Legacy

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.

As the shadows narrowed, Dag came up under their awning and sat beside her on his log seat. He propped his right elbow on his knee, neck bent, staring down at his sandals. At length he looked up toward the lake, face far away—Fawn couldn’t tell if he was trying to memorize the view or not seeing it at all. She thought of their visits to the lily marsh. This place nourishes him. Would he starve in his spirit, exiled? A man might die without a mark on him, from having his ground ripped in half.

She took a breath, sat straight. Began, “Beloved.”

His face turned sideways to her in a fleeting smile. He looked tired.

“What are you going to do?”

“I don’t know.” He seemed for an instant if he wanted to amend that bluntness in some reassuring fashion, but then just let it stand.

She angled her face away. “I wasn’t going to tell you this story, but now I think I will. When you were first gone to Raintree, I knitted up another pair of socks like those you’d been so pleased with, and took them to your mother for a present. A peace offering, like.”

“Didn’t work.” It wasn’t a guess, nor a chiding; more of a commiseration.

Fawn nodded. “She said—well, we said several things to each other that don’t matter now. But one thing she said sticks. She said, once a patroller sees a malice, he or she doesn’t ever put another thing—or person—ahead of patrolling.”

“I do wonder sometimes how she was betrayed, and who the patroller was. My father, I suspect.”

“Did sound like,” Fawn conceded. “But not with another woman, I don’t guess.”

“Me, either. Something Aunt Mari once let slip—Dar and I once may have had a sister who died as an infant in some tragic way. He says he doesn’t remember any such thing, so she would have had to be either before or within a few years after he was born. If so, she was buried in a deep, deep silence, because Father never mentioned her, either.”

“Huh.” Fawn considered this. “Could be…Well.” She bit her lip. “I’m no patroller, but I have seen a malice, and if there’s anything your mama was right about, it’s that. She said if you didn’t love me enough, you’d choose the patrol.” She held up a hand to stem his beginning protest. “And that if you loved me beyond all sense—you’d choose the patrol. Because you couldn’t protect me for real and true any other way.”

He subsided, silenced. She raised her face to meet his beautiful eyes square, and went on, “So I just want you to know, if you have to choose the patrol—I won’t die of it. Nor be worse off for having known and loved you for a space. I’ll still be richer going down the road than when you met me, by far, if only for the horse and the gear and the knowing. I never knew there was as much knowing as this to be had in the whole world. Maybe, looking back, I’ll remember this summer as a dream of wonders…even the nightmare parts. If I didn’t get to keep you for always, leastways I had you for a time. Which ought to be magic enough for any farmer girl.”

He listened gravely, not attempting, after his first protest, to interrupt. Trying to sort it out, maybe, for he said, “Are you saying you’re too tired to keep up this struggle anymore?”

She eyed him. “No, that’s you, I think.”

He gave a little self-derisive snort. “Could be.”

“Keep it straight. I love you, and I’ll walk with you down any path you choose, but…this one isn’t my choice to make. It’s yours.”

“True. And wise.” He sighed. “I thought we both chose in that scary little parlor back in West Blue. And yet your choice will be honored or betrayed by mine in turn. They don’t come separately.”

“No. They don’t. But they do come in order. And West Blue, well—that was before either you or I saw Greenspring. That town could’ve been West Blue, those people me and mine. I watched your lips move, counting down that line of dead…To keep you, there’s a lot of things I’d fight tooth and toenail. Your kin, my kin, another woman, sickness, farmer stupidity, you name it. Can’t fight Greenspring. Won’t.”

He blinked rapidly, and for a moment the gold in his eyes looked molten. He swiped the shiny water tracks from his cheekbones with the back of his hand, leaned forward, and kissed her on the forehead, that terrifying kiss of blessing again. “Thank you,” he whispered. “You have no idea how that helps.”

She nodded shortly, swallowing down the hot lump in her own throat.

They went into their tent to change, him out of his short trousers and sandals, her out of her somewhat grubby shift. When, on her knees sorting through his trunk, she tried to hand him up his cleanest shirt, he surprised her by saying, “No—my best shirt. The good one your Aunt Nattie wove.”

He hadn’t worn his wedding shirt since their wedding. Wondering, she shook it out, its folds wrapped in other clothes to keep it from creasing—her green cotton dress, as it happened.

“Oh, yes, wear that one,” he said, looking over his shoulder. “It’s so pretty on you.”

