“What should I do?” Fawn whispered.

“Stay here, till I find out what this is all about.”

He padded softly back past the piles of cargo and the bunks, careful to wake no snoring sleepers. Fawn barely heard the creak of the back hatch open and close.

The oil lantern burning low on the kitchen table was clever Tripoint handiwork, a glass vase protected by a wire cage mounted on a metal reservoir, with a metal hat and wire handle above. As he slipped past, Dag plucked it up. He eased out the back hatch and closed the door before hanging the lantern on the bent nail and turning the valve key to brighten the flame. He peered out over the water. Any moon or stars were veiled by the overcast sky, and the lamplight reflected off the inky surface of the river in snaky orange ripples.

In a few moments, the ripples fluttered and the lines of light broke up as a dark shape emerged from the darker shadows. Dag made out Remo’s wet hair, then his paler face as he turned again and stroked toward the rear of the Fetch. His left arm, still scored with stitches, was up out of the water towing a makeshift raft, some driftwood hastily lashed together with vines and willow withies. Atop the raft sat folded saddlebags, and atop them a cloth bundle. Remo swam up under the Fetch’s rudder oar, and gasped, “Please…please will you take these?”

If the boy had swum from the opposite shore in this weather, he had to be chilled to the bone and close to exhaustion, youth or no youth. Dag raised his brows, but bent over the back rail, grasped the cloth bundle, and heaved it onto the deck. Ah, Remo’s clothes and boots, of course. Then the saddlebags, containing, from the weight of them, the rest of his life’s treasures. Dag grunted, but set them by the first bundle. He turned to watch Remo trying to lift himself up along the rudder pole on shaking arms, only to slide back. Dag sighed, leaned out, extended his hand, and helped pull the shivering young patroller up over the back rail as well. The abandoned raft ticked against the rudder and drifted away.

Remo nodded gratefully and bent to pick with numb fingers at the knot tying his bundle. He rubbed his naked body down with the wrapping towel and shuddered into his clothes. “Th-thanks.”

“Folks are sleeping inside,” Dag warned in a low tone. He wondered whether he ought to haul the boy indoors and plunk him in front of the hearth, or throw him back over the rail. Well, he’d doubtless find out shortly.

“Yes, right,” whispered Remo. His lip was back to normal size, but the bruises around his eye had darkened to a spectacular deep purple, just starting to go green at the edges. He finished pulling on his shirt and stood with hands clenching and unclenching at his sides, as if his next words were clotting in his throat.

He’d gone to a great deal of trouble for this private talk, Dag thought, only to choke off now. Caution reined in Dag’s curiosity just enough to convert his What can I do for you? into a more noncommittal general eyebrow lift.

It was enough to break the logjam, anyway. Remo blurted, “Take me with you.”

“And, ah—why should I do that?”

The return stare was uncomfortably Hod-like.

“Do you even know where I’m going?” Dag prodded.

“Downriver. Away. Anywhere away from here.”

This was the one, Dag reminded himself, who’d had to take his great-grandmother’s broken and wasted bone back and present it to his waiting family. It wasn’t hard to guess that the scene hadn’t gone well, though that still left a wide range of badly to choose from. Remo had been the more conscientious of the feckless partners, the one who’d tried to do the right thing. And had it come out all wrong. Well, you know how that goes, old patroller. Dag rubbed his head and sat down on the bench against the cabin wall. His arm harness being off for the night, he rested his stump unobtrusively down by his left side and laid his hand on his right knee.

Remo dropped hastily to the deck and sat cross-legged, perhaps feeling dimly that supplication went ill with looming.

“There are ten other boats heading the same way,” Dag pointed out. “Why the Fetch?”

Remo shot him a look of tight-lipped exasperation. “Because they’re all full of farmers.”

Dag wasn’t quite sure how to take that emphasis. He was tempted to haul Remo by the nose in a few more circles till he recanted his tone, but it was late and Dag was tired. One circle, maybe. “So is this one.”

Remo’s second shaft wobbled closer to the real target. “You left.”

“I was not—”

“If you weren’t banished, they as much as drove you out. Made it impossible for you to stay. I thought you’d understand.” His bitter laugh betrayed both his youth and how close to the end of his rope he dangled.

Oh, I do.

“You threw off their old rules. You rebelled. You took your own path, alone. And no one is going to say to you it’s just because you’re a stupid fool kid!”

We see the world not as it is, but as we are. “That’s not exactly what I’m about, here. Now, I can say, whatever’s going on over there between you and your family, it will pass. Great griefs must, if only because no one has the stamina to keep them up that long.” Not more than twenty years, leastways.

Remo just shook his head. Too sunk in his own misery to listen? To hear?

Dag thought ruefully of his own family, and revised his sage advice. “And while you’re waiting, there’s always the patrol.”

Remo shook his head harder. “The Pearl Riffle patrol is lousy with my family. Most of my brothers and sisters and half my cousins. Uncles and aunts. And every one of them thinks they should have been left great-grandmama’s knife instead, and they’re right.” He gulped and added, “I went to the camp knife maker yesterday to ask for my own bonded knife, and he wouldn’t even agree to make it for me!”

In your mood? Dag mentally commended the cautious knife maker. He said patiently, “Whatever your troubles are, you won’t defeat them by running away from them. My road’s not for you. What I’m saying is, the best thing you can do for yourself and Pearl Riffle Camp is go back over there and pretend this swim didn’t happen.”

Remo’s jaw worked. “I could swim halfway back. That would solve all my troubles.”

Dag sighed, but before he could marshal his next argument, the door swung quietly open and Fawn slipped through. She had a blanket wrapped around her nightdress, shawl-fashion, and a lumpy cloth in her hand. She glanced at Dag and tossed her head. “Maybe I can put a word in here. Being the resident expert at running away from home.” She opened her cloth. “Here, have a chunk of cornbread. I make it sweet.”

Remo accepted it mechanically, but stared at it in some bewilderment. Fawn handed a piece to Dag and took the last one herself. Dag took a grave bite of his own and motioned Remo to proceed. Fawn leaned against the cabin wall and nibbled, then nudged Dag’s knee with her bare foot. “This is your Remo, right? Or is it Barr?”

Dag swallowed crumbs and made the demanded introduction. “Remo, yes. Remo, this is my wife, Fawn Bluefield.”

Remo, food in hand, made a confused half-effort to stand, then settled back as Fawn waved him down. He returned her nod instead. “You’re the farmer bride? I thought you’d be…taller.”

Dag quelled his curiosity as to what several adjectives Remo had just swallowed along with his cornbread, there. Older was undoubtedly one.

“Now,” said Fawn cheerily, “the first thing I know for sure about running away from home is, plans made in the middle of the night are not always the best. In the morning—after breakfast—you can generally think of much better ones.” She exchanged a meaningful look with Dag, and went on, “It’s the middle of the night now, and you’re keeping Dag from my bed. But I just laid a big pile o’ those furs and blankets we used for last night’s visitors in front of the hearth. They’re real warm now. Toasty, even.”