“You were on your oar. Whit was off duty. That’s all.” Not everything is about you, youngster, though I know you can’t see that right now. He was also reminded of Fawn’s farmer joke about the parents’ curse: May you have six children all just like you. Was there an equivalent patrol captain’s curse? That would explain a lot…
Remo swallowed. “Oh.” A flush bloomed and faded in his face, but some of the tension went out of him.
Dag refrained from pointing out that he’d have yelled for Remo before Hawthorn or Hod, lest the touchy Pearl Riffle boy just think himself called the second-best of a bad lot. Tact, old patroller. They were getting somewhere, here.
Remo’s hand went out toward Hod’s knee, then drew back. “Is he going to end up following me around like he does you?”
Dag rejected both If I knew, I wouldn’t have to test it and He can’t follow both of us, leastways as answers. He glanced down at Hod, who was staring up anxiously. “Why don’t you ask?” Otherwise you’re about to do intimate groundwork upon a person you haven’t spoken to directly since you came into the room.
Remo reluctantly looked Hod in the face. “Are you going to get stuck on me?” he demanded.
Hod did that yes/no headshake again, as confusing to Remo as to everyone else. “Dunno?” He offered after a moment, “Don’t want to. But my knee hurts all throbby, and I want to help Dag. Don’t you want to help Dag?”
Remo scratched his head, glanced sideways. “I guess I do.”
Dag had talked young patrollers through their first fuzzy ground-giftings before; Remo gave him no surprises on that score. The actual transfer was the work of an instant. Hod gasped as the palpable warmth eased his joint. Dag gave Hod some stern warnings about taking better care of himself hereafter, and no more tricks. Hod shook his head hard and unambiguously at that one.
Whit, Berry, and Hawthorn came in then, cheeks pink from the night chill, to put away their assorted equipment. Dag, feeling as drained as if it had been him rather than Remo to give the ground reinforcement, sagged wearily into a chair by the hearth and let Fawn explain to the boat boss just what all had been going on in here, which she did with an accuracy almost as embarrassing to Remo as to Hod. Since she managed to do this while simultaneously feeding everyone warm apple pie, however, they all got over it pretty smoothly.
Dag was then treated to an entirely unexpected half-hour of listening to a lot of farmers sitting around over plates of crumbs seriously discussing problems of Lakewalker-farmer beguilement not as dark magical threat but as something more like navigating a channel that had just had all its snags and sand bars shifted by a flood. Save for Fawn and Whit, their ideas were confused and their suggestions mostly useless; it was their tones of voice that subtly heartened him. Remo, hearing mainly the confusion, at first folded his arms and looked plagued, but then was drawn despite himself into what Dag suspected were his first halting efforts to explain Lakewalker disciplines to outsiders.
The party broke up for bed with the woes of the world unsolved, but Dag felt strangely satisfied nonetheless.
Fawn, passing Hod, caught him on the shoulder, and said, “You know, you could have come out and asked for a turn on Whit’s bow, too, same as Hawthorn. Try it next time.”
Hod looked startled; his lips peeled back in a grin over his crooked teeth, and he bobbed his head in a gratified nod. Had he just needed an invitation? What brooding over a purely imagined exile had led him to the wall? What distress was so painful that such a brutal self-harm seemed a better choice? Dag, wondering, managed to add a, “Good night, Hod. Sleep hard,” to Fawn’s shrewd words, which won another gratified head-bob and a flush of pleasure. Following Fawn forward, Dag blew out his breath in contemplation.
After calling Hawthorn to come collect his raccoon, who after its nap now wanted to romp, they curled around each other in their warming nest. Fawn murmured, “How’s your oat doing?”
Surprised, Dag rubbed his left arm. “I’d almost forgotten it. Huh. It seems to be converted already. Hardly anything left there but a little warm spot. Maybe tomorrow I’ll try ten oats.”
“I was thinking, two.”
“Five?” He hesitated. “I think I’m glad you talked me out of that tree.”
“Uh-huh,” she said dryly. He could feel her sleepy smile against his shoulder. She added after a moment, “You really got Remo going tonight. If only we could get him to quit confusing farmers with their livestock, I think he’d be a decent sort.”
“Is he that bad? He doesn’t mean ill.”
“I didn’t think he did. He’s just…full of Lakewalkerish habits.”
“Or he was, before he got tipped out of his cradle. I ’spect our river trip isn’t quite the rebellion he thought he was signing up for.”
She snickered, her breath warm in the hollow of his skin.
Dag said more slowly, “He was just an ordinary patroller, before his knife got broken. But if ordinary folks can’t fix the world, it’s not going to get fixed. There are no lords here. The gods are absent.”
“You know, it sounds real attractive at first, but I’m not sure I’d want lords and gods fixing the world. Because I think they’d fix it for them. Not necessarily for me.”
“There’s a point, Spark,” he whispered.
She nodded, and her eyes drifted shut. His stayed open for rather a long while.
13
To the excitement of everyone aboard—although Fawn thought that Dag and Bo concealed it best—the Fetch approached Silver Shoals around noon. It was another gray, chilly day, promising but not delivering rain. Climbing to her mid-roof perch again, Fawn was glad for her jacket.
On the north bank of the river lay a village and ferry landing, which Remo at his sweep eyed uncertainly. “Is that Silver Shoals? It’s four times the size of Pearl Bend!”
“Oh, that’s not the town,” said Berry, leaning on her steering oar to keep the flatboat mid-channel. “That’s just a road crossing. Wait’ll we get around this bluff and the next curve.” She did shade her eyes and frown at the water-gauge pole sticking up near the landing. “River’s falling again. I think we’ll take the Shoals while we still can, and tie up below. I don’t want to get caught above for another week.”
Remo grew very quiet as the shore shifted and the town covering the southern hillsides eased at last into view; Dag, joining him at his oar, seemed to study his stare. Many of the houses were painted white, or even colors, spots of brightness amongst the now nearly leafless trees. Some newer, taller buildings were brick, and Fawn wondered if one might be the famous mint. Wood and coal smoke smudged the damp air, and the shoreline was crowded with smelly but lively businesses needing access to water—tanners, dyers, a soap-maker, a reeking mussel fishery, a boatyard. Mills, Fawn supposed, lined the feeder creeks—she could see at least one from here, partway up the hill, a sawmill at a guess. Wagons drawn by straining teams rattled up and down the muddy streets, and pedestrians strode on boardwalks. The town was bigger than Lumpton Market and Glassforge put together, and easily forty times the size of Pearl Bend.
At Berry’s sharp reminder, all the gawkers turned their attention to navigating the growling shoals, which were much like Pearl Riffle only more so. A few skeletal boats hung up in the wrack gave warning of the fate of the unwary or unlucky. Dag passed back laconic remarks about hidden hazards to Berry, which by now she took in with no more comment than nods, and they cleared the shelves, boulders, and bars without once scraping the hull, which made her grin. There followed some heavy pulling by all the oarsmen to bring the Fetch in to shore.