Lois Bujold - Sharing Knife 4 Horizon

“Yes, but your marriage would give Whitesmith, here, some claims on your property that your other kin might not want to allow. Or if that house and hill is all left to the tad, here, as your papa’s only surviving son, he presumably owes you some due-share, but he’s too young to administer it. I’ve seen this sort of tangle lead to all sorts of fights and disputes and even killings, and over a good deal less property than your Oleana hill!”

“In Graymouth, maybe!” cried Berry, but Bo scratched his chin in worry.

“Better you should wait and get married back in Clearcreek, miss,” said the clerk.

“But it could be four or six months till we get back there!” said Whit, sounding suddenly bewildered. “We want to get married now!”

“Yeah, Fawn’s baked the cake and fixed the food and everything!” put in Hawthorn. “And she made me take a bath!”

“Something like this sort of problem must have come up before.”

Dag pitched his voice deep to cut across the rising babble of protest. “In a town with as many strangers passing through for trade as Graymouth gets. Couldn’t you just leave out all mention of the property, let the Clearcreek clerk write it all in later?”

“I should have kept my fool mouth shut,” muttered Bo. “Sorry, Berry.”

The distress from the folks assembled in the room was rising like a miasma around Dag, and he closed himself tighter against it.

“That’s what the marriage registration is for, to settle all these critical matters!” said the clerk. “Not that I’d expect a Lakewalker to understand,” he added in a low mutter. “Don’t you fellows trade your women around? Like bed-boat girls, but with big knives, and not near so friendly.”

Dag stiffened, but decided to pretend not to hear, although Remo stirred in annoyance and Barr’s sandy eyebrows rose.

The clerk straightened up, cleared his throat, and gripped the edges of the table. “There have been variances made, from time to time,” he said. Whit made an eager noise. “The fellow puts up a bond with the town clerk in the amount of the disputed property, or a decreed percentage. When he brings back the proper documents or witnesses to prove his claims, he gets it back, less a handling fee. Or, if his claims don’t fly, the woman’s kin comes to collect it, for damages.”

“What damages?” said Hawthorn curiously, but Bo’s grip on his shoulder quelled him.

Whit’s nose abruptly winkled. “Just how much money are we talking about here?”

“Well, the worth of that hill and house, I suppose.”

“I don’t have that much money!”

The clerk shrugged helplessly.

“We’ve still to sell off the Fetch,” said Berry dubiously, “but it won’t run to anything near the value of our place in Clearcreek. And besides, we need that money to take home to live on next year.”

Remo glanced at Barr and cleared his throat. “Barr and I-anyway, I still have my salvage share from the cave,” he offered. “I could, uh, pitch in.”

Barr swallowed, and with an effort, got out, “We.”

Whit, Bo, and Berry began vigorously explaining to Clerk Bakerbun all the reasons why his legal demand made no sense; the clerk’s shoulders stiffened, and his face set.

Fawn slid back under Dag’s arm, and whispered up to him, “Dag, this is crazy! These Graymouth folks have got no right to Whit’s money, or even some part-fee. They didn’t work hard or bleed or risk their lives to earn it. Wedding papers shouldn’t cost that much! Do you think it’s a cheat? Does that fellow figure us for up-country folks just bleating to be skinned?”

“How would I know?”

She cast him up a significant look. Dag sighed and eased open his groundsense, despite the discomfort pressing on him from all the suddenly unhappy people sharing the room. Less the raccoon, who was now dozing on a chair.

“His ground feels more stressed than sly,” he whispered back. “But if he’s setting up to angle for a bribe, I’m blighted if I’ll let my tent-brother pay it. Not for this.”

Fishing for an illicit bribe would be easy enough to handle. Just troop downstairs in a body and loudly demand explanations from as many folks as possible. The truth would out, and then the clerk would be in hot water. Dag didn’t take the fellow for that sort of foolish. No…

Dag guessed this mulishness as overblown conscientiousness, crossed with an underlying contempt for odd shabby people from Drowntown.

Arguing with the man might merely make him climb up on his high horse, send Whit and Berry off on their journey unwed, and be happily confirmed in his low opinion of the morals of river folks. Dag’s annoyance increased.

Irrelevant as all this paper ceremony seemed to Dag, it meant a lot to Whit and Berry, both so far from home; possibly even more to Whit than Berry, this being his first venture into the wide world, and anxious to do right by his hard-won river maiden. Blight it, the happy day that Fawn and Berry had worked and planned so hard to create should not tumble down into distraught confusion, not if Dag could help it.

And I can.

Quite quietly, from behind the clerk, he stretched out his left arm, and with his ghost hand-ground projection-shaped a reinforcement for persuasion. Such subtle work was invisible to all eyes here, but not to Barr’s or Remo’s inner senses; Remo’s eyebrows climbed. Barr’s jaw dropped, then his lips shaped outraged words, You dare…!

Dag did not attempt too much detail, just a general trend of feeling.

You like these hardworking young folks. You wish them well. You want to help them out. That far-off Clearcreek woodlot isn’t your responsibility. Let that lazy Clearcreek village clerk do some work for a change. These youngsters are going to go away up the river and you’ll never see them again. No problem for you. Such a cute couple. He let the reinforcement spin off his ghost fingers and into the back of the clerk’s head. As an added bonus, the clerk wouldn’t have a headache for the next several days…

Necessarily, Dag accepted the little backwash from Clerk Bakerbun’s ground into his own, so as not to leave the man blatantly beguiled.

The clerk rubbed his forehead and frowned. “You say you’re heading back upriver right away?”

“Yes, pretty soon,” said Berry.

“It’s irregular, but I suppose I could leave out mention of the disposition of the property…” He paused in an internal struggle. “If I put in a notation for the Clearcreek village clerk to add the information later. It’s his task, properly.”

“Very sensible,” Dag rumbled. He followed up with a wave of approval.

With no groundsense, the clerk would not be able to tell whether this happy feeling was coming from outside his head or inside.

Fawn glanced appraisingly at the clerk, at Barr and Remo, at Dag, and pressed her lips together.

The clerk rubbed his forehead again, then turned a brighter look upon Whit and Berry. “You seem like nice young folks. I guess I’m obliged to get you off to a good start…”

After that, events followed a course more like what Dag had experienced in West Blue. The clerk had a set of standard promises written out, prepared to lead the couple in their spoken responses. He seemed surprised when both were able to read them off the paper for themselves, each adding a few variations stemming, Dag supposed, from Clearcreek and West Blue local custom. Whit and Berry bent and signed both books, the clerk signed and stamped, and the witnesses lined up to take their turns with the quill.

The clerk seemed equally surprised when he was not called upon to countersign anyone’s X. Bo’s handwriting was labored but legible, as was Hod’s, but only because he’d been practicing along with Hawthorn.