maybe Hoharie had been right about that appalling recovery time after all….
“That’s it.” Fawn jumped to her feet.
He opened his eyes to find her frowning down at him.
“We’re going on a picnic,” she declared roundly.
“What?”
“Just you wait and see. No, don’t get up. It’s a surprise, so don’t look.”
He watched anyway, as she bustled about putting a great deal of food and two stone jugs into a basket, bundled up a couple of blankets, then vanished around behind Cattagus and Mari’s tent to emerge toting a paddle for the narrow boat. Bemused, he found himself herded down to the dock and instructed to get in and have a nice lie-down, padded and propped in the bottom of the boat facing her.
“You know how to steer this craft?” he inquired mildly, settling.
“Er…” She hesitated. “It looked pretty easy when you did it.” And then, after a moment, “You’ll tell me, won’t you?”
“It’s a deal, Spark.”
The lesson took maybe ten minutes, once they’d pushed off from the dock. Their somewhat-wandering path evened out as she settled into her stroke, and then all he had to do was coax her to slow down and find the rhythm that would last. She found her way to that, too. He pushed back his boy’s hat and smiled from under the fringe at her. Her face was made luminous even beneath the shadow of her own neat brim by the light reflecting off the water, all framed against the deep blue sky.
He felt amazingly content not to move. “If your folks could see us now,” he remarked, “they really would believe all those tales about the idleness of Lakewalker men.”
He’d almost forgotten the blinding charm of her dimple when she smirked. She kept paddling.
They rounded Walnut Island, pausing for a glimpse of some of the stallions prancing elegantly in pasture, then glided up through the elderberry channels. Several boats were out gathering there today; Dag and Fawn mainly received startled stares in return for their waves, except from Razi and Utau, working again on Cattagus’s behalf and indirectly their own. Cattagus fermented his wines in large stone crocks buried in the cool soil of the island’s woods, which he had inherited from another man before him, and him from another; Dag had no idea how far back the tradition went, but he bet it matched plunkins. They stopped to chat briefly with the pair. A certain hilarity about Dag’s hat only made him pull it on more firml
y, and Fawn paddle onward, tossing her head but still dimpling.
At length, to no surprise but a deal of pleasure on Dag’s part, they slipped into the clear sheltered waters of the lily marsh. He then had the amusement, carefully concealed under his useful hat fringe, of watching Fawn paddle around realizing that her planning had missed an element, namely, where to spread blankets when all the thick grassy hillocks like tiny private islands turned out to be growing from at least two inches of standing water. He listened to as much of her foiled muttering as he thought he would get away with, then surrendered to his better self and pointed out how they might have a nice picnic on board the boat, wedged for stability up into a willow-shaded wrack of old logs. Fawn took aim and, with only a slightly alarming scraping noise, brought them upright into this makeshift dock.
She sat in the bottom of the boat facing him, their legs interlaced, and shared food and wine till she’d succeeded in fulfilling several of Hoharie’s recommendations at once by driving him into a dozy nap. He woke at length more overheated than even farmer hats and the flickering yellow-green willow shade could contend with, and hoisted himself up to strip off his shirt and arm harness.
Fawn opened one eye from her own replete slump, then sat up in some alarm as he lifted his hips to slip off his trousers. “I don’t think we can do that in a narrow boat!”
“Actually, you can,” he assured her absently, “but I’m not attempting it now. I’m going into the water to cool off.”
“Aren’t you supposed to get cramps if you swim too soon after a heavy meal?”
“I’m not going swimming. I’m going floating. I may not move any muscles at all.”
He selected a dry log about three feet long from the top of the wrack, wriggled it loose, and slipped into the water after it. The surface of the water was as warm as a bath, but his legs found the chill they sought farther down, flowing over his skin like silk. He hung his arms over his makeshift float, propped his chin in the middle, kicked up some billowing coolness, and relaxed utterly.
In a little while, to his—alas, still purely aesthetic—pleasure, Fawn yanked her shift over her flushed face, unwedged a log of her own, and splashed in after him. He floated on blissfully while she ottered around him with more youthful vigor, daring to wet her hair, then her face, then duck under altogether.
“Hey!” she said in a tone of discovery, partway through this proceeding. “I can’t sink!”
“Now you know,” he crooned.
She splashed him, got no rise, then eventually settled down beside him. He opened his eyes just far enough to enjoy the sight of her pale bare body, seemingly made liquid by the water-waver, caressed by the long, fringed water weeds as she idly kicked and turned. He looked down meditatively at the yellow willow leaves floating past his nose, harbinger of more soon to come. “The light is changing. And the sounds in the air. I always notice it, when the summer passes its peak and starts down, and the cicadas come on. Makes me…not sad, exactly. There should be a word.” As though time was sliding away, and not even his ghost hand could catch it.
“Noisy things, cicadas,” Fawn murmured, chinned on her own log. “I heard ’em just starting up when I was riding to Raintree.”
They were both quiet for a very long time, listening to the chaining counterpoint of bug songs. The brown wedge of a muskrat’s head trailed a widening vee across the limpid water, then vanished with a plop as the shy animal sensed their regard. The blue heron floated in, but then just stood folded as though sleeping on one leg. The green-headed ducks, drowsing in the shade across the marsh, didn’t move either. The clear light lay breathing like a live thing.
“This place is like the opposite of blight,” murmured Fawn after a while. “Thick, dense…if you opened up, would its ground just flow in and replenish you?”
“I opened up two hours ago. And yes, I think it may,” he sighed.