“I don’t know, Dag. It’s awfully farmer-girl. Shouldn’t I dress more Lakewalker for this?”

He smiled crookedly down at her. “No.”

It was disquieting, in this context, to be all gussied up in their wedding-day clothes again. She adjusted the hang of the cord on her left wrist, and the gold beads knocked cool against her skin. Were they to be unmarried in this new noon hour, as if tracing back over some exact path after they had gotten lost? Maybe they had gone astray, somewhere along the way. But fingering the links of events back one by one in her memory, she couldn’t see where.

Dag had picked up his hickory stick, so she guessed they were in for a longish walk to this grove, since he’d stopped using it around the campsite a few days back. She brushed her skirts straight, slipped her shoes on, and followed him out of the tent.

Dag realized he’d walked for a mile without seeing a single thing that had passed his eyes, and it wasn’t because the route was so familiar. His mind seemed to have come to some still place, but he wasn’t sure if it was poised or simply numb. They were passing patroller headquarters when Fawn, uncharacteristically silent till then, asked her first question: “Where is this council grove, anyhow?”

He glanced down at her. The rosy flush from their walk in the noon warmth kept her from being pale, but her face was set. “Not much farther. Just past Hoharie’s medicine tent.”

She nodded. “Will there be very many people there? Is it like a town council?”

“I don’t know town councils. There are nearly eight thousand folks around Hickory Lake; the whole point of having a camp council is so they don’t have to all show up for these arguments. Anyone can come listen who’s interested, though. It depends on how many people or families or tents are involved in a dispute. It’s only Tent Redwing—and Tent Bluefield—today. There’ll be Dar and Mama, but not too many friends of theirs, because they wouldn’t care to have them watch this. My friends are mostly out on patrol this season. So I don’t expect a crowd.” He hesitated, swinging his staff along, then shrugged his left shoulder. “Depends on how they take our marriage cords. That affects most everyone, and could grow much wider.”

“How long will it take?”

“At the start of a session, the council leader lights a session candle. Session lasts as long as it takes to burn down, which is about three hours. They say of a dispute that it’s a one-candle or two-candle or ten-candle argument. They can spread over several days, see.” He added after a few more paces, “But this one won’t.” Not if I can help it.

“How do you know?” she asked, but then it was time to turn off into the grove.

Grove was a misnomer; it was more of a clearing, a wide circular space at the edge of the woods weeded of poison ivy and other noxious plant life and bordered by huge, flowering bushes people had planted over the years—elderberry, forsythia, lilac—some so old their trunks were thick as trees. Upended log seats were scattered about on grass that a couple of placid sheep were at work nibbling short. To one side rose an open frame nearly the size of patrol headquarters under a shingled roof, for bad weather, but today a small circle of seats was set up in the shade at the clearing’s edge. A few more folks were walking in as Dag and Fawn arrived, so apparently they were not late.

Fairbolt Crow, talking head down with Mari, arrived last. They split off from each other, Fairbolt taking the remaining unoccupied log seat at the end of a close-set row of seven backed up to some venerable elderberry bushes, branches hanging heavy with fruit. Mari strode over to the gaggle of patrollers seated to Dag’s right. Dag was not surprised to see Saun, Razi, and Utau already there; Saun jumped to his feet and rolled up a log for her. He was a little more surprised to see Dirla—had she paddled all the way over from Beaver Sigh for this? — and Griff from Obio’s patrol.

Clustered to the left of the councilor’s row were only Dar, Cumbia, and Omba, the latter plainly not too happy to be there. His mother looked up from a bit of cord she was working in her lap for habit or comfort, shot Dag one glance of grim triumph, which he scarcely knew how to interpret—See what you made me do? maybe—then looked away. The looked away part he had no trouble understanding, since he did the same, like not watching a medicine maker rummage in one’s wound. Dar merely appeared as if he had a stomachache, and blamed Dag for it, hardly unusual for Dar.

One log seat waited directly across from the councilors. Utau muttered something to Razi, who hurried to collect another from nearby and set it beside the first. Not ten feet of open space was left in the middle. No one was going to have to bellow…at least, not merely to be heard.

Fawn, looking every bit as wary as a young deer, stopped Dag just out of earshot by clutching his arm; he bent his head to her urgent whisper, “Quick! Who are all those new people?”

