Remo’s lips folded as tightly as his arms. “I’m not going back.”
“You have to come back! Amma and Issi ripped me up one side and down the other, like it was my fault you ran off!”
“So it was,” said Remo uncompromisingly.
“Well, it’s water over the Riffle now. The important thing is, if I bring you back, all is forgiven. I’m not saying things won’t be edgy for a while, but sooner or later someone else will win Amma’s ire, and it’ll blow over. It always does.” He blinked and grinned in a way that might have seemed charming, to some other audience at some other season.
“Not this time.”
“Remo, you’re making no sense. Where else would you go but back?”
“On,” said Remo. He nodded at Berry. “Boss Berry, whose boat you are dripping in, will likely let you sleep the night inside if you ask politely. In the morning, you go upriver, I go down. Simple.”
“Remo, no. Not simple. If I don’t fetch you back alive and in one piece, Amma swears I’ll be discharged from patrol permanently! I’m not joking!”
Fawn was beginning to get the picture, here. It wasn’t simply worry for a partner; Barr was on a mission to save his own well-scorched tail.
Remo looked furious. “Neither am I.”
Barr stared at him with the genuine bewilderment of a fellow who’d slid by on charm all his life whose charm had inexplicably stopped working.
Dag had been watching from the sidelines without comment. Before the go-round could start again, his unmoved voice put in, “Best dry your weapons, patroller. Your bow is starting to warp from the wet.”
Barr made a discomfited gesture, as if he’d like to protest this interruption but didn’t quite dare. He eyed Dag warily. “And you, Dag Red-Blue whatever. Amma also wanted me to tell her if you talked Remo into this. Like I knew!”
Remo snorted in disgust.
“I said I didn’t think you’d seen each other since that first day in the patrol tent. I’m not sure she believed me.” He added bitterly, “I’m not sure she believed anything I said.”
With heavy sarcasm, Remo intoned, “Why, Barr—why ever would she not?”
Before Barr’s return growl could find words, Berry exchanged a glance with Dag and shouldered forward. “It’s boatmen’s bedtime, patroller, and you’re making a tedious ruckus in our bunkroom. If you want, you could have some mighty tasty leftovers and a dry bed in front of the hearth. If you two’d druther keep arguin’ instead, take it outside to the riverbank where you can keep it up to your heart’s content or dawn, whichever comes first. Your choice, but make it now.” A rattle of sleet against the windows lent a sinister weight to her cool remark.
After a long, long moment, Barr swallowed down whatever he’d been going to snap back at Remo and nodded to the boat boss. He said stiffly, “I’d be grateful for a bed, yes, ma’am. And food.” He shot Remo a surly look that made it clear he was giving up only temporarily.
The occupants of the Fetch’s kitchen-bunkroom shuffled back into almost-normal preparations for sleep. Barr did look after his weapons, with a sidelong glance at Dag. Whit and Hod helped lay out the rest of his things to dry; Hawthorn and Berry settled the guest-furs in front of the fire; and Fawn reheated the fish, potatoes, and onions. Barr wolfed down the meal as though starved, and gaped in wonder at the tankard of beer Bo shoved in front of him. He found the bottom of it quickly. Awkwardly, everyone dodged around one another in the shared sleeping space that had suddenly become a little too shared, but all found their beds at last.
As the lantern light dimmed to the faintest red glow through the curtains of their nook, Fawn interlaced herself with Dag for warmth and whispered, “You didn’t happen to wish for Barr on those birthday candles, did you?”
Dag choked down a laugh. “No, Spark.” He grew quiet for a moment. “Not exactly, leastways.”
“Just so’s you know that last surprise was not my doing.”
“It seems to have been Amma Osprey’s. Wish I could have been listening at the window for that talk. I’ll bet it was blistering. Sounds like it was past time she put the fire to that boy’s feet, though.”
“Do you think Remo should go back with him?”
“It’s not my decision to make.”
“You wanted him to go back, that first night.”
“It’s good for young patrollers to get out and see the world.”
“You said you weren’t adopting him.”
He drew back his head to look down over his nose at her, squinting in the shadows. “Do you remember everything I say that clearly? That could get downright burdensome on a husband.”
She snickered.
He added, “Seems they can both drag back home with their tails between their legs, and Amma’ll let them in. I’m not too surprised. Nobody wants to waste patrollers. Still…I’ll hate to see Remo go, if he goes. I thought I might be starting to get somewhere with him. And he was a huge help with Hod.”
Fawn grew more pensive. “There is this. You can’t ever run away from one thing without running toward something else.” She slid a small hand up his shoulder. “You, for example. I ran away from home, and right into you. And the wide world with you. I’d never be here if I hadn’t first left there.”
“Do you like it here? This boat?”
“I’d like any boat with you in it.” She stretched up and kissed him.
“Was it a happy birthday?”
“The best in years.” He kissed her back, and added slowly, “The best in all my years. And that’s a lot of years, Spark. Huh.”
She considered poking him and demanding what that Huh was all about, but he yawned fit to crack his jaw, her feet finally warmed up, and she melted into sleep.
At breakfast, Fawn discovered that like most fine young animals, Barr was cuter when he was dry and fluffy. She’d been uncertain of his age in the strain of his last night’s exhaustion, but now she was sure he was the junior of the partners. He’d also regained his temper, or at least his arguments shifted to being less about Barr and more about Remo.
“Your tent-folk are all really worried about you,” he offered.
“Not when I last saw them,” Remo replied. “Notably not.”
“Remo, you have to realize, Amma’s only giving us a grace period, here. You can’t expect forgiveness to be held out on a stick forever.”
Remo said nothing.
Barr soldiered on. “If we don’t get back timely, she’ll have had a chance to get over being worried about you, and revert to being riled. We need to grab the moment.”
Fawn couldn’t help asking, “Won’t she be worried about the both of you?”
Barr glanced at her as if uncertain whether to speak directly to the farmer bride or not; unable to resist a chance to vent, he said, “Since she as much as told me to come back with him or not at all, I don’t think so.”
“Barr the expendable,” murmured Remo.
Barr’s jaw set, but he made no rejoinder; Remo looked mildly surprised.
After a little silence broken only by munching and requests to pass the cornbread and butter, Remo said, “Speaking of expendable, what in the world were you doing out in that weather last night?”
“It wasn’t my first plan,” said Barr. “There’s a ferry camp somewhere near here that I was trying to reach by dark, and the worse the rain got, the more it seemed worth holding out for. I sure wasn’t going to get any drier camping on shore in that blow. But I came to you before I came to it.”
“If you mean Fox Creek Camp,” Dag put in, “you passed it about ten miles back.”
“I can’t have missed it!” Barr said. “I’ve had my groundsense wide-open almost the whole way—looking for you,” he added aside to Remo. “Or your floating body.”
“Water this cold, my body might not have come up so soon,” said Remo distantly.
Dag’s brows twitched, but he said, “Fox Creek Camp mostly lies behind the hills. They dammed the creek to make a little lake back there. Likely there wasn’t anyone out on the ferry landing after dark.”