Passage tsk-3 Read online

  Whit patted his mount’s neck. “There, there, Warp. Don’t let those big bruisers discourage you. Nobody’s going to make you pull a ton of bricks.” His face rose to stare after the receding wagon. “That’d be a life, though, wouldn’t it, Fawn? I bet some of those wagons go as far as Tripoint or Silver Shoals or, or who knows where? Think of it! You’d get to see everywhere, talk to the whole world, and get paid for it. Sleep in a different place every night, I bet.”

  “The novelty of that wears off,” Dag advised, sounding amused.

  Scorning this with a look that said Old-people talk! Whit went on, “I never thought of it, but I bet a town like Glassforge needs lots of horses, too. And drivers. I know how to drive a team. I wonder if I could get me one of those fancy jackets in town? I wonder if…” He trailed off, but Fawn had a clear sense of the mill wheels continuing to turn in his head, even if he’d temporarily disconnected them from his mouth.

  I bet you’re never going back to West Blue, Fawn thought. Any more ’n I am. She grinned in anticipation of showing off Glassforge to Whit, as pleased as if she’d invented the place herself, and wondered if this was anything like the pleasure Dag took in her. Dag never seemed to tire of showing her new things…no. It was a little more complicated than that. In her open delight, she made the world new to him again, and so drove his weariness away. It seemed a fair trade.

  Whit was gratifyingly amazed by the hotel in Glassforge, three stories high, built of local brick softened by trails of ivy, “bigger,” as he cried, “than Uncle Hawk’s new barn!” The corners of Dag’s mouth tucked up as Fawn earnestly explained to Whit how it was that patrols and couriers were always allowed to stay there for free, on account of some old malice the Lakewalkers had put down in these parts in the time of the present owner’s papa, which Whit thought a very good deal.

  Fawn was secretly uncertain if the deal would extend to an ex-patroller of dodgy status traveling privately with a tail of farmer relatives, but when they dismounted in the hotel’s stable yard, she found she was still remembered from the past summer as the farmer heroine who’d slain the malice. She was welcomed by name by the excited horse boys and made much of by the owner’s wife when they went inside. Even more agreeable than having the best available rooms instantly offered up to them was the way Whit’s eyes grew wide as he took in her local fame. He didn’t even crack a joke about it.

  They hauled their bags upstairs to their chambers. By request, Fawn and Dag’s room was the same they had slept in before, full of happy memories. Better, it had a nice thick plank door between it and Whit’s room, with an oak bar that promised a night free of brothers, mosquitoes, or any other interruptions. Fawn was left with an hour before supper to run around and say hello to all the friends she’d made here in the summer: seamstresses, chambermaids, the cook and scullions. Whit trailed amiably. Fawn wasn’t quite sure who she was showing off to which, as several of the younger girls perked up no end at Whit, alarming him enough to make him very polite. The charm he unleashed upon Sal the cook was pure stomach-interest, though, as she was both married and motherly.

  “Sal let me do sitting-down chores while I was getting better and waiting for Dag to finish some patroller duties,” Fawn explained, inhaling deeply of the mouthwatering aromas of the hotel’s kitchen. Pots bubbled, a roast turned on a spit, pies cooled; a scullion ran a hopeful horse boy back outside to wait for scraps till after the patrons were fed.

  “I must have shelled ten thousand peas, but it kept me from going stir-crazy.”

  “You were so pale, at first!” agreed Sal. “I think my cookin’ helped put those roses back in your cheeks.” She patted one, leaving a smudge of flour.

  “I think it did, too,” said Fawn, brushing at the flour and smiling.

  “That ’n Dag.”

  Sal’s smile thinned a bit, and she glanced appraisingly at Whit. “So that patroller fellow with the missin’ hand must have got you home all right, after all.”

  Fawn nodded.

  “We weren’t too sure on him,” Sal admitted. “Some of us was afraid he’d gone and beguiled you, like they say Lakewalkers can. Though it’s true the ones we get here are usually pretty well-behaved. How they carry on with each other being not our business.”

  Fawn raised her chin. “If there was any beguiling going on, I’d say it was mutual. We married each other.”

  “He never!” said Sal in astonishment.

  Fawn gestured at her brother. “Whit stood witness.”

