Lois Bujold - Legacy

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?”