Legacy - Lois McMaster Bujold [12]
Dag drew breath and repeated his blunt introduction: “Fairbolt, meet Missus Fawn Bluefield. My wife.”
Fairbolt squinted and rubbed the back of his neck, his face screwed up. The silence stretched as he and Mari looked over the wedding cords with, Fawn felt, more than just their eyes. Both officers had their sleeves rolled up in the heat of the day, and both had similar cords winding around their left wrists, worn thin and frayed and faded. Her own cord and Dag’s looked bright and bold and thick by comparison, the gold beads anchoring the ends seeming very solid.
Fairbolt glanced aside at Mari, his eyes narrowing still further. “Did you suspect this?”
“This? No! This isn’t—how could—but I told you he’d likely done some fool thing no one could anticipate.”
“You did,” Fairbolt conceded. “And I didn’t. I thought he was just…” He focused his gaze on Dag, and Fawn shrank even though she was not at its center. “I won’t say that’s impossible because it’s plain you found a way. I will ask, what Lakewalker maker helped you to this?”
“None, sir,” said Dag steadily. “None but me, Fawn’s aunt Nattie, who is a spinner and natural maker, and Fawn. Together.”
Though not so tall as Dag, Fairbolt was still a formidably big man. He frowned down at Fawn; she had to force her spine straight. “Lakewalkers do not recognize marriages to farmers. Did Dag tell you that?”
She held out her wrist. “That’s why this, I understood.” She gripped the cord tight, for courage. If they couldn’t be bothered to be polite to her, she needn’t return any better. “Now, I guess you could look at this with your fancy groundsense and say we weren’t married if you wanted. But you’d be lying. Wouldn’t you.”
Fairbolt rocked back. Dag didn’t flinch. If anything, he looked satisfied, if a bit fey. Mari rubbed her forehead.
Dag said quietly, “Did Mari tell you about my other knife?”
Fairbolt turned to him, not quite in relief, but tacitly accepting the shift of subject. Backing off for the moment; Fawn was not sure why. Fairbolt said, “As much as you told her, I suppose. Congratulations on your malice kill, by the way. What number was that? And don’t tell me you don’t keep count.”
Dag gave a little conceding nod. “It would have been twenty-seven, if it had been my kill. It was Fawn’s.”
“It was both ours,” Fawn put in. “Dag had the knife, I had the chance to use it. Either of us would have been lost without the other.”
“Huh.” Fairbolt walked slowly around Fawn, as if looking, really looking, at her for the first time. “Excuse me,” he said, and reached out to tilt her head and study the deep red scars on her neck. He stepped back and sighed. “Let’s see this other knife, then.”
Fawn fished in her shirt. After the scare at Lumpton Market she had fashioned a new sheath for the blade, single and of softer leather, with a cord for her neck to carry it the way Lakewalkers did. It was undecorated, but she’d sewn it with care. Hesitantly, she pulled the cord over her curls, glanced at Dag, who gave her a nod of reassurance, and handed it over to the camp captain.
Fairbolt took it and sat down in one of the chairs near a window, drawing the bone blade out. He examined it much the way Dag and Mari had, even to touching it to his lips. He sat frowning a moment, cradling it in his thick hands. “Who made this for you, Dag? Not Dar?”
“No. A maker up in Luthlia, a few months after Wolf Ridge.”
“Kauneo’s bone, yes?”
“Yes.”
“Did you ever have reason before to think the making might be defective?”
“No. I don’t think it was.”
“But if the making was sound, no one but you should have been able to prime it.”
“I am very aware of that. And if the making was unsound, no one should have been able to prime it at all. But there it sits.”
“That it does. So tell me