A couple dozen boats, both flatboats and keels, were tied along a more level stretch amongst not one but several wharf boats, each with its own collection of goods-sheds upslope from it. The road between was dotted with wagons drawn up either by the sheds or the boats, and toiling teams of wharf rats loading or unloading goods. “You could get lost up in that town,” Remo muttered in dismay, which made a smile flit over Dag’s mouth. Whit frankly gaped. Hod, a Glassforge boy, was less impressed, instead earnestly intent on carrying out with Hawthorn his task of throwing and tying ropes as they nudged into the bank.
Once the Fetch was safely wedged between another flat and a keel, Berry made inquiries of the neighboring loiterers for downriver news, but both boats were from upstream, like themselves. Bo ran out the gangplank, and Berry led the way on a climb up to the nearest goods-shed, Fawn following her by invitation, Whit just following.
In the front rooms of the goods-sheds they found counters with clerks or clerk-owners. With the latter, Berry bartered for her cargo—hides and barrel staves, bear grease and the dying cider; with all, she asked after news of her papa’s boat which might have passed through here last fall. This mostly drew headshakes, but also remarks about some Tripoint feller who’d been by lately asking similar questions about missing boats, and he’d likely want to talk to you. Which would have been more useful if they’d remembered his name or direction.
But in the third goods-shed, the merchant not only pulled out his record book from eleven months ago and found an entry of a purchase of hides from the Clearcreek Briar Rose the Fourth, recognizably initialed by Boss Clearcreek, but identified the curious Tripoint man. He told Berry to look for a trader by the name of Capstone Cutter, likely to be found this time of day at a mussel tavern up the street behind the goods-sheds. From this clerk-owner Berry made her only purchase, some boxes of pearl and mother-of-pearl buttons that were one of the rivertown’s more famous products.
Berry told Whit to hang on to his window glass, just as she was hanging on to her Tripoint tool stocks, because he’d get a much better price downstream. Which made plain what Fawn had suspected for some time: Whit wasn’t heading back home from Silver Shoals after all. Fawn supposed she ought to at least make him write a letter to Mama and Papa. Or write one herself. She wondered how to get her missive to West Blue without a Lakewalker courier to tap; likely that last merchant, the smart one, had ways of getting news to and from Lumpton Market at least. She would ask him later.
Meanwhile, she hurried up the boardwalk after Berry, Whit following cumbered with the button boxes, then across the mucky street to a building with a swinging sign announcing it as The Silver Mussel, painted with a picture of a shell with little feet, buggy eyes, and unlikely smiling teeth. If those creatures at all resembled their portrait, Fawn didn’t think she wanted one anywhere near her mouth, cooked or not. But the smell, as they entered the door, was nothing at all like the stench from the mussel fishery down on the riverbank, being mainly a heady steam of garlic and onion intertwined with the sweet tang of fresh beer. Whit inhaled and smiled.
Inside was a big room with sawdust on the floor and a long counter along one side. Scullions and serving boys were clearing tables in a leisurely fashion that suggested the lunch rush was over. Fawn’s eye followed Berry’s as it swept the room and caught up on a man who could well be their quarry, sitting alone at a table at the far end. A big fellow about my age, the fortyish merchant had said, running to fat, curly brown hair, very nice-trimmed beard. Dresses like a riverman, right enough, but all his gear was the best. Berry nodded, as if in confirmation, and wove amongst the tables toward him.
He looked up from the mussel shell he was exploring and smiled vaguely at the two young women, but swallowed what he was chewing in quick surprise when Berry stopped by his side and said, “Mister Cutter? From Tripoint?”
“Cap Cutter, and aye,” he replied. “What can I do for you, miss…and miss?” An afterthought of a nod also acknowledged Whit.
Berry stuck out her work-roughened hand. “I’m Boss Berry Clearcreek, of the Fetch. This here’s my sweep-man, Whit Bluefield, and my friend and cook Missus Fawn Bluefield.”
Cutter’s eyebrows rose a little at her claim, but lowered again as he shook her hand and she returned his boatman’s grip. He nodded to Fawn and Whit. “Married?” And corrected himself even before the Bluefield grimaces with, “Oh, brother and sister, aye.”
“I hear you been asking about missing boats,” said Berry.
His general friendliness gave way to something more urgent. “Did you all come from downriver?”
“No—the Fetch is a flat—but we’re heading that way. See, last fall my papa and brother took a flat down from Clearcreek and never came back. No word. It was like they just vanished. So I’m on the lookout for them, or news of them.”
“The boats we’re missing disappeared in this spring’s rise, much later, but here, sit…” He half-rose, gesturing at the other three chairs around the square plank table. An uncleared plate opposite him, piled high with empty shells, indicated that a companion had left—perhaps another informant? Cutter sank back, frowning a little, as they settled themselves.
“Boats?” asked Fawn curiously. “More than one?”
He nodded. “I started out as a keeler out of Tripoint, till I married and the tads started coming along, and my missus wanted me more settled. So I took up a goods-shed there and started sending cargoes instead of hauling them. First cargoes, then a boat, then two boats, then four. My luck was fair in general, and I’ve mostly found steady men for my bosses. They were good boats, too, solid work out of Beaver Creek. Not like those homemade tubs the hills boys cobble together, with green or rotten timbers and bad caulking—I lost a cargo on one of those flats, once, learned my lesson. It went down on a sunny day in nineteen feet of clear water, stove in, I swear, when it struck nothing harder than the head of a yellow-bellied catfish.”
Having seen a channel cat, Fawn was not so sure this represented defects in the boat, but she held her peace.
“Sound boats, sound crews,” Cutter went on, “but two out of four didn’t come back this summer. And when I got to asking around, turned out they weren’t the only ones. There’s nine boats or flattie crews out of the Tripoint area didn’t come back when they should of. You might expect to lose one or two a season, but nine? And even sunk boats come up again, or are seen, or salvaged. Bodies come up, too, and folks who have the snagging and burying of ’em generally pass the word along. When we all got together and figured it, it was right plain someone needed to go take a closer look, and I was it. Losing those two boats was a blow to me, I don’t mind telling you.”
A scullion interrupted then, clearing the odd plate and asking if they’d like anything. Fawn shook her head warily, and Berry, intent on Cutter, waved the offer away, but Whit ordered a plate of mussels and a beer to go with.
“My papa was twenty years and more on the river,” Berry said after the scullion departed. “A good boat-builder, and his crew was all local fellows who’d gone down and back with him before. I usually went along myself, ’cept this last time.”
Cutter’s eyes opened. “Say, do you play the fiddle?”
Berry nodded. “I got good pay, playing the keeler boys upstream.”
His smile turned a shade more respectful, not that he’d been at all rude before. Some kind of river fellowship at work, Fawn guessed. “I’ve heard tell of you! Yellow-headed gal who travels with her daddy and scrapes real lively, has to be.” He sucked out the contents of another mussel shell, and went on, “My keel tied up down the bank is the Tripoint Steel, and I picked my crew special. Big fellows all, and we’ve come pretty well-armed, this time. Some of them were missing friends or kin, too, and volunteered when they heard what I was up to. Whatever this trouble is, we’re hoping to find it.”