After a long, long moment, Barr swallowed down whatever he’d been going to snap back at Remo and nodded to the boat boss. He said stiffly, “I’d be grateful for a bed, yes, ma’am. And food.” He shot Remo a surly look that made it clear he was giving up only temporarily.
The occupants of the Fetch’s kitchen-bunkroom shuffled back into almost-normal preparations for sleep. Barr did look after his weapons, with a sidelong glance at Dag. Whit and Hod helped lay out the rest of his things to dry; Hawthorn and Berry settled the guest-furs in front of the fire; and Fawn reheated the fish, potatoes, and onions. Barr wolfed down the meal as though starved, and gaped in wonder at the tankard of beer Bo shoved in front of him. He found the bottom of it quickly. Awkwardly, everyone dodged around one another in the shared sleeping space that had suddenly become a little too shared, but all found their beds at last.
As the lantern light dimmed to the faintest red glow through the curtains of their nook, Fawn interlaced herself with Dag for warmth and whispered, “You didn’t happen to wish for Barr on those birthday candles, did you?”
Dag choked down a laugh. “No, Spark.” He grew quiet for a moment. “Not exactly, leastways.”
“Just so’s you know that last surprise was not my doing.”
“It seems to have been Amma Osprey’s. Wish I could have been listening at the window for that talk. I’ll bet it was blistering. Sounds like it was past time she put the fire to that boy’s feet, though.”
“Do you think Remo should go back with him?”
“It’s not my decision to make.”
“You wanted him to go back, that first night.”
“It’s good for young patrollers to get out and see the world.”
“You said you weren’t adopting him.”
He drew back his head to look down over his nose at her, squinting in the shadows. “Do you remember everything I say that clearly? That could get downright burdensome on a husband.”
She snickered.
He added, “Seems they can both drag back home with their tails between their legs, and Amma’ll let them in. I’m not too surprised. Nobody wants to waste patrollers. Still…I’ll hate to see Remo go, if he goes. I thought I might be starting to get somewhere with him. And he was a huge help with Hod.”
Fawn grew more pensive. “There is this. You can’t ever run away from one thing without running toward something else.” She slid a small hand up his shoulder. “You, for example. I ran away from home, and right into you. And the wide world with you. I’d never be here if I hadn’t first left there.”
“Do you like it here? This boat?”
“I’d like any boat with you in it.” She stretched up and kissed him.
“Was it a happy birthday?”
“The best in years.” He kissed her back, and added slowly, “The best in all my years. And that’s a lot of years, Spark. Huh.”
She considered poking him and demanding what that Huh was all about, but he yawned fit to crack his jaw, her feet finally warmed up, and she melted into sleep.
At breakfast, Fawn discovered that like most fine young animals, Barr was cuter when he was dry and fluffy. She’d been uncertain of his age in the strain of his last night’s exhaustion, but now she was sure he was the junior of the partners. He’d also regained his temper, or at least his arguments shifted to being less about Barr and more about Remo.
“Your tent-folk are all really worried about you,” he offered.
“Not when I last saw them,” Remo replied. “Notably not.”
“Remo, you have to realize, Amma’s only giving us a grace period, here. You can’t expect forgiveness to be held out on a stick forever.”
Remo said nothing.
Barr soldiered on. “If we don’t get back timely, she’ll have had a chance to get over being worried about you, and revert to being riled. We need to grab the moment.”
Fawn couldn’t help asking, “Won’t she be worried about the both of you?”
Barr glanced at her as if uncertain whether to speak directly to the farmer bride or not; unable to resist a chance to vent, he said, “Since she as much as told me to come back with him or not at all, I don’t think so.”
“Barr the expendable,” murmured Remo.
Barr’s jaw set, but he made no rejoinder; Remo looked mildly surprised.
After a little silence broken only by munching and requests to pass the cornbread and butter, Remo said, “Speaking of expendable, what in the world were you doing out in that weather last night?”
“It wasn’t my first plan,” said Barr. “There’s a ferry camp somewhere near here that I was trying to reach by dark, and the worse the rain got, the more it seemed worth holding out for. I sure wasn’t going to get any drier camping on shore in that blow. But I came to you before I came to it.”
