Lois Bujold - Legacy

“Been getting here. I had a few delays.” He made the sling-gesture.

For once, it did not divert his interrogator’s eye. Dar’s voice sharpened as his gaze locked on his brother’s left arm. “What fool thing have you gone and done? Or have you finally done something right?” He let his breath out in a hiss as his eyes raked over Fawn. “No. Too much to hope for.” His brow wrinkled as he frowned at her left wrist. “How did you do that?”

“Very well,” said Dag, earning an exasperated look.

Dar walked closer, staring down at Fawn in consternation. “So there really was a farmer-piglet.”

“Actually”—Dag’s voice suddenly went bone dry—“that would be my wife. Missus Fawn Bluefield. Fawn, meet Dar Redwing.”

Fawn attempted a tremulous smile. Her knees felt too weak to dip.

Dar stepped half a pace back. “Ye gods, you’re serious about this!”

Dag’s voice dropped still further. “Deadly.”

They locked eyes for a moment, and Fawn had the maddening sense that some exchange had passed or was passing that, once again, she hadn’t caught, although it had seemed to spin off the rather insulting term piglet. Or, from the heated look in Dag’s eye, very insulting term, although she couldn’t see exactly why; chickie and filly and piglet and all such baby-animal terms being used interchangeably for little endearments, in Fawn’s experience. Perhaps it was the tone of voice that made the difference. Whatever it was, it was Dar who backed down, not apologizing but changing tack: “Fairbolt will explode.”

“I’ve seen Fairbolt. I left him in one piece. Mari, too.”

“You can’t tell me he’s happy about this!”

“I don’t. But neither was he stupid.” Another hint of warning, that? Perhaps, for Dar ceased his protests, although with a frustrated gesture. Dag continued, “Omba says Mari spoke to you alone last night, after the others.”

“Oh, and wasn’t that an uproar. Mama always pictures you dead in a ditch, not that she hasn’t been close to right now and then just by chance, but I don’t expect that of Mari.”

“Did she tell you what happened to my sharing knife?”

“Yes. I didn’t believe half of it.”

“Which half?”

“Well, that would be the problem to decide, now, wouldn’t it?” Dar glanced up. “Did you bring it along?”

“That’s why we came here.”

To Dar’s work shack? Or to Hickory Lake Camp generally? The meaning seemed open.

“You seen Mama yet?”

“That will be next.”

“I suppose,” Dar sighed, “I’d best see it here, then. Before the real din starts.”

“That’s what I was thinking, too.”

Dar gestured them toward the cabin steps. Fawn sat beside Dag, scrunching up to him for solace, and Dar took a seat near the steps on a broad stump.

“Give Dar the knife,” said Dag. At her troubled look, he dropped a reassuring kiss atop her head, which made Dar’s face screw up as though he was smelling something rank. Fawn frowned but fished the sheath out of her shirt once more. She would have preferred to give it to Dag to hand to his brother, but that wasn’t possible. Reluctantly, she extended it across to Dar, who almost as reluctantly took it.

Dar did not unsheathe it immediately, but sat with it in his lap a moment. He took in a long breath, as though centering himself somehow; half the expression seemed to drop from his face. Since it was mostly the sour, disapproving half, Fawn didn’t altogether mind. What was left seemed distant and emotionless.

Dar’s examination seemed much like that of the other Lakewalkers: cradling the knife, holding it to his lips, but also cheek and forehead, eyes open and closed in turn. He took rather longer about it.

He looked up at last, and in a colorless voice asked Dag to explain, once again, the exact sequence of events in the malice’s cave, with close guesses as to the time each movement had taken. He did not ask anything of Fawn. He sat a little more, then the distant expression went away, and he looked up again.

“So what do you make of it?” asked Dag. “What happened?”

“Dag, you can’t expect me to discuss the inner workings of my craft in front of some farmer.”

“No, I expect you to discuss them—fully—in front of that donor’s mother.”

Dar grimaced, but counterattacked, unexpectedly speaking to Fawn directly for the very first time: “Yes, and how did you get pregnant?”

Did she have to confess the whole stupid episode with Stupid Sunny? She looked up beseechingly at Dag, who shook his head slightly. She gathered her courage and replied coolly, “In the usual way, I believe.”

Dar growled, but did not pursue the matter. Instead, he protested to Dag, “She won’t understand.”

“Then you won’t actually be giving away any secrets, will you? Begin at the beginning. She knows what ground is, for starters.”

“I doubt that,” said Dar sourly.

Dag shifted his splinted hand to touch his marriage cord. “Dar, she made this. The other as well.”

“She couldn’t…” Dar went quiet for a time, brow furrowing. “All right. Flukes happen. But I still think she won’t understand.”

“Try. She might surprise you.” Dag smiled faintly. “You might be a better teacher than you think.”

“All right, all right! All right.” Dar turned his glower on Fawn. “A knife…that is, a dying body that…agh. Go all the way back. Ground is in everything, you understand that?”

Fawn nodded anxiously.

“Living things build up ground and alter its essence. Concentrate it. They are always making, but they are making themselves. Man eats food, the food’s ground doesn’t vanish, it goes into the man and is transformed. When a man—or any living thing—dies, that ground is released. The ground associated with material parts dissipates slowly with the decaying body, but the nonmaterial part, the most complex inner essence, it goes all at once. Are you following this?” he demanded abruptly.

Fawn nodded.

His look said, I don’t think so, but he went on. “Anyway. That’s how living things help a blight recover, by building up ground slowly around the edges and constantly releasing it again. That’s how blight kills, by draining ground away too fast from anything caught away from the edge too long. A malice consumes ground directly, ripping it out of the living like a wolf disemboweling its prey.”

Dag did not wince at this comparison, although he went a little stony. Actually, that was a brief nod of agreement, Fawn decided. She shivered and concentrated on Dar, because she didn’t think he’d respond well to being stopped for questions, at least not by her.

“Sharing knives…” He touched the curve of hers. “The inner surface of a thighbone has a natural affinity for blood, which can be persuaded to grow stronger by the maker shaping the knife. That’s what I do, in addition to…to encouraging it to dwell on its fate. I meet with the pledged heart’s-death donor, and he or she shares their blood into the knife in the making. Because their live blood bears their ground.”

“Oh!” said Fawn in a voice of surprise, then closed her mouth abruptly.

“Oh what?” said Dar in aggravation.

She looked at Dag; he raised an unhelpful eyebrow. “Should I say?” she asked.

“Certainly.”

She glanced sideways at the frowning and—even shirtless—thoroughly intimidating maker. “Maybe you’d better explain, Dag.”

Dag smiled a trifle too ironically at his brother. “Fawn reinvented the technique herself, to persuade her ground into my marriage cord. Took me by surprise. In fact, when I recognized it, I nearly fell off the bench. So I’d say she understands it intimately.”

“You used a knife-making technique on a marriage cord?” Dar sounded aghast.