The horse Remo rode was Pakko’s, recovered along with all his gear. His bonded sharing knife was indeed still in his saddlebags, but, the son confided later to Dag, he wasn’t going to let his papa have it till his mama said so. Dag and the medicine maker—and Pakko—had enjoyed, or endured, a number of practical lectures yesterday from Arkady on the subject of nerve damage, which even Dag took as guarded hope for the man’s walking again; he rather thought Pakko might well be a great-grandpapa before that meeting with his bone blade took place.
All the tales had to be told again to the new people, so it was after lunch before the Laurel Gap patrol headed back to the Trace once more, at a walking pace with men taking it in turns to carry Pakko’s litter smoothly. The wagon camp fell much quieter, and folks bent their thoughts to their own road. Dag counted up the days of delay, and was surprised how few there were—he felt as if they’d been trapped in this burned-over valley for months.
Tavia was left horseless. Since Barr would be traveling the next stretch in the back of a wagon, he offered her the use of his mount—which, actually, belonged to Arkady—if she’d come north with him. After a sidewise glance at Dag, Neeta renewed her urging to Remo to come south with her; the boy seemed confused by her sudden warmth. Which brought Dag to a task he’d been dreading. His shiver of rage was still anchored by doubt. Let’s have the truth out, then. And if it was as ugly as cleaning up mud-men, maybe it was as needful, too.
Dag selected a spot just out of sight and earshot of the camp, near the chattering streambed. He sat on a rock and dug in the ground with his stick, while Sumac leaned on a gray beech bole, arms crossed. Her mere presence, he trusted, would be enough to block any embarrassments like his last private talk with Neeta. His other invitees settled cross-legged around him: Remo, Tavia, Neeta. Finch and Ash, also summoned, shuffled and stared uncertainly.
“What’s this all about, Dag?” asked Remo. “Patrol business, you said.”
Dag held up his hand to spare the last pair from settling. He’d have picked Sage for this testimony, as the most levelheaded of the Alligator Hat boys, but in the aftermath of the malice kill the young smith had been distracted by worry for his wife and tent-brother. “I won’t keep you long. The day Whit shot the malice, that afternoon, what all was going on in camp when Neeta rode by? As exactly as you can remember.”
“Oh…” Finch ran a hand through his hair. “It was such an uproar at first. Berry’d got out just about enough words to explain what had happened, or at least, enough for us to explain it to the rest. We were all worried for her and Whit. Bo’d looked over poor Fawn, and said she was a goner. Hod and Hawthorn were crying. It was plain we wouldn’t be staying there long, and most of us figured you for a goner, too. So when we told the muleteers your tale, they dug space for her as well.”
“As a sort of gift,” Ash confirmed.
“Neeta came cantering up the road in a hurry, but she saw us and reined in.”
“Before or after the burial?”
“Oh, before. We had those four poor muleteers and Fawn laid out on blankets, and were sort of looking at one another wondering what to say. Neeta said she’d been sent to find the local Lakewalkers and get help for some hurt patroller. That she’d seen Tavia, who’d hauled Arkady up the ridge to rescue you both—you were hurt, too, but she didn’t know just how bad.”
“It didn’t sound real good,” said Ash. “We got that somebody had a broke back, but we weren’t sure which.”
“We told her Whit had shot the malice, but I don’t know as she really believed us. She rode around and looked at the wings, anyway. Never got down off her horse. Then she was gone at a gallop before Vio even got to ask about Owlet.”
Neeta started to speak, but, at Dag’s upflung hand, fell silent. Her eyes pinched. Did she see what was coming? Dag was afraid so.
Dag said, “Did she know you were about to bury Fawn?”
“Oh, sure,” said Finch. “That is…we didn’t talk about it, but it was all laid out there, the corpses and the grave half dug and all. I wouldn’t think you could miss it.”
Ash gave a slow blink, and started to open his mouth. Dag cut in: “Thanks, boys. That’ll be all.”
The two wandered upstream toward the wagons, looking curiously over their shoulders.
Dag scowled across at Neeta.