Fairbolt was seated, perhaps not accidentally, closest to the patrollers, and Dowie Grayheron beside him. Dag whispered back, “Left from Fairbolt and Dowie is Pakona Pike. She’s council leader this season. Head of Tent Pike.” A woman of ninety or so, as straight-backed as Cumbia and one of her closer friends—Dag did not expect benign neutrality from her, but he didn’t say it to Fawn.

“Next to her are Laski Beaver and Rigni Hawk, councilor and alternate from Beaver Sigh.” Laski, a woman in her eighties, was head of Tent Beaver on Beaver Sigh, and a leather maker—it was her sister who made the coats that turned arrows. No one would ever have pulled her from her making for council duty. Rigni, closer to Dag’s age, came from a tent of makers specializing in boats and buildings, though she herself was just emerging from raising a brood of children. She was also one of Dirla’s aunts; she might have heard some good of Dag and Fawn.

“Next down from them, Tioca Cattail and her alternate Ogit Muskrat, from Heron Island. I don’t know them all that well.” Only that Tioca was a medicine maker, and since the recent death of her mother head of Tent Cattail on Heron. Ogit was a retired patroller of about Cumbia’s age, curmudgeonly as Cattagus but without the charm; of no special making skills, he liked being on council, Dag had heard. While he was not close friends with Cumbia, the two had certainly known each other for decades. Despite Ogit’s patrol connections Dag did not hold much hope for an ally in him.

Fawn blinked and nodded, and Dag wondered if she would remember all this and keep it straight. In any case, she now let him lead her forward. He seated her on his right, to the patroller side of things, and settled himself, laying his hickory staff at his feet and sitting up with a polite nod to the councilors across from him.

On a shorter sawed-off log in front of Pakona sat a beeswax candle. She nodded back grimly, lit the wick, and lowered a square parchment windbreak around it, lanternlike. From beside it she picked up a peeled wooden rod, the speaker’s stick, and tapped it three times against the makeshift table. Everyone fell silent and regarded her attentively.

“There’s been a deal of talk and gossip about this,” she began, “so I don’t think anyone here needs more explaining-to. The complaint in the matter comes from Tent Redwing against its member Dag Redwing. Who’s speaking for Tent Redwing?”

Dag stirred at his naming, but voiced no protest. Let that one go for now. You’ll find your chance.

“I do,” said Dar, holding up one hand; behind him, Cumbia nodded. Cumbia, as head of Tent Redwing, was more than capable of speaking for herself and everyone else, and Dag wondered at this trade-off. An extension of Dag’s shunning? Didn’t trust herself to keep her voice and argument steady? She looked like old iron, today. But mostly, she looked old.

“Pass this down to Dar, then,” said Pakona. The stick went from hand to hand. “Speak your tent’s complaint, Dar.”

He took the stick, inhaled, cast Dag a level stare, and began. “It won’t take long. As we all know, Dag returned late from a patrol this summer with a farmer paramour in tow that he named his wife, on the basis of a pair of wedding cords that no one had witnessed them make. We say that the cords are counterfeit, produced by trickery. Dag is in simple violation of the long-standing rule against bringing such…self-indulgences within the bounds of camp. Tent Redwing requests the camp and the patrol enforce the usual penalties, returning the girl to her people by whatever means required and fining Dag Redwing for his transgression.”

Dag, rigid with surprise, exhaled carefully. How interestingly clever of Dar—yes, this had to be Dar’s idea. He had entirely shifted his argument from the one threatened before Dag had departed for Raintree, of forced string-cutting or banishment. A glance at Fairbolt’s rising eyebrows told Dag the camp captain, too, had been taken by surprise; he cast Dag an apologetic glance. Dag wasn’t sure how long ago Dar had rethought his attack, but he had been shrewd enough to keep it from Fairbolt.

Dag opened his ground just enough to catch the councilors’ sevenfold flicker of ground examination upon him and Fawn. Tioca Cattail tilted her head, and said, “Pardon, but they appear to be perfectly usual cords to me. Can’t that girl shut down her—no, I suppose not. How do you think they are false?”

“They were falsified in the making,” said Dar. “The exchange of grounds in the cords marks a true marriage, yes, but the making also acts—normally—as a barrier against anyone not bearing Lakewalker bloodlines from contaminating our kinships. It’s not a great making, true. It’s more like the lowest boundary. We tend to think everyone can do it, but that is itself the sign of the value of this custom in the past.

