Barr, perhaps inadvisably, vented some protest. Dag gestured at his hook and spoke more fiercely.

“Uh-oh,” said Fawn. “If Dag’s bringing up Wolf Ridge, that boy’s in bigger trouble than he can guess.”

“Wolf Ridge?” said Remo. “The Wolf Ridge? Dag was there?”

“That’s where the hand went,” said Whit, waving his left. “Torn off by one of them dire wolves that malice made, he says. He doesn’t much talk about it. But he sent the skin to Papa as one of Fawn’s bride-gifts. Big as a horse hide. The twins swore it had to be faked, but Papa and I didn’t think so.”

Remo’s breath trickled out through pursed lips. “There were only a handful of survivors—wait, company captain at Wolf Ridge?”

“Yeah, which is why he don’t care to talk about it,” said Fawn, “so don’t you let on I told you. It gave him an aversion to captaining. Despite beating that malice.”

“Absent gods,” said Remo. He watched the pair in the narrow boat. Dag was saying more. Barr was saying much less. By the time Dag’s hand clenched in a venomous fist—for some emphasis rather than threat, Fawn judged—Barr had shrunk to half his former size. Crouching in his seat, really, but the effect from this angle of view was pretty startling. And if Barr backed up any more, he risked falling off the stern.

Barr’s lips had stopped moving altogether. It was just head bobs, now, or sometimes head shakes. At length, Dag sat back. Barr straightened his slumped shoulders, picked up his paddle, and aimed his narrow boat back toward the Fetch. As they pulled alongside again, Dag sat with his hand on his knee, waiting. Barr looked up and cleared his throat.

“Miss Clearcreek—Boss Berry, that is,” Barr corrected himself as her frown deepened. “First off, I apologize for what I tried with you the other morning. What I was trying, see, I was trying to put a persuasion in your ground to get you mad at Remo so’s you’d fire him and he’d have to come back with me. That was wrong. I also didn’t quite have a strong enough—” he caught Dag’s rising brows, and finished hastily, “I was just plain wrong, is all.”

He drew a long breath and continued, “And I apologize to you, Remo. First for what I tried with Boss Berry, which was as much out of line to you as to her, and also for getting taken in by that flattie girl up in Pearl Bend even though you told me better, and for flirting with her in the first place, and for getting your great-grandmama’s knife broke when you came in after me in the fight, and for that stupid joke with the pots that started it all, which I guess I’m still going to be apologizing for when my hair turns gray. Which is going to be next week at this rate, but anyway. I’m really, really sorry.” He looked up. He looked, Fawn thought, ready to cry. Gods, Dag, you don’t do things by halves, do you. But I knew that…

Remo’s mouth was hanging open. “Oh,” he said.

“And I apologize to everyone on board the Fetch,” Barr concluded valiantly, “for being a walking, talking blight on you for the past few days.”

Dag’s deep voice broke in. “Here’s the offer. I’ll stand good for Barr, Boss Berry, if you’ll let him back aboard your boat to work his passage. In return, Barr will place himself under my discipline as his patrol leader. Barr, if you agree, you can come back on board. If not, you’re on your own.”

Barr stared around the wide, flat, empty riverscape, gulped, and murmured, “I agree, sir.” He looked up. “I agree, ma’am.”

Berry leaned over, skeptically sucking her lip. “You understand, patroller boy, you’re here on Dag’s word. He’s earned my respect, which you have not, and it’s his wallet you’ll be drawin’ on. I don’t know how you plan to pay that debt; that’s between you and him. But I don’t have to put up with you, and if you give me one lick more trouble, I won’t. Clear?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

She glanced at Dag, who nodded. “All right, then. You can come on my boat.”

Dag climbed back over the rail, and Barr once more handed up his gear; he and Remo manhandled the narrow boat across the rear deck and tied it down. At lunch, which came up shortly, Barr ate hesitantly, though he left nothing to wash off his plate. Which was his gain, because his first assignment was scullery duty with Hod, which he fulfilled almost wordlessly. It was equally quiet up on the roof when he did his first stint on the oars with Dag and Bo. At dinner he was slightly less ghostlike, actually exchanging three or four unexceptionable remarks besides requests to pass the salt or cornbread.

Cuddling down with Dag that night, Fawn whispered, “What in the world did you say to Barr out in that boat today? I’ve seen frogs run over by a cart wheel that weren’t squashed that flat.”

“Well, I think that’d better be between me and him, Spark. But don’t fret too much. Barr’s resilient. You have to calibrate, see. A reprimand that would have poor Remo trying to fall on his knife is just about enough to ruffle Barr’s hair.”

“Did you, um, persuade him?”

“Didn’t need to. He was ready. Reminds me of how you train a Raintree mule. First you whack him between the ears with a fence post, hard as you can. This gets his attention. Then you can start in.”

“That works on patrollers, as well as mules?”

“Or on patrollers who are like mules. You have to give Barr credit for that two hundred—or three hundred—miles he hung on after his partner, despite all. That boy’s wrong-headed in a lot of ways, but you can’t accuse him of giving up easy.”

“How’d you learn to handle mule-headed patrollers, anyhow?”

His lips twitched against her brow in the dark. “Studied my own patrol leaders, as a youngster. Up really close.”

“That would be, like, face-to-face close?”

“Uh-huh.”

Her dimpled grin brushed his collarbone. “Mule-man. Why am I not surprised? Though I’d have guessed you more for a young Remo.”

“Remo and Barr each have their moments that throw me back in memory. Between the pair of ’em, they put me in a real humble frame of mind toward my old patrol teachers, I will say.”

During the next day, Barr settled in to be a pretty good crewman, as far as Fawn could judge. Topside, both his muscle and his groundsense proved useful, and adding the extra man to the rotation gave everyone a bit more ease, with the possible exception of the cook. Only Hod resented the reductions of his turns on the sweeps, but he was much consoled when Barr was assigned to dishwashing duty in his place one meal out of three. The good fellowship on the Fetch slowly began to recover from the setbacks Barr had brought.

Berry put in at a largish rivertown, too briefly for Bo to wander away and find a tavern, just long enough to learn of another sighting here of her papa’s boat last fall. The news left her frowning thoughtfully and counting out the river miles still left till the junction of the Grace and the Gray; the Fetch was better than two thirds of the way from Tripoint to the Confluence. Not exactly running out of either river or possibilities, but as the distance shortened, Fawn thought she could feel Berry’s tension grow.

Dag begged one short stop at another Lakewalker ferry camp, though Remo stayed aboard and Barr with him. Dag came back soon, shaking his head. “Too small, these camps strung along here. I’d likely do better to wait for Confluence Camp, which is the biggest in these parts. Better chance there.”

Fawn had thought the Grace a big river at Pearl Riffle, but she began to see she’d been naive. It was a lot wider now, and not just because of the rains and the rise. It was also starting to be more bendy, turning in large loops that added river miles without getting them westward much and utterly confusing Fawn’s sense of direction, especially under the thickly overcast skies. But toward the afternoon of the next day, the scudding clouds broke up and genuine sunlight broke through once more. When the chill wind also died, Fawn climbed up to the roof to sit at Berry’s feet and watch the passing scene. The shores turned a sharper gray and a richer brown, glowing soberly, and the water shone a dark, metallic blue.