Passage - Lois McMaster Bujold [85]
Dag was then treated to an entirely unexpected half-hour of listening to a lot of farmers sitting around over plates of crumbs seriously discussing problems of Lakewalker-farmer beguilement not as dark magical threat but as something more like navigating a channel that had just had all its snags and sand bars shifted by a flood. Save for Fawn and Whit, their ideas were confused and their suggestions mostly useless; it was their tones of voice that subtly heartened him. Remo, hearing mainly the confusion, at first folded his arms and looked plagued, but then was drawn despite himself into what Dag suspected were his first halting efforts to explain Lakewalker disciplines to outsiders.
The party broke up for bed with the woes of the world unsolved, but Dag felt strangely satisfied nonetheless.
Fawn, passing Hod, caught him on the shoulder, and said, “You know, you could have come out and asked for a turn on Whit’s bow, too, same as Hawthorn. Try it next time.”
Hod looked startled; his lips peeled back in a grin over his crooked teeth, and he bobbed his head in a gratified nod. Had he just needed an invitation? What brooding over a purely imagined exile had led him to the wall? What distress was so painful that such a brutal self-harm seemed a better choice? Dag, wondering, managed to add a, “Good night, Hod. Sleep hard,” to Fawn’s shrewd words, which won another gratified head-bob and a flush of pleasure. Following Fawn forward, Dag blew out his breath in contemplation.
After calling Hawthorn to come collect his raccoon, who after its nap now wanted to romp, they curled around each other in their warming nest. Fawn murmured, “How’s your oat doing?”
Surprised, Dag rubbed his left arm. “I’d almost forgotten it. Huh. It seems to be converted already. Hardly anything left there but a little warm spot. Maybe tomorrow I’ll try ten oats.”
“I was thinking, two.”
“Five?” He hesitated. “I think I’m glad you talked me out of that tree.”
“Uh-huh,” she said dryly. He could feel her sleepy smile against his shoulder. She added after a moment, “You really got Remo going tonight. If only we could get him to quit confusing farmers with their livestock, I think he’d be a decent sort.”
“Is he that bad? He doesn’t mean ill.”
“I didn’t think he did. He’s just…full of Lakewalkerish habits.”
“Or he was, before he got tipped out of his cradle. I ’spect our river trip isn’t quite the rebellion he thought he was signing up for.”
She snickered, her breath warm in the hollow of his skin.
Dag said more slowly, “He was just an ordinary patroller, before his knife got broken. But if ordinary folks can’t fix the world, it’s not going to get fixed. There are no lords here. The gods are absent.”
“You know, it sounds real attractive at first, but I’m not sure I’d want lords and gods fixing the world. Because I think they’d fix it for them. Not necessarily for me.”
“There’s a point, Spark,” he whispered.
She nodded, and her eyes drifted shut. His stayed open for rather a long while.
13
To the excitement of everyone aboard—although Fawn thought that Dag and Bo concealed it best—the Fetch approached Silver Shoals around noon. It was another gray, chilly day, promising but not delivering rain. Climbing to her mid-roof perch again, Fawn was glad for her jacket.
On the north bank of the river lay a village and ferry landing, which Remo at his sweep eyed uncertainly. “Is that Silver Shoals? It’s four times the size of Pearl Bend!”
“Oh, that’s not the town,” said Berry, leaning on her steering oar to keep the flatboat mid-channel. “That’s just a road crossing. Wait’ll we get around this bluff and the next curve.” She did shade her eyes and frown at the water-gauge pole sticking up near the landing. “River’s falling again. I think we’ll take the Shoals while we still can, and tie up below. I don’t want to get caught above for another