“I say the farmer girl did not make her own cord, but that Dag made it for her, with a trick he stole from my knife-making techniques, of using blood to lead live ground into an object. It represents nothing but cunning.”

“How do you know this, Dar?” asked Fairbolt, frowning.

Dar said, a trifle reluctantly, “Dag told me himself.”

“That’s not what I said!” Dag said sharply.

Pakona held up a quelling hand. “Wait for the stick, Dag.”

“Hold on,” said Rigni Hawk, her nose wrinkling. “We’re taking hearsay testimony on a matter when we have two eyewitnesses sitting right in the circle?”

“Thank you, Rigni,” huffed Fairbolt in relief. “Quite right. Pakona, I think the stick should go to Dag for this tale.”

“He has reason to lie,” said Dar, looking sullen.

“That’ll be for us to sort out,” said Rigni firmly.

Pakona waved, and Dar reluctantly handed the stick around via Omba to Dag.

“So how did you make those cords?” asked Tioca in curiosity.

“Fawn and I made both cords together,” Dag said tightly. “As some of you may remember, my right arm was broken at the time”—he made the old sling-gesture—“and the other is, well, as you see. Lakewalker blood or no, I was quite incapable of weaving any cord at all. Fawn wove the cord she now wears, I sat behind her on the bench with my arms along hers, and I cast my ground into it in the usual way. I don’t see how anyone in his right mind can maintain that cord is invalid!”

Pakona waved to quell him again, but murmured, “So, go on. What about the other?”

“I admit, I attempted to aid her in catching up her ground to weave into the second cord. We were having no luck at all when suddenly, all on her own, she cut open both her index fingers and wove while bleeding. Her ground welled right up and into the cord. I didn’t help her any more than she helped me; less, I’d say.”

“You instructed her to do this, then,” said Tioca.

“No, she came up with it—”

“A few nights earlier, Dag and I had been talking about ground,” Fawn put in breathlessly, “and he’d told me blood held ground after it left the body, because it was, like, alive separately from the person. Which I thought was a right disturbing idea, so I remembered it.”

“You’ve not been given leave to speak here, girl,” said Pakona sharply.

Fawn sat back and clapped her hand over her mouth in apology and alarm. Dag set his jaw, but added, “Fawn is exactly right. I recognized it as a technique that any of us here who have been bonded to sharing knives have likewise seen, but I didn’t suggest it. Fawn thought of it herself.”

“They used a knife-making technique on wedding cords,” Dar said in a voice of outrage.

“Groundwork is groundwork, Hoharie says,” Dag shot back. “I defy you to find a rule anywhere says you can’t.”

Tioca’s eyes narrowed in considerable intrigue. “Medicine-making does have to be a little more…adaptable than some other kinds of making,” she allowed. Such as knife-work hung implied. In a kindly sort of tone. Dag allowed himself an instant of enjoyment, watching Dar’s teeth grit.

“One brother’s word against t’other’s,” rumbled Ogit Muskrat from his end of the row. “One’s a maker, one’s not. Given the matter is making, I know which I’d trust.”

Fawn, her lips pressed tight, cast a look up at Dag: But you’re a maker, too! He gave her a small headshake. He was letting himself get distracted, wound up in side issues. This wasn’t about their cords.

Very canny of Dar to try to make it so, though. It dropped the whole smoldering issue of threatened banishment against a, what was that word Fairbolt had used, notable patroller, into the lake. Was that part Cumbia’s doing—shaken by doubt of her son’s allegiance despite her harsh words to Fawn? A reaction to whatever reputation Dag had won in Raintree? It certainly avoided complicated and possibly ferocious campwide debates over the council’s right to force a string-cutting. If Dar could make it stick, it made everything simple and the problem go away, without anyone having to change anything.

And if Dar couldn’t make it stick, there was still the other strategy to fall back on. But Dag doubted there was a person on council who wouldn’t prefer the simpler version, Fairbolt not excepted.

“But if you rule the girl’s cord is invalid,” said Laski Beaver, scratching her head, “yet Dag’s is not, does that mean he’s married to her but she’s not married to him? Makes no sense.”

“Both are invalid,” snapped Dar. Pakona, with admirable even-handedness, gave him the same quelling glower and headshake she’d given Dag, and he subsided.

