Lois Bujold - Passage

“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.”

Did Tanner mean for their sakes, or for Hod’s? It was hard to tell.

Truly, when they all stopped for lunch and to water and bait the horses, it seemed to Fawn that the lanky youth had little going for him. Hod’s dishwater hair was dull and limp and in need of a cut, his skin was bad, his teeth doubtful, and he moved in a habitual slouch. He was inarticulate to the point of muteness; her couple of attempts to say a friendly word to him threw him into complete confusion. He seemed outright afraid of Dag, and went wide around him. Fawn wasn’t even sure if Hod was his real name.