Passage

13

To the excitement of everyone aboard—although Fawn thought that Dag and Bo concealed it best—the Fetch approached Silver Shoals around noon. It was another gray, chilly day, promising but not delivering rain. Climbing to her mid-roof perch again, Fawn was glad for her jacket.

On the north bank of the river lay a village and ferry landing, which Remo at his sweep eyed uncertainly. “Is that Silver Shoals? It’s four times the size of Pearl Bend!”

“Oh, that’s not the town,” said Berry, leaning on her steering oar to keep the flatboat mid-channel. “That’s just a road crossing. Wait’ll we get around this bluff and the next curve.” She did shade her eyes and frown at the water-gauge pole sticking up near the landing. “River’s falling again. I think we’ll take the Shoals while we still can, and tie up below. I don’t want to get caught above for another week.”

Remo grew very quiet as the shore shifted and the town covering the southern hillsides eased at last into view; Dag, joining him at his oar, seemed to study his stare. Many of the houses were painted white, or even colors, spots of brightness amongst the now nearly leafless trees. Some newer, taller buildings were brick, and Fawn wondered if one might be the famous mint. Wood and coal smoke smudged the damp air, and the shoreline was crowded with smelly but lively businesses needing access to water—tanners, dyers, a soap-maker, a reeking mussel fishery, a boatyard. Mills, Fawn supposed, lined the feeder creeks—she could see at least one from here, partway up the hill, a sawmill at a guess. Wagons drawn by straining teams rattled up and down the muddy streets, and pedestrians strode on boardwalks. The town was bigger than Lumpton Market and Glassforge put together, and easily forty times the size of Pearl Bend.

At Berry’s sharp reminder, all the gawkers turned their attention to navigating the growling shoals, which were much like Pearl Riffle only more so. A few skeletal boats hung up in the wrack gave warning of the fate of the unwary or unlucky. Dag passed back laconic remarks about hidden hazards to Berry, which by now she took in with no more comment than nods, and they cleared the shelves, boulders, and bars without once scraping the hull, which made her grin. There followed some heavy pulling by all the oarsmen to bring the Fetch in to shore.

A couple dozen boats, both flatboats and keels, were tied along a more level stretch amongst not one but several wharf boats, each with its own collection of goods-sheds upslope from it. The road between was dotted with wagons drawn up either by the sheds or the boats, and toiling teams of wharf rats loading or unloading goods. “You could get lost up in that town,” Remo muttered in dismay, which made a smile flit over Dag’s mouth. Whit frankly gaped. Hod, a Glassforge boy, was less impressed, instead earnestly intent on carrying out with Hawthorn his task of throwing and tying ropes as they nudged into the bank.

Once the Fetch was safely wedged between another flat and a keel, Berry made inquiries of the neighboring loiterers for downriver news, but both boats were from upstream, like themselves. Bo ran out the gangplank, and Berry led the way on a climb up to the nearest goods-shed, Fawn following her by invitation, Whit just following.

In the front rooms of the goods-sheds they found counters with clerks or clerk-owners. With the latter, Berry bartered for her cargo—hides and barrel staves, bear grease and the dying cider; with all, she asked after news of her papa’s boat which might have passed through here last fall. This mostly drew headshakes, but also remarks about some Tripoint feller who’d been by lately asking similar questions about missing boats, and he’d likely want to talk to you. Which would have been more useful if they’d remembered his name or direction.

But in the third goods-shed, the merchant not only pulled out his record book from eleven months ago and found an entry of a purchase of hides from the Clearcreek Briar Rose the Fourth, recognizably initialed by Boss Clearcreek, but identified the curious Tripoint man. He told Berry to look for a trader by the name of Capstone Cutter, likely to be found this time of day at a mussel tavern up the street behind the goods-sheds. From this clerk-owner Berry made her only purchase, some boxes of pearl and mother-of-pearl buttons that were one of the rivertown’s more famous products.

Berry told Whit to hang on to his window glass, just as she was hanging on to her Tripoint tool stocks, because he’d get a much better price downstream. Which made plain what Fawn had suspected for some time: Whit wasn’t heading back home from Silver Shoals after all. Fawn supposed she ought to at least make him write a letter to Mama and Papa. Or write one herself. She wondered how to get her missive to West Blue without a Lakewalker courier to tap; likely that last merchant, the smart one, had ways of getting news to and from Lumpton Market at least. She would ask him later.

