“Next down from them, Tioca Cattail and her alternate Ogit Muskrat, from Heron Island. I don’t know them all that well.” Only that Tioca was a medicine maker, and since the recent death of her mother head of Tent Cattail on Heron. Ogit was a retired patroller of about Cumbia’s age, curmudgeonly as Cattagus but without the charm; of no special making skills, he liked being on council, Dag had heard. While he was not close friends with Cumbia, the two had certainly known each other for decades. Despite Ogit’s patrol connections Dag did not hold much hope for an ally in him.
Fawn blinked and nodded, and Dag wondered if she would remember all this and keep it straight. In any case, she now let him lead her forward. He seated her on his right, to the patroller side of things, and settled himself, laying his hickory staff at his feet and sitting up with a polite nod to the councilors across from him.
On a shorter sawed-off log in front of Pakona sat a beeswax candle. She nodded back grimly, lit the wick, and lowered a square parchment windbreak around it, lanternlike. From beside it she picked up a peeled wooden rod, the speaker’s stick, and tapped it three times against the makeshift table. Everyone fell silent and regarded her attentively.
“There’s been a deal of talk and gossip about this,” she began, “so I don’t think anyone here needs more explaining-to. The complaint in the matter comes from Tent Redwing against its member Dag Redwing. Who’s speaking for Tent Redwing?”
Dag stirred at his naming, but voiced no protest. Let that one go for now. You’ll find your chance.
“I do,” said Dar, holding up one hand; behind him, Cumbia nodded. Cumbia, as head of Tent Redwing, was more than capable of speaking for herself and everyone else, and Dag wondered at this trade-off. An extension of Dag’s shunning? Didn’t trust herself to keep her voice and argument steady? She looked like old iron, today. But mostly, she looked old.
“Pass this down to Dar, then,” said Pakona. The stick went from hand to hand. “Speak your tent’s complaint, Dar.”
He took the stick, inhaled, cast Dag a level stare, and began. “It won’t take long. As we all know, Dag returned late from a patrol this summer with a farmer paramour in tow that he named his wife, on the basis of a pair of wedding cords that no one had witnessed them make. We say that the cords are counterfeit, produced by trickery. Dag is in simple violation of the long-standing rule against bringing such…self-indulgences within the bounds of camp. Tent Redwing requests the camp and the patrol enforce the usual penalties, returning the girl to her people by whatever means required and fining Dag Redwing for his transgression.”
Dag, rigid with surprise, exhaled carefully. How interestingly clever of Dar—yes, this had to be Dar’s idea. He had entirely shifted his argument from the one threatened before Dag had departed for Raintree, of forced string-cutting or banishment. A glance at Fairbolt’s rising eyebrows told Dag the camp captain, too, had been taken by surprise; he cast Dag an apologetic glance. Dag wasn’t sure how long ago Dar had rethought his attack, but he had been shrewd enough to keep it from Fairbolt.
Dag opened his ground just enough to catch the councilors’ sevenfold flicker of ground examination upon him and Fawn. Tioca Cattail tilted her head, and said, “Pardon, but they appear to be perfectly usual cords to me. Can’t that girl shut down her—no, I suppose not. How do you think they are false?”
“They were falsified in the making,” said Dar. “The exchange of grounds in the cords marks a true marriage, yes, but the making also acts—normally—as a barrier against anyone not bearing Lakewalker bloodlines from contaminating our kinships. It’s not a great making, true. It’s more like the lowest boundary. We tend to think everyone can do it, but that is itself the sign of the value of this custom in the past.
“I say the farmer girl did not make her own cord, but that Dag made it for her, with a trick he stole from my knife-making techniques, of using blood to lead live ground into an object. It represents nothing but cunning.”
“How do you know this, Dar?” asked Fairbolt, frowning.
Dar said, a trifle reluctantly, “Dag told me himself.”
“That’s not what I said!” Dag said sharply.
Pakona held up a quelling hand. “Wait for the stick, Dag.”
“Hold on,” said Rigni Hawk, her nose wrinkling. “We’re taking hearsay testimony on a matter when we have two eyewitnesses sitting right in the circle?”
“Thank you, Rigni,” huffed Fairbolt in relief. “Quite right. Pakona, I think the stick should go to Dag for this tale.”
“He has reason to lie,” said Dar, looking sullen.
“That’ll be for us to sort out,” said Rigni firmly.
Pakona waved, and Dar reluctantly handed the stick around via Omba to Dag.
“So how did you make those cords?” asked Tioca in curiosity.
“Fawn and I made both cords together,” Dag said tightly. “As some of you may remember, my right arm was broken at the time”—he made the old sling-gesture—“and the other is, well, as you see. Lakewalker blood or no, I was quite incapable of weaving any cord at all. Fawn wove the cord she now wears, I sat behind her on the bench with my arms along hers, and I cast my ground into it in the usual way. I don’t see how anyone in his right mind can maintain that cord is invalid!”
Pakona waved to quell him again, but murmured, “So, go on. What about the other?”
“I admit, I attempted to aid her in catching up her ground to weave into the second cord. We were having no luck at all when suddenly, all on her own, she cut open both her index fingers and wove while bleeding. Her ground welled right up and into the cord. I didn’t help her any more than she helped me; less, I’d say.”
“You instructed her to do this, then,” said Tioca.
“No, she came up with it—”
“A few nights earlier, Dag and I had been talking about ground,” Fawn put in breathlessly, “and he’d told me blood held ground after it left the body, because it was, like, alive separately from the person. Which I thought was a right disturbing idea, so I remembered it.”
“You’ve not been given leave to speak here, girl,” said Pakona sharply.
Fawn sat back and clapped her hand over her mouth in apology and alarm. Dag set his jaw, but added, “Fawn is exactly right. I recognized it as a technique that any of us here who have been bonded to sharing knives have likewise seen, but I didn’t suggest it. Fawn thought of it herself.”
“They used a knife-making technique on wedding cords,” Dar said in a voice of outrage.
“Groundwork is groundwork, Hoharie says,” Dag shot back. “I defy you to find a rule anywhere says you can’t.”
Tioca’s eyes narrowed in considerable intrigue. “Medicine-making does have to be a little more…adaptable than some other kinds of making,” she allowed. Such as knife-work hung implied. In a kindly sort of tone. Dag allowed himself an instant of enjoyment, watching Dar’s teeth grit.
“One brother’s word against t’other’s,” rumbled Ogit Muskrat from his end of the row. “One’s a maker, one’s not. Given the matter is making, I know which I’d trust.”
Fawn, her lips pressed tight, cast a look up at Dag: But you’re a maker, too! He gave her a small headshake. He was letting himself get distracted, wound up in side issues. This wasn’t about their cords.
Very canny of Dar to try to make it so, though. It dropped the whole smoldering issue of threatened banishment against a, what was that word Fairbolt had used, notable patroller, into the lake. Was that part Cumbia’s doing—shaken by doubt of her son’s allegiance despite her harsh words to Fawn? A reaction to whatever reputation Dag had won in Raintree? It certainly avoided complicated and possibly ferocious campwide debates over the council’s right to force a string-cutting. If Dar could make it stick, it made everything simple and the problem go away, without anyone having to change anything.