Legacy - Lois McMaster Bujold [138]
“I do wonder sometimes how she was betrayed, and who the patroller was. My father, I suspect.”
“Did sound like,” Fawn conceded. “But not with another woman, I don’t guess.”
“Me, either. Something Aunt Mari once let slip—Dar and I once may have had a sister who died as an infant in some tragic way. He says he doesn’t remember any such thing, so she would have had to be either before or within a few years after he was born. If so, she was buried in a deep, deep silence, because Father never mentioned her, either.”
“Huh.” Fawn considered this. “Could be…Well.” She bit her lip. “I’m no patroller, but I have seen a malice, and if there’s anything your mama was right about, it’s that. She said if you didn’t love me enough, you’d choose the patrol.” She held up a hand to stem his beginning protest. “And that if you loved me beyond all sense—you’d choose the patrol. Because you couldn’t protect me for real and true any other way.”
He subsided, silenced. She raised her face to meet his beautiful eyes square, and went on, “So I just want you to know, if you have to choose the patrol—I won’t die of it. Nor be worse off for having known and loved you for a space. I’ll still be richer going down the road than when you met me, by far, if only for the horse and the gear and the knowing. I never knew there was as much knowing as this to be had in the whole world. Maybe, looking back, I’ll remember this summer as a dream of wonders…even the nightmare parts. If I didn’t get to keep you for always, leastways I had you for a time. Which ought to be magic enough for any farmer girl.”
He listened gravely, not attempting, after his first protest, to interrupt. Trying to sort it out, maybe, for he said, “Are you saying you’re too tired to keep up this struggle anymore?”
She eyed him. “No, that’s you, I think.”
He gave a little self-derisive snort. “Could be.”
“Keep it straight. I love you, and I’ll walk with you down any path you choose, but…this one isn’t my choice to make. It’s yours.”
“True. And wise.” He sighed. “I thought we both chose in that scary little parlor back in West Blue. And yet your choice will be honored or betrayed by mine in turn. They don’t come separately.”
“No. They don’t. But they do come in order. And West Blue, well—that was before either you or I saw Greenspring. That town could’ve been West Blue, those people me and mine. I watched your lips move, counting down that line of dead…To keep you, there’s a lot of things I’d fight tooth and toenail. Your kin, my kin, another woman, sickness, farmer stupidity, you name it. Can’t fight Greenspring. Won’t.”
He blinked rapidly, and for a moment the gold in his eyes looked molten. He swiped the shiny water tracks from his cheekbones with the back of his hand, leaned forward, and kissed her on the forehead, that terrifying kiss of blessing again. “Thank you,” he whispered. “You have no idea how that helps.”
She nodded shortly, swallowing down the hot lump in her own throat.
They went into their tent to change, him out of his short trousers and sandals, her out of her somewhat grubby shift. When, on her knees sorting through his trunk, she tried to hand him up his cleanest shirt, he surprised her by saying, “No—my best shirt. The good one your Aunt Nattie wove.”
He hadn’t worn his wedding shirt since their wedding. Wondering, she shook it out, its folds wrapped in other clothes to keep it from creasing—her green cotton dress, as it happened.
“Oh, yes, wear that one,” he said, looking over his shoulder. “It’s so pretty on you.”
“I don’t know, Dag. It’s awfully farmer-girl. Shouldn’t I dress more Lakewalker for this?”
He smiled crookedly down at her. “No.”
It was disquieting, in this context, to be all gussied up in their wedding-day clothes again. She adjusted the hang of the cord on her left wrist, and the gold beads knocked cool against her skin. Were they to be unmarried in this new noon hour, as if tracing back over some exact path after