Lois Bujold - Legacy

“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 firmly, 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.