She’s probing. Shooting not at any facts that could possibly be known to her, and certainly not blind, but at Fawn’s fears. A vision of her mama and Aunt Nattie, both grown downright dumpy in their middle age, nonetheless assaulted Fawn’s imagination. Half a dozen barbs, half a dozen direct hits—no, not blind. Still…I must have hit her somewhere, too, for her to be counterattacking so cruelly.
Fawn remembered a description she’d heard down in Glassforge of how the rougher keelboat men fought duels. Their wrists were strapped together with rawhide thongs, and their free hands given knives. So they were forced to circle close, unable to disengage or get out of their enemy’s stabbing range. This fight with Cumbia felt like that. Driven to her wits’ end by her own family, Fawn had not believed Dag when he’d said his would be worse, but if her people fought to bruise and tumble, his aimed to slice to the bone. Maybe Dag was right about the best contact being none. I didn’t come here to fight this old woman, I came to try for some peace. Why am I letting her have her war?
Fawn took a deep breath, and said, “Dag is the most truthful man I ever met. If we have a problem, he’ll tell me, and we’ll fix it.”
“Huh.” Cumbia sat back. Fawn could sense another shift in her mood, away from the sudden, sharp attack, but it did not reassure her. “Then let me tell you the truth about patrollers, girl. Because I was married to one. Sister, daughter, and mother to the breed—walked with them, too, when I was your age, ’bout a thousand years ago. Men, women, old, young, kind or mean-minded, in one thing they are all the same. Once they’ve seen their first malice, they don’t ever give up patrol unless they’re crippled or dead. And they don’t ever put anyone else before it. Mari—by all right reason, she should be staying in camp taking care of Cattagus, but off she goes. And he sends her, being just as bad. Dag’s father was another. All of ’em, the whole lot. Don’t you be thinking I imagine Dag’ll choose to cut strings because of any consideration for me, or Dar, or anyone else who has supported him his whole life.
“Here’s the fork. If Dag doesn’t love you enough, he’ll choose the patrol. And if he loves you beyond all sense—he’ll choose the patrol. Because you’re standing in the center of that world he’s sent to save, and if he doesn’t save it, he doesn’t save you, either. When Fairbolt called on him the other night with the news from Raintree, how long did it take your bridegroom to decide to go off and leave you? All alone, with no friends or kin?”
Not very long, Fawn did not say aloud. Her mouth had grown too dry for speech.
“And it wouldn’t make a whit of difference if you were Lakewalker born, or a hundred times prettier, or writhing in birth bed, or crying at his child’s deathbed, or in agony on your own. Patrollers turn and go all the same. You can’t win this one.” She sat back and favored Fawn with a slow blink, cold as any snake. “Neither could I. So take your foolish knitting and go away.”
Fawn swallowed. “They’re good socks. Maybe Omba would like to have them.”
Cumbia set her jaw. “You’re a touch hard of listening, aren’t you, girl?” And then plucked up the little bundle and tossed it into the fire pit smoldering a few yards away.
Fawn almost screamed aloud. Three days of work! She dove after it. It had not yet caught, but the dry cotton smoked against the red coals, and a stray end of the jaunty woolen yarn winked in scarlet sparks, curling up and starting to blacken. She leaned in and snatched it back out, brushing off a smear of soot and glowing bits from the browning edge, drawing in her breath sharply at the burning bite of them. Her blue skirt had muddy patches from where her knees had thumped down, and she scrubbed at them as she rose, glaring uselessly at Cumbia.
It wasn’t just the pain of the burn on her fingers that started tears in Fawn’s eyes. She choked out, “Dag said it would be useless to try and talk to you.”
“Should have listened to him, too, eh?” said Cumbia. Her face was nearly expressionless.
“I guess,” returned Fawn shortly. Her bright theory that letting Cumbia vent might clear the air seemed singularly foolish now. She wanted to shoot some devastating last word over her shoulder as she stalked off, hurting as she’d been hurt, but she was far too shaken to think of any. She wanted only to escape.
“Go, then,” said Cumbia, as if she could hear her.
Fawn clutched the knit bundle in her unburned hand and marched away. She didn’t let her shoulders bow till she was out of sight on the road and having to pick her footfalls among the drying puddles. Her stomach shuddered, and this island seemed abruptly lonely and strange, hostile and pinched, despite the bright morning air. Oppressive, like a house turned prison. She sniffed angrily, feeling stupid stupid stupid, and smeared away the drops on her lashes with the back of her hand, then turned it to capture the cooling moisture on her throbbing fingers. A reddening line crossed three of them; she thought one might be starting to blister. Mama or Aunt Nattie would have dabbed the spots with butter, made soothing murmurs, and maybe kissed them. Fawn wasn’t too sure about the butter—in any case, she had none in the tiny cache of food that passed for her larder—but the rest of the remedy she missed desperately. Not to be had. Ever again. The thought made her want to bawl far more than the little pain in her hand.
She’d gone to Cumbia to try to head off the clash with the camp council at its apparent root. To save Dag. She had not only failed, she might have made it even worse. Cumbia and Dar could have no doubt now of what an easy target Dag’s farmer wife was. Why did I think I could help him? Stupid…
In her home campsite—in Mari’s and Sarri’s campsite, Fawn corrected this thought—Cattagus was still sitting over his leatherwork, now stitching a diminutive slipper held up nearly to his nose, poking rawhide cords in and out of the holes he’d made with his awl. Tesy had gone off somewhere, though Cattagus was apparently keeping an eye on her brother, presently penned in a little corral and diverted with a pair of alarmed turtles; he was tapping on a shell and calling the creature to come out. As Fawn crossed the clearing, Cattagus put down his work and looked at her shrewdly. She recalled Cumbia’s shot about walking around naked and wondered if all her efforts to put on a brave face were useless; if any Lakewalker looking at her could see what a seething mess she really was. Likely.
To her surprise, Cattagus beckoned her over. She stopped by his table, and he leaned on one elbow, regarding her rather ironically, and wheezed, “So, where have you been, girlie?”
“Went to talk to Cumbia,” Fawn admitted. “Tried, anyhow.”
“Burn your fingers, did you?”
Fawn hastily pulled her hand from her licking tongue and hid it behind her back. “She threw the socks I’d brought her for a present in the fire. Should have just let them burn, I guess, but I couldn’t stand the waste.”
“That what you been crouching over all these past three days?”
“Pretty much.”
“Huh. Let’s see. No, girlie, the burn,” he added impatiently as she thrust out her scorched bundle. She gave him her other hand; he held it in his dry, thick fingers, and his gray head bent slightly. He was dressed as usual in nothing but the short trousers and sandals that were his summer uniform, and she was conscious of the smell of him, a mix of old man and lake green, not unpleasant at this concentration, and very Cattagus. Would Dag smell like that when he grew as old? She thought she could learn to like it.
Fawn stared at her rejected knitting as Cattagus kneaded her palm. “Do you think Mari would like those socks? They’re too big for me and too small for Dag, but they’re good for under riding boots. If she’s not too proud to take work from a stupid farmer,” she added bitterly. “Or Cumbia’s castoffs.”