“I don’t know. I have way too much tumbling through my head right now to trust my judgment on that. Get the bandits, first. And their leader Crane especially. I know that much. It may well be the only thing in the world I know for sure, right this minute.”
It seemed old-patroller thinking to her: Get the malice first. Everything else after. She didn’t think he was wrong. But after was starting to loom in a worrisome way. She settled on reaching up to give a heartening shake to his shoulders and say, “You get those bandits good, then.”
He gifted her back a grateful smile and a jerky nod.
In the afternoon, another flatboat arrived, but it proved to hold a family. The papa and the eldest son volunteered, along with two boat hands, to the dismay and fright of the mama who was left with four youngsters and a grandpa. No one expected arrivals after nightfall, when most sensible boats tied to the banks, but at the last glimmering of dusk one more keelboat came, almost slipping past in the shadows. Its crew of tough-looking Silver Shoals men, when the awful litany of deceit, murders, and boat-burnings was recited yet again, made no bones about joining up. Then there was nothing to do but feed folks, talk over plans in more detail, and keep the men quiet and sober till midnight.
There was little work to getting Dag’s war kit ready, as he planned to be gone for mere hours, not weeks. Fawn had thought they were done with these partings in the dark when he’d quit the patrol; the returning memories unnerved her. But the crowd of river men assembled on the bank was encouraging in its numbers and bristle. Dag had set Barr and Remo and some of the Raintree hunters out ahead as scouts. The rest tramped away over the hill by the light of a few lanterns, doubtless noisier than a company of stealthy Lakewalker patrollers, but with determination enough.
Sleep was out of the question. Fawn and Berry turned to assembling on the kitchen table what bandages and medicines the Fetch offered, in readiness for the men’s return—at dawn, Dag had guessed. Fawn hoped there would be no need to break out any of Berry’s stock of Tripoint shovels for burial duty, at least not of folks on their side. It was likely much too optimistic a hope, but she had to fight the bleak chill of this night somehow. With nearly everyone gone off, the row of boats tied along the bank of the feeder creek seemed much too quiet.
Hawthorn had disappeared up amongst the nearby trees for a while, most likely to cry himself out in privacy. When he returned, he lay down in his bunk with his back to the room. As his hands loosened in deep sleep, the kit escaped his grip and went to hide in the stores. Bo went out to take a walk up and down the row of boats and talk with the few other men, some older like himself, one with a broken arm, left to watch over them. Hod, detailed as Bo’s supporter as well as boat guard, tagged along.
Alder’s head came up from an uncomfortable doze. He didn’t look crisp and handsome anymore, sitting on a stool with his back to his hitching post, just strained and exhausted. Fawn wondered if he’d often been sent out on decoy duty because his clean looks and glib tongue reassured folks. His eyes shifted in the lantern light, a furtive gleam, then focused on Berry.
“I couldn’t escape,” he said. “You don’t know what Crane does to deserters.”
Berry stared across at him from her place at the table, but said nothing. Fawn ceased fiddling uselessly with her sewing kit and wondering if she would have to sew up live skin and flesh with it, and turned in her chair to watch them both. “Just what does this Crane do to deserters?” she asked at last, when Berry didn’t.
“He’s clever, horrible clever. One or two he’s killed outright in arguments, but mostly, if a fellow or a couple of fellows demand to leave his gang, he pretends to let them. He lets ’em load up with their pick of goods, their share, the lightest and most valuable, then trails after ’em in secret. You can’t get away from his groundsense. Ambushes ’em, kills ’em, hides the goods for himself. Nobody back at camp even knows. You can’t get out alive.”
It seemed almost inadvertent justice to Fawn. With a few hitches. She glanced up, wondering if Berry spotted them, too. “If it’s so secret, how do you know? ’Cause it seems to me Crane wouldn’t be doing all this ambushin’ and buryin’ by himself.”
Alder shot her a glance of dislike.
“How come there’s any bandits left?” Fawn went on. “Or is that Crane’s plan, to be the last one left at the end?”
“Men drift in. Like the Drum brothers. Sometimes he recruits from captives. Like Skink.”
And like Alder? Fawn wondered if she wanted to ask how in front of Berry. Maybe not. She suspected Bo already knew, from that earlier interrogation that had left the men all so grim. And there would likely be other witnesses taken alive to tell the tale tomorrow.
“I tried to save you,” Alder went on, looking longingly at Berry. “Out there today, I tried everything I could think of to get you to go on. I always tried to save as many as I could, when I was put on catching duty. Boats with families, women or children, I waved them on.”
Likely they were also the poorer boats, Fawn suspected. “Bed boats?” she inquired.
Alder flinched. “We never got any of those,” he mumbled. Berry’s gaze flicked up.
If Crane was as clever and evil as Alder said, more likely he let the women in to ply their trade, loaded them up with presents, and disposed of them on their exit just like his deserters. Or else word of the lucrative Cavern Tavern would have trickled out in at least some channels before this, and Berry had not overlooked the bed boats in her inquiries. But it was undoubtedly true that Alder had tried frantically to convince Berry to go on.
His voice grew lower, more desperately persuasive. “But we could get away now, you and me. When I saw you, it was like I woke up from a yearlong nightmare. I was so afraid for you—I would never have let Crane have you. I never imagined you’d rescue me. But see, I know where some of Crane’s caches are. If we slipped away now, tonight, while the others are busy, we could both go back to Clearcreek rich and never have to go on the river no more. I never want to see the river again; it’s been the ruination of me. We could wipe all this out like a bad dream and start over.”
“Is that what you was plannin’ to bring back to me?” said Berry in a scraped voice, staring down at her clenched hands. “Bags of coin soaked in murdered folks’ blood?”
Alder shook his head. “Crane owes you death payment for the Rose at least, I figure.”
“Why, if it sank in a storm?” Fawn inquired, lifting her eyebrows. His return glare was nearly lethal.
Alder recovered himself and went on. “It’s all that Lakewalker sorcerer’s fault. He messes with folks’ minds, puts them in thrall to him. Destroys good men—delights in it. You saw Skink. He was just an ordinary boatman, not a speck different from your papa’s hands on the Rose, before Crane caught him and turned him. That’s why I could never get away. Gods, I hate Crane!”
That last had the ring of truth. Berry looked up at him, and for a moment, Fawn thought she saw her hard-pressed resolution waver, if that wasn’t just the water in her reddened eyes.
“If Crane beguiled you,” said Fawn, “then you’re still beguiled right now, and it isn’t safe to let you go, because you’d just run right back to him. You couldn’t help it, see, just like you couldn’t help the other.”
Alder’s lips began to move, then stopped in confusion. Did he see the dilemma he’d backed himself into?
Berry spoke at last. “’Course if you ain’t beguiled, it’s hard to see how it was you couldn’t get away before this. Seems to me a man who just wanted to escape, and didn’t care about no treasure, could’ve swum out in the night and set himself on a bit of wrack and floated away most anytime this past summer. Come to the first camp or hamlet past the Wrist in about a day and gone ashore for help, and gave warning what nasty things was hiding up in the Elbow. And this would all have been over long before now. If you wasn’t beguiled. So which is it, Alder? Make up your mind.”