Passage - Lois McMaster Bujold [143]
“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.
20
Dag braced one knee on a fallen log, checked the seating of his bow in his wrist cuff, and locked the clamp. He opened himself for another quick cast around, cursing, not for the first time, his ground-sense