Passage - Lois McMaster Bujold [154]
Fawn let Dag sleep for closer to three hours; he woke on his own when the Fetch pulled away from shore. Stumbling out to the kitchen, he ran a hand through his bent hair, and asked, “What’s been happening?”
“Not much,” she said, passing him a mug of tea. “Everybody decided to move their boats around to the cave landing. Berry, Whit, and Hod are topside.” She gestured upward with her thumb. “I sent Hod and Remo out to clean Crane up a while back.”
Dag’s brows bent, whether in bewilderment or disapproval she was not sure.
She explained, “It was more for us than him. Getting paralyzed like that loosed his bowels and bladder, seemingly. He was stinkin’ up Berry’s boat. Besides…even corpses get washed before burying.”
He nodded glumly. She ran him out onto the back deck to wash up, took his bloodied clothes to soak in a bucket, and handed him fresh ones. The day was turning pale blue as the weak sun climbed, not so much warming up as thinning the chill. Since his hand was still shaking, she also helped him shave, a skill she’d acquired that time his arm had been broken, just before their marriage. Hot food and a cleanup were worth at least a couple hours of the sleep he hadn’t got, she figured.
Their rattling around woke Barr from his own nap; Remo had been lying in his bunk but not sleeping, and he too rose to join them.
“I have to question Crane,” Dag repeated. He nodded to the patrollers. “You two had best sit in. A quorum of sorts.”
“I want to hear that tale, too,” said Fawn.
He shook his head. “It’s like to be nasty, Spark. I would spare you if I could.”
“But you can’t,” she pointed out, which made him wince. Feeling pressed by his dismay, she struggled to explain. “Dag…I’ll never be a fighter. I’m too little. My legs are too short to outrun most fellows. The only equal weapon I’ll ever have is my wits. But without knowing things, my wits are like a bow with no arrows. Don’t leave me disarmed.”
After a bleak moment, he ducked his chin in assent. When he’d finished swallowing down his breakfast and his tea, they all followed him out onto the front deck. The Snapping Turtle was out ahead, approaching the crook of the Elbow, and the keelboat from Silver Shoals trailed them at some distance. The Fetch seemed very far from any shore, running down this stretch of swollen river.
Crane was laid out—like a funeral, Fawn couldn’t help thinking—in Remo’s spare shirt, covered by a blanket and with another folded under his head. His arms lay flaccid along his sides, nerveless feet to the bow. Dag settled down cross-legged next to him. Tidying up the two men first had lent this encounter a curious formality, as though they were couriers from distant hinterlands meeting to exchange news.
Even Crane seemed to feel it, or at least he was no longer trying to bite folks as he had when he’d first been washed. Fawn wondered if his several hours of being stepped past and ignored like a pile of old laundry had felt as weird for him as it had for everyone else. And then she wondered if Dag had arranged it that way on purpose, the way he’d left Barr without food to help tame him.
Fawn dragged the bench forward a little behind Crane and settled on it out of his direct view. But however mangled his ground and groundsense, he had to know she was back there. Barr leaned against the pen fence across from Dag, overlooking the captive; Remo sat at Crane’s feet.
“So what’s your real name?” Dag began. “Your camp? How’d you come to be alone?”
“Did you lose your partner?” Barr asked.
“Did you desert?” asked Remo.
Dag continued, “Or were you banished?”
Crane pressed his lips together and glowered at his interrogators.
“One of the prisoners told me he was an Oleana patroller,” Remo put in uncertainly.
Silence.
“If that’s the case,” said Dag, “and he’s a banished man, then he’s likely Something Crane Log Hollow.” Crane’s head jerked, and Dag’s lips twisted in