Passage tsk-3

by Lois McMaster Bujold

  The air of the Fetch’s cabin, when Dag stepped inside, was warm and moist and smelled amazing. He walked into the kitchen area to find it crammed with busy people and festooned with bunches of autumn wildflowers and dried milkweed pods tied with colored yarn. Berry and Fawn were frying up a mountain of fish and potatoes and onions, and Whit and Bo were tapping a new keg of beer set up on a trestle, and where had that come from?

  “What are we celebrating?” Dag inquired amiably.

  Fawn set aside her pan, walked over, stood on tiptoe, snaked an arm around his neck to pull his face down to her level, and said, “You. Happy birthday, Dag!” And kissed him soundly, to the hoots and clapping of the whole crew congregated. He pulled back, once she released him, with his mouth gaping in astonishment.

  “Yes!” Whit whooped. “We got him! We got him good!”

  “How did you know this was my birthday?” Dag asked Fawn. It had been upwards of twenty years since he’d paid the least attention to it himself, and he certainly hadn’t mentioned it recently.

  “Dag!” said Fawn in fond exasperation. “You gave it to the town clerk when we were married in West Blue! Of course I remembered!”

  And Fawn’s was in about six more weeks, as he had learned at the same time and not forgotten—he’d thought they might be in Graymouth by then, and wondered what farmer birthday customs might please her, and been glad that Whit would be there to ask and maybe help keep her from feeling too alone in a strange place. She’ll be nineteen, gods. Dag wasn’t sure whether to feel old, or good, but as Remo pressed him into his seat and Bo thrust a tankard of beer into his hand, he decided on good.

  Then came tender fish and melting potatoes and a tide of beer, and jokes and tales and laughter, and yes, friends, and his own real tent-kin. He was glad, too, for Remo at the table—whatever the exact interplay of ground and body, mind and heart, it seemed a wider world to have both farmers and Lakewalkers in it. Celebrating each other.

  The beer, Dag learned, had been secretly laid in by Whit for precisely this purpose at that last stop where he’d sold his window glass. Its status as a present had apparently kept it from any premature depredations by Bo, a fact Bo himself pointed out with a certain pride. The Bluefield conspiracy had been going on for some days, it seemed, for when no one was able to force down another bite, Fawn brought out a package wrapped in cloth and tied with another jaunty yarn bow. Dag opened it to discover a new-sewn oiled cloth cape and hood, such as boatmen wore.

  “Bo let me use his old one for a pattern,” Fawn explained in satisfaction. “I traded making new ones for him and Berry for the cloth to make some for you and Whit, but I haven’t got to the others yet.” Her second packet was a sweater sleeve, incomplete but promissory. “I expect to make some real good progress on it next week. Remo said Lakewalkers give new clothes and weapons on birthdays, and maybe when you start patrolling, a horse. You have a horse and a whole arsenal already, but at least I made you a few more arrows. Berry gave me the Tripoint steel heads, and Hawthorn had the eagle feathers.” She added a bundle of half a dozen new shafts to the stack, and Dag decided he would let his tongue be cut out before explaining that such gifting customs were mainly meant for youngsters.

  Outside in the dark, the wind blew a spatter of rain against the walls and windows, and Berry looked up intently. But as the wind and water didn’t yet shift the boat, she settled back and sipped at her tankard. Dag would have been quite content to just take a seat near the fire with a warm wife in his lap for the rest of the night, but Fawn extracted herself from his embrace and flitted off again.

  “More?” said Dag.

  “Remo said Lakewalkers don’t make birthday cakes, exactly, but if you’re going to be a real Bluefield, you need to have one,” Whit explained as Fawn came tottering back with a huge cake on a platter. “With candles. It’s the farmer thing to do, or at least it always was at our house.”

  “I love the candles best. One for every year,” Fawn expanded upon this, thumping the platter down in front of Dag. Which explained the size of the cake, bristling with a small forest of thin beeswax sticks. “I made this cake with ginger and pear, and honey-butter frosting. Because I was getting right tired of everything apple, even if we still have barrels of them.”

  “Where did you find all the candles?” Dag asked, fascinated and a bit taken aback. “Same goods-shed where Whit got the beer?”

