Passage

19

Berry’s radiant joy seemed to light up the air around her; in contrast, Alder’s roiling ground darkened in consternation. Dag set his feet apart and stared down, hand on his jaw, fingers spread hard across his lips. What is this? Hod grinned uncertainly. Whit abandoned his steering oar and came to Dag’s side to peer over, his eyes widening in a suddenly set face.

“Hawthorn, Bo! Fawn, come on out here! I’ve found Alder!” Berry called.

Alder’s hand made a futile gesture and fell to his side; he stretched his mouth in a smile as Hawthorn came bolting out of the hatch with a yell of glee. The boy might have hugged Alder if Berry hadn’t already held that space with no sign of giving it up; as it was, he danced around the pair, whooping. Fawn and Bo followed at a less violent pace. A curious Remo dodged the crowd by hoisting himself up from the back deck and strolling forward to watch.

As the cries of greeting swirled around Alder, his skiff mate looked up and spotted Remo. “Alder!” he gasped. “There’s a Lakewalker on this here boat! We have to leave off. You know Crane don’t want us to mess with no Lakewalkers.”

Alder stared up at the row of spectators lining the edge of the cabin roof. He drew a short breath. “No, Skink—there’s two. That tall one’s haircut fooled me at a distance.”

Berry grinned widely at him. “Three, actually. Dag and Remo’ve been in my crew since Pearl Riffle, and Barr, um, signed on later. They’re all real tame, though—you don’t have to be scared of ’em.”

Alder gulped. “No, not scared, but—I guess you won’t be needing a pilot, huh?”

“No,” agreed Skink loudly. “These folks don’t need us. Come on away, Alder.”

Alder swung to his companion. “No, you don’t understand. This girl here”—he waved at Berry—“she’s my betrothed. Was. Is. From back at Clearcreek. Did you come all the—no, yes, of course you came from Clearcreek. Had to have. We can’t… hire on this boat, Skink.”

Skink said uneasily, “Right, that’s what I said. What you want t’ do, then?”

Hawthorn interrupted urgently, “Alder, where were you? Where’s Papa and Buckthorn and the Briar Rose? Where’s the other boat hands that was with you?”

Berry stood a little away from Alder, wrenched unwillingly from her elation by these harder questions. “Oh, Alder, why didn’t you come home? Or write, or send word up the river with someone? It’s coming on eleven months since you left. We’ve been worried sick about you all!”

Alder’s lips moved wordlessly. He swallowed and found at least a few: “I’m so sorry, Berry. The Briar Rose sank in a storm near here last winter. I was the only one as got off. Some fellows from”—he glanced at Skink—“from a hunting camp up in the Elbow picked me up off the shore, nearly dead. I was sick for weeks—lung fever. By the time I got better, there was no sign of the boat but a few boards caught in a towhead. The river took the rest.”

“Are you sure?” asked Berry anxiously. “They might have got downstream of you and thought you was lost—no, they would have sent word somehow…” Her breath went out of her in a long sigh.

Hawthorn’s hopeful face crumpled; Berry folded him in one arm. His back shook. “Shh, Hawthorn,” she said, hugging him tight. “We always sort of knew, didn’t we? Because Papa and Buckthorn and…” she hesitated, “…they wouldn’t have left us without saying, unless…well.” She scrubbed her free arm across her damp eyes. “Why no word, Alder? It was so cruel on us!”

Alder drew breath. “It took me months to get stronger, and then I owed the camp fellows for their help, and then I thought—I went down the river to get us a grubstake, and I didn’t want to come dragging back to you with my hands full of bad news and nothing. I meant to at least replace the value of the Rose for you. But it’s took longer than I thought it would.”

Remo whispered urgently in Dag’s ear, “Dag, he’s—”

Dag held up his hand and murmured back, “Wait. Let him finish.” He stared down intently at the anguished people on the front deck, groundsense as open as he could bear. Which was not wide, at this point.

Berry cried, “Alder, you’re making no sense! You know me better, you must! How can you think I’d put a bag of coin above my kinfolks’ lives, or even the knowing of their fates?”

“I’m sorry, Berry,” Alder repeated helplessly, hanging his head. “I was wrong, I see that now. I never dreamed you’d come after me.”

