Passage

17

Though the weather stayed cloudy and chilly, the Fetch made steady downriver progress all that day. The enclosing hills flattened out, sign, Berry explained to Fawn, that they were passing west out of the hinterland of Oleana into level Raintree. The riverbanks were drained of color, sodden brown with gray tree boles broken only by an occasional glum-looking river village, or sometimes dun farm fields open down to the water. No longer autumn…not yet winter.

Berry kept Remo on the sweeps with her—possibly, Fawn figured, to avert another grounding, since she encouraged Remo, in a way Bo had not, to offer warnings. At least Bo did not ignore Dag’s laconic remarks. Clearly, river pilot could be another job for Lakewalkers amongst farmers, in addition to medicine maker. When Fawn started sorting through the possibilities with an open mind, it seemed to her that farmers and Lakewalkers offered vast possibilities to each other, for all that Lakewalkers scorned any task that diverted them from hunting malices. Yet someday the last blight bogle ever had to emerge and be destroyed. What would patrollers do when there was no more need for patrols? Not in my lifetime, Dag had said. Maybe Lakewalkers were better off not dwelling on an end none of them would live to see.

She glimpsed Barr’s narrow boat ahead of them a couple of times that day, and what might have been a campfire on the far shore that night, till the rains came again and doused the distant glow. The following day she saw his boat trailing far behind, an ink-stroke on the gray water, before the Fetch rounded another curve and the shifting shoreline hid it.

“Isn’t a narrow boat faster than us?” she asked Dag, peering under the edge of her hand when they were both out on the back deck for a moment. “I’d think he should have pulled ahead. Or stopped somewhere and bought that broke-down horse.”

“He imagines he’s trailing us just out of groundsense range. Which he is—of his and Remo’s. Though not of mine.”

“How long d’you think he’ll follow us?”

“Not much longer. With all his gear we threw into his boat, no one included any food. And I doubt hunting in the rain and dark on shore is likely to offer him much reward, especially without a cook fire.”

Fawn hadn’t noticed Barr’s lack of supplies in the rush. Dag did. And had said nothing. What was he up to?

Dag went on, “Rain again tonight, I expect. Perfect.”

“Perfect for what?”

“Sober reflection, Spark. Fasting is supposed to be good for meditating on one’s sins.” His dour smile faded a trifle. “Barr’s in trouble and he knows it. He’s getting his first taste of banishment. There are reasons in our grounds that Lakewalkers regard banishment as the next thing to a death sentence. If he’s let his bow-strings get as wet as I think, I give him till tomorrow night, tops.”

“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.

Cuddling down with Dag that night, Fawn whispered, “What in the world did you say to Barr out in that boat today? I’ve seen frogs run over by a cart wheel that weren’t squashed that flat.”

“Well, I think that’d better be between me and him, Spark. But don’t fret too much. Barr’s resilient. You have to calibrate, see. A reprimand that would have poor Remo trying to fall on his knife is just about enough to ruffle Barr’s hair.”

“Did you, um, persuade him?”

“Didn’t need to. He was ready. Reminds me of how you train a Raintree mule. First you whack him between the ears with a fence post, hard as you can. This gets his attention. Then you can start in.”

“That works on patrollers, as well as mules?”

“Or on patrollers who are like mules. You have to give Barr credit for that two hundred—or three hundred—miles he hung on after his partner, despite all. That boy’s wrong-headed in a lot of ways, but you can’t accuse him of giving up easy.”

“How’d you learn to handle mule-headed patrollers, anyhow?”

His lips twitched against her brow in the dark. “Studied my own patrol leaders, as a youngster. Up really close.”

“That would be, like, face-to-face close?”

“Uh-huh.”

Her dimpled grin brushed his collarbone. “Mule-man. Why am I not surprised? Though I’d have guessed you more for a young Remo.”

“Remo and Barr each have their moments that throw me back in memory. Between the pair of ’em, they put me in a real humble frame of mind toward my old patrol teachers, I will say.”

