Passage tsk-3

by Lois McMaster Bujold

  “You were on your oar. Whit was off duty. That’s all.” Not everything is about you, youngster, though I know you can’t see that right now. He was also reminded of Fawn’s farmer joke about the parents’ curse: May you have six children all just like you. Was there an equivalent patrol captain’s curse? That would explain a lot…

  Remo swallowed. “Oh.” A flush bloomed and faded in his face, but some of the tension went out of him.

  Dag refrained from pointing out that he’d have yelled for Remo before Hawthorn or Hod, lest the touchy Pearl Riffle boy just think himself called the second-best of a bad lot. Tact, old patroller. They were getting somewhere, here.

  Remo’s hand went out toward Hod’s knee, then drew back. “Is he going to end up following me around like he does you?”

  Dag rejected both If I knew, I wouldn’t have to test it and He can’t follow both of us, leastways as answers. He glanced down at Hod, who was staring up anxiously. “Why don’t you ask?” Otherwise you’re about to do intimate groundwork upon a person you haven’t spoken to directly since you came into the room.

  Remo reluctantly looked Hod in the face. “Are you going to get stuck on me?” he demanded.

  Hod did that yes/no headshake again, as confusing to Remo as to everyone else. “Dunno?” He offered after a moment, “Don’t want to. But my knee hurts all throbby, and I want to help Dag. Don’t you want to help Dag?”

  Remo scratched his head, glanced sideways. “I guess I do.”

  Dag had talked young patrollers through their first fuzzy ground-giftings before; Remo gave him no surprises on that score. The actual transfer was the work of an instant. Hod gasped as the palpable warmth eased his joint. Dag gave Hod some stern warnings about taking better care of himself hereafter, and no more tricks. Hod shook his head hard and unambiguously at that one.

  Whit, Berry, and Hawthorn came in then, cheeks pink from the night chill, to put away their assorted equipment. Dag, feeling as drained as if it had been him rather than Remo to give the ground reinforcement, sagged wearily into a chair by the hearth and let Fawn explain to the boat boss just what all had been going on in here, which she did with an accuracy almost as embarrassing to Remo as to Hod. Since she managed to do this while simultaneously feeding everyone warm apple pie, however, they all got over it pretty smoothly.

  Dag was then treated to an entirely unexpected half-hour of listening to a lot of farmers sitting around over plates of crumbs seriously discussing problems of Lakewalker-farmer beguilement not as dark magical threat but as something more like navigating a channel that had just had all its snags and sand bars shifted by a flood. Save for Fawn and Whit, their ideas were confused and their suggestions mostly useless; it was their tones of voice that subtly heartened him. Remo, hearing mainly the confusion, at first folded his arms and looked plagued, but then was drawn despite himself into what Dag suspected were his first halting efforts to explain Lakewalker disciplines to outsiders.

  The party broke up for bed with the woes of the world unsolved, but Dag felt strangely satisfied nonetheless.

  Fawn, passing Hod, caught him on the shoulder, and said, “You know, you could have come out and asked for a turn on Whit’s bow, too, same as Hawthorn. Try it next time.”

  Hod looked startled; his lips peeled back in a grin over his crooked teeth, and he bobbed his head in a gratified nod. Had he just needed an invitation? What brooding over a purely imagined exile had led him to the wall? What distress was so painful that such a brutal self-harm seemed a better choice? Dag, wondering, managed to add a, “Good night, Hod. Sleep hard,” to Fawn’s shrewd words, which won another gratified head-bob and a flush of pleasure. Following Fawn forward, Dag blew out his breath in contemplation.

  After calling Hawthorn to come collect his raccoon, who after its nap now wanted to romp, they curled around each other in their warming nest. Fawn murmured, “How’s your oat doing?”

  Surprised, Dag rubbed his left arm. “I’d almost forgotten it. Huh. It seems to be converted already. Hardly anything left there but a little warm spot. Maybe tomorrow I’ll try ten oats.”

  “I was thinking, two.”

  “Five?” He hesitated. “I think I’m glad you talked me out of that tree.”

  “Uh-huh,” she said dryly. He could feel her sleepy smile against his shoulder. She added after a moment, “You really got Remo going tonight. If only we could get him to quit confusing farmers with their livestock, I think he’d be a decent sort.”

  “Is he that bad? He doesn’t mean ill.”

  “I didn’t think he did. He’s just…full of Lakewalkerish habits.”

  “Or he was, before he got tipped out of his cradle. I ’spect our river trip isn’t quite the rebellion he thought he was signing up for.”

  She snickered, her breath warm in the hollow of his skin.

  Dag said more slowly, “He was just an ordinary patroller, before his knife got broken. But if ordinary folks can’t fix the world, it’s not going to get fixed. There are no lords here. The gods are absent.”

  “You know, it sounds real attractive at first, but I’m not sure I’d want lords and gods fixing the world. Because I think they’d fix it for them. Not necessarily for me.”

  “There’s a point, Spark,” he whispered.

  She nodded, and her eyes drifted shut. His stayed open for rather a long while.

  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 fr
ankly 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 g
oods, 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.