“But there’s more of them to gang up on you if there’s trouble,” said Remo doubtfully.

“Also true,” Dag conceded. “Try opening up to the limit of your groundsense range, just once, to see what happens. I promise it won’t kill you.”

“Not instantly, maybe,” muttered Remo, but he obeyed. Brows rather clenched, he opened himself, wider and wider; the water-shadow of his ground gradually thickened and became perceptible to Dag in all its dense complexity.

The boy’s got a groundsense range of a good half-mile, Dag thought in satisfaction. Remo was clearly well-placed as a patroller, maybe a future patrol leader, if he could be lured away from wrecking himself on the rocks of his own mistakes.

With a muttered Oof! Remo let his groundsense recoil. But not, Dag noted, all the way; it was still open to perhaps the dimensions of the Fetch and its residents. And to Dag. Remo rubbed his forehead. “That’s…something.”

“Town like this has a tremendous ground-roil,” Dag agreed. “It’s life, though—the opposite of blight, as much as any woods or swamp. More. If our long war is meant to hold back the blight and sustain the world’s ground, if you look at it rightways, a place like this”—he nodded at the slopes, the lamplights spread across them like fireflies out of season—“is our greatest success.”

Remo blinked as this odd thought nudged into his brain. Dag hoped it would stir things up a bit in there.

Dag drew breath, leaned forward. “The fact that this town is also a vast ground-banquet for any malice that chances to emerge too close troubles me hugely. What all had you heard down at Pearl Riffle Camp about the losses in our summer’s campaign over in Raintree?”

Remo replied seriously, “It was bad, I heard. A place called Bonemarsh Camp was wholly blighted, and they lost seventy or a hundred folks in the retreat.”

“Did the name of Greenspring even come up?”

“Wasn’t that some farmer village the malice first came up near?”

“Praise Fairbolt, at least that much got in. Yes. Had you heard their losses?”

“I didn’t read the circular myself, just heard talk about it. Lots, I’d guess.”

“You’d guess right. They lost nearly half their people, about five hundred folk in all, including almost all their children, because you know a malice goes for youngsters first. Absent gods, you should have seen that malice when we slew it, after that fair feast. I never knew one could grow so ghastly beautiful. Sessiles, early molts, they’re crude and ugly creatures, and you get to thinking ugliness is what malices are all about, but it’s not. It’s not.” Dag fell silent, but then shook off the haunting memory and forged on while he still had Remo’s ground and mind open. “I took my patrol through Greenspring on the way home, and we came upon some townsmen who’d come back to bury their dead. It was high summer, but most of the victims had been ground-ripped, so they were slow to rot. I counted down the row, so pale they were, like ice children in that gray heat…How long a trench do you think you’d have to dig, Remo, to bury all the youngsters in Silver Shoals?”

Remo’s lips parted; he shook his head.

“It’d be about a mile long, I figure,” said Dag evenly. “At the least estimate. I’d have dragged every Lakewalker I know down that row if I could have, but I couldn’t, so now I have to do it with words.” And maybe his clumsy words were working better here, with Silver Shoals spread in front of Remo’s eyes, than they would have in the comfortable isolation of Pearl Riffle Camp.

“I can see the problem,” said Remo slowly.

Absent gods be praised!

“But I don’t see what more we can do about it. I mean, we’re already patrolling as hard as we can.”

“It’s not our patrolling that needs to change. It’s…see, the thing is, if the Greenspring folks had known more about malices, about Lakewalkers, about all we do, someone might have got out with word earlier. More lives—not all, I know, but more—might have been saved at Greenspring, and Bonemarsh need not have been blighted any, if we could have been warned and taken the malice quick before it started to move south. And the only way I know to get farmers to know more is to start teaching ’em.”

Remo’s eyes widened as he gauged the lights of the town. “How could we possibly teach them all?”

Already Remo was past the usual response, How could we teach any of ’em? Farmers can’t… followed by whatever Lakerwalkerish conceit first occurred. Dag nearly smiled. “Well, now, if we had to lift and carry each and every farmer all at once, we’d break our backs, sure. But if we could start by teaching some farmers, someplace—maybe after that they could teach each other. Save each other. If they can only grab the right tools. These folks are good at tools, I find.” He raised his left arm; his hook and the buckles of his harness gleamed briefly in the faint yellow lantern lights.

Remo fell silent, staring up the shore.

After a while, Dag said, “Fawn and Whit are mad to see the town mint tomorrow morning, before we go on down the river. Want to come along?”

Remo’s ground closed altogether. “Is it safe for Lakewalkers alone up there?” Remo had barely ventured off the Fetch; if he hadn’t been pressed into helping with the unloading earlier, Dag wasn’t sure he would have set foot on land at all.

“Yes,” said Dag recklessly. He suspected that Remo would follow him from sheer habit if he displayed a patrol leader’s confidence, and no need to enlighten the youth as to how hollow a confidence that so often was. “Besides, we won’t be alone.”

“I’ll think about it,” said Remo cautiously. He added after a little silence, “Whit sure likes his money. Yet it’s nothing, in its ground. Just metal chips.”

“If money has a ground, it exists inside folks’ heads,” Dag agreed. “But it’s mighty convenient for trade. It’s like a memory of trade you can hold in your hand, and take anywhere.” Anywhere it was recognized. Four great farmer towns—all along this river system, curiously enough—coined their own money these days, in addition to odd lots of coin left from the ancient days that turned up from time to time. The clerks in the goods-sheds were gaining a lot of practice in figuring, Dag guessed, making the coins all dance fairly with one another—or sometimes, he’d heard, not so fairly. In which case, people got a lot of practice at arguing. Even Lakewalkers used farmer coin, and not only while out patrolling.

“Lakewalker camp credit is better,” said Remo. “Bandits can’t knock you on the head and take it away from you. It’s not a temptation to the weak-willed or cruel.”

“It can’t be stolen with a cudgel,” Dag agreed, his mood darkening in memory. “But it can be stolen with words. Trust me on that.”

Remo looked over at him in some wonder. But before he could inquire further, Bo and Hod turned up at the foot of the gangplank. Hod had one of Bo’s arms drawn over his shoulder and was getting him aimed down the middle of the boards.

Dag was surprised to see them. One of the reasons Berry had been amenable to the proposed trip to the mint in the morning, despite the delay to their departure, was that she hadn’t expected her uncle back tonight. She’d figured she and Hawthorn, who had been taken to the mint once by their papa on a previous trip, would use the time looking for Bo while Fawn and Whit went off touring.

Bo was saying querulously to Hod, “I still don’t see the point of making me drink all that water. It just took up space for better bev’rages. And I have to piss just as bad.”

“Your head’ll feel better in the morning,” Hod assured him. “It’s a good trick I know about, really.”

“Yeah, well, we’ll see,” muttered Bo, but let Hod steer him over the gangplank. His knees buckled on the jump down, but Hod kept him upright. Despite several hours of following Bo around Silver Shoals riverside taverns, Hod was pretty sober, Dag noted. Hod looked up at Dag and Remo, watching from the roof, and cast them a shy smile. He maneuvered the old man inside, to be greeted with even greater surprise by Berry.