A variety of expressions had moved across the listening Bo’s face, from muted pleasure to muted grief; now he was simply mute, chewing gently on a thumbnail. Fawn had tumbled out onto the deck almost as excited as Hawthorn. Her face had fallen in mirror to her friend Berry’s. Now she stood by Bo with her arms folded, listening hard. On the whole, Dag was glad she did not seem to be swallowing all this down as readily as Berry, but then, she had less reason to: Alder had sworn no heart-oaths to Fawn, and any hopes she held for Berry’s happiness teetered on a balance against fears for Whit’s. My Spark’s shrewd; she feels the twist in this.

Berry went stiff. “Alder—you’re going to have to tell the truth sometime, so it may as well be now. If there’s another girl, you’ll have to betray one of us or t’other, so you can’t win that toss nohow. If she—maybe—nursed you back to health or something, I don’t suppose I can even hate her…” Berry stared beseechingly at him. They were standing wholly apart now.

“No!” said Alder in surprise. “No other woman, I swear!”

Remo whispered, “Blight. S’ the first true thing that fellow’s said.”

“Aye,” replied Dag. And sorry he was for it; it would have been a tidy wrap for the tragedy. He added softly, “Keep an eye on that beguiled fellow. He’s getting ready to bolt.” Skink was edging toward the skiff. Remo nodded and slipped quietly down past the chicken pen. Skink stopped and edged back, looking furtively around the crowded bow.

Berry searched her betrothed’s face and decided—however wishfully, even Dag could not tell—that he spoke true. “Then come with me now! We’ll sell the Fetch in Graymouth and have all the grubstake we need. The house in Clearcreek is waiting.” Her voice skipped a breath. “I had it all ready for us.”

Alder ran a harried hand through his hair. “I can’t run off with no word to the camp fellows as helped me.”

“Of course not!” said Berry. “We can stop around the bend. I’d want to thank them myself for their care of you. Or”—she paused as a new realization apparently overcame her—“if you have debts to them, well, I have some coin as will clear them. It’s not much, but it’s enough to cover a sick man’s keep and nursing.” She hesitated again in unwelcome suspicion. “Unless they were gambling debts that got all out of hand on you…?”

“Berry, they’re a pretty rough lot. Better I should deal with them, and you take your boat straight on. I’ll…collect my things and meet you at the Wrist.”

Bo’s slow voice broke in. “You never found any bodies to bury proper?”

Alder shook his head. The roil in his ground was growing frantic.

“You don’t have to soften it for me,” said Berry in a low voice. “I know what this river can do.”

Was this Dag’s business? He glanced at Fawn, who was anxious for Berry but more anxious for the stricken Whit. At Bo, at the bewildered Hawthorn. Dag was not above supporting lies to shield someone from futile pain, but all directions seemed bad, here. So let’s have the truth out, and see where the pain falls fairly. He looked down gravely and said, “Berry…? Alder is lying to you.”

Her face turned up, white and wild. “What about?”

“Everything.”

Skink lunged for the rail.

He was caught by Remo and by Chicory, who had come out partway through the uproar to lean against the cabin wall and listen in baffled fascination. Chicory was quick enough to help catch Skink before he went over into the water, a hunter’s reflexes, but his face twisted up in doubt once the struggling man was held between them. “What are we doing here, Lakewalker?” he called up to Dag.

“I’m not sure, but that fellow is beguiled to the gills. I don’t know who did it, or when, or why.” Had it been on purpose?

“Oh, that’s no good,” said Hod. “Can you fix him, Dag?”

What would happen if he unbeguiled the unsavory Skink? It was gut-wrenching to imagine having to take in that repulsive ground-release, but beguilement was a hurt in its own way. If Dag would not leave a man bleeding or lying with a broken bone, could he turn away from this? “Why are you trying to run off, Skink? I won’t hurt you.”

Skink glared around madly. “Crane won’t like this!” he told Alder.

The fear from both their grounds pulsed like a stench, but Alder at least held his stance as Dag eased down from the roof and approached Skink. On my head be it. He lifted his left arm, not that he needed to touch the man at this range, but aligning body and ground helped him concentrate. The act was growing easier with practice; Dag flinched as the backwash of Skink’s agitated ground poured into him, but he forced himself to accept it.

Dag wasn’t sure what response he’d been expecting, but it certainly wasn’t Skink’s collapse into utter shock and violent weeping, a sudden shuddering heap on the deck. “No, no, no!” he wailed. “No, no, no…”

Chicory bit his lip in appalled fascination, tense with surmise.

Yes, Dag thought. The troop captain’s seen something like this before. And so have I.

