“I can see the problem,” said Remo slowly.
Absent gods be praised!
“But I don’t see what more we can do about it. I mean, we’re already patrolling as hard as we can.”
“It’s not our patrolling that needs to change. It’s…see, the thing is, if the Greenspring folks had known more about malices, about Lakewalkers, about all we do, someone might have got out with word earlier. More lives—not all, I know, but more—might have been saved at Greenspring, and Bonemarsh need not have been blighted any, if we could have been warned and taken the malice quick before it started to move south. And the only way I know to get farmers to know more is to start teaching ’em.”
Remo’s eyes widened as he gauged the lights of the town. “How could we possibly teach them all?”
Already Remo was past the usual response, How could we teach any of ’em? Farmers can’t… followed by whatever Lakerwalkerish conceit first occurred. Dag nearly smiled. “Well, now, if we had to lift and carry each and every farmer all at once, we’d break our backs, sure. But if we could start by teaching some farmers, someplace—maybe after that they could teach each other. Save each other. If they can only grab the right tools. These folks are good at tools, I find.” He raised his left arm; his hook and the buckles of his harness gleamed briefly in the faint yellow lantern lights.
Remo fell silent, staring up the shore.
After a while, Dag said, “Fawn and Whit are mad to see the town mint tomorrow morning, before we go on down the river. Want to come along?”
Remo’s ground closed altogether. “Is it safe for Lakewalkers alone up there?” Remo had barely ventured off the Fetch; if he hadn’t been pressed into helping with the unloading earlier, Dag wasn’t sure he would have set foot on land at all.
“Yes,” said Dag recklessly. He suspected that Remo would follow him from sheer habit if he displayed a patrol leader’s confidence, and no need to enlighten the youth as to how hollow a confidence that so often was. “Besides, we won’t be alone.”
“I’ll think about it,” said Remo cautiously. He added after a little silence, “Whit sure likes his money. Yet it’s nothing, in its ground. Just metal chips.”
“If money has a ground, it exists inside folks’ heads,” Dag agreed. “But it’s mighty convenient for trade. It’s like a memory of trade you can hold in your hand, and take anywhere.” Anywhere it was recognized. Four great farmer towns—all along this river system, curiously enough—coined their own money these days, in addition to odd lots of coin left from the ancient days that turned up from time to time. The clerks in the goods-sheds were gaining a lot of practice in figuring, Dag guessed, making the coins all dance fairly with one another—or sometimes, he’d heard, not so fairly. In which case, people got a lot of practice at arguing. Even Lakewalkers used farmer coin, and not only while out patrolling.
“Lakewalker camp credit is better,” said Remo. “Bandits can’t knock you on the head and take it away from you. It’s not a temptation to the weak-willed or cruel.”
“It can’t be stolen with a cudgel,” Dag agreed, his mood darkening in memory. “But it can be stolen with words. Trust me on that.”
Remo looked over at him in some wonder. But before he could inquire further, Bo and Hod turned up at the foot of the gangplank. Hod had one of Bo’s arms drawn over his shoulder and was getting him aimed down the middle of the boards.
Dag was surprised to see them. One of the reasons Berry had been amenable to the proposed trip to the mint in the morning, despite the delay to their departure, was that she hadn’t expected her uncle back tonight. She’d figured she and Hawthorn, who had been taken to the mint once by their papa on a previous trip, would use the time looking for Bo while Fawn and Whit went off touring.
Bo was saying querulously to Hod, “I still don’t see the point of making me drink all that water. It just took up space for better bev’rages. And I have to piss just as bad.”
“Your head’ll feel better in the morning,” Hod assured him. “It’s a good trick I know about, really.”
“Yeah, well, we’ll see,” muttered Bo, but let Hod steer him over the gangplank. His knees buckled on the jump down, but Hod kept him upright. Despite several hours of following Bo around Silver Shoals riverside taverns, Hod was pretty sober, Dag noted. Hod looked up at Dag and Remo, watching from the roof, and cast them a shy smile. He maneuvered the old man inside, to be greeted with even greater surprise by Berry.
“Well, that’s interestin’,” murmured Dag.
“How so?” said Remo.
“Seems Hod’s got a talent for managing difficult drunks. I wasn’t expecting anything like that. You wonder where and how he learned it, so young.”
Remo’s brows drew down. He was quiet for a long time. “Kind of disturbing, in a way. In light of how he flinches at most everything.”
“Uh-huh,” said Dag, pleased at Remo for following through that far. The boy might make a patrol leader someday after all, if he survived. Remo was open enough again to sense the ripple of approval in Dag’s ground, and his spine straightened a bit, unwittingly.
Dag smiled and slid down off the roof to go find out what Fawn had arranged for their bedding.
14
To Fawn’s bemusement, Remo tagged along on the trip to the mint, which made her wonder what Dag had been saying to him last night. She’d thought Remo had been too terrified of the town to set foot in it. He started the tour with a set look on his face that could more easily be mistaken for disapproval. Which made her wonder in turn what emotions some of Dag’s grimmer looks masked—a Lakewalker bride would not have to guess, she reflected with a sigh. At the last moment, Dag thought to ask Hod if he wanted to come along, which made the boy turn red with pleasure and nod mutely and vigorously.
Disappointingly, the mint was not in operation that day, but in return for a few copper crays a man took visitors around, answered their questions, and, Fawn suspected, kept an eye on them. He certainly eyed the pair of Lakewalkers askance. Even idle, the coin-stamping presses were fascinating, almost as complex as Aunt Nattie’s loom, and much heavier. “Sessile,” Dag muttered, staring at them over her shoulder with profound Lakewalker suspicion of sitting targets. Remo nodded agreement.
On the walk back through town, she and Whit were diverted by a shop selling tools and hardware—not a blacksmithery, as nothing but small repairs were done on the premises, but more like a goods-shed. Most of the items for sale seemed to come from upriver, including a fascinating Tripoint stove cast entirely of black iron, with an iron pipe acting as a chimney to take the smoke away. It was like an iron hearth-oven box turned inside out, made to stand out into a room with the fire on the inside.
“Look!” Fawn told Dag in excitement. “It has to be so much better for heating, because a fireplace only shows one face to a room, and this thing shows, what, six. Six times better. And you wouldn’t have to bend and crouch to cook on it, and it wouldn’t blow smoke in your face, either, and you’re less like to catch your clothes or hair on fire, too!” Oh, I want one!
He stared at it and her in mild alarm. “You’d need a wagon and team to shift it, Spark!”
“Naturally you wouldn’t cart it around with you, any more than you would a fireplace. Fire pit,” she revised, thinking of Lakewalkers camps.
“It would have to be planted someplace permanent.”
“Hm,” he said, looking at her with one of his odder smiles. “Farmer tool.”
“Well, of course.” She tossed her head, imagining someplace permanent where you could plant such a stove, and a garden. And children. Not a Lakewalker camp, they’d proved that. Not a farmer village, or at least not West Blue. A town like this one? Maybe not, as such a big concentration of folks plainly made Lakewalkers deeply uncomfortable. Where, then? Regretfully, she allowed Dag and Remo to drag them away from the fascinating emporium.