Pakona turned back, and said, “Bring those things up here, Dag. We need a closer look.” She added reluctantly, “The girl, too.”

Dag had Fawn roll up the soft fine fabric of his left sleeve and dutifully rose to walk slowly down the row of councilors. Fawn followed, silent and scared. The touches, both with fingers and groundsense, were for the most part brief enough to be courteous, although a couple of the women’s hands strayed curiously to the fabric of his shirt. Tioca, Dag was almost certain, detected his fading ground reinforcement being slowly absorbed in Fawn’s left arm, but she said nothing about it to the others. Fairbolt, at the end of the line, waved them both away: “I’ve seen ’em. Repeatedly.”

Dag and Fawn recrossed the circle and sat once more. He watched her head bend as she straightened her skirts. In the green dress, she looked like some lone flower found in a woodland pool, in a spring-come-late. Very late. She is not your prize, old patroller, not to be won nor earned. She’s her own gift. Lilies always are. His only-fingers traced her cord on his arm, and fell back, gripping his knee.

“There’s our vote, then,” said Pakona. “Is this unusual cord-making to be taken as valid, or not?”

“There’s this,” said Laski, slowly. “Once word gets out, I’d think others could repeat this trick. Acceptance would open the door to more of these mismatches.”

“But they’re good ground constructions,” said Tioca. “As solid as, well, mine.” She wriggled her left wrist and the cord circling it. “Are cords not to be proof of marriage anymore?”

“Maybe all cord-makings will have to be witnessed, hereafter,” said Laski.

A general, unenthusiastic hm as everyone envisioned this.

“I suggest,” said Pakona, “that we set the future actions of future folks beyond the scope of this council, or we’ll still be arguing as the hundredth candle burns down. We only have to rule on this couple, this day. We’ve seen all there is to see, heard from the only ones who were there. Whether the idea for the thing was Dag’s or the farmer girl’s seems to me not to make a great deal of difference. The outcome was the same. A no vote will see it finished right now. A yes vote will…well, it won’t. Dar, is this agreeable to Tent Redwing?”

Dar leaned back for a low-voiced exchange with their frowning mother. Cumbia had run out of cord to play with; her hands now kneaded the fabric of her shift along her thin thighs. A grimace, a short nod. Dar turned back. “Yes, we accept,” he replied.

“Dag, you?”

“Yes…,” said Dag slowly. He glanced aside at Fawn, watching him in trusting bewilderment, and gave her a little nod of reassurance. “Go ahead.”

Dar, expecting more argument, looked at him in sharp surprise. Dag remembered Fairbolt’s word picture of the sitting tactician. Wise man, Fairbolt. He settled back to watch the candle burn down as Pakona started down the row.

“Ogit?”

“No! No farmer spouses!” Well, that was clear.

“Tioca?”

A slight hesitation. “Yes. I can’t reconcile it with my maker’s conscience to say that’s not a good making.”

Rigni, called upon, looked plaintively at Tioca and at last said, “Yes.”

Laski, after a bit of a struggle, said, “No.”

Pakona herself said, “No,” without hesitation, and added, “if we let this in, it’s going to be every kind of mess, and it will go on and on. Dowie?”

Dowie looked down the row and made a careful count on her fingers, and looked appalled. A no from her would finish the matter. A yes would create a tie and throw it onto Fairbolt. After a long, long pause, she cleared her throat, and said, “Yes?”

Fairbolt gave her palpable cowardice a slow, blistering, and ungrateful glare. Then he sighed, sat up, and stared around. A longer silence stretched.

You know they’re good cords, Fairbolt, Dag thought. Dag watched the struggle in the captain’s face between integrity and practicality, and admired how long it was taking the latter to triumph. In a way, Dag wished the integrity would pull ahead. It wasn’t going to make a bit of difference in the end, after all, and Fairbolt would feel better about himself later.

“Fairbolt?” said Pakona, cautiously. “Camp captain always goes last to break the tie votes. It’s a duty.”

Fairbolt waved this away in a Yeah, yeah, I know gesture. He cleared his throat. “Dag? You got anything more to say?”

“A certain amount, yes. It will seem roundabout, but it will go to the center in the end. Makes no never mind to me whether it’s before or after you have your say, though.”

Fairbolt gave him a little nod. “Go ahead, then. You have the stick.”