“Skink, pull yourself together!” Alder snapped. He looked around at his gaping audience, now augmented by Barr and Bearbait. “Sorry, folks, sorry. It takes him like that when the drink wears off, sometimes. I better get him back to camp…”

Any one of Alder’s lies might have been plausible; the accumulation was surely not. What truth does he fear so desperately? This was Dag’s last chance to avoid finding out. Alas, there wasn’t much to choose between regret for a disaster from a mistake, or regret for a disaster from being perfectly correct. Strike at the weakest point; strike fast.

He strode forward, yanked up Skink’s head by the hair, and bought his attention with, if not a fence post between the ears, his harshest company-captain’s voice. “Look at me.” Skink stared up, his breath catching in mid-snivel. Dag demanded, “What are you really doing here?”

“Boat bandits!” babbled Skink. “We’re supposed to check the down-bound boats, and if they’re any good, bring ’em in to Crane and the boys for the plucking. Oh, gods!”

“What?” cried Berry. “Alder, what?” She wheeled to stare in horror not at Skink, but at her betrothed.

“The man’s in a drunken delirium!”

“The man,” said Chicory thoughtfully, “reminds me a whole bunch of those fellers we used to pick off the edge of the blight bogle’s camp.”

Dag just barely kept himself from saying, It’s related. Not a parallel he wished to draw attention to. He compromised on, “Maybe, but this is human mischief, it seems.” He yanked Skink’s hair again, refusing to let him retreat into breathless weeping. “How many bandits, where?”

“Thirty. Forty. And Crane, always him.”

“Where?”

“Cave, there’s this cave up around the Elbow. Thirteen river miles around the loop, but just three across the neck. Gives time to scout out the boats and prepare, see…”

He’s spouting good, now. Keep up the pressure. “Was there ever a malice in the cave?”

“What?”

“A blight bogle.”

Skink shook his head. “Ain’t no blight bogles around here. Just Crane, that’s bad enough. And them Drum brothers. Before the Drums come, Alder was Crane’s right-hand man, but he likes them better now, and even Alder’s not crazy enough to be jealous of them two Drums.”

Dag shook Skink again, leaning down on his shoulder as if Skink were a leather water-bag and Dag was trying to squeeze out the last drops. “So you lure in the boats with offers of piloting, and then what? Steal their valuables? What do you do to the crews?”

“That wasn’t how they got my boat. When I first come, the cave was still fixed up as Brewer’s Cavern Tavern. Bring us in, get us drunk, set on us while we was in a stupor…except the ones Crane saved out for his game…oh, the blood and pitifulness of it all!”

Very quietly, Bo and Barr had moved in on either side of Alder, Dag was glad to see. Berry had stepped back, her face drained, cold, distant. Fawn gripped her bloodless hand, in support or restraint or both.

“What happens to the crews nowadays?” Dag kept on.

“Kill ’em in their sleep or from behind, if we can. Can’t let any run off to tell. Ride ’em down if they run. Crane can always find ’em. Burn the boats or hide them in the blocked channel back behind the island. Can’t let any boats go down to be recognized, either. Brewer used to do that, but Crane is cannier. Brewer invented the game, too, but Crane won it in the end.”

“And the bodies?”

“Used to plant ’em in the ravine, till Little Drum showed how you could slit their bellies and load ’em with rock, and sink ’em in the river so’s they don’t come up. Faster than buryin’. Oh, gods. See, them Drum boys don’t always kill ’em first…”

Was this enough? Too much. Dag knew their urgent danger now, and surely decanting more grotesque details—what was the game? — could wait till they were not in front of Fawn, Berry, Hawthorn, and Hod. One more. “Who is Crane?”

“The Lakewalker. Our Lakewalker.”

Barr and Remo both took that in immediately; Dag could tell by the way their grounds snapped shut like mussels. A renegade? A madman? A malice’s pawn? “Where did he come from?” Dag pressed relentlessly.

“Don’t know. He was here already when I come along. Oleana somewheres, I guess.”

“Did he start the gang?”

“No! Fellow named Brewer, I said.”

“Was Brewer a Lakewalker?” Surely not, with that name.

“No, ’course not! Before me—before Alder—Crane was just a passenger on a down-bound flatboat that Brewer lured in to the Cavern Tavern. Somehow he talked Brewer out of killing him, and then he was Brewer’s right-hand man for a time, and then…no more Brewer. Just Crane.” Skink hesitated. “Brewer, they say he just wanted to get filthy rich, but nobody can figure out what Crane wants.”