During the next day, Barr settled in to be a pretty good crewman, as far as Fawn could judge. Topside, both his muscle and his groundsense proved useful, and adding the extra man to the rotation gave everyone a bit more ease, with the possible exception of the cook. Only Hod resented the reductions of his turns on the sweeps, but he was much consoled when Barr was assigned to dishwashing duty in his place one meal out of three. The good fellowship on the Fetch slowly began to recover from the setbacks Barr had brought.

Berry put in at a largish rivertown, too briefly for Bo to wander away and find a tavern, just long enough to learn of another sighting here of her papa’s boat last fall. The news left her frowning thoughtfully and counting out the river miles still left till the junction of the Grace and the Gray; the Fetch was better than two thirds of the way from Tripoint to the Confluence. Not exactly running out of either river or possibilities, but as the distance shortened, Fawn thought she could feel Berry’s tension grow.

Dag begged one short stop at another Lakewalker ferry camp, though Remo stayed aboard and Barr with him. Dag came back soon, shaking his head. “Too small, these camps strung along here. I’d likely do better to wait for Confluence Camp, which is the biggest in these parts. Better chance there.”

Fawn had thought the Grace a big river at Pearl Riffle, but she began to see she’d been naive. It was a lot wider now, and not just because of the rains and the rise. It was also starting to be more bendy, turning in large loops that added river miles without getting them westward much and utterly confusing Fawn’s sense of direction, especially under the thickly overcast skies. But toward the afternoon of the next day, the scudding clouds broke up and genuine sunlight broke through once more. When the chill wind also died, Fawn climbed up to the roof to sit at Berry’s feet and watch the passing scene. The shores turned a sharper gray and a richer brown, glowing soberly, and the water shone a dark, metallic blue.

As the sun’s light grew level and the shadows stretched, they rounded a tight bend to find a familiar keelboat drawn up to a high place along the bank. Smoke rose from cook fires, with the boat’s crew lazing around them. When they saw the Fetch, some rose and waved, and Boss Wain actually ran out to the back of the Snapping Turtle to cup his hands and hail them.

“Hey, Boss Berry! How’s about a mutton dinner in exchange for a tune or three?”

Berry grinned and bent her head to Fawn. “What do you say? Would the cook like a night off?”

Fawn looked dubiously at the rowdy keelers, now adding whooping welcomes to that of their boss. “I don’t know. Is it safe?” Berry had always been with her papa and big brother before, keeping an eye out for her.

“Oh, aye. Wain’s a loud lout, but he’ll keep the line if you do. Not that he won’t push his luck, mind. Doubt he’ll bother you, though—I mean, you have Dag.”

Dag indeed. And Whit, Remo, Hod, Bo, and she supposed Barr, and Hawthorn for the cheering on. Fawn decided to be brave, like Berry. “All right. Sure.”

Berry waved back. “You got yourselves a fiddler, boys!” She leaned on her steering oar to bring the Fetch to shore just above where the Snapping Turtle was moored. Keelers ran out to help tie their lines to the trees.

“What, more Lakewalkers?” Boss Wain cried as they all trooped up to his fires. “What are you doing, Berry, collecting ’em?”

“In a manner of speaking,” she replied, swinging her fiddle-bag. “This here’s Remo and Barr; Dag you know.”

Wain tugged on the brim of his hat in uneasy, respectful acknowledgment of Dag, and promptly begged his attention for a crewman with a hurt foot, if he’d a mind. Dag returned a nod, eyelids lowering and lifting. Nobody brought up the sand bar; maybe Wain was trying to make amends, in which case Berry seemed willing to let him.

“What’s this, Wain, stealing sheep again?” asked Bo, with a nod at the nearest cook fire, where two crewmen were turning a browning carcass on a makeshift spit. Dripping fat made the fire lick up in smoky, orange spurts, and sent a rich aroma into the cool air. Fawn’s mouth watered, and Whit licked his lips.

