Berry rubbed her nose. “Steel won’t help if it was sickness or shipwreck, but I admit it sounds right heartening. Are you thinking it was some kind o’ boat bandits? Boatmen’s been robbed before, it’s true, but usually word gets out pretty quick.”
Cutter scratched his short beard in doubt. “There would be the hitch in it. So many gone, so quiet-like…Some of us think there’s something uncanny about it.” His mouth tightened. “Like maybe sorcery. Or worse. Thing is, not only are the boats and bodies not showing up between the outlet of the Grace and Graymouth, neither are the goods, seemingly. Which makes a fellow wonder—what if they were diverted north to Luthlia instead, up the Gray into that wild Lakewalker country?”
Fawn sat up in indignation. “Lakewalkers wouldn’t rob farmer boats!”
Cutter shook his head. “They were valuable cargoes. Fine Tripoint steel and iron goods, plus I’d sent a deal of silver coin along with my keel bosses to buy tea and spices with, down south. Anyone could be tempted, but for some, it might be…easier.”
“It makes no sense,” Fawn insisted. “Leaving aside that Lakewalkers just don’t do things like that, Luthlia’s one of the few Lakewalker hinterlands that makes iron and steel on its own, and it’s good work, too. I’ve seen some. Dag says Luthlian mines and forges supply blades to the camps north of the Dead Lake nearly to Seagate! They can make steel that doesn’t even rust! Why would they rob yours?”
Cutter’s voice lowered. “Yeah, but there’s also the missing bodies to be accounted for. I can think of another reason they might not turn up downstream, and it ain’t a pretty one.” He ran a thumbnail between his teeth in a significant gesture, then glanced guiltily at the paling Berry. “Sorry, miss. But a man can’t help thinking.”
Fawn wanted to jump up and stalk out in a huff, but Whit’s mussels and beer arrived just then, and by the time the scullion took himself off again she had re-mastered her wits. “I can think of a reason a lot more likely than Lakewalkers—who do not either eat people—for folks to go missing, and that’s malices. Blight bogles. I was mixed up in that malice kill near Glassforge last spring—as close a witness as I could be. Bogles take farmer slaves, if they can. If one’s set up on the river, it’d be just as happy to take boatmen slaves, I’d imagine. And it wouldn’t necessarily know about selling stolen goods downstream.” Although its new minions might. Could a malice dispatch them to such a distance without risking losing control of them? Maybe not.
And yet…the whole Grace Valley was well-patrolled, not only by Lakewalkers from the several ferry camps strung along the river, but also by any Lakewalkers passing up or down in their narrow boats. It wasn’t a neglected backwoods region, by any means. Could a malice as strong as the Glassforge one pass undetected for a year or more? The Glassforge one did, she reminded herself. I need to tell Dag about this.
Cutter looked as if the idea of a river bogle didn’t sit well with him, but he didn’t reject it out of hand. If it was a malice snatching boats, all Cutter’s big men with big knives would be no use to him. But a lot of use to the malice. Fawn shivered.
Whit, watching her mulish expression anxiously, said, “Hey, Fawn, try one of these!” and pushed his plate of gaping mussel shells toward her. She picked one up and eyed it; Berry leaned over and showed her how to detach the morsel from its housing. Fawn chewed dubiously, without as much effect as she would have thought, gulped, and stole some of Whit’s beer for a chaser. Berry absently helped herself to a few more.
“If you find a pearl,” Cutter put in, watching Fawn with some amusement, “you get to keep it. They take back the shells, though.”
All those buttons, after all. Still, the notion of a pearl was enough to make her try one more, till Whit pulled back his plate in defense.
Cutter turned more seriously to Berry. “Your missing folks aren’t necessarily connected to ours. Or else the problem goes back farther than I thought. But my keel will be downriver before your flat, I expect, and I can ask after your folks, too, while I’m asking. What are the names again?”
Cutter listened carefully to Berry’s descriptions of her papa, brother Buckthorn, Alder, and their crewmen. She didn’t mention her betrothal, and from the pause in his chewing Fawn thought Whit noticed this. Remarking that two sets of ears were better than one, Cutter returned the names and some descriptions of the Tripoint boats and bosses—bewildering to Fawn, especially as some boats were named after men, but Berry seemed to follow it all. Berry even remarked of one boat, or boss, “Oh, I know that keel; Papa and us worked it upriver from Graymouth ’bout three years back,” which made Cutter nod.
Cutter leaned back, looking over the two young women and Whit, and asked, “So what do you have for muscle on your Fetch, ’sides this sawed-off boy here?” Which made Whit sit up and put his shoulders back, frowning.
“Two tall fellers and my uncle Bo, who’s canny when he’s sober. Couple of boat boys.”
Not mentioning, Fawn noticed, that the two tall fellows were shifty Lakewalkers. Was Berry actually growing protective of her unusual sweep-men?
Cutter’s mouth tightened in concern. “If I were you girls I’d find another flat or two to float with, so’s you can watch out for each other going down. If it’s river bandits, they’re more like to cut out a stray than tackle a crowd. There’s safety in numbers.”
Berry nodded acknowledgment of the point without precisely agreeing to the plan, and they took their leave of the Tripoint man.
Fawn, still fuming over Cutter’s slander of Lakewalkers, hadn’t been going to repeat that part to Dag when they all got back to the Fetch, but, alas, the excited Whit promptly did. Dag responded only with his peculiar expressionless expression, lowering and raising his eyelids, which Fawn recognized as his I am not arguing look that could conceal anything from bored weariness to silent rage. Dismissing the slur, however, Dag was a lot more interested in the news about the other lost boats. He agreed with Fawn’s hopeful suggestion that a river malice seemed unlikely due to the heavy patrolling in the region, but his hand, she noticed, absently rubbed his neck where a cord for a sharing knife sheath no longer hung.
Just before supper, finding herself briefly alone on the back deck with Whit, Fawn said, “You know, Berry’s still betrothed to her Alder, as far as she knows. What are you going to do if we find him downstream somewhere?”
Whit scratched his head. “Well, there’s this. I figure if we find out he’s died, she’ll need a shoulder to cry on. And if we find out that he’s run off with some other girl and don’t love her anymore—she’ll still need a shoulder to cry on. I got two shoulders, so I guess I’m ready for anything.”
“What if we find him and rescue him from, from I don’t know what, and they still want each other?”
Whit twitched his brows. “Rescue from what? It’s been too long. If he loved her proper, he’d have come back to her if he had to crawl up that riverbank on his hands and knees all the way from Graymouth. Which he’s had plenty of time to do, I’d say. No, I ain’t afraid of Alder.”
“Even if Alder’s out of the picture, one way or another, doesn’t mean you’re in.”
Whit eyed her appraisingly. “Berry likes you well enough. It wouldn’t hurt you to put in a good word for me, now and then.” He added after a moment, “Or at least stop ragging me.”
Fawn reddened, but replied, “The way you always stopped ragging me, when I begged or burst out cryin’?”
Whit reddened, too. “We was younger.”
“Huh.”
They stared moodily at each other.
After another moment, Whit blurted, “I’m sorry.”
“Years of tormentin’ to be fixed with one I’m sorry—when you finally want something from me?” Fawn’s lips tightened. She hated to be so weakly forgiving, but under the circumstances…“I’ll think about it. I like Berry, too.” But couldn’t help adding, “Which puts me in a puzzle whether to promote your cause or not, mind you.”