Legacy - Lois McMaster Bujold [51]
“Mama knows—we all know—your passion for patrolling. How hard you fought to get back in after you lost your hand. Is dipping your wick in this farmer girl worth casting away your whole life?”
Dar was remembering the brother from eighteen years back, Dag thought. Agonized, exhausted, seeking only to deal death in turn to that which had made him the walking corpse he’d felt himself to be. And then, with luck, to be reunited in death with all that he’d lost, because no other course seemed possible or even imaginable. Something strange and new had happened to that Dag in the malice cave near Glassforge. Or—something that had been happening below the surface had finally been brought to light. I’m not who you think I am anymore, Dar. You look at me yet don’t see me. Dar seemed curiously like Fawn’s kin, in that way. So who am I? For the first time in a long time, Dag wasn’t sure he knew the answer, and that was a lot more disturbing than Dar’s old assumptions.
Dar misinterpreted Dag’s uneasy look. “Yeah, that’s got you thinking! About time. I’m not going to back off on this. This is your warning.”
Dag touched the cord below his rolled-up left sleeve. “Neither am I. That’s yours.”
They both maintained a stony silence as they reached the shore road again and turned right. Dar managed a nod when he turned off at the Redwing campsite, but he spoke no word of farewell, of further meetings, or of any other indication of his intent. Dag, fuming, returned an equally silent nod and walked on.
On the mere physical level, Dag thought he need have no fear for either Fawn or himself. It wasn’t Dar’s style to gather a bunch of hotheads like Sunny and his friends to deliver violent rebuke. A formal charge before the camp council was precisely what Dar would do, no question there. His was no idle threat. Dag felt a curious blankness within himself at the thought, in a way like the familiar empty moment before falling into attack on a malice lair.
He considered the current makeup of the camp council. There were normally a representative and an alternate from each island, chosen yearly by rotation from the heads of the various clans and other elders, plus the camp captain as a permanent member on behalf of the patrol and its needs. Cumbia had been on the council herself once, and Dag’s grandfather, before he’d grown too fragile, had been an alternate twice.
Dag had scarcely paid attention to who was in the barrel on council this year, or to tell the truth any other year, and suddenly it mattered.
The council resolved most conflicts by open discussion and binding mediation. Only in matters involving banishment or a death sentence did they make their votes secret, and then the quorum was not the usual five, but the full seven. There had only been two murders in Hickory Lake Camp in Dag’s lifetime, and the council had settled the more ambiguous by ordering a payment between the families; only one had led to an execution. Dag had never yet witnessed a banishment like the one at Log Hollow that Saun had gossiped about. Dag couldn’t help feeling that there must have been a more unholy mess backing up behind that incident than Saun’s short description suggested. Like mine? Maybe not.
Dag had deliberately steered clear of camp gossip in the past days if only to avoid the aggravation, keeping to himself with Fawn—and healing, don’t forget that—but in any case he doubted very many of his friends would repeat the most critical remarks to his face. He could think of only one man he could trust to do so without bias in either direction. He made plans to seek Fairbolt after supper.
Fawn glanced up from the perfect coals in the fire pit to see Dag stride back into the clearing, his scowl black. She had never seen so much quiet joy in Dag as this afternoon out in the lily marsh, and she set her teeth in a moment of fury for whatever his brother had done to wreck his happiness. She also bade silent good-bye to her hope, however faint, that Dar had come as a family peacemaker, dismissing the little fantasy she had started to build up about maybe a