  “Yep,” said Whit. “They said their promises in the parlor in West Blue in front of the whole family, and signed the family book, and everything.”

  “Oh, honey…” Sal hesitated, looking troubled. “He was a right disturbin’ fellow, the way all patrollers are, though it was plain he’d took a shine to you, but…I thought better o’ him than that. Don’t you two know that Lakewalkers don’t recognize marriages to us folks? I’m afraid he was pulling the wool over your eyes, and your family’s, too.”

  “No, he didn’t,” said Fawn. “We were married Lakewalker-style at the same time—we wove and swapped our binding strings as sound as any Lakewalker couple ever did. See?” She held out her left wrist, wrapped in the dark braid, and wriggled it to let the gold beads on the cord-ends bounce and glimmer, showing it off for the third or fourth time in this evening’s rounds.

  “Is that what those are?” said Sal doubtfully. “I’ve seen them hair bracelets on some of the patrollers here, time and time.”

  “Wedding cords, yes.”

  Whit said, “It’s like they got married twice over. I don’t think Dag was taking any chances by that time. I will say, when he ties a knot, it stays tied.”

  Sal’s eyes grew as round as her mouth. “And his people accepted it?”

  Fawn tossed her head. “I won’t claim his kin were all happy, but they didn’t say we weren’t married.”

  “Well, I never!”

  The serving boys bounced in, the scullions called, and Sal had to set aside her fascinated pursuit of this gossip in favor of getting supper ready. She shooed her guests out of her kitchen with visible regret.

  In the corridor to the dining room, Whit paused in puzzlement. “Fawn…”

  “Hm?”

  “Dag’s kin did accept those cords of yours, right? They didn’t claim you were just, um…running around together, right?”

  Fawn lowered her voice. “In truth, there were four or five opinions on that. Some took ’em for true, some accused us of trickery, and some didn’t care nohow about the cords, they wanted to deny us any-road. They weren’t just arguing with Dag, mind; they were arguing with each other as well. We kind of set the cat amongst the pigeons with those cords. When we left, I expect it took the urgency out of the debate.” Truly, Dag hadn’t wanted to force a decision, lest it become a quick and simplifying no.

  “These rules of theirs—do they make them camp by camp, or everywhere at once?”

  “Camp by camp, but the camps stay in touch with one another. Couriers carry patrol reports, plus letters between the camp councils. And folks’ personal letters. And lots of gossip, Dag says. Young patrollers exchange between camps to train up, and parties travel with trade goods. And folks go on visits to kin, sometimes. So news has ways of getting around. Lakewalkers don’t let themselves get cut off from each other.” She frowned. “I do wonder how Dag will go on, away from his people. That’s not natural, for a Lakewalker. They made us both plenty mad, but…I do wonder.”

  “Huh,” said Whit.

  Whit must have made a good impression on Sal, because the portions soon set before the three of them at the dinner table were generous. After they had all pretty much foundered on the glut, Whit went off to the kitchen to compliment her. He came back full of a scheme to go reconnoiter Glassforge after dark, which Dag—Fawn was grateful to see—had the sense to discourage.

  “It’s been a long day,” Fawn seconded. “Dag’s still recovering, you know.” Dag smiled at her from lidded eyes tha
t looked anything but sleepy, dark and a bit glittery, and she dimpled back at him.

  “Oh, yeah,” said Whit vaguely. “And you weren’t doing too well yourself, earlier. Tomorrow, then.” He contented himself with going off to visit the horses and maybe chat with the hotel stable’s horse boys.

  Fawn and Dag went straight to bed, but not to sleep. Where Fawn made the astonishing and delightful discovery that Dag’s ghost hand was starting to come back, at least enough to do a few blissful, blushful things with. Fawn’s opinion of the medicine maker who had predicted such a recovery went up several notches. They did hear Whit come in, mainly because he knocked on the wall and bade them good night. Fawn smothered a giggle as Dag raised his head and drawled back similar good wishes—very blandly, considering his position just then.

