Legacy - Lois McMaster Bujold [137]
“Yes,” Dag growled.
“Thank you,” she said. “That’s done.”
“But I’m not Dag Redwing,” Dag put in. “That fellow no longer exists.”
“Save it for the grove. That’s where the argumentation belongs.” She hesitated, glancing briefly at Fawn and back to Dag. “I will point out, you’ve been summoned but your child-bride has not. There’s no place for a farmer in our councils.”
Dag’s jaw set. “Is she explicitly excluded? Because if she has been, we have a sticking point before we start.”
“No,” Dowie admitted reluctantly. “But take it from me, she won’t help your cause, Dag. Anyone who believed before that you’ve let your crotch do your thinking won’t be persuaded otherwise by seeing her.”
“Thank you,” said Dag in a voice of honeyed acid. “I think my wife is pretty, too.”
Dowie just shook her head. “I’m going to be so glad when this day is over.” Her sandals slapped against her heels as she turned and strode off.
“There’s a woman sure knows how to blight a mood,” Dag murmured, his jaw unclenching.
Fawn crept to Dag’s side; his arm went around her shoulders. She swallowed, and asked, “Is she any relation to Obio Grayheron?”
“He’d be her cousin by marriage. She’s head of Tent Grayheron on this island.”
“And she has a vote on the council? That’s…not too encouraging.”
“Actually, she’s one I count as friendly. I patrolled for a year or so with her back when I was a young man, before I left to exchange and she quit to start her family.”
If that was friendly, Fawn wondered what hostile was going to be like. Well, she’d soon find out. Was this all as sudden as it seemed? Maybe not. The camp council question had been a silence in the center of things that Dag had been skirting since they’d returned from Raintree, and she’d let him lead her in that circuit. True, he’d plainly been too ill to be troubled with it those first few days. But after?
He doesn’t know what he wants to do, she realized, cold knotting in her belly. Even now, he does not know. Because what he wanted was impossible, and always had been, and so was the alternative? What was a man supposed to do then?
They dressed, washed up, ate. Dag did not return to cracking nuts, nor Fawn to spinning. He did get up and walk restlessly around the campsite or into the walnut grove, wherever he might temporarily avoid the other residents moving about their own early chores. When the dock cleared out from the morning swimmers, he went down and sat on it for a time, knees bent under his chin, staring down into the water. Fawn wondered if he was playing at that old child’s amusement he’d showed her, of persuading the inedible little sunfish that clustered in the dock’s shade to rise up and swim about in simple patterns. The sun crept.
As the shadows narrowed, Dag came up under their awning and sat beside her on his log seat. He propped his right elbow on his knee, neck bent, staring down at his sandals. At length he looked up toward the lake, face far away—Fawn couldn’t tell if he was trying to memorize the view or not seeing it at all. She thought of their visits to the lily marsh. This place nourishes him. Would he starve in his spirit, exiled? A man might die without a mark on him, from having his ground ripped in half.
She took a breath, sat straight. Began, “Beloved.”
His face turned sideways to her in a fleeting smile. He looked tired.
“What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know.” He seemed for an instant if he wanted to amend that bluntness in some reassuring fashion, but then just let it stand.
She angled her face away. “I wasn’t going to tell you this story, but now I think I will. When you were first gone to Raintree, I knitted up another pair of socks like those you’d been so pleased with, and took them to your mother for a present. A peace offering, like.”
“Didn’t work.” It wasn’t a guess, nor a chiding; more of a commiseration.
Fawn nodded. “She said—well, we said several things to each other that don’t matter now. But one thing she said