“To do what?”
“Well, that’ll be somewhat up to him.”
“I dunno, Dag. If I wanted some particular thing, I don’t think I’d leave it entirely up to Barr.”
He gave her a reassuring nod. “I’m not planning to, Spark.”
The narrow boat trailed them disconsolately all the following morning. Around noon, it spurted forward as if in sudden decision. Fawn wondered if this had anything to do with the smell of the baking apple pies wafting in their wake, which Dag had asked for especially for today’s lunch. She and Dag stepped out onto the back deck to lean on the rail and watch as Barr paddled close to the side of the Fetch where Remo held a sweep. Berry and Whit were on roof crew with him, this hour. They all stared down coldly as Barr hailed them. He looked pinched and pale, and nothing like as self-righteous as upon his first arrival.
Berry glowered over the side. “What are you doin’ back here?”
Barr jerked his chin. “It’s a free river.”
Berry shrugged; her frown did not change.
“Remo,” Barr called plaintively, “what is it you’re planning to do once you get to the blighted sea, anyway?”
Remo gave his sweep a long pull. “Turn around. Or keep walking, maybe. Depends on how I feel about things by then.”
Barr winced. “All right. It’s plain you won’t come back with me. I, um, accept that.”
Remo said nothing.
Barr took a fortifying breath. “Can I come with you?”
Remo’s brows flew up. “What?”
“To the sea. Can I come with you?” Barr stared up in something very like pleading.
Remo stared down in unflattering astonishment. “Why would I want you? Why would anyone?”
“I sure don’t,” said Berry.
“Ma’am.” Barr ducked his head at her. “I could pay my passage. Partway, at least.”
“I wouldn’t have you on my boat for any money,” said Berry.
“I could work? Like Remo?”
“You?” She snorted. “I ain’t seen you lift a hand yet.”
“You wouldn’t have to pay me…Look, I’m sorry, all right?”
Dag’s lips twitched; he gave Fawn’s shoulder a squeeze and climbed up onto the Fetch’s roof. Bending his head, he murmured to Berry. She shot him a startled frown, then a slow, respectful look that started at his boots and traveled to his serious face, and said, “I don’t know, patroller. I suppose you can try.”
He nodded and dropped back down to the rear deck. “Barr, bring your boat alongside. You and I need to have a private talk about some things.”
He motioned Barr closer. When Barr brought his boat clumping up to the hull, Dag climbed down and lowered himself into it, facing Barr, and shoved them away. Barr stroked slowly backward till they were well out of earshot, then set his paddle across his lap. Only then did Dag lean grimly forward and start talking.
Fawn scrambled up onto the roof to stand in the line with Remo, Whit, and Berry, watching.
“What’s Dag doing?” asked Whit, craning his neck.
“Well,” said Berry, “he said he wanted to talk to the boy, patroller-to-patroller like. And then we’d see what we’d see.”
Barr waved his hands; Dag’s spine straightened in skepticism. He leaned forward and spoke again, and Barr rocked backward.
“I think that may be more like company captain to patroller,” Fawn allowed.
“Was he a—oh, yes, in Raintree,” began Remo. “I suppose the famous Fairbolt Crow wouldn’t have given Dag that command if he hadn’t thought he could handle it.”
“Fairbolt didn’t just think,” said Fawn. “He knew. Dag’d been a company captain before, when he patrolled up in Luthlia.”
“Luthlia!” said Remo. “That’s tough country. I met a couple of patrollers from there once, came across our ferry. They scared me.” He eyed Dag in new speculation.
Barr, perhaps inadvisably, vented some protest. Dag gestured at his hook and spoke more fiercely.
“Uh-oh,” said Fawn. “If Dag’s bringing up Wolf Ridge, that boy’s in bigger trouble than he can guess.”
“Wolf Ridge?” said Remo. “The Wolf Ridge? Dag was there?”
“That’s where the hand went,” said Whit, waving his left. “Torn off by one of them dire wolves that malice made, he says. He doesn’t much talk about it. But he sent the skin to Papa as one of Fawn’s bride-gifts. Big as a horse hide. The twins swore it had to be faked, but Papa and I didn’t think so.”
Remo’s breath trickled out through pursed lips. “There were only a handful of survivors—wait, company captain at Wolf Ridge?”
“Yeah, which is why he don’t care to talk about it,” said Fawn, “so don’t you let on I told you. It gave him an aversion to captaining. Despite beating that malice.”
“Absent gods,” said Remo. He watched the pair in the narrow boat. Dag was saying more. Barr was saying much less. By the time Dag’s hand clenched in a venomous fist—for some emphasis rather than threat, Fawn judged—Barr had shrunk to half his former size. Crouching in his seat, really, but the effect from this angle of view was pretty startling. And if Barr backed up any more, he risked falling off the stern.
Barr’s lips had stopped moving altogether. It was just head bobs, now, or sometimes head shakes. At length, Dag sat back. Barr straightened his slumped shoulders, picked up his paddle, and aimed his narrow boat back toward the Fetch. As they pulled alongside again, Dag sat with his hand on his knee, waiting. Barr looked up and cleared his throat.
“Miss Clearcreek—Boss Berry, that is,” Barr corrected himself as her frown deepened. “First off, I apologize for what I tried with you the other morning. What I was trying, see, I was trying to put a persuasion in your ground to get you mad at Remo so’s you’d fire him and he’d have to come back with me. That was wrong. I also didn’t quite have a strong enough—” he caught Dag’s rising brows, and finished hastily, “I was just plain wrong, is all.”
He drew a long breath and continued, “And I apologize to you, Remo. First for what I tried with Boss Berry, which was as much out of line to you as to her, and also for getting taken in by that flattie girl up in Pearl Bend even though you told me better, and for flirting with her in the first place, and for getting your great-grandmama’s knife broke when you came in after me in the fight, and for that stupid joke with the pots that started it all, which I guess I’m still going to be apologizing for when my hair turns gray. Which is going to be next week at this rate, but anyway. I’m really, really sorry.” He looked up. He looked, Fawn thought, ready to cry. Gods, Dag, you don’t do things by halves, do you. But I knew that…
Remo’s mouth was hanging open. “Oh,” he said.
“And I apologize to everyone on board the Fetch,” Barr concluded valiantly, “for being a walking, talking blight on you for the past few days.”
Dag’s deep voice broke in. “Here’s the offer. I’ll stand good for Barr, Boss Berry, if you’ll let him back aboard your boat to work his passage. In return, Barr will place himself under my discipline as his patrol leader. Barr, if you agree, you can come back on board. If not, you’re on your own.”
Barr stared around the wide, flat, empty riverscape, gulped, and murmured, “I agree, sir.” He looked up. “I agree, ma’am.”
Berry leaned over, skeptically sucking her lip. “You understand, patroller boy, you’re here on Dag’s word. He’s earned my respect, which you have not, and it’s his wallet you’ll be drawin’ on. I don’t know how you plan to pay that debt; that’s between you and him. But I don’t have to put up with you, and if you give me one lick more trouble, I won’t. Clear?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She glanced at Dag, who nodded. “All right, then. You can come on my boat.”
Dag climbed back over the rail, and Barr once more handed up his gear; he and Remo manhandled the narrow boat across the rear deck and tied it down. At lunch, which came up shortly, Barr ate hesitantly, though he left nothing to wash off his plate. Which was his gain, because his first assignment was scullery duty with Hod, which he fulfilled almost wordlessly. It was equally quiet up on the roof when he did his first stint on the oars with Dag and Bo. At dinner he was slightly less ghostlike, actually exchanging three or four unexceptionable remarks besides requests to pass the salt or cornbread.