Wain stuck his thumbs in his braces and puffed out his considerable chest. “I’ll have you know that farmer gave us this here mutton.” His wave took in not only the roasting carcasses, but three more worried-looking live sheep tied to the trees beyond the camp.

His brawny lieutenant put in, “Yeah, he told us to take them as a present. He begged so pitiful, we finally gave in.”

“That I just plain don’t believe,” said Berry.

“It’s true as I stand!” Wain cried in indignation. A sneaky grin stretched his mouth. “See, we passed this sheep pasture up the river a ways, and the boys allowed as how fresh mutton for dinner would go down good, but the farmer likely wouldn’t give us a fair price. And I said, no, I wouldn’t allow no sheep-stealing, a riverman should be above that, but I bet Saddler here a barrel of beer I could get us them there sheep for free, and he said, No, you can’t, which was as good as a red rag to a bull, you know me.”

Berry nodded, though her blond brows had a skeptical lift to them, which only seemed to encourage the other boat boss.

“So we tied up the Turtle, and me and a couple of the boys snuck up on some of those sheep—that was a job, let me tell you, sliding around that muddy pasture—and chucked a good slug of Graymouth pepper sauce in the mouths of the six slowest.”

“Or tamest,” Fawn muttered, suddenly not liking where this tale was going. She edged closer under Dag’s arm.

“You should’ve seen those sheep run around then, shaking their heads and drooling all orange at the mouth!”

Wain’s lieutenant, Saddler, wheezed with laughter and took up the tale. “Then Boss Wain, see, goes up to the farmer’s barn and calls him out, and tells him there’s something wrong with his sheep—that they’ve taken the Graymouth murrain, horrible contagious. The fellow was practically shakin’ in his boots by the time Wain got done tellin’ him how he seen it wipe out a whole flock in a week, down on the lower Gray. And the farmer asked, what’s to be done? and Wain says, There’s no cure and nothing for it but to cull the sick ones, quick, and maybe bury the carcasses in lime, miles away from the others. And this fellow was practically crying for his sheep, so when Wain suggested he’d take away the sick ones and dispose of ’em for him, the farmer was most pitifully grateful. Which we did do, and here we are.”

“And you owe me the next barrel!” Wain said, slapping him on the back in high good humor.

“That I do,” coughed Saddler. “But it was worth it, to see the thankful look on that farmer fellow’s face when we carted off his poor sick sheep. And you have to admit, Wain spoke true—they didn’t live the day!”

The gathered boatmen laughed, and even Barr and Remo smiled. The tale finished, the group broke up to tend to the dinner preparation, including tapping a new keg set up on a nearby stump. Dag went off to see the fellow with the bad foot. Fawn caught Whit’s eye and scowled the grin right off his face.

“What’s your trouble?” he whispered at her.

“Those could’ve been Papa’s sheep,” she muttered back.

His brow wrinkled. “I don’t think Papa would have been taken in by some smoky fiddle about the Graymouth murrain, Fawn. He knows his sheep better than that.”

“That’s not the point. That farmer may not be as smart as Papa, but I’ll bet he works as hard. Tricking’s same as stealing, in my eyes. And it was cruel on him.”

The smoke wafted their way, and Whit inhaled appreciatively. “Well, those sheep are beyond saving now, Fawn. Best anyone can do now is see they didn’t die in vain. Waste not, want not, as Mama herself says.”

“Well, I’m not eating any!” she declared. “And you shouldn’t, either.”

“Fawn!” he protested. “We can’t go complaining and being—being walking, talking blights and spoiling everybody’s party. These keeler men work hard; this is a pretty innocent pleasure, here. A picnic and a sing-song!”

“That farmer worked hard, too. Harder than rivermen, or you wouldn’t be thinking of switching, now would you?”

“That’s not why I—oh, crap anyways. Don’t eat that tasty-smellin’ mutton if that’s what pleases you, but don’t be ragging me.” He stalked off, to console himself pretty promptly with a tankard of the Turtle’s fresh Raintree beer.

