Dag’s jaw set. “There are plenty of other necessary jobs to do in camp, as I recall being told more than once. Ten folks in camp keep one patroller in the field, Fairbolt says. They could be among that ten. Or do you secretly despise everyone else here, and I never knew?”
Dar batted this dart away with a swipe of his hand. “So you’re saying your children could grow up to be servants of mine? And you’d be content with that?”
“We would find our way.”
“We?” Dar scowled. “So already you put your farmer get ahead of the needs of the whole?”
“If that happens, it won’t be by my choosing.” Would Dar hear the warning in that? Dag continued, “We actually don’t know that all cross-bloods lack groundsense. If anything, the opposite; I’ve met a couple who have little less than some of us. I’ve been out in the world a good bit more than you. I’ve seen raw talent here and there amongst farmers, too, and I don’t think it’s just the result of some passing Lakewalker in a prior generation leaving a present.” Dag frowned. “By rights, we should be sifting the farmers for hidden groundsense. Just like the mages of old must have done.”
“And while we’re diverting ourselves in that, who fights the malices?” Dar shot back. “Nearly good enough to patrol isn’t going to do the job. We need the concentration of bloodlines to reach the threshold of function. We’re stretched to the breaking point, and everyone knows it. Let me tell you, it’s not just Mama who is maddened to see you wasting the talent in your blood.”
Dag grimaced. “Yeah, I’ve heard that song from Aunt Mari, too.” He remembered his own reply. “And yet I might have been killed anytime these past four decades, and my blood would have been no less wasted. Pretend I’m dead, if it’ll make you feel better.”
Dar snorted, declining to rise to that bait. They had reached the point where the road from the bridge split to cut through the woods to the island’s north shore. At Dar’s gesture, they turned onto it. The earth was dappled golden-green in the late sun, leaf shadows barely flickering in the breathing summer air. Their pacing sandals kicked up little spurts of dirt in the stretches between drying puddles.
Dar gathered himself, and continued, “It’s not just your own family you put to shame. This stunt of yours creates disruption and a bad example in the patrol, as well. You’ve a reputation there, I don’t deny. Youngsters like Saun look up to you. How much harder will this make it for patrol leaders to prevent the next ill-fated farmer romance? I swear, you’re thinking only of yourself.”
“Yes,” said Dag, and added meditatively, “it’s a new experience.” A slow smile turned his lips. “I kind of like it.”
“Don’t make stupid jokes,” snapped Dar.
I wasn’t. Absent gods help me. In fact, it grew less funny the longer he thought about it. Dag took a long breath. “What are you after, Dar? I married Fawn for true—mind, body, and ground. That isn’t going to change. Sooner or later, you’ll have to deal with it.”
“Dealing with it is just what I’m trying to avoid.” Dar’s scowl deepened. “The camp council could force a change. They’ve ruled on string-cuttings before.”
“Only when the couple was divided and their families couldn’t negotiate an agreement. No one can force a string-cutting against the will of both partners. And no one of sense would tolerate the precedent if the council tried. It would put everyone’s marriage at risk—it would fly against the whole meaning of string-binding!”
Dar’s voice hardened. “Then you’ll just have to be forced to will it, eh?”
Dag let ten steps pass in silence before he replied. “I’m stubborn. My wife is determined. You’ll break your knife on that rock, Dar.”
“Have you grasped what you risk? Shunning—banishment? No more patrolling?”
“I’ve a lot of patrol years left in me. We’re stretched, you say—and yet you’d throw those years away into a ditch? For mere conceit?”
“I’m trying for exactly the reverse.” Dar swiped an angry hand across his brow. “You’re the one who seems to be galloping blindly for the ditch.”
“Not by my will. Nor Fairbolt’s. He’ll stand up for me.” Actually, Fairbolt had said only that he didn’t care to defend this before the camp council—not whether he would overcome his understandable distaste if he had to. But Dag was disinclined to confide his doubts to Dar at this point.
“What,” scoffed Dar, “with all the trouble this will make for patrol discipline? Think again.”
Had Dar and Fairbolt been talking? Dag began to be sorry he had held himself aloof from camp gossip these past days, even though it had seemed wiser not to present his head for drumming on or let himself be drawn into arguments. He countered, “Fawn’s a special case anyway. She’s not just any farmer, she’s the farmer girl who slew a malice. As contrasted with, for example, your malice count. What was it, again? Oh, yes—none?”
Dar’s lips thinned in an unfelt smile. “If you like, brother. Or maybe the count is, every malice that any knife of my making slew. Without a sharing knife no patroller is a malice killer. You’re just malice food walking around.”
Dag drew breath through his nostrils and tried to get a better grip on his temper. “True. And without hands to wield them, your knives are just—what did you call them? — wall decorations. I think we need to cry truce on this one.”
Dar nodded shortly. They paced beside each other for a time.
When he could trust himself to speak again, Dag went on, “Without Fawn’s hand, I would be dead now, and maybe a good part of my patrol with me. And you’d have spent the past weeks having memorial rites and making tender speeches about what a fine fellow I was.”
Dar sighed. “Almost better, that would be. Simpler, at least.”
“I appreciate that almost. Almost.” Dag gathered his wits, or attempted to. “In any case, your bird won’t fly. Fairbolt’s made it clear he’ll tolerate this for the sake of need and won’t take it to the council. And neither will Mama. Get used to us, Dar.” He let his voice soften to persuasion, almost plea. “Fawn is her own sort of worthy. You’d see it if you’d let yourself look at her straight. Give her a chance, and you won’t be sorry.”
“You’re besotted.”
Dag shrugged. “And the sun rises in the east. You’re not going to change either fact. Give up the gloom and set your mind to some more open view.”
“Aunt Mari was a feckless fool to let this get by.”
“She made all the same arguments that you just did.” Rather better phrased, but Dar had never been a diplomat. “Dar, let it ride. It’ll work out in time. Folks will get used to it. Fawn and I may always be an oddity, but we won’t start a stampede any more than Sarri did with her two husbands. Hickory Lake will survive us. Life will go on.”
Dar inhaled, staring straight ahead. “I will go to the camp council.”
Dag covered the chill in his belly with a slow blink. “Will you, now. What will Mama say? I thought you hated rows.”
“I do. But it’s come down to me. Someone has to act. Mama cries, you know. It has to be done, and it has to be done soon.” Dar grimaced. “Omba says if we wait till you get your farmer girl pregnant, you’ll never be shifted.”
“She’s right,” said Dag, far more coolly than he felt.
Dar bore the look of a man determined to do his duty, however repugnant. Yes, Dar would stiffen Cumbia, even against her better judgment. Did both imagine Dag would cave in to these threats—or did they both realize he wouldn’t? Or was it one of each?
“So,” said Dag, “I’m a sacrifice you’re willing to make, am I? Is Mama so willing?”
“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.