She raised her chin. “She looked dead! Ground-ripped, I figured. How was I to know those shields of yours would do such a crazy thing? And anyway, I had my ground veiled on account of the malice blight.”
Dag said slowly, “It’s your word alone as to whether you were open or closed. I can’t prove you’re lying. You can’t prove you’re telling the truth.” Can you, Neeta?
Red spots flared in Neeta’s fair cheeks: indignant, or scared? “Well, I like that!”
“She could open now,” said Remo doubtfully.
Dag and Neeta traded a long, long stare. His heartbeats felt hot, and too far apart. Odd. He’d thought his world would be tinged with red by this point, but it was just blue and distant. “No,” said Dag at last. “I think not. Unveiled, I could kill her with a thought, you know. Just like I did Crane. It’d be almost as easy as murder by silence.”
A ripple of dismay ran through Remo and Tavia, a flinch from Sumac, but no one spoke. Or dared speak?
Neeta’s gaze fell, slid away. It was all the answer Dag needed. Or wanted, really. And you thought this was your duty, old patroller, why?
Wearily, he ran his hand over his face, rubbing at the numbness. “Go home, Neeta. Patrol there. You owe New Moon for your raising, and Luthlia for your training. You’ll be a long time paying that debt back. At the end of your lifetime, share if you will. Just don’t come north. The north does not need you.”
Remo stared at her in bleak doubt.
“It’s not fair!” she began, then clamped her jaw shut. Right. Best advice for someone at the bottom of a deep, deep hole: stop digging. Apt turn of phrase, that. Well, he’d never thought the girl was stupid.
“What about me?” said Tavia. She had gone very pale, staring at her partner.
Sumac stirred on her tree bole. “I’d recommend you to Fairbolt Crow at Hickory Lake, if you want to take a turn exchanging north. My word with Fairbolt is pretty good coin. I’ll be speaking for Rase as well, you can bet—I expect he’ll be all recovered by the time I get him up there. His recent malice experiences are going to make him very much in demand, I can tell you. Yours, too.”
Tavia looked at the ground, looked narrowly at Neeta, who stirred uncomfortably but said nothing. Tavia finally replied, “I think I’ll report in at home, first. Be sure the story is told straight. Make my good-byes properly. But I’ll take you up on your good word after that, if the offer holds.”
“It holds.”
“Tell Rase I’ll be along come fall, then.”
Sumac nodded.
Rase? thought Dag. So much for poor Barr’s hopes. Well, Barr was resilient. Remo looked downcast, again. Blight, that boy can’t win for losing. Both were so very young…
“And you, Remo? Which way you ridin’, tomorrow?” asked Sumac.
Remo let out a long breath. He did not look at Neeta anymore. “North,” he said.
No one spoke on the short walk back to camp.
In the morning, when they’d finally wrestled the wagons back down the creek bed and onto the Trace, two silent riders turned south. Arkady had lent Tavia a horse, also lading her with a long list of his possessions to bring back with her when she returned. Dag didn’t know what all Sumac had confided to Arkady last night, but he was formidably chilly to Neeta in parting. Tavia turned once in her saddle to wave farewell, a gesture earnestly returned by Rase. Neeta, her back rigid, did not look around.
To Fawn’s joy, Blackwater Mills harbored a hotel almost as fine as the one in Glassforge, if smaller. Better still, it had a spanking new bathhouse. She gladly pried open their purse for a room—as, after one look at the bathhouse, did Arkady. Doubling up with Sumac f
or frugality, no doubt. As for Fawn, she looked forward to a few days of eating food someone else had fixed, and no squinting in the cook smoke. The swelling in Dag’s foot had gone down in the four days of travel since they’d left the burned-over valley, but its color—colors—were even uglier. They both could use some time in a real bed, she reckoned. All to themselves.
The town held sadness, too, for this was a place of parting. It lay on a barely navigable tributary of the Grace River, but more importantly it was where the Tripoint Trace crossed the old straight road that cut up toward Pearl Riffle, with its Lakewalker ferry and camp. Sage, Calla, and Indigo would point their wagon east up the Trace; the rest of them would take the northern way, from which in turn sprouted the back road that led to Clearcreek.