  Fawn shook her head, dark eyes and curls all sprightly. “Nope, the ones they had were all too big. I made these myself, this afternoon, with some wax Berry gave me from her stores and some string I plaited a while back.”

  Dag plucked one up and rolled it between his fingers, smelling the faint honey scent. “They’re a good making, Spark.”

  She smiled in pleasure at his praise.

  “The deal is,” Whit advised, “you’re supposed to light them, then make a wish. If you blow them all out in one breath, you get your wish.”

  Dag could not picture the groundwork that would effect such a thing, so decided it must be a farmer superstition, if a pleasant one. “It sounds right difficult.”

  “It’s easier when you’re six than when you’re fifty-six,” Whit conceded.

  “Indeed. Well, all right. I’ll try.” Certain Lakewalker makers produced groundworked candles that made the task a snap; this would call for a greater effort on his part, Dag suspected. But these wax lights were sound work, and of Fawn’s own hands. Just like their marriage cords. He set the candle back in its hole in the frosting, centered himself, aligned his ground, called up his hottest persuasion, and swept his ghost hand back and forth across the bristling top of the cake. To his pure delight, all fifty-six little golden flames sprang up in its wake with a faint foomp! foomp! sound.

  He looked up in satisfaction to find Fawn and Berry both standing at his sides with lit spills in their hands and their mouths open. A silence stretched around the crowded table. Hod was blinking. Hawthorn’s eyes were wide. Bo seemed to have bitten his tongue. “Was that…not right?” Dag asked hesitantly.

  Whit said, in a rather hollow voice, “And I’d have been impressed if he’d blown them out all at once!”

  Remo laughed out loud. Actually, Remo cackled, Dag decided. Dag might have been more annoyed, particularly as Remo didn’t stop for quite a while—choking himself off, eventually, into his sleeve—except that it was the first time ever he’d heard the boy laugh.

  “That was just fine, Dag,” Fawn assured him valiantly. “You can light all our birthday cakes from now on.” She blew out her spill and handed him a knife.

  Dag waited a while for Fawn to enjoy the glow—or conflagration—while he enjoyed the play of the warm light on her face, like a summer sunset here on the edge of winter. He didn’t cheat much, blowing out the candles again. Fawn extracted the wax stumps for reuse, sharing the task of licking off the frosting with Hawthorn, an eager volunteer. The pocked cake was divided into generous slabs, with half still left for breakfast. After, Dag was made to sit by the fire with Fawn just as he’d pictured, while Whit and the crew took charge of the cleanup. The rain drummed on the roof as Hod and Hawthorn pestered Remo to show them how Lakewalkers cheated in games of chance, Remo protesting that he didn’t know how to either play or cheat.

  And then, with a faint groan and a definite jerk, the Fetch lifted from the sand bar. Berry whooped, and everyone dropped all other tasks to turn out and get the boat away from the bar and down the island to a safe landing, to be tied properly for the night. Both of the Lakewalkers, with their ability to move surely in the dark, were pressed into this task, but when they all came trooping wetly back inside Fawn had hot tea waiting and prewarmed towels stacked by the hearth. Sodden clothes were stripped off and hung up—except for Dag’s, adequately protected by his new boatman’s rain gear—dry clothes were donned, and those with room snagged more cake and beer. The patter of rain gusted into a rattle of hail, but the guide ropes held the boat in its new mooring as they all settled around the hearth once m
ore.

  Then Berry pulled out her fiddle and gave them three tunes, two lively, one slow and plaintive. There wasn’t enough room to dance, but while Berry shook out her fingers and rested up the Clearcreeks debated teaching boatmen’s songs to the Bluefields. Hawthorn claimed he knew all the rude words.

  “Yeah, but you don’t understand ’em,” drawled Bo.

  “I do too!”

  “Maybe it’s time for a lullaby,” Berry suggested.

  “No, not yet!” Hawthorn protested. Hod looked torn. Whit looked wistful.

  Remo was sitting on the floor near the fire, the overfed raccoon kit asleep in his lap; his head came up, turning.

  “What?” Dag said quietly.

  “There’s a Lakewalker out on the river in a narrow boat.”

  “In this weather?” Bo snorted. “Fool should be on shore with the boat turned upside down and him under it. Tied down at both ends, too, if he’d a lick of sense.”

