Lois Bujold: Passage

“Take ’em along,” said Dag.

“On a keelboat? There’s hardly room.”

“No, on a flatboat.”

“Oh.”

More busy silence. Whit set down the shaft with a click, and Dag opened one wary eye.

Whit said, “But Fawn’s mare’s in foal. You wouldn’t want her to drop her foal along the trail somewheres. I mean…wolves. Catamounts. Delay. Wouldn’t it be better to leave her here all comfy at West Blue and pick her up when you got back?”

“And what am I supposed to do, walk?” said Fawn in scorn.

“No, but see…suppose you left her here for Mama to ride, since she can’t ride Swallow. And suppose we each rode one of my team, instead. I’d been meaning to sell them in Lumpton next spring, but I bet down by those rivertowns I’d get a better price. Also Papa and Fletch wouldn’t be put to the trouble of feedin’ them all winter. And you’d save the cost of taking your pregnant horse on a boat ride she wouldn’t hardly appreciate anyhow.”

“How would I get back? Copper can’t carry us double, and my bags!”

“You could pick up another horse when you get down there to Graymouth.”

“Oh, so Dag’s supposed to pay for this, is he?”

“You could sell it again when you got back. That, plus the savings for not shipping your mare, you’d likely come out pretty near even. Or even ahead!”

Fawn huffed in exasperation. “Whit, you can’t come with us.”

“Only as far as the river!” His voice went wheedling. “And see, Mama, I wouldn’t be going off by myself—I’d be with Dag and all. Going out, anyhow, and coming back I’d know how to find my way home again.”

“With money burning a hole in your pocket till it dropped through onto the road, I suppose,” said Sorrel.

“Unless you met up with bandits like Fawn did,” said Tril. “Then you’d lose your money and your life.”

“Fawn’s going. No, worse—Fawn’s going again.”

Sorrel looked as if he wanted to say something like Fawn’s her husband’s business, now, but in light of his prior prying, couldn’t quite work up to it.

His drowsy brain forced into motion, Dag found himself considering not money matters, but safety. A Lakewalker husband and his farmer wife, alone in farmer country, made an odd couple indeed, and they’d already met more than one offended observer who might, had there been time, have taken stronger exception to the pairing. But suppose it were a Lakewalker husband, a farmer wife, and her farmer brother? Might Whit be a buffer for Dag, as well as another pair of eyes to watch out for Fawn? Because absent gods knew Dag couldn’t stay awake all the time. Or even another half-hour. He swallowed a yawn.

“You could fall into bad company, down on that big river,” Tril worried.

“Worse ’n Dag?” Whit inquired brightly.

Tactless, but telling. Sorrel and Tril gave Dag an appraising look; Dag shifted uncomfortably.

He had been brooding about the problems of Lakewalker-farmer divisions for months, without results that he could see, and here was Whit practically volunteering to be a patrol partner and tent-brother. If Dag turned the boy down, would he ever get another such offer? Whit hasn’t the first idea what it would entail.

Of course, neither do I.

“Dag…” said Fawn uneasily.

“Fawn and I will talk about it. As you say, we’re not leaving tomorrow.”

“Dag could show me his blight patch, on the way past Glassforge,” Whit offered eagerly. “I could be—”

Dag raised and firmed his voice. “Fawn and I will talk it over. We’ll talk to you after.”

Whit subsided, with difficulty.

Fawn eyed Dag in deepening curiosity. When he rose to go upstairs, she set aside her arrow-making and followed.

She closed the door of their room behind her, and he took her hand and swung her to a seat on the edge of the twins’ beds, now pushed together. There was still a sort of padded ridge down the middle, but on the soft, clean linens, it wasn’t at all hard to slide over in the night. Rather like a miniature snowbank, but warmer. Much warmer.

“Dag,” Fawn began in dismay, “what in the world were you thinking? You give Whit the least encouragement, and he’ll be badgering us to death to be let tail along.”

He put his arm around her and hugged her up close to his right side. “I’m thinking…I took this road to learn how to talk to farmers. To try some other way of being than lords and servants—or malices and slaves—or kept apart. Tent-brother is sure another way.”

Her fair brow furrowed. “You’re doing that Lakewalker thing again. Trying to join your bride’s tent, be a new brother to her kin.”

He tilted his head. “I suppose I am. You know I mean to style myself Dag Bluefield.”

She nodded. “Your family at Hickory Lake—what’s left of ’em—I didn’t get the sense they exactly nourished your heart even before you sprung me on ’em. Your brother acted like giving you one good word would cost him cash money. And you acted like it was normal.”

“Hm.” He half-lidded his eyes and lowered his head to nibble at her hair. He pressed a stray strand between his lips, rubbing its fine grain.

“Are you that family-hungry, Dag? ’Cause I admit I’m close to full-up, just now.”

He pulled her down so that they lay face-to-face, smiling seriously. “Then you shouldn’t mind sharing.”

“Oh, many’s the time I wished I could give Half-Whit away!”

His lips twitched. He brushed the dark curls from her forehead and kissed along her eyebrows.

“And there’s another thing,” she added severely, although her hand strayed to map his jaw. “Camping in the evening, have you thought how fast it would blight the mood to have him sitting there on the other side of the fire, leering and cracking jokes?”

Dag shrugged. “Camp privacy’s not a new problem for patrollers.”

“Collecting firewood, bathing in the river, scouting for squirrels? So you told me. There’s a whole code, but Whit doesn’t know it.”

“Then I’ll just have to teach him Lakewalker.”

“Yeah? Best bring your hickory stick, for rapping on his skull.”

“I’ve trained denser young patrollers.”

“There are denser young patrollers?” She leaned back, so her eyes would bring his face into focus, likely. “How do they walk upright?”

He sniggered, but answered, “Their partners help ’em along. Feels sort of like a three-legged race some days, I admit. The idea is to keep ’em alive long enough to learn better. It works.” His smile faded a little. “Mostly.”

Her slim fingers combed back his hair, side and side, and pressed his head between them in a little shake. “You’re still thinking Lakewalker. Not farmer.”

“This walk we’re on is for changing that, though. I figure if I can practice on Whit…I might have more margin for mistakes.”

“We say two’s company, three’s a crowd. I swear with you it’s two’s partners, three’s a patrol.”

The fingers moved down to his shirt buttons; he aimed kisses at them in passing, and said, “I’ve been watching and listening, these past weeks, and not just all about how to herd beans. There’s no more head-space for Whit in this house than there was for you. It’s all for Fletch and Clover, and their children. Maybe if he was let out under a higher ceiling, he could straighten up a bit. With help, even grow—less wrenchingly than you had to.”

She shivered. “I wouldn’t wish that even on Whit.” Her smile crept back. “So are you picturing yourself as a tent-brother—or a tent-father? Old patroller.”

“Behave, child,” he returned, mock-sternly. He tried to pay back the favor with the buttons, one-handed, and, benefiting from much recent practice, succeeded.