Legacy - Lois McMaster Bujold [14]
“Oh!” she said in surprise. “These are all your patrollers!” There must have been five or six hundred pegs in all. She leaned closer to search for names she recognized.
Fairbolt raised his brows. “That’s right. A patrol leader can keep a patrol in mind, but once you get to be a company or camp captain, well, one head can’t hold them all. Or at least, mine can’t.”
“That’s clever! You can see everything all at once, pretty nearly.” She realized she needed to look more closely at Two Bridge Island for names. “Ah, there’s Mari. And Razi and Utau, they’re home with Sarri, oh good. Where’s Dirla?”
“Beaver Sigh,” said Dag, watching her pore over the display. “That’s another island.”
“Mm? Oh, yes, there she is, too. I hope she’s happy. Does she have a regular sweetheart? Or sweethearts? What are the little buttons for?”
Mari answered. “For the patrollers who are carrying sharing knives. Not everyone has one, but every patrol that goes out needs to have two or more.”
“Oh. Yes, that makes sense. Because it wouldn’t do a bit of good to find a malice and have no knife on hand. And you might find another malice, after. Or have an accident.” Dag had spoken with a shudder of the ignominy of accidentally breaking a sharing knife, and now she understood. She hesitated, thinking of her own spectacular, if peculiar, sharing knife accident. “Why are they numbered?”
Dag said, “The camp captain keeps a book with records of the owners and donors, for if a knife is used. To send the acknowledgments to the kinfolk, or know where to send the pieces if they chance to be recovered.”
Fawn frowned. “Is that why the patrollers are numbered, too?”
“Very like. There’s another set of books with all the names and next of kin, and other details someone might want to know about any particular patroller in an emergency. Or when the emergency is over.”
“Mm,” said Fawn, her frown deepening as she pictured this. She set her hands on her hips and peered at the board, imagining all those lives—and deaths—moving over the landscape. “Do you connect the pegs to people’s grounds, like marriage cords? Could you?”
“No,” said Dag.
“Does she always go on like this?” asked Fairbolt. She glanced up to find him staring at her rather as she’d been staring at the patroller board.
“More or less, yes,” said Dag.
“I’m sorry!” Fawn clapped her hand to her mouth in apology. “Did I ask too many questions?”
Fairbolt gave her a funny look. “No.” He reached up and took a peg out of the Missing circle, one of two jutting there. He held it out at arm’s length, squinting briefly at the fine print on the side, and grunted satisfaction. “I suppose this comes off, now.” With surprising delicacy, his thick fingers unwound its wire and teased off one numbered button. The second he frowned at, but twisted back into place. “I never met the Luthlia folks; never got up that way. You be taking care of the honors on this one, Dag?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Thanks.” He held the peg in his palm as if weighing it.
Dag reached up and touched the remaining peg in the red circle. “Still no word of Thel.” It didn’t sound like a question.
“No,” sighed Fairbolt.
“It’s been near two years, Fairbolt,” Mari observed dispassionately. “You could likely take it down.”
“It’s not like the board’s out of room up there, now is it?” Fairbolt sniffed, stared unreadably at Dag, gave the peg in his hand a toss, and bent down and thrust it decisively into the square marked Sick List.
He straightened up and turned back to Dag. “Stop in at the medicine tent. Let me know what they say about the arm. Come see me after you have that talk with Dar.” He made a vague gesture of dismissal, but then added, “Where are you going next?”
“Dar.” Dag added more reluctantly, “Mother.”
Mari snorted. “What are you going to say to Cumbia about that?” She nodded at his arm cord.
Dag shrugged. “What’s to say? I’m not ashamed, I’m not sorry,