Meanwhile, she hurried up the boardwalk after Berry, Whit following cumbered with the button boxes, then across the mucky street to a building with a swinging sign announcing it as The Silver Mussel, painted with a picture of a shell with little feet, buggy eyes, and unlikely smiling teeth. If those creatures at all resembled their portrait, Fawn didn’t think she wanted one anywhere near her mouth, cooked or not. But the smell, as they entered the door, was nothing at all like the stench from the mussel fishery down on the riverbank, being mainly a heady steam of garlic and onion intertwined with the sweet tang of fresh beer. Whit inhaled and smiled.

Inside was a big room with sawdust on the floor and a long counter along one side. Scullions and serving boys were clearing tables in a leisurely fashion that suggested the lunch rush was over. Fawn’s eye followed Berry’s as it swept the room and caught up on a man who could well be their quarry, sitting alone at a table at the far end. A big fellow about my age, the fortyish merchant had said, running to fat, curly brown hair, very nice-trimmed beard. Dresses like a riverman, right enough, but all his gear was the best. Berry nodded, as if in confirmation, and wove amongst the tables toward him.

He looked up from the mussel shell he was exploring and smiled vaguely at the two young women, but swallowed what he was chewing in quick surprise when Berry stopped by his side and said, “Mister Cutter? From Tripoint?”

“Cap Cutter, and aye,” he replied. “What can I do for you, miss…and miss?” An afterthought of a nod also acknowledged Whit.

Berry stuck out her work-roughened hand. “I’m Boss Berry Clearcreek, of the Fetch. This here’s my sweep-man, Whit Bluefield, and my friend and cook Missus Fawn Bluefield.”

Cutter’s eyebrows rose a little at her claim, but lowered again as he shook her hand and she returned his boatman’s grip. He nodded to Fawn and Whit. “Married?” And corrected himself even before the Bluefield grimaces with, “Oh, brother and sister, aye.”

“I hear you been asking about missing boats,” said Berry.

His general friendliness gave way to something more urgent. “Did you all come from downriver?”

“No—the Fetch is a flat—but we’re heading that way. See, last fall my papa and brother took a flat down from Clearcreek and never came back. No word. It was like they just vanished. So I’m on the lookout for them, or news of them.”

“The boats we’re missing disappeared in this spring’s rise, much later, but here, sit…” He half-rose, gesturing at the other three chairs around the square plank table. An uncleared plate opposite him, piled high with empty shells, indicated that a companion had left—perhaps another informant? Cutter sank back, frowning a little, as they settled themselves.

“Boats?” asked Fawn curiously. “More than one?”

He nodded. “I started out as a keeler out of Tripoint, till I married and the tads started coming along, and my missus wanted me more settled. So I took up a goods-shed there and started sending cargoes instead of hauling them. First cargoes, then a boat, then two boats, then four. My luck was fair in general, and I’ve mostly found steady men for my bosses. They were good boats, too, solid work out of Beaver Creek. Not like those homemade tubs the hills boys cobble together, with green or rotten timbers and bad caulking—I lost a cargo on one of those flats, once, learned my lesson. It went down on a sunny day in nineteen feet of clear water, stove in, I swear, when it struck nothing harder than the head of a yellow-bellied catfish.”

Having seen a channel cat, Fawn was not so sure this represented defects in the boat, but she held her peace.

“Sound boats, sound crews,” Cutter went on, “but two out of four didn’t come back this summer. And when I got to asking around, turned out they weren’t the only ones. There’s nine boats or flattie crews out of the Tripoint area didn’t come back when they should of. You might expect to lose one or two a season, but nine? And even sunk boats come up again, or are seen, or salvaged. Bodies come up, too, and folks who have the snagging and burying of ’em generally pass the word along. When we all got together and figured it, it was right plain someone needed to go take a closer look, and I was it. Losing those two boats was a blow to me, I don’t mind telling you.”

