Passage - Lois McMaster Bujold [158]
His glance met Fawn’s startled one; his lids fell, rose. Yes, she thought, Dag would know all about affinity. Barr and Remo were both looking at him with some misgiving after these peculiar statements. Fawn didn’t blame them. An even stranger look lingered in Crane’s face, as if it shocked him to find there was something still in the world for him to want—and it was in his enemy’s hand to give or withhold. Wonder grew in Fawn, winding with her horror. She’d expected Crane to say, Blight you all, and let the malices take the world. Not Yes, I beg for some last share in this.
As if testing his fortune in disbelief, Crane growled blackly, “We made better sport in the cave. Would it give you a thrill, big man, to kill me with your own hand?”
Dag’s gaze flicked down. “I already did. All we’re doing now is debating the funeral arrangements.” He leaned on his hand and pushed himself up with a tired grunt. He was finished with his questions, evidently, although Barr and Remo looked as though they wanted to ask a dozen more. Not necessarily of Crane.
“Captain No-camp?” Crane called as Dag started to turn away.
Dag looked back down.
“Bury my bones.”
Dag hesitated, gave a short nod. “As you will.”
Fawn followed him to the kitchen, where he drew the bone knife from its sheath and hung the cord around his neck. He made no move to hand either back to Remo.
“Scoop up a kettle of river water and put it on the fire for me, Spark. I want to boil this knife clean of its old groundwork before we reach the cave landing.”
After the Fetch moored above the mouth of the bandit cave, Crane was removed on a makeshift litter of blankets stretched between two keelboat poles borrowed from the nearby Snapping Turtle. Heads turned and murmurs rose both from boatmen and roped bandits as he was carried past. He shut his eyes, possibly pretending to be unconscious, an escape of sorts; the only one, Fawn trusted, that he would have. Dag followed, but was seized on almost at once by Bearbait and one of the Raintree hunters, who dragged him off to the cave to look at the hurt men again, or maybe at more hurt men.
Wain’s lieutenant, Saddler, tramped down the stony slope and hailed Berry.
“We found a slew of boats tied up behind that island over there,” he told her, with a wave at the opposite shore, the same level leafless woods that lined most of the river along here, save for the weathered ridge that backed the cave and shaped the Elbow. Only the—relative—narrowness of the channel gave a clue to a river-wise eye that it was an island.
“Wain wanted to know if you could pick out your papa’s. Or name any of the others, for that matter.”
“If the Briar Rose is back there, I suppose I ought to look,” Berry agreed halfheartedly. She glanced at Fawn. “You come with me?”
Fawn nodded. It had to feel to Berry like being taken to look at a body dragged from the river, to see if it was a missing kinsman. You’d want a friend to go with you.
“I’ll come, too…if you want,” Whit offered cautiously.
A silent nod. Berry’s mouth was strained, her eyes gray and flat. It was hard to read gratitude in her face, though Fawn thought some might be hidden there. It was hard to read anything in her face, really.
Saddler and another strong-armed keeler rowed them across in a skiff. Paths threaded between the trees and across the island, wet and squelchy underfoot, as though the river had recently overtopped the banks and left a promise to return. Fawn’s shoes were soaked through before they reached the other side. This channel was narrower, choked with fallen trees and other drifted debris.
Up and down the shore, derelict boats were tied, both keels and flats. A few curious boatmen were poking around in them. Some boats in better condition looked as though they’d been in the process of having their original names scraped away and replaced by new ones, or other identifying marks altered. Others had sprung leaks and settled into the mud. The newest captures were tied at the top end, upstream, and