Passage - Lois McMaster Bujold [47]
“But you aren’t up to anything.” Whit squinted over his shoulder.
“You sure it isn’t just the hook?”
Dag set his teeth. “Quite sure. Don’t you remember what you thought, first time Fawn brought me into your kitchen at West Blue?”
Whit blinked in an effort of recollection. “Well, I suppose I thought you were a pretty strange fellow for my sister to drag in. And tall, I do remember that.”
“Were you afraid?”
“No, not particularly.” Whit hesitated. “Reed and Rush were, I think.”
“Indeed.”
Whit’s eyes shifted; the mob of flatties on the boat roof was gradually settling back down. “This feels creepy, y’know?”
“Yes.”
“Huh.” Whit’s dark brows drew in. Thinking? Dag could hope.
“What did you hear up at the goods-shed about the fight last night?” Dag asked.
“Oh, yeah, that was lucky for us!”
“What?” said Dag, astonished. His steps slowed.
Whit waved a hand. “It seems two fellows from the Fetch got roped into it by some of their friends, jumping some local Lakewalker they were mad at. When the ferrywomen and a bunch of other Lakewalkers came to break it up, they run off scared, along with some girl and her beau. The other three was in no shape for runnin’ and are back on their boats now. But it means Boss Berry needs two stout fellows to pull the broad-oars.” Whit pointed to Dag and himself, grinned, and held up two fingers. “And Fawn to cook,” he added cheerily.
“Let me get this straight,” said Dag. “You’ve volunteered me—and Fawn—as flatboat crew?”
“Yeah! Isn’t it great?” said Whit. Dag was just about to blister him with an explanation of how not-great it was, when he added, “It was Fawn’s idea, really,” and Dag let his breath huff out unformed.
On his next breath, Dag managed, “Do you have any idea how to man a flatboat sweep?”
“No, but I reckoned you would, and Berry and Bo said they’d teach me.”
It wasn’t exactly Dag’s vision of the marriage trip he’d promised Fawn—or himself, for that matter. It wasn’t just the work, which Whit plainly underestimated. Dag was still dragging from his encounter with Hod, though it wasn’t his bodily strength that had suffered. But he remembered the recuperative effects of the harvest, and was given pause. He said more cautiously, “Did you tell this boat boss I’m a Lakewalker?”
“Uh…I don’t remember as it came up,” Whit admitted uneasily.
Dag sighed. “Was he wearing a pot on his head?”
“Her head, and no. What kind of pot? Why?”
Dag’s terse summary of Barr and Remo’s jape surprised a shout of laughter from Whit. “Oh, that’s ripe! No, the loaders at the goods-shed didn’t tell me that part! I wonder if they was some of the pot-pated ones?”
“Not so ripe in the result,” said Dag. “One of the patrollers was wearing his sharing knife last night, which he should not have been, and it was broken in the fight. The Pearl Riffle Lakewalkers are pretty upset about it today.”
Whit squinted. “Is that bad?”
Dag groped for a comparison. “Suppose…suppose you and Sunny Sawman and his friends got into a drunken brawl in the village square of West Blue, and in the tumble one of you knocked over your aunt Nattie and killed her. Gone in a moment. That’s just about how bad.”
“Oh,” said Whit, daunted.
“I expect those patrollers feel as bad as you would, the morning after.” Dag frowned. “I wouldn’t imagine the friends of those flatties who are laid up feel too kindly toward stray Lakewalkers just now, either.” He sighed. Well, one way or another, they needed a boat out of Pearl Riffle, come the rise. Which couldn’t come too soon.
And here, evidently, was the boat in question.
Fawn—at last!—stood in the bow talking with a tall, blond girl in a practical homespun shirt, skirt, and leather vest, her sleeves rolled up on slim but strappy-muscled arms. She had a nice wide smile, tinged, as she looked down at Fawn, with a touch of that same excited-to-be-making-new-friends air as Whit. Fawn looked equally pleased. Dag tried not to feel old. In a pen to one side of the bow, a boy knelt milking a goat. He had the same straw-straight