Legacy - Lois McMaster Bujold [55]
“You do,” Dag conceded. “Can you give me a bit more time to answer? Because I don’t think I can leave the council aside.”
Fairbolt nodded again.
“Mind, I can only answer for myself and Fawn. I don’t control the acts of anyone else.”
“You can persuade,” said Fairbolt. “You can shape. You can, dare I suggest, not be a stubborn fool.”
Too late for that. This man, Dag was reminded, had six hundred other patrollers to track. Enough for tonight. The frogs were starting their serenade, the mosquitoes were out in companies, and the fat double-winged dragonflies darting over the lake were giving way to the night patrol of flitting bats. He levered himself to his feet, bade Fairbolt a polite good evening, and walked into the gathering dark.
8
They were making ready to lie down in their bedroll before Dag reported his conversations with his brother and Fairbolt to Fawn. From the brevity of his descriptions, compared to the time he’d been gone, Fawn suspected he was leaving a good bit out; more than these clipped essentials had cast him into his dark mood. Brothers can do that. But his explanation of the camp council was frightening enough.
In the light of their candle stub atop Dag’s trunk, which did for their bedside table, Fawn sat cross-legged, and said, “Seven people can just vote you—us—to be banished? Just like that?”
“Not quite. They have to sit and hear arguments from both sides. And they’ll each speak with other folks around their islands, gather opinions, before delivering a ruling of this…this gravity.”
“Huh.” She frowned. “Somehow I thought your people not liking me being here would take the form of…I don’t know. Leaving dead rotten animals outside our door to step on in the morning, nasty tricks like that. Fellows in masks setting fire to our tent, or sneaking from the bushes and beating you up, or shaving my head, or something.”
Dag raised quizzical brows. “Is that the form it would take in farmer country?”
“Sometimes.” Sometimes worse, from tales she’d heard.
“A mask won’t hide who you are from groundsense. Anyone wants to do something that ugly around here, they sure can’t do it in secret.”
“That would slow ’em up some, I guess,” allowed Fawn.
“Yes, and…this isn’t a matter for boys’ tricks. Our marriage cords, if nothing else, draw it up to another level altogether. Serious dilemmas take serious thought from serious folks.”
“Shouldn’t we be making a push to talk to those serious folks, too? Dar shouldn’t have it all his own way, seems to me.”
“Yes—no…blight Dar,” he added, in a burst of aggravation. “This shoves me into exactly the worst actions to ease you in here smoothly. Drawing attention, forcing folks to choose sides. I wanted to lie low, and while everyone was waiting for someone else to do something, let the time for choosing just slip on by. I figured a year would do it.”
Fawn blinked in astonishment at his timetable. Perhaps a year didn’t seem like such a long time to him? “This isn’t exactly your favorite sort of arguin’, is it?”
He snorted. “Not hardly. It’s the wrong thing at the wrong time, and…and I’m not very smooth at it, anyway. Fairbolt is. Twenty minutes talking with him, and your head’s turned around. Good camp captain. But he’s made it clear this is my own bed to lie in.” He added in a lower voice, “And I hate begging for favors. Figured I used up a life’s supply long before this.” A slight thump of his left arm on the bedroll indicated what favors he was thinking of, which made Fawn huff in turn. Whatever special treatment had won him his arm harness and let him back on patrol must, it seemed to her, have been paid back in full a good long time ago.
Nevertheless, Dag began the next morning to show their presence more openly by taking Fawn out in the narrow boat for plunkin delivery duty. The first step was to paddle out to a gathering raft, which over the season had worked its way nearly to the end of their arm of the lake and would shortly start back up the other side. A dozen Lakewalkers of various ages, sexes, and states of undress manned the ten-foot-square