Legacy - Lois McMaster Bujold [69]
The hands reached the end of some counting turn, stopped, and set the wooden tool on the table with a sharp clack. The scowl deepened. As if the words were jerked from her, Cumbia said, “Not like this.”
“How else should it be? It seemed very like Dag.”
“It came out all wrong.” Cumbia blew out her breath. “It generally does, with that boy. The aggravation and sorrow he has brought me, first to last, can hardly be counted.” Her gaze on Fawn left no doubt as to what she considered the latest entry in that tally.
At least she’s started talking. “Well, folks we’re close to most often do aggravate us. Because otherwise we wouldn’t care. He’s brought good things as well. Twenty-seven malice kills, to start. You have to be proud of that.”
Cumbia grimaced. “Oh, he’s proven himself on patrol, right enough, but he’d done that by the time he was twenty-five. It’s in camp where he’s ducked his duties, as if patrolling got him off responsibility for all else. If he’d married when he should have, years ago, we wouldn’t be in this muddle now.”
“He did, once,” Fawn pointed out, in an attempt at a dignified reply. “Right on time for a Lakewalker man, I guess. It turned into a hurtful tragedy that still haunts him.”
“He’s not the first nor the last to suffer such. Plenty of others have lost folks in the maw of some malice.” And Cumbia was one of them, Fawn was reminded. “He’s had twenty years to put it behind him.”
“Well, then”—Fawn took a breath—“it looks like he’s not going to, doesn’t it? You all had your chance with him, and a good long chance it was. Maybe it’s someone else’s turn now.”
Cumbia snorted. “Yours?”
“Seems like. I’d say you haven’t lost anything to me that you had in the first place. When I met him, he wasn’t betrothed to anything but his own death, near as I could tell. And if he’s lost that infatuation, well, good!”
Cumbia leaned back, her attention now fully engaged. Which wasn’t exactly a comfortable feeling, but at least it was a shift from her attempt to pretend Fawn didn’t exist at all.
Fawn went on, “You’re both of you stiff-necked. I think Dag must get it from you, to tell the truth. Somebody has to bend before things break.” Hearts, for one. “Can’t you please stop Dar from going to the camp council? It’s bound to end badly.”
“Yes, for you,” said Cumbia. More level than venomous, oddly.
Fawn raised her chin. “Do you really believe Dag’ll choose to cut strings if he’s forced to the edge? That he’d break his word? You have a strange idea of your son, for knowing him so long.”
“I believe he’ll be secretly relieved to be freed of that ill-chosen oath to you, girl. Embarrassed, sure, and obnoxious about it—men always are, when they’re caught in the wrong. But in the long run, glad to be rescued from his own mistakes, and gladder still not to have to do it himself.”
Fawn bit her lip. So you think your son’s a coward, as well as a liar? She didn’t say it. Or spit it. She was shaken by a faint undercurrent of plausibility in Cumbia’s argument. I’ve known him half a summer. She’s known him all his life. She gripped the cord around her left wrist, for solace and courage. “What if he chooses banishment?”
“He won’t. No Lakewalker could. He’ll remember what he owes, and who to.”
In general, Dag tried to keep as much distance between himself and his family as he could, and Fawn was beginning to see why. People left their families all the time—it was as normal for a Lakewalker man as it was