Fawn’s jaw set, but truly, what right had she to blight the party? Especially if it was, more or less, Wain’s apology to the Fetch and its boss about that sand bar. But she remained determined to touch no tricked-away mutton. Remo was now helping Dag with the fellow with the hurt foot; she withdrew quietly to the Fetch and watched the camp on shore from a perch on the edge of the cabin roof. The sun set, and the firelight blazed brighter and more invitingly.

The noisiness of the boatmen grew more repellent. Bo was staggering already, grinning foolishly, though Hod seemed to be looking out for him. Hawthorn was showing off his raccoon kit’s tricks, such as they were, to an appreciative or at least tolerant audience. Barr and Remo were sitting together eating along with the man with the freshly bandaged foot, so even they weren’t being standoffish Lakewalkers. Wain, Saddler, and Whit were all grouped tightly around Berry. Fawn began to wonder what the point was of spurning the affair for principle’s sake if nobody was going to even take notice.

At least one person noticed. Dag walked across the gangplank and lifted himself up to the roof to dangle his legs over beside hers. “What’s the trouble, Spark? You feeling all right? I thought your monthly was past.”

“It is.” She shrugged. “I just keep thinking about that poor farmer that Wain robbed. Or tricked, whichever. It’s just not fair!” She eyed him suspiciously. “Are you going to eat that stolen mutton?”

“Er…I’m afraid I already have.”

“Well, don’t try and kiss me with those greasy lips,” she said grumpily.

He cleared his throat. “I actually came aboard to find my tambourine and a couple of buckets for the boys to thump on. Berry’s about to tune up her fiddle, and she allowed as how she’d like some help.”

“Oh, that’ll be good…” It had been ages since Dag had played music with anyone around a campfire, and she knew that had been one of his pleasures out on patrol. A tambourine was not much as a solo instrument. Blight that Boss Wain…

Up the bank in the shadows, a dim, white shape uttered a mournful m-a-a-a. It occurred to Fawn that not all of that poor farmer’s sheep were beyond saving. And a faint thump against the side of the hull reminded her that the Fetch’s skiff was presently tied to the stern down in the water, rather than onto the side of the cabin where it often hung in rougher weather. She could never have launched it by herself. Could she row it by herself? Upstream?

She eyed Dag sideways. Could he be roped into helping with her scheme? Maybe not. Sometimes, catfish notwithstanding, he could be a little too grown-up and responsible. That left Whit, maybe, but he seemed to have gone over to the other side. In any case, she now had good reason to cheer the party along merrily, with lots of food and beer all around. And any boatman or Lakewalker who was lagging—not that this seemed to be a problem—should certainly be encouraged to drink up. “I wouldn’t miss your music for all the mutton in the world.” She smiled at Dag, who looked heartened by her change of mood; she even let him kiss her brow with muttony lips as he swung her down from the roof.

And as for fickle brothers, well, when you’d watched someone all his life while he hardly noticed you, you ended up knowing a lot more about him than he might credit. A lot more. She almost skipped across the gangplank after Dag.

The moon rode high above the river valley, shedding silvery-blue light on the mist that wisped above the water. The night air was as silent as though some ancient sorcerer had cast a spell of enchantment. Clearly a midnight made for romance, although the chill suggested the kissing might better be conducted beneath a thick quilt. The one she’d left Dag snoring under would have suited Fawn fine. Instead, well…

“Fawn, this is crazy,” Whit hissed at her.

“Lift your end, Whit.”

“Someone will hear us.”

“Not if you shut up and lift. They’re all sodden-drunk over there, pretty much.”

“Wain’ll be mad.”

“I’m mad. Whit, if you don’t help me hoist this stupid sheep into this stupid skiff, not only will I tell Berry what you and the Roper boys did with Tansy Mayapple in Millerson’s loft, I’ll wake her up and tell her right now.”