“That explains something about places like this, then,” she muttered in satisfaction.
A much longer time later, they regretfully pulled their wrinkled selves up onto the wrack and back into the boat, dressed, and pushed back to start for home. The sun was sliding behind the western trees as they crossed the wide part of the lake, and had turned into an orange glint by the time they climbed the bank to Tent Bluefield. Dag slept that night better than he had for weeks.
18
F awn woke late the next morning, she judged by the bright lines of light leaking around the edges of their easterly tent flaps. The air inside was still cool from the night, but would grow hot and stuffy soon. Wrapped around her, Dag sighed and stirred, then hugged her in tighter. Something firm nudged the back of her thigh, and she realized with a slow smirk that it wasn’t his hand. I thought that picnic would be good for him.
He made a purring noise into her hair, indicating the same satisfying realization, and she wriggled around to turn her face to his. His eyes gleamed from under his half-closed eyelids, and she sank into his sleepy smile as if it were a pillow. He kissed her temple and lips, and bent his head to nuzzle her neck. She let her hand begin to roam and stroke, giving and taking free pleasure from his warm skin for the first time since he’d been called out to Raintree. He pulled her closer still, seeming to revel in her softness pressing tight to him, skin to skin for the length of her body. This needed no words now, no instruction. No questions.
A hand slapped loudly three times against the leather of the tent flap, and a raspy female voice called, “Dag Redwing Hickory?”
Dag’s body stiffened, and he swore under his breath. He held Fawn’s face close to his chest as if to muffle her, and didn’t answer.
The slaps were repeated. “Dag Redwing Hickory! Come on, I know you’re in there.”
A frustrated hiss leaked between his teeth. All his stiffening, alas, slackened. “No one in here by that name,” he called back gruffly.
The voice outside grew exasperated. “Dag, don’t fool with me, I’m not in the mood. I dislike this as much as you do, I daresay.”
“Not possible,” he muttered, but sighed and sat up. He ran his hand through his sleep-bent hair, rolled over, and groped for his short trousers.
“What is it?” Fawn asked apprehensively.
“Dowie Grayheron. She’s the alternate for Two Bridge Island on camp council this season.”
“Is it the summons?”
“Likely.”
Fawn scrambled into her shift and trailed after Dag as he shoved through their tent flap and stood squinting in the bright sun.
An older woman, with streaked hair like Omba’s braided up around her head, stood drumming her fingers on her thigh. She eyed Dag’s bed-rumpled look in bemusement, Fawn more curiously. “The camp council hearing for you is at noon,” she announced.
Dag started. “Today? Short notice!”
“I came around twice yesterday, but you were out. And I know Fairbolt warned you, so don’t pretend this is a surprise. Here, let me get through this.” She spread her legs a trifle, pulled back her shoulders, and recited, “Dag Redwing Hickory, I summon you to hear and speak to grave complaints brought before the Hickory Lake Camp Summer Council by Dar Redwing Hickory, on behalf of Tent Redwing, noon today in Council Grove. Do you hear and understand?”
“Yes,” Dag growled.
“Thank you,” she said. “That’s done.”
“But I’m not Dag Redwing,” Dag put in. “That fellow no longer exists.”
“Save it for the grove. That’s where the argumentation belongs.” She hesitated, glancing briefly at Fawn and back to Dag. “I will point out, you’ve been summoned but your child-bride has not. There’s no place for a farmer in our councils.”
Dag’s jaw set. “Is she explicitly excluded? Because if she has been, we have a sticking point before we start.”
“No,” Dowie admitted reluctantly. “But take it from me, she won’t help your cause, Dag. Anyone who believed before that you’ve let your crotch do your thinking won’t be persuaded otherwise by seeing her.
”
“Thank you,” said Dag in a voice of honeyed acid. “I think my wife is pretty, too.”
Dowie just shook her head. “I’m going to be so glad when this day is over.” Her sandals slapped against her heels as she turned and strode off.
“There’s a woman sure knows how to blight a mood,” Dag murmured, his jaw unclenching.
Fawn crept to Dag’s side; his arm went around her shoulders. She swallowed, and asked, “Is she any relation to Obio Grayheron?”
“He’d be her cousin by marriage. She’s head of Tent Grayheron on this island.”
“And she has a vote on the council? That’s…not too encouraging.”
“Actually, she’s one I count as friendly. I patrolled for a year or so with her back when I was a young man, before I left to exchange and she quit to start her family.”
If that was friendly, Fawn wondered what hostile was going to be like. Well, she’d soon find out. Was this all as sudden as it seemed? Maybe not. The camp council question had been a silence in the center of things that Dag had been skirting since they’d returned from Raintree, and she’d let him lead her in that circuit. True, he’d plainly been too ill to be troubled with it those first few days. But after?
He doesn’t know what he wants to do, she realized, cold knotting in her belly. Even now, he does not know. Because what he wanted was impossible, and always had been, and so was the alternative? What was a man supposed to do then?
They dressed, washed up, ate. Dag did not return to cracking nuts, nor Fawn to spinning. He did get up and walk restlessly around the campsite or into the walnut grove, wherever he might temporarily avoid the other residents moving about their own early chores. When the dock cleared out from the morning swimmers, he went down and sat on it for a time, knees bent under his chin, staring down into the water. Fawn wondered if he was playing at that old child’s amusement he’d showed her, of persuading the inedible little sunfish that clustered in the dock’s shade to rise up and swim about in simple patterns. The sun crept.