The Basswoods stopped abruptly short, when Vio dug in her heels and declared she’d had enough and wouldn’t go one more step. Well, in this busy place Grouse would have no trouble finding day labor, likely more successful for him now he was cured of his recurrent bog ague, and, really, Fawn expected the couple would do better with town life than with the demands of homesteading. Selling their rickety wagon and a pair of their mules would give them enough to start out on. She grinned, though, to overhear the phrase Our Lakewalkers fall from Grouse’s lips when he was explaining their adventures to the hotel horseboys.
She would miss Plum, who had somehow ended up under her wing, and she rather thought Dag would miss Owlet. He seemed vastly amused by his grubby Little Brother of the mud-bat adventure, and Owlet seemed to return the compliment. Though she suspected Dag used his groundsense to cheat—unless it was his arm rig that so enthralled the child, who had developed a passion for buckles. Well, I’ll just give Dag a toddler or two of his own, and he’ll do fine. Could she really object when the cheating would be on her side?
But the most important thing that happened in their stopover in Blackwater Mills, almost as good as a bow-down in Fawn’s view, was when a patrol that had come from a neighboring camp to reinforce the Laurel Gap folks—though they’d arrived after the fight was over—rode miles out of their way home to catch up with Dag and Arkady to have the tale firsthand. They seemed a little taken aback to get it mostly from Fawn and Whit and Berry, complete with a display of the sharing-bolt shards and crossbow. But their captain, as shorthanded as every other patrol leader, was highly interested in the notion of farmer help that couldn’t be mind-slaved by a malice, even if the farmers did no more than hold the horses. Dag tried to make it very clear that his walnut shields weren’t quite perfected yet, but the captain left with a gleam in his eye nonetheless, after making sure of the directions to where Dag and Arkady planned to roost.
Later that night, Fawn rolled over on clean sheets atop a yielding feather mattress and snuggled up to Dag. The bedside lamp cast a gentle glow over their quiet room. Slow spring rain sounded through the real glass windows, open just enough for a cool breeze to stir the cloth curtains. Just being inside when the rain was outside seemed pleasure enough for any sensible woman, but she had plenty more blessings to count. Her fingers reached up to flick over his quizzical eyebrows, one, two, comb through his unruly hair, three. This tally might take a while…
“Will it be enough?” she murmured. “Those patrollers tonight? Seems to me they listened to us better than any Lakewalkers yet. Or is this just another stone in the sea?”
Dag’s lips softened in a smile. “The world’s a pretty big sea. For all our travels, we’ve only seen a slice of it. Enough…no, not yet. But it’s a start. And this time, our rocks will make ripples.” He leaned into her hand to kiss it in passing. “Best part is, I don’t have to go around like a stump speaker trying to talk folks into being nicer to each other, one by one. Which really would be like throwing pebbles into the sea.”
He stretched over and picked up her spent walnut necklace from where it lay by the lamp, turning it thoughtfully in his hand. “These will bring folks to us, for their own reasons, and I don’t even have to know what all the reasons are. Send enough farmers out with enough Lakewalker patrols, and they will learn all about Lakewalkers, and bring their true tales home.”
“Well,” said Fawn, “only if the Lakewalkers can resist trying out patroller humor on them.”
His lips twitched. “I’d think any fellow raised on a diet of Bo stories would be able to sort it out…Maybe not on the first day.”
Fawn giggled. “Those river boys should do well on patrol, then. That learning won’t be all one way, I expect.”
“Indeed, I’m counting on that.” He held up the necklace, squinting at it. “I do wonder about what Whit and Bo said, back on your birthday when I first showed this off…that it wouldn’t be a day, after I set something like this loose in the world, before someone figured out how to misuse it.”
“I’m afraid that’s true.” Fawn sighed. “But if there’s enough folks…Those river bandits we ran into were awful, sure, but most of the rivermen were good enough fellows. The river has a reputation, but that doesn’t stop folks from going on it anyhow, and getting plenty of good from it, too. If there’s enough grease, some grit won’t stop the whole wheel from turning.”