“If you mean Fox Creek Camp,” Dag put in, “you passed it about ten miles back.”
“I can’t have missed it!” Barr said. “I’ve had my groundsense wide-open almost the whole way—looking for you,” he added aside to Remo. “Or your floating body.”
“Water this cold, my body might not have come up so soon,” said Remo distantly.
Dag’s brows twitched, but he said, “Fox Creek Camp mostly lies behind the hills. They dammed the creek to make a little lake back there. Likely there wasn’t anyone out on the ferry landing after dark.”
“Oh. Crap.” Barr looked briefly put out, then cheered up. “This is better anyway. If I’d stopped there, I wouldn’t have caught up with you till tonight at the earliest, and that’d be yet another fifty upriver miles to backtrack. At least.” He turned again to Remo. “Which is another reason to come back with me now. Every mile you go down is going to be that much more work going up.”
“Not my problem,” said Remo.
“Well, it’s mine!” said Barr, baited into personal outrage again. “With this current running, a narrow boat with only one paddler couldn’t even make headway going upriver! It needs at least two, and better four!”
In a practical spirit, and to divert whatever crushing thing Remo was fixing to say next, Fawn suggested, “You could trade your narrow boat for a horse at the next town and ride back to Pearl Riffle overland.”
“That’s a stupid idea,” objected Barr. Failing to notice either her stiffening or Dag’s, he plunged on, “I couldn’t get one good horse in trade for that old boat, let alone two!”
“You wouldn’t need two,” said Remo.
Whit, falling back into his old bad habits of pot-stirring, put in cheerfully, “And who says it has to be a good horse?”
Barr clenched his teeth and eyed him unfavorably.
Boss Berry’s drawl cut across the debate. “There’s this, Remo. You hired on as my sweep-man. If you jump my boat now, you’ll leave me shorthanded in the middle of nowhere, and that’s not right. Now, this ain’t my argument, but if you want to quit, at least do it at a village or town where I can hire on your replacement.”
“That’s only fair,” Remo allowed, looking at Barr in a challenging way. Barr didn’t have an immediate answer, although by his grimace Fawn thought she could see him mentally adding the upstream miles.
“Sky’s lightening,” said Bo. “Time to get out on the river.”
Berry nodded. “Me, Remo, and Whit for the first watch.”
Which ended the squabble for the next two hours at least. Breakfast broke up, and Remo and Barr went out to get the water emptied from Barr’s boat, hoist it up, and tie it down across the back deck, where, Fawn thought, it was going to be mightily in the way. Hod and Hawthorn turned to their scullery duties. Dag went ashore to collect Copperhead, who had been standing amongst the dripping leafless trees and whinnying plaintively since predawn, answered by bleats from Daisy-goat. Copperhead actually seemed glad to scramble back onto the boat, and touched noses with Daisy; the two animals had become unlikely friends. The lines were untied, the top-deck crew took to their sweeps, and the Fetch pushed off from the muddy bank, turnin
g slowly downstream. The river was dark and fast and scary this morning, the wind funneling up the valley cold and raw, whipping the mist to tatters. Fawn put her mind to sewing up more rain cloaks and retreated inside to find her work basket, glad for an indoor task.
Fawn had her oilcloth pieces laid out on the table near the window for the light, stitching industriously, when Barr came into the kitchen, shot her a guarded look, and began puttering around setting his dried gear back in order. Patrollers were doubtless taught to travel tidy, she reflected. She returned him a nod, in case he wanted to talk but wasn’t sure he was allowed. Although maybe that was more for rigid Remo; Barr apparently had found no trouble talking with farmer girls in the past. Except not farmer brides inexplicably married to other Lakewalkers, it seemed, for when he finally opened his mouth, what came out was hardly smooth.
“You’re pretty stuck on Dag, aren’t you?” He’d sat down in front of the hearth with his knees up, to oil some leather straps, incidentally blocking the heat. But perhaps he was still core-cold from yesterday.
For answer, Fawn held up her left wrist and the marriage cord wrapped around it. “What does your groundsense tell you?”
His nose wrinkled in wonder, but not denial. “Can’t imagine how you two did that.”