“M-a-a-a,” bleated the confused sheep, its hooves slipping and splashing in the mud and stones of the bank.

“You shut up, too,” Fawn whispered fiercely. “Now, lift!”

A grunt, a swing, and the last sheep was rocked over the thwart to join its two companions. Twelve cloven feet thumped and clattered, echoing on the planks of the boat’s bottom. Round yellow eyes rolled in long white faces. Fawn leaped to thrust back the front legs of one trying to struggle out again, soaking her shoes.

“We better get in and start rowing,” she said. “You don’t think they’ll try and jump out when we’re out on the water, do you?”

“They might. And probably get their fleece waterlogged and drown, to boot. Sheep are stupider than chickens.”

“Whit, nothing’s stupider than chickens.”

“Well, that’s true,” he conceded. “Almost as stupid as chickens, then.”

Fawn scrambled aboard after Whit, to find that the boat’s end was now stuck in the mud from the added weight. She climbed back out and prepared to give it a push off the bank, only to freeze when a puzzled voice behind her spoke: “Why are you taking sheep for a boat ride?”

She spun around to find Barr standing in the moon-striped shadows of the bare branches, scratching his head and peering blearily at them.

“Why aren’t you asleep?” she hissed at him.

“I was asleep. I got up to piss,” he replied. “Good beer those keeler boys had. What are you doing?”

“None o’ your business. Go back to your bedroll.”

Barr ran a hand over his jaw and squinted at them. “Does Dag know you two are out here?” The absent look of a groundsense consulted slipped over his face. “No, he’s asleep.”

“Good. Don’t you dare wake him up. He needs his sleep.” Fawn stuck one already-wet shoe into the mud and gave them a hard shove off. The skiff slid away from shore.

“If you don’t want Dag to know what you’re up to, then I’m definitely curious,” said Barr stubbornly, beginning to follow them up the bank.

“We’re un-stealing sheep,” said Whit. “Don’t look at me like that. It wasn’t my idea.”

“Won’t Boss Wain be mad?”

“No,” said Fawn. “He’ll think they chewed through their ropes and ran off. I made sure to leave the ends ragged and all over sheep spit.” She rubbed her hands on her skirts and took up her oar. Unfortunately, Whit’s pull, once they got coordinated, was about twice as strong as hers, which resulted in the skiff turning toward shore unless he waited for her to stroke again. And in the pause the down-bound current pushed them back. Barr was having no trouble keeping up, even with the need to pick his way across the rocks and fallen logs.

“You two are never going to make it upstream against this current,” he observed.

“Well, we’re gonna try, so get out of our way.” Not that Barr was actually in the way, but he was being very annoying off to the side.

Barr continued walking up the bank. Very slowly. A passenger said M-a-a-a.

“You’re not making much progress,” he said again.

“Let’s try farther out in the channel, Whit,” suggested Fawn.

“That makes no sense,” said Whit. “Current’s stronger out there.”

“Yes, but it’ll be more private.”

M-a-a-a. M-a-a-a.

“Dag’d flay me if I let you two babies go drown yourselves in the Grace,” Barr complained.

“So don’t tell him,” said Fawn through her teeth. Her hands were beginning to ache.

After a few more minutes, Barr said, “I can’t stand this. Give over. Come inshore and I’ll take Fawn’s oar.”

“We don’t need your help,” said Fawn.

“Yes, we do,” said Whit, and rowed harder. Fawn splashed madly, but was unable to keep the skiff from turning in.

“No, the stupid sheep’ll try and jump out!”

“Well, go nab ’em. You herd sheep, Barr and I will row.”

Fawn gave up. Barr edged past, and he and Whit pushed the boat out into the river once more. Fawn settled irately on the next seat and shoved a sheep face out of her lap. But she slowly grew consoled as their upriver progress became more visible. Whit’s muscles were on the whippy side, but a farmer son’s life had left them harder than they looked, and he kept up with Barr’s broader shoulders well enough.

