“Is he that bad? He doesn’t mean ill.”

“I didn’t think he did. He’s just…full of Lakewalkerish habits.”

“Or he was, before he got tipped out of his cradle. I ’spect our river trip isn’t quite the rebellion he thought he was signing up for.”

She snickered, her breath warm in the hollow of his skin.

Dag said more slowly, “He was just an ordinary patroller, before his knife got broken. But if ordinary folks can’t fix the world, it’s not going to get fixed. There are no lords here. The gods are absent.”

“You know, it sounds real attractive at first, but I’m not sure I’d want lords and gods fixing the world. Because I think they’d fix it for them. Not necessarily for me.”

“There’s a point, Spark,” he whispered.

She nodded, and her eyes drifted shut. His stayed open for rather a long while.

To the excitement of everyone aboard—although Fawn thought that Dag and Bo concealed it best—the Fetch approached Silver Shoals around noon. It was another gray, chilly day, promising but not delivering rain. Climbing to her mid-roof perch again, Fawn was glad for her jacket.

On the north bank of the river lay a village and ferry landing, which Remo at his sweep eyed uncertainly. “Is that Silver Shoals? It’s four times the size of Pearl Bend!”

“Oh, that’s not the town,” said Berry, leaning on her steering oar to keep the flatboat mid-channel. “That’s just a road crossing. Wait’ll we get around this bluff and the next curve.” She did shade her eyes and frown at the water-gauge pole sticking up near the landing. “River’s falling again. I think we’ll take the Shoals while we still can, and tie up below. I don’t want to get caught above for another week.”

Remo grew very quiet as the shore shifted and the town covering the southern hillsides eased at last into view; Dag, joining him at his oar, seemed to study his stare. Many of the houses were painted white, or even colors, spots of brightness amongst the now nearly leafless trees. Some newer, taller buildings were brick, and Fawn wondered if one might be the famous mint. Wood and coal smoke smudged the damp air, and the shoreline was crowded with smelly but lively businesses needing access to water—tanners, dyers, a soap-maker, a reeking mussel fishery, a boatyard. Mills, Fawn supposed, lined the feeder creeks—she could see at least one from here, partway up the hill, a sawmill at a guess. Wagons drawn by straining teams rattled up and down the muddy streets, and pedestrians strode on boardwalks. The town was bigger than Lumpton Market and Glassforge put together, and easily forty times the size of Pearl Bend.

At Berry’s sharp reminder, all the gawkers turned their attention to navigating the growling shoals, which were much like Pearl Riffle only more so. A few skeletal boats hung up in the wrack gave warning of the fate of the unwary or unlucky. Dag passed back laconic remarks about hidden hazards to Berry, which by now she took in with no more comment than nods, and they cleared the shelves, boulders, and bars without once scraping the hull, which made her grin. There followed some heavy pulling by all the oarsmen to bring the Fetch in to shore.

A couple dozen boats, both flatboats and keels, were tied along a more level stretch amongst not one but several wharf boats, each with its own collection of goods-sheds upslope from it. The road between was dotted with wagons drawn up either by the sheds or the boats, and toiling teams of wharf rats loading or unloading goods. “You could get lost up in that town,” Remo muttered in dismay, which made a smile flit over Dag’s mouth. Whit frankly gaped. Hod, a Glassforge boy, was less impressed, instead earnestly intent on carrying out with Hawthorn his task of throwing and tying ropes as they nudged into the bank.

Once the Fetch was safely wedged between another flat and a keel, Berry made inquiries of the neighboring loiterers for downriver news, but both boats were from upstream, like themselves. Bo ran out the gangplank, and Berry led the way on a climb up to the nearest goods-shed, Fawn following her by invitation, Whit just following.

In the front rooms of the goods-sheds they found counters with clerks or clerk-owners. With the latter, Berry bartered for her cargo—hides and barrel staves, bear grease and the dying cider; with all, she asked after news of her papa’s boat which might have passed through here last fall. This mostly drew headshakes, but also remarks about some Tripoint feller who’d been by lately asking similar questions about missing boats, and he’d likely want to talk to you. Which would have been more useful if they’d remembered his name or direction.

But in the third goods-shed, the merchant not only pulled out his record book from eleven months ago and found an entry of a purchase of hides from the Clearcreek Briar Rose the Fourth, recognizably initialed by Boss Clearcreek, but identified the curious Tripoint man. He told Berry to look for a trader by the name of Capstone Cutter, likely to be found this time of day at a mussel tavern up the street behind the goods-sheds. From this clerk-owner Berry made her only purchase, some boxes of pearl and mother-of-pearl buttons that were one of the rivertown’s more famous products.

Berry told Whit to hang on to his window glass, just as she was hanging on to her Tripoint tool stocks, because he’d get a much better price downstream. Which made plain what Fawn had suspected for some time: Whit wasn’t heading back home from Silver Shoals after all. Fawn supposed she ought to at least make him write a letter to Mama and Papa. Or write one herself. She wondered how to get her missive to West Blue without a Lakewalker courier to tap; likely that last merchant, the smart one, had ways of getting news to and from Lumpton Market at least. She would ask him later.

Meanwhile, she hurried up the boardwalk after Berry, Whit following cumbered with the button boxes, then across the mucky street to a building with a swinging sign announcing it as The Silver Mussel, painted with a picture of a shell with little feet, buggy eyes, and unlikely smiling teeth. If those creatures at all resembled their portrait, Fawn didn’t think she wanted one anywhere near her mouth, cooked or not. But the smell, as they entered the door, was nothing at all like the stench from the mussel fishery down on the riverbank, being mainly a heady steam of garlic and onion intertwined with the sweet tang of fresh beer. Whit inhaled and smiled.

Inside was a big room with sawdust on the floor and a long counter along one side. Scullions and serving boys were clearing tables in a leisurely fashion that suggested the lunch rush was over. Fawn’s eye followed Berry’s as it swept the room and caught up on a man who could well be their quarry, sitting alone at a table at the far end. A big fellow about my age, the fortyish merchant had said, running to fat, curly brown hair, very nice-trimmed beard. Dresses like a riverman, right enough, but all his gear was the best. Berry nodded, as if in confirmation, and wove amongst the tables toward him.

He looked up from the mussel shell he was exploring and smiled vaguely at the two young women, but swallowed what he was chewing in quick surprise when Berry stopped by his side and said, “Mister Cutter? From Tripoint?”

“Cap Cutter, and aye,” he replied. “What can I do for you, miss…and miss?” An afterthought of a nod also acknowledged Whit.

Berry stuck out her work-roughened hand. “I’m Boss Berry Clearcreek, of the Fetch. This here’s my sweep-man, Whit Bluefield, and my friend and cook Missus Fawn Bluefield.”

Cutter’s eyebrows rose a little at her claim, but lowered again as he shook her hand and she returned his boatman’s grip. He nodded to Fawn and Whit. “Married?” And corrected himself even before the Bluefield grimaces with, “Oh, brother and sister, aye.”