Legacy - Lois McMaster Bujold [141]
Dag, rigid with surprise, exhaled carefully. How interestingly clever of Dar—yes, this had to be Dar’s idea. He had entirely shifted his argument from the one threatened before Dag had departed for Raintree, of forced string-cutting or banishment. A glance at Fairbolt’s rising eyebrows told Dag the camp captain, too, had been taken by surprise; he cast Dag an apologetic glance. Dag wasn’t sure how long ago Dar had rethought his attack, but he had been shrewd enough to keep it from Fairbolt.
Dag opened his ground just enough to catch the councilors’ sevenfold flicker of ground examination upon him and Fawn. Tioca Cattail tilted her head, and said, “Pardon, but they appear to be perfectly usual cords to me. Can’t that girl shut down her—no, I suppose not. How do you think they are false?”
“They were falsified in the making,” said Dar. “The exchange of grounds in the cords marks a true marriage, yes, but the making also acts—normally—as a barrier against anyone not bearing Lakewalker bloodlines from contaminating our kinships. It’s not a great making, true. It’s more like the lowest boundary. We tend to think everyone can do it, but that is itself the sign of the value of this custom in the past.
“I say the farmer girl did not make her own cord, but that Dag made it for her, with a trick he stole from my knife-making techniques, of using blood to lead live ground into an object. It represents nothing but cunning.”
“How do you know this, Dar?” asked Fairbolt, frowning.
Dar said, a trifle reluctantly, “Dag told me himself.”
“That’s not what I said!” Dag said sharply.
Pakona held up a quelling hand. “Wait for the stick, Dag.”
“Hold on,” said Rigni Hawk, her nose wrinkling. “We’re taking hearsay testimony on a matter when we have two eyewitnesses sitting right in the circle?”
“Thank you, Rigni,” huffed Fairbolt in relief. “Quite right. Pakona, I think the stick should go to Dag for this tale.”
“He has reason to lie,” said Dar, looking sullen.
“That’ll be for us to sort out,” said Rigni firmly.
Pakona waved, and Dar reluctantly handed the stick around via Omba to Dag.
“So how did you make those cords?” asked Tioca in curiosity.
“Fawn and I made both cords together,” Dag said tightly. “As some of you may remember, my right arm was broken at the time”—he made the old sling-gesture—“and the other is, well, as you see. Lakewalker blood or no, I was quite incapable of weaving any cord at all. Fawn wove the cord she now wears, I sat behind her on the bench with my arms along hers, and I cast my ground into it in the usual way. I don’t see how anyone in his right mind can maintain that cord is invalid!”
Pakona waved to quell him again, but murmured, “So, go on. What about the other?”
“I admit, I attempted to aid her in catching up her ground to weave into the second cord. We were having no luck at all when suddenly, all on her own, she cut open both her index fingers and wove while bleeding. Her ground welled right up and into the cord. I didn’t help her any more than she helped me; less, I’d say.”
“You instructed her to do this, then,” said Tioca.
“No, she came up with it—”
“A few nights earlier, Dag and I had been talking about ground,” Fawn put in breathlessly, “and he’d told me blood held ground after it left the body, because it was, like, alive separately from the person. Which I thought was a right disturbing idea, so I remembered it.”
“You’ve not been given leave to speak here, girl,” said Pakona sharply.
Fawn sat back and clapped her hand over her mouth in apology and alarm. Dag set his jaw, but added, “Fawn is exactly right. I recognized it as a technique that any of us here who have been bonded to sharing knives have likewise seen, but I didn’t suggest it. Fawn thought of it herself.”
“They used a knife-making technique on wedding cords,” Dar said in a voice of outrage.
“Groundwork is groundwork, Hoharie says,” Dag shot back. “I defy you to find a rule anywhere says you can’t.”
Tioca’s eyes narrowed in considerable intrigue. “Medicine-making does have to be a little more…adaptable