A scullion interrupted then, clearing the odd plate and asking if they’d like anything. Fawn shook her head warily, and Berry, intent on Cutter, waved the offer away, but Whit ordered a plate of mussels and a beer to go with.

“My papa was twenty years and more on the river,” Berry said after the scullion departed. “A good boat-builder, and his crew was all local fellows who’d gone down and back with him before. I usually went along myself, ’cept this last time.”

Cutter’s eyes opened. “Say, do you play the fiddle?”

Berry nodded. “I got good pay, playing the keeler boys upstream.”

His smile turned a shade more respectful, not that he’d been at all rude before. Some kind of river fellowship at work, Fawn guessed. “I’ve heard tell of you! Yellow-headed gal who travels with her daddy and scrapes real lively, has to be.” He sucked out the contents of another mussel shell, and went on, “My keel tied up down the bank is the Tripoint Steel, and I picked my crew special. Big fellows all, and we’ve come pretty well-armed, this time. Some of them were missing friends or kin, too, and volunteered when they heard what I was up to. Whatever this trouble is, we’re hoping to find it.”

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.”

“Well”—Whit sighed—“maybe we’ll find her Alder, and you and me’ll both look nohow.” Turning away, he muttered dolefully under his breath, “I wonder if he’s tall?”

Dag sat on the edge of the Fetch’s roof in the dark, legs dangling over, gingerly testing his groundsense. The familiar warmth of Copperhead, Daisy-goat, and the chickens, the known shapes of the people near him: Whit and Hawthorn out back cleaning up after supper and amiably arguing, Spark’s bright flame collaborating with Berry on rebuilding a bed-nest after their stack of supporting hides had been sold out from under them today, Remo sitting in a corner with his ground wrapped up tight, a nearly transparent smudge. Bo had gone off, he said, to ask around the taverns after further news of the Clearcreek Briar Rose, a plan that had made Berry grimace; Hod had gone along.

Dag widened his reach to the other boats nearby, holding dozens of people more. Up to the line of goods-sheds, more comfortably deserted except for a night watchman or two, and a loiterer who might or might not be looking for an unlocked door. The river behind, lively with moving water, plants, a certain amount of floating scum suspiciously rich in life-ground, a few fish with their bright fishy auras, crayfish creeping and mussels clinging in the rocks and mud. Still wider, across the street to the buildings thumping with lives boiling in his perceptions—awake, asleep, arguing, scheming, making love, making hate, the warm ground-glow of a mama nursing a child.

That’s three hundred paces. Try for more. On the far shore of the river, ducks slept concealed in the scrub, heads tucked under their wings. In a barn up the bank, tired oxen dozed after a day of hauling boats up over the shoals along the well-beaten tow-path. A dozen houses were clustered around the towing station and ferry landing, and more goods-sheds; Dag could have counted their inhabitants. That’s over half a mile, yes!

He studied the ground in his own left arm. The five oats that he’d surreptitiously ground-ripped this morning, stolen from a handful fed to Copperhead, were all turned to Daggish warm spots. The ten he’d snitched at lunch were well on their way to conversion. His ground seemed healthy and dense, the old blighted patches fading away like paling bruises. He quietly extended his ghost hand, drew it back in. And again. Once so erratic and frightening, the ground projection was coming under his control, even fine control. Why did I fear this? Perhaps he’d try ground-ripping something even bigger tomorrow. Not a tree—impressed with Spark’s shrewd guess, he’d stick to food, for now.

The shadow of Remo’s closed ground, like a ripple in clear water, moved beneath him; the young patroller ducked out the front hatch and straightened by Dag’s knee, looking up at him. A brief flicker as he opened a little and found Dag open wide. Remo turned his head and stared back up the hill toward the many lights of Silver Shoals, scattered up the slope and over the slopes beyond. Even at this hour, there were a few wagons and people wandering the streets. Beyond the line of goods-sheds, light and laughter burst from the door of the mussel tavern as it swung open and closed, loud enough to carry down to the waterside.

“How can you stand the noise?” Remo asked, pressing his hands to his head in a gesture of pained dismay. He didn’t, of course, mean the sounds of the actually quite peaceful autumn night that came to their ears. Silver Shoals had to be the largest collection of unveiled humanity he’d encountered in all his short life.

