Legacy - Lois McMaster Bujold [143]
“Dag, you?”
“Yes…,” said Dag slowly. He glanced aside at Fawn, watching him in trusting bewilderment, and gave her a little nod of reassurance. “Go ahead.”
Dar, expecting more argument, looked at him in sharp surprise. Dag remembered Fairbolt’s word picture of the sitting tactician. Wise man, Fairbolt. He settled back to watch the candle burn down as Pakona started down the row.
“Ogit?”
“No! No farmer spouses!” Well, that was clear.
“Tioca?”
A slight hesitation. “Yes. I can’t reconcile it with my maker’s conscience to say that’s not a good making.”
Rigni, called upon, looked plaintively at Tioca and at last said, “Yes.”
Laski, after a bit of a struggle, said, “No.”
Pakona herself said, “No,” without hesitation, and added, “if we let this in, it’s going to be every kind of mess, and it will go on and on. Dowie?”
Dowie looked down the row and made a careful count on her fingers, and looked appalled. A no from her would finish the matter. A yes would create a tie and throw it onto Fairbolt. After a long, long pause, she cleared her throat, and said, “Yes?”
Fairbolt gave her palpable cowardice a slow, blistering, and ungrateful glare. Then he sighed, sat up, and stared around. A longer silence stretched.
You know they’re good cords, Fairbolt, Dag thought. Dag watched the struggle in the captain’s face between integrity and practicality, and admired how long it was taking the latter to triumph. In a way, Dag wished the integrity would pull ahead. It wasn’t going to make a bit of difference in the end, after all, and Fairbolt would feel better about himself later.
“Fairbolt?” said Pakona, cautiously. “Camp captain always goes last to break the tie votes. It’s a duty.”
Fairbolt waved this away in a Yeah, yeah, I know gesture. He cleared his throat. “Dag? You got anything more to say?”
“A certain amount, yes. It will seem roundabout, but it will go to the center in the end. Makes no never mind to me whether it’s before or after you have your say, though.”
Fairbolt gave him a little nod. “Go ahead, then. You have the stick.”
Pakona looked as though she wanted to override this, but thought better of annoying Fairbolt while his vote hung in the breeze. She crossed her arms and settled back. Dar and Cumbia were frowning in alarm, but Dag certainly had all their attention.
Dag’s mind was heavy, his head ached, but his heart felt light, as if it were flying. Might just be falling. We’ll know when we hit the ground. He set the speaking stick aside, reached down, gripped his hickory staff, and stood up. Full height.
“Excepting the patrollers who just came back from Raintree with me, how many folks here have heard the name of a farmer town called Greenspring?”
An array of blank looks from the center and left, although Dirla’s aunt Rigni, after a glance at her patroller niece, hesitantly raised her hand for a moment. Dag returned her a nod.
“I’m not surprised there are so few. It was the town in Raintree where that last malice started up, unchecked. No one told me the name either, when I was called out to ride west. Now, partly that was due to the confusion that always goes with such a scramble, but you know—partly, it wasn’t. No one knew, or said, because it didn’t seem important to them.
“So how many here—not my patrollers—know the numbers of dead at Bonemarsh?”
Ogit Muskrat said gruffly, “We’ve all heard them. ’Bout fifty grown-ups and near twenty youngsters.”
“Such a horror,” sighed Tioca.
Dag nodded. “Nineteen. That’s right.” Fairbolt was watching him curiously. No, I’m not taking your advice about boasting, Fairbolt. Maybe the reverse. Just wait. “So who knows how many died at Greenspring?”
The patrollers to his right looked tight-lipped, holding back the answer. The majority of the councilors just looked baffled. After a stretch, Pakona finally said, “Lots, I imagine. What has this to do with your counterfeit wedding cords, Dag?”
He let that counterfeit slide unchallenged, too. “I said it was roundabout. Of a thousand