Lois Bujold - Legacy

“Were you all right?” Dag asked, as soon as they were out of earshot. “With Dar, I mean.”

“I guess. Except that he asked one really rude question.”

“Which was?”

Fawn flushed. “He asked if we’d made love in his cabin.”

“Ah. Well, he actually does have a legitimate reason for wanting to know that, but he should have asked me. If he really couldn’t trust me to know better.”

“I hadn’t worked round yet to asking him if your mama had softened any overnight. Didn’t you want to ask?”

“If she had,” Dag said distantly, “I’m sure Dar was able to stiffen her up again.”

Fawn asked more quietly, looking down at her feet pacing along the muddy, leaf-and-stick-strewn path, “Did this—marrying me—mess things up any between you and your brother?”

“No.”

“Because he seems pretty angry at you. At us.”

“He’s always annoyed at me for something. It’s a habit. Don’t worry about it, Spark.”

They reached the road and turned right. Dag barely glanced aside as they passed his family’s clearing. He made no move to turn in there. The road followed the shoreline around the island and curved south, running between the woods and more groups of cabins hugging the bank. The dripping trees sparkled in the morning light, and the sun, now well up above the farther shore, sent golden beams between the boles through the cool, moist air, which smelled of rain and moss.

Not a quarter mile along, Dag turned left into a clearing featuring three tent-cabins and a dock much like all the others. It was set a little apart from its neighbors by a stand of tall black walnut trees to its north and an orchard of stubbier fruit trees to its south; Fawn could see a few beehives tucked away among the latter. On a stump in front of one of the cabins sat an aging man dressed only in trousers cut off above the knees and held up by a rope belt, and leather sandals. His gray hair was knotted at his nape. He was carving away with long strokes on what looked to be some sort of oar or paddle in the making, but when he saw them he waved the knife in amiable greeting.

Dag dumped their saddlebags atop another stump and led Fawn over to the fellow. By his gnarly feet, she suspected he was an old patroller. He’d clearly been a big man once, now going a little stringy with age, except around his—for a Lakewalker—ample middle. He eyed Fawn as curiously as she eyed him.

Dag said, “Fawn, this is Cattagus Redwing, Mari’s husband.”

Making him Dag’s uncle, then. So, this marriage hadn’t estranged Dag from quite all his family. Fawn dipped her knees and smiled anxiously, looking around covertly for Mari. It would be wonderful to see a familiar face. She saw no one else, but heard cheery voices coming from down over the bank.

Cattagus tilted his head in dry greeting. “So, this is what all the fuss is about. Cute as a kitten, I’ll grant you that.” His voice was wheezy, with a sharp whistling running through it. He looked her up and down, a little smile playing around his lips, shook his head wryly, drew breath again, and added, “Absent gods, boy. I’d never have got away with something like this. Not even when I was thirty years younger.”

Dag snorted, sounding more amused than offended. “’Course not. Aunt Mari would’ve have had your hide for a tent flap.”

Cattagus chuckled and coughed. “That’s a fact.” He waved aside with his knife. “The girls from Stores brought your tent by.”

“Already?” said Dag. “That was quick.”

Fawn tracked their gazes to a large handcart set at the side of one cabin, piled high with what appeared to be old hides, with a stack of long poles sticking out the back.

“They said, bring back their cart soon as you get it empty.”

“That I can do. Where do Mari and Sarri want me to set up?”

“Better go ask ’em.” Cattagus gestured toward the shore.

Fawn followed Dag to peek over the bank. To the left of the dock, at which two narrow boats were tied, a sort of wooden cradle lay in the water, perhaps ten feet long and six feet wide. A woman wearing long black hair to her hips and nothing else, and a black-haired girl-child, were tromping vigorously up and down in it. Marching with them, Razi, equally nude, was clapping his hands and calling to the little girl, who looked to be about four, “Jump, Tesy! Jump!” She squealed with laughter and hopped like a frog, splashing the woman, who ducked and grinned. The cradle was apparently for retting some sort of long-stemmed plant, and the treaders were engaged in kicking off the rotting matter to clean the fibers. Beyond them, Utau, standing in water to his waist, was supporting the clutching fists of a small boy of perhaps two, whose fat little legs kicked up a fountain of foam. Mari, dressed in only a simple sleeveless shift hemmed at the calf and sandals like her husband’s, stood on the dock with her hands on her hips watching them, smiling. She seemed to be halfway through either loading or unloading a couple dozen coils of rough-looking rope from one of the boats, much like the rope netting Fawn had seen on the plunkin panniers.

Dag called down over the bank, “Hey, Mari! We’re back.”

Indicating that he’d been here once already this morning, likely to arrange this. Fawn wondered if this had been his first idea, or his third, and just how he had gone about explaining his needs. His ability to persuade had not entirely deserted him, it seemed.

Mari waved back. “Be right with you!”

Steps laid from flat stones made a stairway down the steep bank to the dock. In a few moments, Fawn was treated to the somewhat startling sight of a whole family of nude, wet Lakewalkers climbing up from the shore. They seemed quite unconscious of their undress. Fawn, who had never done more than wade in the shallows of the river with her skirts rolled up, supposed it made sense, given that these people were likely in and out of the water a dozen times a day for various purposes. She was nonetheless relieved when they streamed past her with only the briefest greetings and emerged a few minutes later from the cabin on the north of the clearing dressed, if simply: Razi and Utau in truncated trousers like Cattagus’s, and Sarri and her daughter in shifts. The little boy, escaping, streaked past still in his skin in a beeline for the water, only to be scooped up and tickled into distraction from his purpose by Utau.

Mari followed up the steps and stopped by Dag. “Morning, Fawn.” Her expression today was ironic but not unsympathetic. “Dag, Sarri thought you could set up under the apple tree over there. There’s a bit of rising ground there, though you can hardly see it. It’ll be the driest spot.”

Utau, with the boy now riding atop his shoulders, small hands pulling his hair from its knot, came up with the long-haired woman. To Fawn’s eyes, she looked to be about thirty; Fawn added the accustomed fifteen years to her guess. “Hello, Fawn,” Utau greeted her, without surprise. Clearly, he’d been given the whole tale by now. “This is our wife, Sarri Otter.” A nod at Razi, who had been inspecting the cart and now strode over to join them, confirmed the other part of that our.

Fawn had twigged that they were on Sarri’s territory, and maybe Mari’s; she gave her knee-dip, and said to the women, “Thank you for having us here.”

Sarri folded her arms and nodded shortly, face not unfriendly, eyes curious. “Dag…well, Dag,” she said, as if that explained something.

Dag, Razi, Utau, and Mari, with Cattagus following along and supplying wheezing commentary, then turned their attention to the alleged tent. The men hauled the cart to the orchard and swiftly unloaded it. The bewildering mess of poles and ropes was transformed with startling speed into a square frame with hides over its arching top and hanging down for walls, neatly staked to the earth. It had a sort of miniature porch, more hides raised up on poles, for an awning in front, which they arranged facing the lakeshore, canted so that the rising sun would not shine in directly. They rolled up and tied the front walls beneath the awning, leaving the little room open to the air much like the more solid structures.