Dag considered him, then gestured friendly-like to the space on the roof edge beside him. Remo clambered up easily. He’d pretty much fully healed from his beating, due to a combination of Verel’s earlier ground treatments, plenty of good food, and simple outdoor exercise, although mostly, Dag suspected glumly, due to youth.

“Farmer ground’s a bit noisy,” Dag said, “but you can get used to it. It’s good ground, just a lot of it. It’s blighted ground that hurts. Malice ground, now that hurts like nothing else in the wide green world.”

Remo looked appropriately daunted by this reminiscence; Dag went on, “Still, it’s a lot to take in. Even for townsfolk. If you study them, you’ll notice that they pass by each other in the street with a lot less looking or talking than village or hamlet farmers do. They have to learn not to look, because there’s no way they can stop and deal with everyone when there’s thousands. It’s not ground-veiling, but it’s something like, in their heads, I think. In a way, it makes big towns saf—more comfortable for Lakewalkers alone than tiny ones. Townsmen are more used to ignoring odd folks.”

“But there’s more of them to gang up on you if there’s trouble,” said Remo doubtfully.

“Also true,” Dag conceded. “Try opening up to the limit of your groundsense range, just once, to see what happens. I promise it won’t kill you.”

“Not instantly, maybe,” muttered Remo, but he obeyed. Brows rather clenched, he opened himself, wider and wider; the water-shadow of his ground gradually thickened and became perceptible to Dag in all its dense complexity.

The boy’s got a groundsense range of a good half-mile, Dag thought in satisfaction. Remo was clearly well-placed as a patroller, maybe a future patrol leader, if he could be lured away from wrecking himself on the rocks of his own mistakes.

With a muttered Oof! Remo let his groundsense recoil. But not, Dag noted, all the way; it was still open to perhaps the dimensions of the Fetch and its residents. And to Dag. Remo rubbed his forehead. “That’s…something.”

“Town like this has a tremendous ground-roil,” Dag agreed. “It’s life, though—the opposite of blight, as much as any woods or swamp. More. If our long war is meant to hold back the blight and sustain the world’s ground, if you look at it rightways, a place like this”—he nodded at the slopes, the lamplights spread across them like fireflies out of season—“is our greatest success.”

Remo blinked as this odd thought nudged into his brain. Dag hoped it would stir things up a bit in there.

Dag drew breath, leaned forward. “The fact that this town is also a vast ground-banquet for any malice that chances to emerge too close troubles me hugely. What all had you heard down at Pearl Riffle Camp about the losses in our summer’s campaign over in Raintree?”

Remo replied seriously, “It was bad, I heard. A place called Bonemarsh Camp was wholly blighted, and they lost seventy or a hundred folks in the retreat.”

“Did the name of Greenspring even come up?”

“Wasn’t that some farmer village the malice first came up near?”

“Praise Fairbolt, at least that much got in. Yes. Had you heard their losses?”

“I didn’t read the circular myself, just heard talk about it. Lots, I’d guess.”

“You’d guess right. They lost nearly half their people, about five hundred folk in all, including almost all their children, because you know a malice goes for youngsters first. Absent gods, you should have seen that malice when we slew it, after that fair feast. I never knew one could grow so ghastly beautiful. Sessiles, early molts, they’re crude and ugly creatures, and you get to thinking ugliness is what malices are all about, but it’s not. It’s not.” Dag fell silent, but then shook off the haunting memory and forged on while he still had Remo’s ground and mind open. “I took my patrol through Greenspring on the way home, and we came upon some townsmen who’d come back to bury their dead. It was high summer, but most of the victims had been ground-ripped, so they were slow to rot. I counted down the row, so pale they were, like ice children in that gray heat…How long a trench do you think you’d have to dig, Remo, to bury all the youngsters in Silver Shoals?”

Remo’s lips parted; he shook his head.

“It’d be about a mile long, I figure,” said Dag evenly. “At the least estimate. I’d have dragged every Lakewalker I know down that row if I could have, but I couldn’t, so now I have to do it with words.” And maybe his clumsy words were working better here, with Silver Shoals spread in front of Remo’s eyes, than they would have in the comfortable isolation of Pearl Riffle Camp.

“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.