The skirted woman touched her lips. “Wait up. Are you also that same Dag Redwing who was just banished from Hickory Lake Camp for consorting with some farmer girl?”

Dag’s head shot up. “I was not banished! Where did you hear such a lie?”

“Well”—she waved a hand—“not banished, precisely. But the camp council circular didn’t make it sound like a happy outcome.”

Buying a moment to gather his wits and his temper, Dag touched his temple, and said stiffly, “You have the advantage of me, ma’am.”

The skirted woman gestured at herself. “Nicie Sandwillow. Pearl Riffle Camp council leader, this season.”

Therefore a senior tent head, that being the pool from which council members were selected by various sorts of rotations, depending on the camp. With the patrol’s camp captain always a permanent member. Dag wondered if the ferry boss was also a permanent member, here. It seemed likely. Making this morning’s inquiry doubly efficient, serving the patrol and the council at once. But it meant that one of Nicie Sandwillow’s tasks was to receive and pass along critical council news from around the hinterland of Oleana, just as Captain Osprey received patrol news. Dag said carefully, “The Hickory Lake council was deeply divided on my case—”

“So there was a charge.”

Dag overrode this. “Pakona Pike, our—Hickory Lake’s council leader this past summer—was not on the side favorable to my arguments. But I can’t believe she’d twist the facts that much.”

“No, not if the facts are that you came in alone, late from a leave, dragging some farmer girl with the pair of you wearing Lakewalker wedding braids that you’d somehow cooked up together, claiming she was your wife and not just your whore. The letter warns all camp councils to watch out for similar trickery.”

Grimly, Dag rolled up his left sleeve. “I say they’re valid cords, and so did a lot of others. Including Fairbolt Crow. See for yourself. Fawn made this one.”

A flicker of grounds touched him, felt the spark of Fawn’s live ground in her cord, drew back. The women looked nonplussed, the two sagging young patrollers confused. It was like the hearing at Hickory Lake all over again, and Dag was bitterly reminded of why he’d left.

“And Fawn isn’t just some farmer girl,” Dag went on, growing more heated. “It was her hand slew the Glassforge malice, with my knife. Or I wouldn’t be alive now to tell it. It was a scramble, I admit, but I can’t believe the tale you had was this distorted, because Saun knew the truth of it, and so did Reela.”

“Hm.” Amma Osprey rubbed her chin. “I believe the scramble part.”

Dag bit out, “This is beside the point. Do you have a spare knife to lend, or not?”

“Good question, Dag Redwing-Bluefield-whoever,” said Amma. “Are you still a patroller, or not?”

Dag hesitated. He could claim to be on the sick list, or pretend to be on long leave. Or disciplinary leave, they’d believe that! But in the midst of all these aggravating half-truths, he refused to lie. “No. I resigned. Although Fairbolt made it clear that if I ever wanted to un-resign, he’d find a place for me.”

“And your farmer, ah, woman?” asked Nicie Sandwillow.

“That was the sticking point. One of them.”

Amma eyed the gaping, hurting young patrollers, now leaning on each other and looking ready to cave on their feet. Dag was sorrier than ever for their witness of this, because Amma would certainly trim her judgment with an eye to making an impression on them. At least, Dag would never have missed such an opportunity, when he’d been a patrol leader. She said, “Such knives are bequeathed in trust for the patrol, specifically the Pearl Riffle patrol. I can’t very well ask the dead if they want to make an exception. As their guardian, it’s my duty to conserve them—especially as they seem to be needed here.”

Remo flinched.

Them, implying she was not down to her last primed knife. She might lend one and still not strip her patrol’s reserve bare. But not to me. Not today. Dag had the frustrating sense, watching her face set, that if he’d arrived with the same request yesterday, before this trouble with the boatmen had broken out over at Possum Landing, the balance of her decision might well have tipped the other way. He let his gaze cross the two miserable miscreants with new disfavor.

There were other sources, other Lakewalker camps downriver. He would simply have to try again elsewhere. “I see. Then I’ll not take more of your time, captain.” Dag touched his hand to his temple and withdrew.

Fifty paces up the slope from the Pearl Bend wharf boat, Fawn craned her neck as the wagons halted in front of a plank shed. It seemed to be trying to grow into a warehouse by budding, add-ons extending in all directions. Whit jumped down from the lead wagon to help Hod hobble over to a bench against the front wall, displacing a couple of idlers that Mape, after a prudent sobriety check, promptly hired to help unload his fragile cargo. To Fawn’s surprise, they only shifted the top layer of slat boxes from her wagon; after that, Whit climbed up with them and Tanner took the reins to turn the rig toward the river.

“Where are we going?” she asked.

Tanner nodded toward the ferryboat tied next to the wharf boat. It looked like a barn floor laid out on a barge, except for a pole sticking up on one side like a short, stubby mast. “Across the river, and up past the Riffle. This load goes upstream from Possum Landing.”

Well, Dag could doubtless find her even over there. Fawn went to Weft’s head to coax her up the broad gangplank, which rather resembled a barn door tossed on its side, while Whit did the same for Warp. The horses were dubious, but at last seemed convinced that it was only some sort of strange bridge, and did not disgrace themselves or their former owner by trying to bolt. The boredom of the lead pair also helped.

The stubby mast turned out to be a capstan; a thick hemp rope was wound about it a few times, high up, one end leading to a stout tree up the bank, the other, supported by a few floats, to a similar tree on the other side. Fawn was a little disappointed not to ride on the famous Lakewalker ferry, but watched with interest as the two Bend ferrymen stuck oak bars into holes on the capstan and started turning it. Whit, equally fascinated, volunteered to help and went to work pushing the squeaking post around, winding and unwinding the rope and slowly pulling the ferry across the river. The water seemed clear and calm to Fawn’s eye, but she jumped when a log floating just under the surface thumped into the side, and she was reminded that this was no quiet lake. Working the ferry might not seem so pleasant when the water was high or rough, or in rain or cold. From out here in the middle, the river looked bigger.

“How do the other boats get past the rope?” she asked Tanner, watching the big log catch, roll under the obstruction, right itself, and sluggishly proceed.

“The ferrymen have to take it down,” he said. “They haul it back and forth across the river with a skiff, usually, but with the river this low nothing’s going over the Riffle anyways, so they just leave it up.”

When the ferry nosed up to the far bank, the ferrymen ran out the gangplank on that end. She and Whit repeated their reassurances to the horses, and the rig rumbled safely, if noisily, onto dry land once more. They both clambered up next to Tanner as he turned the team onto a rutted track leading upstream.

Fawn sat up in anticipation as they topped a rise and the line of flatboats tied to the trees beyond Possum Landing came into view. They were as unlike the Lakewalkers’ graceful, sharp-prowed narrow boats as they could be, looking like shacks stuck on box crates, really. Ungainly. Some even had small fireplaces with stone chimneys, out of which smoke trickled. It was as if someone’s village had suddenly decided to run off to sea, and Fawn grinned at the vision of an escaped house waddling away from its astonished owners. People ran away from home all the time; why shouldn’t the reverse be true? On one of these, she and Dag would float all the way to Graymouth. All running away together, maybe. Her grin faded.