  Dag silently agreed, but stretched his groundsense outward. A Lakewalker indeed, and just as miserable as you’d expect. Their grounds bumped, and the narrow boat changed course, fighting through the wind waves.

  Remo’s eyes widened. He set down the kit and scrambled to his feet. “It’s Barr!”

  A clunk and a thump were followed by the muffled pounding of a fist on the side of the hull.

  “Remo, you fool!” Barr’s voice called hoarsely. “Blight you! I know you’re in there! Come give me a hand before I freeze in this blighted rain!”

  16

  Fawn watched in alarm as Remo took up the lantern and made his way with Dag and Whit out into the wind and rain of the back deck. Hod hovered uncertainly till Bo, staying planted in his chair beyond the hearth, told him sharply to go in or out but stop blocking the doorway like a fool cat, and Hod drew back. Hawthorn bounced impatiently behind Hod; the raccoon kit skittered off and hid in the stores. Berry put her fiddle away in its leather bag and slid it back under her curtained bunk.

  Voices outside rose in debate, Dag’s deep tones overriding: “Just tie it to the rail. We can deal with it in the morning. Shipping more water’s not going to make much difference—it’s already half-swamped.”

  More thumps, grunts, and muffled curses. Whit shoved the door open and handed in a bedroll, a pack, an unstrung bow and quiver coming unwrapped from a trailing blanket, and a couple of lumpy cloth bags, all equally sodden. Hod dropped them in a heap. Whit came back in, followed by Dag and a very wet Lakewalker who Fawn didn’t know. Remo trailed with the lantern, which he put back on the kitchen table, then leaned his shoulders against the door and crossed his arms, face set.

  The fellow stood dripping before the hearth, breathing heavily, strained with exhaustion and cold. His lank hair, plastered to his forehead and hanging in a sorry rattail down his back, might be tawny blond when dry. He shrugged broad shoulders out of a soaked deerskin jacket, then just stood holding it in his hands as if confused where to put it, or just confused altogether. He scowled faintly at the Fetch’s crew, who were staring at him with expressions ranging from dumbfounded to dubious, but he eyed the bright fire with understandable longing.

  Barr, presumably. Fawn tried not to take an instant dislike to him simply on the basis of Remo’s tale about the pretty farmer sister; such a seduction, if it had occurred as described or even at all, could well have been a two-way enterprise. And he’d been brave to help rescue those coal flatties from drowning in the Riffle. Or maybe he just liked excitement, although at the moment he seemed more distraught.

  Apparently continuing an exchange started outside, he looked to Remo and said, “I was afraid I wasn’t going to catch up with you for another hundred miles!”

  “Why are you trying to catch up with me at all?” said Remo, in a voice devoid of encouragement.

  “What do you mean, why? I’m your partner!”

  “Not anymore. I left.”

  “Yes, without a word to anyone! Amma and Issi turned me on the grill for a blighted hour about that alone—like I should have known. How? By magic? You owe me for that, as well as for paddling three hundred miles in three days after you.”

  “If you came from Pearl Riffle, that would be ’bout two hundred miles, unless you took a detour,” Berry observed, her hands on her hips. Hers was one of the more dubious looks.

  Barr waved this away. “It was too blighted many miles, anyway. But that’s done now.” He stretched his shoulders, which cracked a bit, shook out the jacket and laid it on the hearthstones, and edged his backside closer to the fire, spreading his hands briefly on his knees. Big, strong hands, Fawn noted, although at the moment cramped from his paddle and chapped with cold. “I admit, I was glad not to find you floating facedown anywhere between there and here. We can start back in the morning.”

  “Back where?” said Remo, still dour.

  “Pearl Riffle, snag-brain. If you come back with me now, Amma says she’ll let us both back on patrol.” Barr straightened up with a look of, if not triumph, at least accomplishment.

  Remo’s lips folded as tightly as his arms. “I’m not going back.”

  “You have to come back! Amma and Issi ripped me up one side and down the other, like it was my fault you ran off!”

  “So it was,” said Remo uncompromisingly.