  The next morning after breakfast the three of them strolled to the town center, where a street off the market square led down to the little river that flowed past Glassforge toward the Grace. Tributary creeks behind dams fed several mill wheels, though at the moment the dry weather, a boon to harvesters and road travelers all over Oleana, had left the water so low in the main stream that only lightly loaded skiffs and narrow boats could take away the handiwork of the town’s artisans. The autumn air was acrid from the wood smoke and coal smoke rising from a forge, a couple of iron furnaces, a wagon-wright’s, a big smithy, a pottery yard, and, of course, the town’s celebrated glass-makers.

  At one of these, as Fawn had hoped, they found Sassa Clay, one of her best friends from the summer’s misadventures with the malice. Red-haired Sassa seemed equally delighted to see them, and pleased to meet Whit. He had a refreshing masculine disinterest in marriage customs of any kind, but was very keen on glass and local trade, proudly leading a tour of his glassworks for the new audience. Sassa was not much older than Whit, and the two young men hit it off so well Fawn had no guilt about leaving them to each other’s company after lunch and retiring with Dag back to the hotel for—he said—a nap. It wasn’t a lie; she was sure a nap would ensue eventually.

  She became concerned when Whit did not show up at the hotel for dinner, but Dag sensibly pointed out that Sassa knew perfectly well how to find them here if there were any emergencies to report, and Fawn relaxed. She wondered if she might parlay their two planned nights of rest here into three, but Dag was of the opinion that the dry spell couldn’t last much longer, and truly, the night’s chill breathed of the coming change.

  Whit returned so late, they were actually sleeping. Fawn woke muzzily in the dark to hear him clumping around on attempted tiptoe, and the creak of his bed as he climbed into it. She cuddled back into the warmth of Dag’s grip, reassured.

  She was less reassured when she went out to the stable in the frosty dawn to tell the horse boys to have Warp and Weft ready after breakfast—Dag would saddle Copperhead himself—only to find the team gone. And so, she discovered when she checked his room, was Whit. She muffled her panic when she spotted his saddlebags still in a heap by his bed. Descending the staircase wondering whether to drag out Dag and his groundsense for a search, she met Whit breezing back in through the hotel’s stable-yard door.

  “Where have you been?” demanded Fawn in some exasperation.

  “Where are the horses?”

  “Sold ’em,” said Whit smugly.

  “What? We still have two days of riding ahead of us!”

  “I know that. I’ve made arrangements.” At her look of disbelief, he added in a stung tone, “I sold Warp and Weft to Sassa’s boss. He gave me a fair price.”

  “I thought you said you were going to try that coal hauler. On your way back,” she added pointedly.

  “Yeah, well…I liked the glassworks’ stable better. Smelled cleaner, y’know? Plus, you have to figure—a glass wagon isn’t going to race their horses, or overload them. They’re pretty much bound to travel slow and careful.” He nodded in satisfaction, apparently picturing his team in this gentle labor.

  This appeal could not fail to reach Fawn, but she raked her fingers through her hair nonetheless. “Yes, but—how are we supposed to get to the river? Load all the bags on Copperhead and lead him?”

  “No! Don’t be stupid. I made a deal. Sassa’s boss is sending two wagonloads of glass goods down to the river crossing for the Silver Shoals trade. I get to help drive, and load and unload, and you get to ride for free. Dag can tag alongside on Copperhead.”

  Fawn hesitated in new confusion. “So…are you going to come back and work as a teamster for the glassworks, or what?”

  Whit shrugged. “They have fellows for that. I don’t know. But anyway, you and Dag have to hurry up. The wagons are all loaded and about ready to leave. They want to catch the light, with the days shortening.”

  And so Fawn found herself hustled through what she’d planned as a leisurely breakfast, and forced to make hasty farewells to all the folks at the hotel. Dag, old patroller that he was, adjusted to the surprise departure without effort, though he did refuse to be hurried shaving. The extra bags were only piled across Copperhead’s saddle long enough to lead him down into town. The well-sprung freight wagon, with Fawn clinging atop a pile of straw-stuffed slat boxes, headed south out of Glassforge before the morning sun had melted last night’s frost from the weeds lining the ditches.