Pakona looked as though she wanted to override this, but thought better of annoying Fairbolt while his vote hung in the breeze. She crossed her arms and settled back. Dar and Cumbia were frowning in alarm, but Dag certainly had all their attention.

Dag’s mind was heavy, his head ached, but his heart felt light, as if it were flying. Might just be falling. We’ll know when we hit the ground. He set the speaking stick aside, reached down, gripped his hickory staff, and stood up. Full height.

“Excepting the patrollers who just came back from Raintree with me, how many folks here have heard the name of a farmer town called Greenspring?”

An array of blank looks from the center and left, although Dirla’s aunt Rigni, after a glance at her patroller niece, hesitantly raised her hand for a moment. Dag returned her a nod.

“I’m not surprised there are so few. It was the town in Raintree where that last malice started up, unchecked. No one told me the name either, when I was called out to ride west. Now, partly that was due to the confusion that always goes with such a scramble, but you know—partly, it wasn’t. No one knew, or said, because it didn’t seem important to them.

“So how many here—not my patrollers—know the numbers of dead at Bonemarsh?”

Ogit Muskrat said gruffly, “We’ve all heard them. ’Bout fifty grown-ups and near twenty youngsters.”

“Such a horror,” sighed Tioca.

Dag nodded. “Nineteen. That’s right.” Fairbolt was watching him curiously. No, I’m not taking your advice about boasting, Fairbolt. Maybe the reverse. Just wait. “So who knows how many died at Greenspring?”

The patrollers to his right looked tight-lipped, holding back the answer. The majority of the councilors just looked baffled. After a stretch, Pakona finally said, “Lots, I imagine. What has this to do with your counterfeit wedding cords, Dag?”

He let that counterfeit slide unchallenged, too. “I said it was roundabout. Of a thousand townsfolk—roughly half the population of Bonemarsh—Greenspring lost about three hundred grown-ups and all—or nearly all—of their youngsters. I counted not less than one hundred sixty-two such bodies at the Greenspring burying field, and I know there were the bones of at least three more at the Bonemarsh mud-men feast we cleaned up after. Didn’t mention those three to the townsmen doing the burying. It wouldn’t have helped, at the time.”

He glanced down at Fawn, glancing up at him, and knew they were both wondering if some of those scattered bones might have been the missing Sassy. Dag hoped not. He shook his head at Fawn, to say, no knowing, and she nodded and hunkered on her seat.

“Does anyone but me see something terribly wrong with those two sets of numbers?”

The return stares held discomfort, more than a twinge of sympathy, even pity, but no enlightenment. Dag sighed and plowed on. “All right, try this.

“Bonemarsh died—people slain, animals slaughtered, that beautiful country blighted for a generation—because we failed at Greenspring. If the malice had been recognized and stopped there, it would never have marched as far as Bonemarsh.

“It wasn’t lack of patrollers or patrolling that slew Greenspring. Raintree patrol is as stretched as anyone else’s, but there would have been enough, if only. It was a lack of…something else. Talking. Knowing. Friendships, even. A whole lot of simple things that could have been different, that one man or another might have changed, but didn’t.”

“Are you blamin’ the Raintree patrol?” burst out Mari, unable to contain herself any longer. “Because that isn’t the way I saw it. Seems the farmers were told not to settle there, but they didn’t listen.” Pakona made her hand-wave again, though not with any great conviction.

“I’m not blaming either side more than the other,” said Dag, “and I don’t know the answers. And I know I don’t know. And it’s stopped me, right cold.

“But you see—once upon a time, I didn’t know dirt about patrolling, either. And half of what I thought I did know was wrong. There’s a cure for ignorant young patrollers, though—we send ’em for a walk around the lake. Turns ’em into much smarter old patrollers, pretty reliably. Good system. It’s worked for generations.

“So I’m thinkin’—maybe it’s not enough anymore just to walk around the lake. Maybe we, or some of us, or one of us, needs to walk around the world.”

The circle had grown very quiet.

Dag took a last breath. “And maybe that fellow is me. Sometimes, when you don’t know how to start, you just have to start anyway, and find out movin’ what you’d never learn sittin’ still. I’m not going to argue and I’m not going to defend, because that’s like asking me to tell you the ending before I’ve begun. There may not even be an ending. So Fairbolt, you can cast that last vote any way you please. But tomorrow, my wife and I are going to be down that road and gone. That’s all.” He gave a short, sharp nod, and sat back down.