Passage - Lois McMaster Bujold [55]
Fawn hesitated, reluctant to reveal her ignorance. She had her suspicions. She was the married woman here, after all. “Bed boat?” she finally asked.
“Some of the girls who sleep with the boatmen for money follow the trade up and down the river in their own boats. They can slip away easier if the town mothers object, see, and they don’t have to split their pay with the tavern-keepers.”
Fawn wondered if Mama had known about this exotic river-hazard. “You ever meet one?”
“Time to time. Playing fiddle for the keelers pulling upriver, I met most every sort sooner or later. Well, not the worst; Papa didn’t work on those boats. Most of the girls are all right. Some take it up because they’re way down on their luck, but others seem to like it. Some are thieves who give the rest a bad name, same as some boatmen.” She grimaced.
By unspoken agreement, the topic was tabled as Whit waved and they waded out within earshot of the males again. Fawn wondered if Whit had heard yet about the bed boat. She couldn’t help thinking he’d be even more curious than she was. And he had money in his pocket, just now. She resolved not to mention it in front of him. Then she wondered if Lakewalker men from the camp ever snuck down there. Dag might know. And if she asked him straight out, he would likely tell her straight out, though she bet he wouldn’t bring up the subject.
She emptied Whit’s sack onto their coal pile as Berry emptied Bo’s and Hawthorn’s; Berry waded back out in the water to toss them again to the fellows. Whit grinned thanks through purple-blue lips. The shade was already creeping over this patch of bank as the sun sank, and Fawn rubbed her chilly legs together, wondering how long Berry and Bo meant to go on. Dag straightened up and turned his head; he bent one knee and lurched up to a seat on the stump. Fawn followed his gaze.
Coming down the track along the bank were three older Lakewalkers: two women and a man. One woman was dressed like a patroller, the other wore a woolen skirt and buckskin slippers decorated with dyed porcupine quills, and the man was tidy in a simple shirt and trousers, with hair in a very neat queue tied down his back, undecorated. His braid wasn’t shot with gray like the others’, but his face was not young. His left hand was bandaged. They all wore matching frowns.
They came to a halt in front of Dag. The patroller-looking woman said, “Dag Red-Blue whatever you are, we need a word with you.”
Dag opened his hand to indicate welcome to his patch of grass and tree roots.
As Berry came to Fawn’s side to stare, the patroller woman glanced at them both and jerked her head over her shoulder. “In private.”
Dag’s eyelids lowered, opened. “Very well.” He heaved to his feet. “I’ll be back in a bit, Spark, or I’ll find you at the Fetch.”
All the Lakewalker looks dismissed Berry and focused on Fawn, especially her left wrist. She wrapped her right hand around her wedding cord and lifted her chin. She expected Dag to introduce her, but he didn’t, merely giving her a touch to his temple in farewell, and a nod something between grave and grim. Did he know what this was all about? If he did, he sure hadn’t told her. He’d said nothing about his visit to the camp when he’d caught up with her yesterday, and in the flurry of news about the boat, Fawn hadn’t asked. She’d assumed he simply hadn’t found the friends he’d been looking for. Plainly, there was more to it. Fawn watched in concern as Dag trod up the river path after the frowning Lakewalkers.
With his groundsense locked down, Dag could not read the moods of the three Pearl Riffle Lakewalkers directly, but he hardly needed to. Amma Osprey and Nicie Sandwillow were plainly not happy, even more not-happy than when he’d left them yesterday. The man seemed shaken, his right hand protecting the bandaged left held to his chest. He bore no tool bag, but his cleanliness and bearing bespoke his craft.
Captain Osprey turned aside and climbed the bank through the trees till they were out of sight and earshot of anyone happening along the path. The three took