“He’s alone?”

“No, there’s about thirty or forty of us, depending.”

“I mean, no other Lakewalkers with him?” Dag clarified.

“Oh. Yeah. Alone like that, I guess.”

“Where is he right now, do you know?” Nowhere within a mile, but a mile seemed suddenly much too short a distance between this madness and Spark.

Skink shook his head. “Cave, last I seen.” Alder seemed to cringe inward. Dag looked up and eyed him in cold speculation.

Berry swallowed and said to Dag, “Ask him if they took…saw the Tripoint Steel.”

“Them struttin’ keelers?” Skink snorted. “They was through here last week. Crane, he said to lie low and just let them fools float on by. Which they did.”

Dag met Berry’s eyes and read the message: No help there. But it set his mind to spinning. The Fetch’s complement was outnumbered by at least two to one, but other boats came behind in a steady stream. Clever of the bandits to take only the richest and let most pass unmolested, but even so their crimes could not go unmarked much longer. How much time did the Fetch have to prepare? Prepare what?

Some of the Raintree flatties had taken over the oars, or the Fetch would have drifted into a sand bar. They were much closer now to that feeder creek with the good lookout just above it. Dag motioned to Chicory and Bearbait. “Did you ever have the hunting of bandits up in Raintree?”

“Once,” Chicory admitted, scratching his head. “It was only a couple, not thirty or forty. Brought them in alive to be tried before the village clerk, but we didn’t have to stay for the hangings. Not my favorite sort of hunting, but it needed doin’.”

Dag said, “It seems to need doing again. I’ve helped take out bandit gangs a couple of times, plus the big one that plagued Glassforge. First trick is, you make sure you outnumber the targets. The Snapping Turtle is not too far behind us, and there may be other boats following soon. If we can get enough help by nightfall, are you fellows in?”

Chicory glanced at Bearbait, who nodded. “Might as well be.”

“If I could, I’d prefer to leave the farmers to the farmers. And the Lakewalker to the Lakewalkers,” said Dag. Barr and Remo both flinched at the word of their new task, but returned his nod. “This Crane is likely to be dangerous in ways you can’t fight.”

“That would suit me,” said Chicory slowly. “As long as they’re all brought to the same justice after.” His gaze at Dag was hard and questioning.

“If he’s guilty of half the horrors Skink suggests, that won’t be a problem. Three’s been a quorum for field justice before this.”

Chicory gave this a very provisional nod. “Well, if you want to make a rabbit stew, first you catch your rabbit.”

“Aye,” said Dag.

After the Fetch tied up at the mouth of the feeder creek, Fawn watched anxiously as Dag and most of the rest of the men took their prisoners ashore for further questioning. They all returned in about three-quarters of an hour, looking even grimmer, although neither Alder nor his shattered partner showed signs of much new roughing-up. Bo closely supervised the chaining of Alder’s hands behind him, around one of the sturdy posts holding up the Fetch’s roof between the kitchen space and the stores. He advised Dag, “I’d put a gag in his rotten mouth, too.”

Dag just shook his head, but he told Berry and Fawn, “Don’t let those chains loose for any reason. If he has to piss, turn your backs and have Hod hold a bucket.” He held Berry’s eyes as he said this; she nodded shortly. Then they all settled down to wait for reinforcements.

Whit signaled from the bluff fairly soon; he and Bo went out in the bandits’ skiff to explain matters to a down-bound flatboat, which then rowed in to tie alongside the Fetch. Its nine able-bodied flatties were shocked at the news, not to mention at their own narrow escape, and readily volunteered for the attempt to burn out the river robbers.

The Snapping Turtle came into sight around noon, and Fawn saw Dag start to breathe a little easier. Its raucous crew pronounced themselves all in for the dirty job. The serious planning began then amongst the cadre of leaders and bosses gathered on the shore: Wain and Saddler, Chicory and Bearbait, the new flattie boss, and Dag. Wain, claiming to be the best brawler on the river bar none, was inclined to assume leadership. He called for a roundabout river attack, although it was plain Dag preferred Chicory to lead a land strike up over the neck. When the blustering threatened to grow loud and prolonged, Dag took Wain aside for a brief word. Fawn, watching from the Fetch’s bow, was not at all sure it had been words alone that persuaded Wain to settle down, and she nibbled on her knuckles in worry as Dag looked darker than ever. But the land ploy was finally agreed upon.

