Passage - Lois McMaster Bujold [111]
Fawn grew more pensive. “There is this. You can’t ever run away from one thing without running toward something else.” She slid a small hand up his shoulder. “You, for example. I ran away from home, and right into you. And the wide world with you. I’d never be here if I hadn’t first left there.”
“Do you like it here? This boat?”
“I’d like any boat with you in it.” She stretched up and kissed him.
“Was it a happy birthday?”
“The best in years.” He kissed her back, and added slowly, “The best in all my years. And that’s a lot of years, Spark. Huh.”
She considered poking him and demanding what that Huh was all about, but he yawned fit to crack his jaw, her feet finally warmed up, and she melted into sleep.
At breakfast, Fawn discovered that like most fine young animals, Barr was cuter when he was dry and fluffy. She’d been uncertain of his age in the strain of his last night’s exhaustion, but now she was sure he was the junior of the partners. He’d also regained his temper, or at least his arguments shifted to being less about Barr and more about Remo.
“Your tent-folk are all really worried about you,” he offered.
“Not when I last saw them,” Remo replied. “Notably not.”
“Remo, you have to realize, Amma’s only giving us a grace period, here. You can’t expect forgiveness to be held out on a stick forever.”
Remo said nothing.
Barr soldiered on. “If we don’t get back timely, she’ll have had a chance to get over being worried about you, and revert to being riled. We need to grab the moment.”
Fawn couldn’t help asking, “Won’t she be worried about the both of you?”
Barr glanced at her as if uncertain whether to speak directly to the farmer bride or not; unable to resist a chance to vent, he said, “Since she as much as told me to come back with him or not at all, I don’t think so.”
“Barr the expendable,” murmured Remo.
Barr’s jaw set, but he made no rejoinder; Remo looked mildly surprised.
After a little silence broken only by munching and requests to pass the cornbread and butter, Remo said, “Speaking of expendable, what in the world were you doing out in that weather last night?”
“It wasn’t my first plan,” said Barr. “There’s a ferry camp somewhere near here that I was trying to reach by dark, and the worse the rain got, the more it seemed worth holding out for. I sure wasn’t going to get any drier camping on shore in that blow. But I came to you before I came to it.”
“If you mean Fox Creek Camp,” Dag put in, “you passed it about ten miles back.”
“I can’t have missed it!” Barr said. “I’ve had my groundsense wide-open almost the whole way—looking for you,” he added aside to Remo. “Or your floating body.”
“Water this cold, my body might not have come up so soon,” said Remo distantly.
Dag’s brows twitched, but he said, “Fox Creek Camp mostly lies behind the hills. They dammed the creek to make a little lake back there. Likely there wasn’t anyone out on the ferry landing after dark.”
“Oh. Crap.” Barr looked briefly put out, then cheered up. “This is better anyway. If I’d stopped there, I wouldn’t have caught up with you till tonight at the earliest, and that’d be yet another fifty upriver miles to backtrack. At least.” He turned again to Remo. “Which is another reason to come back with me now. Every mile you go down is going to be that much more work going up.”
“Not my problem,” said Remo.
“Well, it’s mine!” said Barr, baited into personal outrage again. “With this current running, a narrow boat with only one paddler couldn’t even make headway going upriver! It needs at least two, and better four!”
In a practical spirit, and to divert whatever crushing thing Remo was fixing to say next, Fawn suggested, “You could trade your narrow boat for a horse at the next town and ride back to Pearl Riffle overland.”
“That’s a stupid idea,” objected Barr. Failing