“We wove them together. As partners, you might say. I made my ground follow my blood into the cord that Dag wears, which Dag’s brother Dar said was a knife-making technique. It worked, anyhow.”
Barr blinked. “Saun said you two had jumped the cliff at Glassforge, which surprised him right off, as he hadn’t thought Dag was the sort—stiffer than Remo, even—but nobody ever…Lakewalkers don’t usually marry farmers, you know.”
He was actually being sort of polite: don’t ever would have been more accurate. “Dag’s an unusual man.”
“Do you realize how old he likely is? To farmer eyes I know he looks thirty-five or forty, but I can tell you he has to be a good deal more than that.”
What are you on about? “His fifty-sixth birthday was yesterday. We had a real nice party. That was the leftovers you bolted last night.”
“Oh.” Barr squinted at her in increasing puzzlement. “Do you realize he has to have beguiled you?”
“Do you realize you are amazingly offensive?” she returned in a level tone.
By his discomfited head-duck, that wasn’t the response he’d been expecting. She bit off her short strand and tied it, then drew out a new length to thread her needle. “Dag hasn’t beguiled me one bit. He and Remo have been doing some studying on that, how beguilement really happens in groundwork, and have found out some pretty terrific things. You should get Dag to teach you.” Barr did not seem the most promising learner, but there was certainly worse out there. If Dag’s schemes were to work, they had to reach ordinary folks, Lakewalker and farmer alike, and not just a tiny elite.
But Barr had other matters on his mind. He muttered, “Can’t be her. Has to be the blonde.” Raising his voice, he said, “Remo’s after that Berry girl, isn’t he? That’s why he won’t turn around…taking after your Dag, maybe? Absent gods, he doesn’t mean to marry her, does he?”
Fawn stared over her stitches in increasing exasperation. “Berry’s betrothed to a farmer boy named Alder, who went missing on a downriver trip last fall along with Berry’s papa and brother. She’s going to look for ’em all, which is why she named her boat the Fetch. She carries on steady, because she’s that sort and it’s a long haul, but inside she’s anxious and grieving. You want to make yourself real unpopular with everyone on this boat in a big hurry, you try botherin’ Berry in any way.” Had she hammered in that hint hard enough to penetrate Barr’s self-absorption? Well, if not, she knew someone with a bigger mallet. Dag had been a company captain, twice. She doubted a patroller boy like Barr would present him an insurmountable challenge.
Barr looked down, finished treating the straps, and returned to reorganizing his pack.
Fawn stared at his sandy hair tied in that touchable fluffy queue down his back, shoved her needle through the heavy cloth with her thimble, and said abruptly, “Ha! I know who you remind me of! Sunny Sawman.”
Barr looked over his shoulder. “Who?”
Fawn smiled blackly. “Farmer boy I once knew. He was blond and broad-shouldered like you.”
Straightening up, Barr cast her a probing smile. Gleaming enough, but she wondered why it wasn’t as face-transforming as Dag’s or Remo’s. Not as genuine, maybe? Barr said, “Good-looking fellow, was he?”
“Oh, yes.” As Barr brightened further, she went on, “Also completely self-centered, a slanderer, and a liar. It wouldn’t quite be fair to call him a coward, because with those muscles he didn’t need to be, but he sure was eager to skim out of the consequences of his choices when things went sour.” She looked him over, pursing her lips in consideration, and added in a kindly voice, “It’s likely your hair color does it, but boy howdy, it’s not a recommendation. I’ll try not to let it set me against you. Too much.”
Barr cleared his throat, opened his mouth, and prudently closed it again. He made his way—or fled—out of the kitchen to pretend to check on his boat on the back deck. Fawn stabbed her cloth once more, satisfied.
At lunch, Remo stopped responding to Barr’s continued badgering altogether, which left Barr floundering. Fawn shrewdly followed Remo’s example, and Whit followed the crowd. Hod and Hawthorn didn’t talk to Barr in the first place, Hod because he was fearful, Hawthorn because he liked Remo and didn’t want him to go away, and so took Barr as an unwelcome interloper. Bo was bemused, Berry unamused, and Dag, well, it was hard to tell what he was thinking. Nothing simple, anyhow.
