Lois Bujold - Legacy

“Now, that’s persuasion. Is that how you folks fish all the time?” asked Fawn in amazement. “I wondered why I didn’t see any poles or lines lying around.”

“Something like that. Actually, we usually use hand-nets. You ever see old Cattagus lying on the dock looking as if he’s dozing, with one hand trailing over the side, that’s what he’s likely doing.”

“It seems almost like cheating. Why are there any fish left in this lake?”

“Well, not everyone has the knack.”

As they pulled into the dock, sunburned and happy, Fawn made plans for begging some herbs from Sarri’s garden and grilling Dag’s catch worthily. She managed to clamber onto the weathered gray planks from the wobbly boat without taking an inadvertent swimming lesson, and let Dag hand her up his prize before he tied off the boat’s lines. Clutching the bass, she turned her face up to Dag for a quick kiss and hug, and they climbed the stone steps up the steep bank.

His arm around her waist gave her an abrupt squeeze, then fell away. She looked up to follow his glance.

Dar waited in the shade at the top of the bank, frowning like a bit of rainy dark detached from winter and walking around. As they crested the rise, he said to Dag, “I need to talk to you.”

“Do you? Why?” Dag inquired, but he gestured toward their tent and the log seats around their fire pit.

“Alone, if you please,” Dar said stiffly.

“Mm,” said Dag, without enthusiasm, but he gave his brother a short nod. He saw Fawn back to the tent and left her to deal with the fish. Fawn watched uneasily as the pair strolled away out of the campsite and turned onto the road, leaning a little away from each other.

T hey turned left onto the shady road between the shore campsites and the woods. Dag was tired enough not to need to shorten his steps to match his brother’s, and not yet annoyed enough to lengthen them to his full patroller’s stride and make Dar hurry to keep up. On the whole, he wouldn’t bet on that remaining the case. What is he about? It didn’t take groundsense to see that although Dar had come to Dag, conciliation and apology were not strong in his mood.

“And so?” Dag prodded, although it would have been better tactics to wait Dar out, make him start. This isn’t supposed to be a war.

“You’re the talk of the lake, you know,” Dar said curtly.

“Talk passes. There will be some other novelty along soon enough.” Dag set his jaw to keep himself from asking, What are they saying? He was glumly sure Dar was about to tell him anyway.

“It’s a pretty unsavory match. Not only is that girl you dragged home a farmer, she’s scarcely more than an infant!”

Dag shrugged. “In some ways Fawn’s a child; in others not. In grief and guilt, she’s fully grown.” And I am surely qualified to judge. “In knowing how to go on, I’d call her an apprentice adult. Basic tasks aren’t yet routine for her, but when all that energy and attention get freed up at last, watch out! She’s ferociously bright, and learns fast. Main thing about the age difference, I reckon, is that it hands me a special burden not to betray her trust.” His eyebrows pinched. “Except that the same is true of anyone at any age, so maybe it’s not so special after all.”

“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.