After Dag released his Lakewalker assistants around noon, the pair disappeared and did not return till after dark. He intercepted them at the end of the gangplank as they approached the Fetch somewhat surreptitiously, each lugging a sack.

“What’s this?” Dag asked.

“Shh,” said Remo, with a glance at the boat. Dag allowed them to lead him out of earshot along the bank.

Barr said, “We decided to patrol upstream a ways, and see if we could track where Crane and the Drums caught up with his two deserters. Which we did. We buried the bodies.” He grimaced, which Dag took to indicate the scene had been rather worse than just plain bodies. He did not feel any need to ask after the details.

Remo continued, “It took a bit longer to trace Crane’s cache. I don’t think anyone without groundsense could have found it.”

“Does Wain know about this?”

“Oh, yeah,” said Barr, “we took the goods to him first. He allowed as how since it was twice-stolen and wouldn’t have been found at all without us, we could keep it for our salvage share. We swapped out the things we didn’t want with some of the boatmen—there’s a regular market going on up at the cave just now. I couldn’t quite stomach the clothes and boots, but some of those keeler boys are not so finicky.”

“They didn’t fit us,” Remo interpreted this more precisely.

“A fellow could come back someday and do some real interesting treasure-hunting within a day or so’s ride of this place,” Barr said, a speculative look in his eye.

“That accounts for you two missing dinner, but why the tiptoeing?” asked Dag.

Remo rubbed his mouth. “Boss Berry refused any salvage share for the Fetch.”

Barr put in, “Which about broke poor Whit’s heart, I think, but he wouldn’t take any if she wouldn’t.”

Remo went on, “I know you said that wasn’t to apply to us, sir, but I figured it might be better not to trouble her mind.”

Dag, who had put his new sharing knife away deep in his saddlebags, because he flat declined to wear it around the same neck where he had kept Kauneo’s in honor for so many long years, nodded understanding. “Yes,” he agreed, “put those bags away discreetly, and no, don’t trouble Boss Berry just now.”

“Yes, sir,” said Barr brightly. Both patrollers looked relieved to be freed from responsibility for this ruling, although Dag doubted Berry would say anything even if she noticed. The pair made their way quietly across the gangplank, discretion somewhat spoiled when Daisy-goat bleated curious greetings. Dag shook his head and followed.

Berry’s hard quest was over, but time and the river flowed only one way, and flatboats perforce went with them. The Fetch left the cave landing the next dawn. Of the patients Dag was taking along, Hawthorn was recovering enough to be active, if still ouchy about his reset nose, but pleased to be let off chores for another few days. When active turned to pesky, Dag would pronounce him well. Bo was more worrisome, developing a rising fever. Dag gave up his sweep duties on the roof to sit with him and, together with Fawn, keep a close eye. Anxious for the old man, Hod proved a dab hand as an attendant, steady and careful when it came to the needed lifting and turning, and he bore up bravely even when the hurting Bo unjustly swore at him.

During the periods when Bo fell into an uneasy doze, Dag turned to another chore. Gathering up what few pieces of paper the Fetch harbored, he sat down at the kitchen table to pen a letter to Fairbolt Crow about the renegade Crane and his fate at the river cave. Whether as patrol leader or captain, the writing of reports had never been Dag’s favorite task, and he’d ducked it whenever he could. Which still meant that he’d written more of the blighted things than he could rightly remember. The lurid events and Crane’s evil history fit oddly into the well-worn forms and phrases of a patrol report, but Dag trusted Fairbolt, at least, to be able to read between the lines. Dag was not entirely satisfied with the results, but he had no more paper to do it over. Fairbolt was not, strictly speaking, Dag’s camp captain anymore, but Dag could not escape the conviction that someone with his head on straight ought to have the facts.

Bo’s fever grew worse that night, and Dag gave ground reinforcements till he nearly passed out. But in the mid-morning, the fever broke. Dag fell wordlessly into his own bed, awakening in the afternoon with an incipient cold, his first in years. Happily Barr and Remo were both able to help with that, a familiar task for patrollers on search patterns in all weathers, and Dag—with another cup of oats silently proffered by Fawn—fended it off with no worse effects than a sore throat and slight sniffle.

Dag had the Fetch stop at the last Lakewalker ferry camp on the north bank of the Grace just long enough for him to deliver his letter to the patrol courier there, turn over the effects of the murdered Lakewalker couple for possible identification, and give a very truncated account of the late doings up in Crooked Elbow to the shocked camp captain. He did not linger.

They came to the Confluence in the late afternoon of the following day. Dag, Berry, and Whit were on the sweeps. Dag having now no need to beg—or attempt to beg—a knife, Berry was just as happy not to have to struggle to pull in the Fetch at the big Lakewalker camp that occupied the point, though Barr and Remo climbed to the roof to stare at the many tents to be seen amongst the trees, and at the wharf boats and goods-sheds maintained along the shore by the Lakewalkers themselves.

Fawn joined them as the Fetch swung past the point and the Gray River could at last be seen. She shaded her eyes with her hand, her lips parted in an unimpaired world-wonder that eased Dag’s heart. The waters of the two great streams did not at once mingle, but ran along side by side for some miles, clear-brown and opaque.

“The Gray really is gray!” said Fawn.

“Yep,” said Dag. “It drains the whole of the Western Levels. It’s well-wooded along here, but about a hundred miles due west, depending, the trees fail and the blight gradually starts. It’s said that after the first great malice war, the blight reached the river here, and the whole Gray was dead from the poison, but it’s long since come alive again. I find that a pretty encouraging tale, myself.”

The westering sun was playing hide-and-seek behind cold blue-gray clouds with glowing edges that filled the sky from horizon to horizon. “I think that’s the widest sky I ever did see,” Fawn said. “Is it because the land’s so level out here?”

“Uh-huh,” said Berry.

“And I thought Raintree was flat!” Whit marveled.

“It’s beautiful. In a severe sort of way. Never seen a sky like that at home.” Fawn turned completely around, drinking in all that her eyes could hold. “That’s a thing to come see, all right.”

In a maternal spirit, she dragged Hod outside to share the sight; he gaped gratifyingly, but, rubbing his red nose, soon went back inside to hug the hearth. Despite the chilly wind, Fawn sat at Dag’s feet for the next half-hour, watching for when the two streams would at last become indistinguishable. During the stretches when they had merely to ship their oars and float on, Whit and Berry doubled up boat cloaks, guarding each other from the blustery discomfort.

Dag found himself thinking, I’m so glad we brought Whit. He wished the boy all good speed and fortune in his courtship, because he thought Fawn must warmly welcome such a tent-sister. And my tent-sister too, how unexpected! The most important thing about quests, he decided, was not in finding what you went looking for, but in finding what you never could have imagined before you ventured forth.

Keep that in mind, old patroller.

As the year slid toward its darkest turning, the late dawns and early sunsets squeezed the daylight hours down to less than a double handful. After encountering a spurt of snow flurries the morning before they’d passed the Confluence, Boss Berry took advantage of having three Lakewalker pilots aboard and reversed her ban on night running—also because she no longer needed the daylight, Fawn figured, to watch for wrecks that might be the Briar Rose. For five nights straight they floated down the wide channel far into the evenings, until nearly half the winding river miles between the Confluence and the Graymouth were behind them, and the cold breath of winter eased into something, if still damp, much less penetrating.