It was late afternoon and forty river miles before they again came upon a village big enough to boast a wharf-boat and goods-shed. The Fetch tied on and most everyone trooped up to the goods-shed, if only to stretch their legs and enjoy a change of scene.
The goods-clerk, when he saw the three tall Lakewalkers shoulder into his shed, leaned under his counter and came up wearing an iron helmet fashioned from an old cook-pot with one side newly cut out, before turning on his stool to do business with these fresh customers. He adjusted the loop of handle comfortably under his chin. Remo choked, Barr nearly went cross-eyed, and Dag pinched the bridge of his nose in a weary way.
Berry bit her lip but, not wishful to waste daylight, rattled off her questions without any comment on the unusual headgear. Regrettably, the goods-clerk knew of no local river-rat wanting to hire on for a downriver hitch as sweep-man, nor had he any memory of the Clearcreek Briar Rose stopping here last fall, although he did remember a couple of the Tripoint boats from Cutter’s list in the spring. Fawn made a few little purchases for the Fetch’s larder, and Whit sold one crate of window glass.
As they finished settling up and turned to go, Barr abruptly turned back.
“Mister,” he said to the clerk, pointing at the iron hat, “where did you get the idea for that?”
The clerk smiled at him triumphantly. “Wouldn’t you like to know, eh, Lakewalker?”
“Because it doesn’t do a blighted thing. It was a joke got up on some flatties stuck up above Pearl Riffle a few weeks back, and they bought it. We laughed at them.”
Some flatties, obviously, who had made it downriver this far ahead of the Fetch, Fawn realized. She stuffed her fist in her mouth and watched in fascination.
“Yep, I just bet you’d like to trick me into taking this off, wouldn’t you, young fellow?” said the clerk in growing satisfaction. “Laugh away. We’ll see who laughs last.”
“What, I haven’t tried to buy anything off you! Or sell anything, either.”
“Yet.” The clerk nodded, then reached up to adjust the slipping pot more firmly. “And nor will you.”
Barr’s hands spread in a frustrated plea. “Look, I know it was a joke because I made it up myself!”
The clerk sat back, eyes narrowing shrewdly. “You would say that, aye.”
“No, really! This i
s crazy. Groundsense sees right through a bitty thing like that. An iron hat doesn’t do anything. It was just a joke! I made it up—”
Berry gave Dag a significant look; Dag reached out and gripped Barr’s shoulder. “Come along now, Barr, and stop arguing with this fellow. Boss Berry wants to cast off.”
“But it’s—but he’s—”
Remo helped propel his partner through the door and down the muddy slope. Barr skidded to a halt and tried to turn back. “It was a joke, I made it up…”
Dag sighed. “If you want to stay here and argue with that fellow, I’m sure we can offload your boat and gear. Me, I predict we’re going to be seeing pots on people’s heads up and down the Grace and the Gray for the next hundred years, so we might as well get used to it. Or for as long as folks are afraid of Lakewalkers and ignorant about our groundwork.” He hesitated, looking down the sodden, dreary valley in a considering way. “Though I suppose if it made people feel safer, it might could be a good thing…no, likely not.” He shook his head and trudged on.
“It’s not my doing,” said Barr plaintively, head still cranked over his shoulder even as he stumbled in Dag’s wake.
“Yes, it is,” said Remo irately, blended in chorus with Fawn’s “Whose else would it be?” and Dag’s reasonable drawl, “Sure it is. Might not be your intention, but it was certainly your doing. Live and learn, patroller.”
Barr’s lips thinned, but he finally shut up. Except Fawn heard him mutter, as he stepped aboard the Fetch once more, “I made it up…”
The next morning at breakfast, Barr’s campaign upon Remo was temporarily silenced when the entire crew of the Fetch united in telling him to pipe down or prepare to go swimming. It didn’t quite cure the problem, because Barr took to staring instead: imploringly, or angrily, or meaningfully. Remo gritted his teeth and attempted to ignore him. Fawn had no idea what-all the pair were doing with their grounds and groundsenses, but would not have been the least surprised had Remo burst out, just like her brothers when they’d driven their beleaguered parents into threats of a whipping if silence did not ensue, Boss! Dag! He’s lookin’ at me! Make him stop lookin’ at me! Barr watched the shoreline slipping past and glowered harder.