The men spent the afternoon assembling or devising weapons. All had knives, and cudgels were readily fashioned, but there were fewer spears and bows amongst them than Dag plainly would have preferred. He set Whit with the bowmen.

“Does Whit have to go?” Fawn murmured to Dag in a rare private moment snatched out on the Fetch’s back deck.

“He volunteered. It would be an insult to leave him with the boats. And I’m short on archers.” He pushed a curl of hair back from her brow. “At least bow-shot puts him farther from the rough and tumble.”

“There’s a point,” she conceded.

“And…I’d rather not leave him with Alder.”

Her gaze flew up. “Dag! No matter how heartbroke he is for Berry, Whit’s not an assassin!”

“No, but Alder has as twisted a tongue as I’ve ever encountered. If he talks Berry into…anything, there’s as much danger of Whit being persuaded to some foolishness out of misplaced nobility as there is of his going to the other extreme. I’m as happy to remove him from the dilemma altogether.” He hesitated. “We’re all going to have to turn hangmen come morning, you know, if this goes as it should. Berry’ll need all the support you can give her through that.”

“Does Alder have to hang? I mean, he was beguiled by this Lakewalker Crane, wasn’t he? Is he guilty, if he did what he did under compulsion? Is Skink? Isn’t that going to be a real problem to figure out, come…come morning?”

Dag was silent for a long time, staring out across the river. “I’m not planning to bring it up if the others don’t. Please don’t you, either. They’re all guilty enough.”

“Dag…” she said reproachfully.

“I know! I know.” He sighed. “No matter what, first we have to capture the bandits. We need to get through that with a single mind. Argue after, when it’s safe to.”

Her lips twisted in doubt.

He held her, bent his face to her hair, and murmured into it, “I thought when I quit the patrol this sort of work would all be behind me, and I could turn my whole heart and ground to fixing folks instead of killing them.” And even lower-voiced: “And once I’d fixed as many as I’d ever killed, I’d be square. And then start to get ahead.”

“Does it work like that?”

“I don’t know, Spark. I’m just hoping.”

She gave him a hug for support and turned her face up. “Can’t you at least unbeguile Alder, before you boys go off tonight? It’ll be horrible for Berry to watch him fall to pieces like that Skink fellow, but at least he mightn’t be so dangerous.”

“I can’t unbeguile Alder.”

“Why not? You did the other. It’s not like ground-gifting, is it, where you can only give so much before you collapse yourself? Or is it like that piece of pie, too much at once?”

“No,” he said in slow reluctance. “I can’t unbeguile Alder because he’s not beguiled in the first place.”

A silence. “Oh,” said Fawn at last. Oh, gods. Poor Berry… “Just when were you planning to mention this to her?”

“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.”

Alder’s mouth opened and shut. He finally settled on, “That Lakewalker. He’s sorcelled me all up. I can’t hardly think, these days.”

“Then I daren’t let you loose, huh?” said Berry, and rose to her feet. “Come on, Fawn. There’s ain’t no sleeping in here. Let’s go set to the roof. The air’s cleaner up there, I expect.”

“I expect it is,” said Fawn, and followed her out the back hatch into the chill dark.

The night sky was clear and starry over the river valley. A half-moon was rising above the eastern shore. They sat cross-legged on the roof, looking around at the black bulk of the bluff, the few dim lights leaking from the boat windows down the row. The creek water gurgled in the stillness, giving itself to the Grace. Fawn heard no shouts or cries of commencing battle, but from three miles away on the other side of a hill, she didn’t expect to.

“Alder was a good man all his life, up in Clearcreek,” said Berry at last.

Fawn said nothing.

“The river really did ruin him.”

Fawn offered, “Maybe he just never met such hard temptations, before.” And after a little, “Spare me from ever doing so.”

“Aye,” breathed Berry. No insect songs enlivened the frosty night; their breath made faint fogs in the starlight. She said at last, “So, is Alder beguiled or not? Did Dag say?”

Fawn swallowed. It wasn’t as if there would ever be a better time or place to tell Berry the truth. “He said not.”

A long inhalation. “I sort of realized it must be that way, after a while. Or Dag would’ve released him along with Skink.” Cold haze trickled from her lips. “I can’t think which way is worse. Ain’t neither is better.”

“No,” agreed Fawn.

“I don’t see no good way out of this.”

“No,” agreed Fawn.

They huddled together in silence for a long time, waiting for light or word, but the cold drove them inside before either came.