“I hope that’s so, Spark.” He set the necklace back and found a better use for his hand, stroking over her shoulder, which made the skin of her arm stand up in happy goose bumps. “I guess we’ll find out.”
She eased back onto her pillow, and his warm palm traced over her belly in a flatteringly interested fashion. She raised her head and squinted over her torso, frowning impatiently. Her waist was still disappointingly slim down there. Six months from now she’d likely be wondering why she’d been in such a hurry to expand, but still. “Is Nattie-Mari all right in there?”
“Seems to be happy so far. Despite all her adventures with her mama.” He tried to keep his voice light, but just a tinge of remembered desperation leaked through.
She drew a breath, then stopped to consider just how to phrase this so’s he wouldn’t take it wrong. “It’s been a pretty amazing wedding trip. Most fellows only claim they want to give their sweethearts the world. You really did.”
This won a trail of light kisses from her temple to her chin, which was very agreeable, but she couldn’t let herself be distracted yet. She caught his head between her hands before he could work down farther and rob her of words. “So don’t take this as any sort of complaint, but can we try staying home for a while?”
He laughed. “I’d say you took your turn traveling with a patroller. It’s my turn to stay put with a farmer.” He sobered a little, though not too much, good. “It’ll be a fine, fresh new thing for me, staying home. I’ve never done that before.”
“I’ll try to see you don’t faint from the excitement of it all.”
Being kissed through a grin was good, too. His lips drifted down her throat and struck south, and they gave up talking for a warmer exchange.
After a few more days of rest in Blackwater Mills, Arkady pronounced Barr able to ride again, suitably splinted and at a careful plod, on a mild-eyed mare borrowed from Whit. Dag, remembering his own much less severe broken arm last year, figured Barr was still in a quelling amount of pain, confirmed by the boy’s wan smile and lack of complaint about the restrictions. Well, a quelled Barr was not altogether a bad thing.
Even at their gentle amble, the straight road north brought them all too soon to their next parting. Barr, Remo, and Rase were to ride on to Pearl Riffle. There Rase would play guest, observe a northern ferry camp in operation, and not least add his testimony to the tale of their malice kills back on the Trace, until Sumac caught up with him again.
Finch and Ash, too, planned to cross the Grace at the Pearl Riffle ferry; they carried a stack of fat letters to West Blue that would guarantee them room and board for quite a while, with lots of sound advice for homesteaders thrown in, most likely.
Sumac’s own plan was to ride with Arkady to Clearcreek, ostensibly to see him safely settled—but given the glitter in her ground, Dag would hav
e bet cash money the couple had more intimate reasons for sticking to each other like burs for the next few days. Sumac herself was vague on whether she meant to leave Arkady at Berry’s and come back to fetch him in a few weeks after presenting Rase, and her resignation, at Hickory Lake Camp, or take him with her straightaway to exhibit to her parents, rather like a hunter returning home with a spectacular bag of game—Dag kept trying not to grin—or have a string-binding on the spot with her uncle Dag doing the blessing and tying, just to make sure, before exposing her husband to his new tent-kin. Dag was happy to stay entirely out of that decision.
Remo turned in his saddle and stared up the shade-dappled road toward his home, his brow clouded with doubt.
“Your kin and camp will be glad to see you,” Dag told him, not entirely recklessly. “Word of how you two helped put down the bandits at Crooked Elbow had to have reached the Riffle months ago, and if a patrol circular about the Trace malices hasn’t got ahead of you already, it’ll be along soon. Grab your forgiveness while the excitement is still high, and you’ll do fine.”
Fawn, atop Magpie, raised an eyebrow at him. “Speaking from experience, Dag?”
He touched one finger to his temple in wry acknowledgment. “Just don’t try to pull the returning-son trick too often, is all. It does wear out with repetition.”
Barr eased his horse forward and observed, “With this leg of mine, we can each take credit for getting the other home. I guarantee to hobble and yelp a lot. You’ll look good.”
“Home camp’s not going to look the same, I promise you,” said Dag. Both of you.