“Remo, you fool!” Barr’s voice called hoarsely. “Blight you! I know you’re in there! Come give me a hand before I freeze in this blighted rain!”

Fawn watched in alarm as Remo took up the lantern and made his way with Dag and Whit out into the wind and rain of the back deck. Hod hovered uncertainly till Bo, staying planted in his chair beyond the hearth, told him sharply to go in or out but stop blocking the doorway like a fool cat, and Hod drew back. Hawthorn bounced impatiently behind Hod; the raccoon kit skittered off and hid in the stores. Berry put her fiddle away in its leather bag and slid it back under her curtained bunk.

Voices outside rose in debate, Dag’s deep tones overriding: “Just tie it to the rail. We can deal with it in the morning. Shipping more water’s not going to make much difference—it’s already half-swamped.”

More thumps, grunts, and muffled curses. Whit shoved the door open and handed in a bedroll, a pack, an unstrung bow and quiver coming unwrapped from a trailing blanket, and a couple of lumpy cloth bags, all equally sodden. Hod dropped them in a heap. Whit came back in, followed by Dag and a very wet Lakewalker who Fawn didn’t know. Remo trailed with the lantern, which he put back on the kitchen table, then leaned his shoulders against the door and crossed his arms, face set.

The fellow stood dripping before the hearth, breathing heavily, strained with exhaustion and cold. His lank hair, plastered to his forehead and hanging in a sorry rattail down his back, might be tawny blond when dry. He shrugged broad shoulders out of a soaked deerskin jacket, then just stood holding it in his hands as if confused where to put it, or just confused altogether. He scowled faintly at the Fetch’s crew, who were staring at him with expressions ranging from dumbfounded to dubious, but he eyed the bright fire with understandable longing.

Barr, presumably. Fawn tried not to take an instant dislike to him simply on the basis of Remo’s tale about the pretty farmer sister; such a seduction, if it had occurred as described or even at all, could well have been a two-way enterprise. And he’d been brave to help rescue those coal flatties from drowning in the Riffle. Or maybe he just liked excitement, although at the moment he seemed more distraught.

Apparently continuing an exchange started outside, he looked to Remo and said, “I was afraid I wasn’t going to catch up with you for another hundred miles!”

“Why are you trying to catch up with me at all?” said Remo, in a voice devoid of encouragement.

“What do you mean, why? I’m your partner!”

“Not anymore. I left.”

“Yes, without a word to anyone! Amma and Issi turned me on the grill for a blighted hour about that alone—like I should have known. How? By magic? You owe me for that, as well as for paddling three hundred miles in three days after you.”

“If you came from Pearl Riffle, that would be ’bout two hundred miles, unless you took a detour,” Berry observed, her hands on her hips. Hers was one of the more dubious looks.

Barr waved this away. “It was too blighted many miles, anyway. But that’s done now.” He stretched his shoulders, which cracked a bit, shook out the jacket and laid it on the hearthstones, and edged his backside closer to the fire, spreading his hands briefly on his knees. Big, strong hands, Fawn noted, although at the moment cramped from his paddle and chapped with cold. “I admit, I was glad not to find you floating facedown anywhere between there and here. We can start back in the morning.”

“Back where?” said Remo, still dour.

“Pearl Riffle, snag-brain. If you come back with me now, Amma says she’ll let us both back on patrol.” Barr straightened up with a look of, if not triumph, at least accomplishment.

Remo’s lips folded as tightly as his arms. “I’m not going back.”

“You have to come back! Amma and Issi ripped me up one side and down the other, like it was my fault you ran off!”

“So it was,” said Remo uncompromisingly.

“Well, it’s water over the Riffle now. The important thing is, if I bring you back, all is forgiven. I’m not saying things won’t be edgy for a while, but sooner or later someone else will win Amma’s ire, and it’ll blow over. It always does.” He blinked and grinned in a way that might have seemed charming, to some other audience at some other season.

“Not this time.”

“Remo, you’re making no sense. Where else would you go but back?”

“On,” said Remo. He nodded at Berry. “Boss Berry, whose boat you are dripping in, will likely let you sleep the night inside if you ask politely. In the morning, you go upriver, I go down. Simple.”

“Remo, no. Not simple. If I don’t fetch you back alive and in one piece, Amma swears I’ll be discharged from patrol permanently! I’m not joking!”

Fawn was beginning to get the picture, here. It wasn’t simply worry for a partner; Barr was on a mission to save his own well-scorched tail.

Remo looked furious. “Neither am I.”

Barr stared at him with the genuine bewilderment of a fellow who’d slid by on charm all his life whose charm had inexplicably stopped working.

Dag had been watching from the sidelines without comment. Before the go-round could start again, his unmoved voice put in, “Best dry your weapons, patroller. Your bow is starting to warp from the wet.”

Barr made a discomfited gesture, as if he’d like to protest this interruption but didn’t quite dare. He eyed Dag warily. “And you, Dag Red-Blue whatever. Amma also wanted me to tell her if you talked Remo into this. Like I knew!”

Remo snorted in disgust.

“I said I didn’t think you’d seen each other since that first day in the patrol tent. I’m not sure she believed me.” He added bitterly, “I’m not sure she believed anything I said.”

With heavy sarcasm, Remo intoned, “Why, Barr—why ever would she not?”

Before Barr’s return growl could find words, Berry exchanged a glance with Dag and shouldered forward. “It’s boatmen’s bedtime, patroller, and you’re making a tedious ruckus in our bunkroom. If you want, you could have some mighty tasty leftovers and a dry bed in front of the hearth. If you two’d druther keep arguin’ instead, take it outside to the riverbank where you can keep it up to your heart’s content or dawn, whichever comes first. Your choice, but make it now.” A rattle of sleet against the windows lent a sinister weight to her cool remark.

After a long, long moment, Barr swallowed down whatever he’d been going to snap back at Remo and nodded to the boat boss. He said stiffly, “I’d be grateful for a bed, yes, ma’am. And food.” He shot Remo a surly look that made it clear he was giving up only temporarily.

The occupants of the Fetch’s kitchen-bunkroom shuffled back into almost-normal preparations for sleep. Barr did look after his weapons, with a sidelong glance at Dag. Whit and Hod helped lay out the rest of his things to dry; Hawthorn and Berry settled the guest-furs in front of the fire; and Fawn reheated the fish, potatoes, and onions. Barr wolfed down the meal as though starved, and gaped in wonder at the tankard of beer Bo shoved in front of him. He found the bottom of it quickly. Awkwardly, everyone dodged around one another in the shared sleeping space that had suddenly become a little too shared, but all found their beds at last.

As the lantern light dimmed to the faintest red glow through the curtains of their nook, Fawn interlaced herself with Dag for warmth and whispered, “You didn’t happen to wish for Barr on those birthday candles, did you?”

Dag choked down a laugh. “No, Spark.” He grew quiet for a moment. “Not exactly, leastways.”

“Just so’s you know that last surprise was not my doing.”

“It seems to have been Amma Osprey’s. Wish I could have been listening at the window for that talk. I’ll bet it was blistering. Sounds like it was past time she put the fire to that boy’s feet, though.”