  They passed the sand-pit where men were digging the fine white sand that was the basis of the town’s famous industry. From the loads being hauled away, Fawn guessed Warp and Weft might have some heavier work to do than delivering finished glass, though for the moment they were hitched on as wheelers to this very wagon—on trial, she suspected. Was Whit on trial for future employment, too? The lead wagon of their little train was being driven by a grizzled fellow named Mape, setting as decorous a pace as Whit had envisioned, but which made her wonder just how long it was going to take them to reach the ferry. He had a skinny youth up beside him, Hod, who seemed to be there to help with the horses and load and unload, like Whit. Their own team of four was handled by a comfortably middle-aged man named Tanner, who, Fawn soon learned, was a something-cousin of the owners of the glassworks, and who had a wife and children back in Glassforge.

  Whit’s questions about the glass business got them over any mutual shyness pretty quick. Fawn edged forward to listen; Dag rode nearby, so quiet and self-contained you might not notice he was listening, too. When Whit paused, Tanner, with a glance over his shoulder at her, took a little breath and asked her about the malice she and Dag had slain this summer. Fawn blinked, first at the realization that his question had been hovering on his tongue for a while, and had taken him some effort to spit out, and then at the oddity of anyone having to work up courage to talk to her. But she answered him steadily, giving him the simplified version, including, after a brief look to Dag, an equally simplified version of how sharing knives worked. This parted Tanner’s lips and sent his brows halfway to his hairline; he glanced aside at Dag but shied from speaking to him directly. Whit chimed in with a vivid description of the blight and a recommendation amounting to a sales pitch to visit it.

  “I guess I should,” said Tanner, shaking his head in wonder. “I didn’t have family directly involved with that mess, the way poor Sassa was caught up, but I’d heard a lot about it—except the very center. It all makes more sense, now. Hope you don’t mind. I didn’t like to ask you about it in front of Mape up there”—he nodded toward the back of the grizzled teamster, safely out of earshot through both distance and the wagons’ rumbling—“on account of he lost his wife’s nephew in the ruckus, and has feelin’s.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Fawn.

  “Was he ground-ripped, like?” inquired Whit, morbidly curious.

  Tanner looked grim. “I think that would have been easier, all told. He was one of the ones took up by the bandits and pressed into their gang. It was a bad time, after, sorting out who was really a bandit and who was tranced by the blight bogle. In the end it was locals got pardoned and strangers got hanged, mostly, which I don’t think was
always right. But Mape’s nephew was killed outright by the Lakewalker patrollers, in the fight when they caught up with the bandits. Which maybe saved the family a hangin’, but I’m not sure Mape’s wife sees it that way.”

  “Oh,” said Whit.

  Fawn swallowed. “Was he a sort of dun-blond boy?”

  “No, dark-haired.”

  Fawn let out her breath in secret relief. Not the one Dag had shot in front of her, then, saving him from a hanging for sure. Dag, riding alongside, had gone quiet—quieter—and expressionless, and it occurred to her that maybe her assailant wasn’t the only one whose evil career Dag had personally ended on that patrol. He had been in on the attack on the bandit camp the night before, she knew, which was how he’d happened to be trailing her kidnappers in the first place. He’d run low on arrows. Some must have found targets…

  “Thanks for the warning,” she said to Tanner. “I shouldn’t like to step on anyone’s feelings.” He nodded cordially enough. Glancing at the skinny youth beside Mape, riding along with his back rounded and his hands dangling between his knees, she added, “So what about Hod? Was he caught up in it all?”

  “No, he was way too much of a homebody.” After a long pause, Tanner added, “Hod’s a bit of a sad sack, if you want my opinion. He was an orphan, living with his older sister, till her husband threw him out not long back for laziness and—he said—thievin’. Sassa Clay took a pity on him and let him put up in the glassworks’ stable to look after the hosses. Which he does do middlin’-well, I admit, despite us finding him sleeping in the straw half the time.”

  “Will he work up to driver?” asked Fawn, wondering if this was Whit’s competition for the coveted job.

  “Hard to say. He’s not real bright. Mape wouldn’t let him touch the reins of his team, for sure.” Tanner lowered his voice. “I’m not sayin’ the boy’s vicious, mind, but it’s true about the thievin’. I’ve seen him sneaking. Only food, so far. Missus Clay slips him extra scraps, now and then, but it doesn’t seem to have stopped him. I’m afraid he’s gonna work up to something bigger someday soon and get into real trouble. So, um…watch your bags.”