The sheep dropped dung, trampled it around the bottom of the boat, and bleated. One attempted suicide by leaping into the river, but Fawn lunged and pulled it back with her hands dug into its greasy fleece. Another tried to follow the first’s example.

“Can’t you settle these sheep down with your groundsense?” Fawn asked Barr. “I bet Dag could.”

“I don’t do sheep,” said Barr distantly.

“No, only boat bosses,” said Whit, which resulted in a chilly silence for a time. The moonlit woods slid slowly past, silvered and remarkably featureless.

“I’m getting blisters,” Whit complained. “How much farther?”

“Well, we’re looking for a sheep pasture that comes right down to the water,” said Fawn.

“What if the sheep are in the fold for the night?” said Whit. “There are lots of pastures that come down to the water. We’ve been passing ’em for days.”

Fawn was quiet.

“Do you even know which one we’re looking for?” asked Barr.

“Er…well…not really.”

“Fawn!” protested Whit. “It could have been any farm for the last twenty miles—or more! Likely more—stands to reason Wain wouldn’t stop too close, in case that farmer figured out he’d been diddled and came after ’em.”

“I’m not rowing any twenty miles!” said Barr.

The mutiny was unanimous. The skiff put in at the first likely-looking pasture it came to, and Barr and Whit united to heave the bleating cargo overboard. The sheep cantered off a few paces and clustered to glower ungratefully back at their rescuers. Whit yanked Fawn back into the boat and turned it downstream.

“I sure hope they find a smarter owner,” she muttered.

“Yeah, sheep, don’t bother thanking us for saving your lives or anything,” Whit called sarcastically, turning and waving.

“Whit, they’re sheep,” said Fawn. “You can’t expect gratitude. You just…know you did the right thing, is all.”

“Just like f—” Barr began, and abruptly shut up. Fawn shot him a suspicious look. After a moment, he said instead, “They sure did stink. Who’s cleaning up this boat?”

“Not me,” said Whit.

“Somebody’ll have to,” said Barr. “I mean…evidence.”

“I will take care of it,” said Fawn through her teeth.

Lovely moonlight and less lovely silence fell. They came in sight of the Fetch in about a third of the time it had taken them to labor upstream.

“Thank you both,” said Fawn gruffly. “Even if I couldn’t make it right, it seems less wrong now. I couldn’t have done it without your help.”

“I’ll remember that,” said Whit.

“Don’t you two un-sheep-stealers go congratulating each other too soon,” said Barr, with a nod toward the Fetch. Fawn followed his glance and went still to see Dag sitting cross-legged on the roof in the moonlight, gazing upstream.

“Crap,” said Whit.

“Though I’m suddenly glad you’re here, Whit,” muttered Barr. “To prevent misunderstandings and all.” He glanced circumspectly at Fawn.

Fawn thought the greater fear might be perfectly correct understandings, actually. As the skiff eased alongside the flatboat, Dag dropped down to the back deck to catch the painter-rope Fawn tossed up to him.

He sniffed, and inquired dryly, “Nice boat ride?”

“Uh-huh,” said Fawn, staring up in defiance.

“Whit, Barr…you look a mite sheepish, one could say.”

“No, we only smell it,” muttered Whit.

“It wasn’t my doing!” Barr blurted.

Dag’s lips twisted up. “This time, Barr, I believe you.”

He leaned down to give them each a hand up in turn, and oversee the skiff properly tied.

Whit said uneasily, “Are you going to turn us in?”

“Who to? They weren’t my sheep.” He added after a moment, “Or yours.”

Barr breathed stealthy relief, and Dag shepherded Fawn firmly to bed.

He actually kept his face straight until he had a pillow stuffed over it. The chortles that then leaked through had Fawn poking him. “Stop that!”

It took a while till he quieted down.