  “Well, it’s water over the Riffle now. The important thing is, if I bring you back, all is forgiven. I’m not saying things won’t be edgy for a while, but sooner or later someone else will win Amma’s ire, and it’ll blow over. It always does.” He blinked and grinned in a way that might have seemed charming, to some other audience at some other season.

  “Not this time.”

  “Remo, you’re making no sense. Where else would you go but back?”

  “On,” said Remo. He nodded at Berry. “Boss Berry, whose boat you are dripping in, will likely let you sleep the night inside if you ask politely. In the morning, you go upriver, I go down. Simple.”

  “Remo, no. Not simple. If I don’t fetch you back alive and in one piece, Amma swears I’ll be discharged from patrol permanently! I’m not joking!”

  Fawn was beginning to get the picture, here. It wasn’t simply worry for a partner; Barr was on a mission to save his own well-scorched tail.

  Remo looked furious. “Neither am I.”

  Barr stared at him with the genuine bewilderment of a fellow who’d slid by on charm all his life whose charm had inexplicably stopped working.

  Dag had been watching from the sidelines without comment. Before the go-round could start again, his unmoved voice put in, “Best dry your weapons, patroller. Your bow is starting to warp from the wet.”

  Barr made a discomfited gesture, as if he’d like to protest this interruption but didn’t quite dare. He eyed Dag warily. “And you, Dag Red-Blue whatever. Amma also wanted me to tell her if you talked Remo into this. Like I knew!”

  Remo snorted in disgust.

  “I said I didn’t think you’d seen each other since that first day in the patrol tent. I’m not sure she believed me.” He added bitterly, “I’m not sure she believed anything I said.”

  With heavy sarcasm, Remo intoned, “Why, Barr—why ever would she not?”

  Before Barr’s return growl could find words, Berry exchanged a glance with Dag and shouldered forward. “It’s boatmen’s bedtime, patroller, and you’re making a tedious ruckus in our bunkroom. If you want, you could have some mighty tasty leftovers and a dry bed in front of the hearth. If you two’d druther keep arguin’ instead, take it outside to the riverbank where you can keep it up to your heart’s content or dawn, whichever comes first. Your choice, but make it now.” A rattle of sleet against the windows lent a sinister weight to her cool remark.

  After a long, long moment, Barr swallowed down whatever he’d been going to snap back at Remo and nodded to the boat boss. He said stiffly, “I’d be grateful for a bed, yes, ma’am. And food.” He shot Remo a surly look that made it clear he was giving up only temporarily.

  The occupants
of the Fetch’s kitchen-bunkroom shuffled back into almost-normal preparations for sleep. Barr did look after his weapons, with a sidelong glance at Dag. Whit and Hod helped lay out the rest of his things to dry; Hawthorn and Berry settled the guest-furs in front of the fire; and Fawn reheated the fish, potatoes, and onions. Barr wolfed down the meal as though starved, and gaped in wonder at the tankard of beer Bo shoved in front of him. He found the bottom of it quickly. Awkwardly, everyone dodged around one another in the shared sleeping space that had suddenly become a little too shared, but all found their beds at last.

  As the lantern light dimmed to the faintest red glow through the curtains of their nook, Fawn interlaced herself with Dag for warmth and whispered, “You didn’t happen to wish for Barr on those birthday candles, did you?”

  Dag choked down a laugh. “No, Spark.” He grew quiet for a moment. “Not exactly, leastways.”

  “Just so’s you know that last surprise was not my doing.”

  “It seems to have been Amma Osprey’s. Wish I could have been listening at the window for that talk. I’ll bet it was blistering. Sounds like it was past time she put the fire to that boy’s feet, though.”

  “Do you think Remo should go back with him?”

  “It’s not my decision to make.”

  “You wanted him to go back, that first night.”

  “It’s good for young patrollers to get out and see the world.”

  “You said you weren’t adopting him.”

  He drew back his head to look down over his nose at her, squinting in the shadows. “Do you remember everything I say that clearly? That could get downright burdensome on a husband.”

  She snickered.

  He added, “Seems they can both drag back home with their tails between their legs, and Amma’ll let them in. I’m not too surprised. Nobody wants to waste patrollers. Still…I’ll hate to see Remo go, if he goes. I thought I might be starting to get somewhere with him. And he was a huge help with Hod.”