The Fetch left its mooring soon after dawn, when the Snapping Turtle’s bleary crew were just beginning to search the nearby woods for their escaped mutton. The sweep-men draped on their oars maintained just enough motion to give steering way to the rudder, and sometimes not even that. Even Berry seemed content to drift at the river’s pace. Despite being as cotton-headed from lack of sleep as everyone else was from other excesses, Fawn kept strong tea coming, and as the morning wore on folks slowly recovered.

The river’s pace picked up abruptly around noon, when a great brown flood swept in from the right, and the current grew rolling.

“That’s not the Gray already, is it?” Fawn asked Berry, startled, when she looked out her moving kitchen window to find the shore grown alarmingly distant.

“Nope,” said Berry, in a tone of satisfaction, and took another swig of tea. “That’s the Beargrass River. It swings up through Raintree to Farmer’s Flats. We’re three-fourths of the way from Tripoint to the Confluence now! They must have had heavy storms in Raintree this past week—I haven’t often seen the Beargrass this high.”

“Do boats go on it?” Fawn peered some more.

“Sure. All the way to Farmer’s Flats, which is the head of navigation, pretty much. Which is why the town is where it is, I ’spect. The Beargrass is almost as busy as the Grace.”

Blighted Greenspring had lain on one of the Beargrass’s upper tributaries, as Fawn recalled soberly. Bonemarsh Camp, too. Last summer’s grim campaign against the malice had all played out north of the big town of Farmer’s Flats; the disruption hadn’t reached down here. Dag might thank the absent gods, but Fawn thought the thanks were better due to Dag.

With the addition of the Beargrass, the Grace nearly topped its banks, and in some places overflowed them. Some of the lower-lying islands were drowned already, bare trees sticking up from the water as if growing out of a lake, except that the lake was moving sideways at a fair clip. Fawn sometimes saw animals trapped up the island trees; possums and raccoons, of course, a couple of black bears, and once, excitingly, a catamount, quite close. They passed a wild pig swimming strongly in the current, and the men aboard were barely restrained from trying to hunt it from the boat. Floating wrack either lodged on or broke loose dangerously from towheads, those accumulations of trees and logs at the top ends of the islands that from a distance resembled, the boatmen said, the unruly locks of a fair-haired boy, hence the name Beargrass.

Toward evening, Berry put two men on each sweep to fight the unwieldy Fetch in to shore. As they were tying up in the lee of a bend, a peculiar arrangement floated past in the dusk: two flatboats lashed together side by side. The crew apparently struggled in vain to steer this lumbering rig, because it was slowly spinning in the current.

Out on the back deck, Bo called across the water for them to break up and tie to shore before dark, but the men on the double-boat either didn’t hear or didn’t understand; their return cries were unintelligible.

“Why’d they fix their boats together like that?” asked Fawn curiously, coming out to look.

“I expect because they’re fool Raintree boys who don’t know a thing about the river and have got no business being on it,” said Bo, and spat over the side for emphasis.

“For company, maybe, or not to lose each other in the dark. It likely made ’em feel safer, out on this big river,” said Whit slowly. “Even the Fetch is starting to look pretty small.”

“Do you see why it don’t make ’em safer?” said Berry.

“Oh, I do!” said Fawn excitedly, staring after the receding Raintree flatties.

Berry grinned. “I bet you do. Now wait for Whit.”

Whit squinted into the dusk and said slowly, “They’re trying to move twice the weight with half the oars.”

Fawn nodded vigorously.

“That’s right,” said Berry, straightening in satisfaction. “We may make a riverman of you yet.”

Whit smiled blindingly at her. “I sure hope so.”

She smiled back involuntarily; not her usual wry grin, but something unwitting and almost unwilling. She rubbed her lips and shook her head. “And to top it, they’re running at night. Unless they got themselves their very own Lakewalker aboard, not too bright, I’m afraid.” She leaned on the back rail and stared down the river, her eyes growing grave and gray in the gathering gloom. Fawn barely heard her mutter: “Papa was no fool country boy. So what happened?”