the damp warmth of the late afternoon, looked back, caught Arkady’s evasive eyes square. “It looks like I’m going to have a lot more people on my hands this trip than I expected. I can’t be your nursemaid, and Barr can’t be your servant.”
“I will not crumple into a heap from a horseback ride, thank you,” said Arkady through his teeth. “Not even one eight hundred miles long.”
“The world under the skin is your home hinterland, but the world outside it is mine. My road, my rules. Can you accept that? ”
“About as well as you ever did, I expect,” Arkady returned. Their stares held each other for an uncomfortable stretch.
“Then you can begin by taking care of your own horse,” Dag said at last. “The barn’s around back.”
Arkady’s glare turned scorching. Barr looked very alarmed. But after a long hesitation, Arkady merely said, “All right,” and took back his reins. As he started around the house, he added over his shoulder, “When I return I want to inspect what you did to that boy with the lockjaw.”
Lines drawn clearly enough; Dag nodded acceptance.
This still left Barr holding the leads of five horses, although Copperhead’s ground showed signs of recent heavy persuasion; that and the gelding’s ten-mile jaunt this morning doubtless explained why he wasn’t trying to tear strips out of his trail mates just now. Dag took him and Magpie off Barr’s hands. Barr yielded gratefully.
“Where’s Remo?” Dag asked.
Barr’s face went bleak. “He stayed.”
“Ah.” An unexpected exchange. Dag frowned after Arkady. “Barr- is Arkady bluffing, with this crazy gambit? Holding himself hostage, to force the camp council to knuckle under and take me back? ”
The corner of Barr’s mouth tucked up. “I think he thinks he is. I’m sure they think he is.”
Dag nodded somewhat relieved understanding, then shot him a sharper look. “Then what’s the use? ”
“Well, I got him this far. I figured the rest would be up to you.”
“Yeah…? ”
Challa made medicine; Arkady made medicine makers. Fawn might dub it the difference between corn and seed corn. When going off to break new land, the latter was clearly the more valuable. So would it be better to call Arkady’s bluff, or the camp council’s? With a slow smile, Dag thought, Neither. Best of all would be to grab your gift of seed corn and run before the original owners could demand it back.
“I’ll tell Finch we can all be ready to start north tomorrow,” said Dag, and led the horses off toward the barn.
–-
Their departure in the morning was much delayed, but with only fifteen miles to cover till their first planned stop, they hadn’t really needed to be off at dawn. Dag and Barr readied their horses with patrollers’ efficiency, but either Finch or his mama kept thinking of last-minute items to add to his packs. In a strange way, it reminded Fawn of her leave-taking at West Blue after her wedding, minus the wedding. Finch, too, was a younger child with no land and a meager due-share, and his space was needed for the next generation even more than his hands were wanted for labor.
His family wasn’t glad to see him go, but they weren’t arguing very hard against it, either. His mama’s feelings were likely the most mixed.
His papa seemed pleased he’d found a grown-up guide, even if he still found Dag unsettling. Arkady and Barr just baffled the Bridgers, despite Barr’s entertaining the family at dinner with an account of their journey on the Fetch-although he’d glanced at Mama Bridger and left out the river bandits, to Fawn’s relief. Bo’s tallest tales could scarcely have won wider eyes; the great river, barely thirty miles west of here, plainly seemed an exotic world to them.
I was more ignorant than that, once. Time seemed tilted, as if ten years of change had been packed into her last ten months. Fawn shook her head in wonder and kicked Magpie after long-legged Copperhead. Finch kept twisting in his saddle and waving, though once they turned onto the road and the budding trees hid the house, he set his face forward eagerly enough.
It was Barr and Arkady who kept glancing back. Fawn suspected Barr was still wishing Remo might change his mind and chase after them, and Arkady had similar hopes about his camp council. Arkady wasn’t used to losing arguments, Fawn reckoned. She dropped back next to Barr as they rode along in the soft spring air. He was encumbered with the two packhorses, but they seemed to follow without protest.
“Where did you get the horses and gear? ” she asked.
“It’s all Arkady’s. I gather he barely tapped into his camp credit even after mounting me. Though one whole packsaddle is crammed with nothing but his medicine stuff he didn’t want to leave behind. I had to remind him to pack clothes.” Barr grimaced. “He said if he didn’t take the portable medicine tent, the council wouldn’t believe he was serious.”
“Is he serious? ”
Barr smirked. “Dag is.”
“Huh.”
It was a promising day for their start, pale blue overhead, pale green alongside, and as the warming afternoon wore on, Fawn found herself nodding. Then yawning and slumping, fighting heavy eyelids and seductive visions of laying a bedroll beneath the bushes and taking a long nap.
She blinked awake briefly at the shock of realization. I really am pregnant.
Her fatigue the past few days at the farmhouse had enough other excuses that she’d not noticed it creeping up on her. If not for Dag’s groundsense, this would be her first suspicion. She stared down at her stomach, neatly clad in her riding trousers, in a mixture of awe and alarm. This time, can I get it right?
“Sleepy, Spark?” Dag’s voice jolted her awake.
“ ’Fraid so,” she mumbled. “Maybe I could tie myself to my saddle, the way you say couriers sometimes do.”
“I have a better idea. Why don’t you come over here”-he indicated his lap-“and we can double up the way we rode into Glassforge.”
She smiled at the memory. “What about Magpie? ”
“She’s Lakewalker trained. She’ll follow.”
“Well, if you think it’ll work…”
Copperhead stepped alongside, and Fawn knotted her reins on her mare’s neck and let Dag help her slide across. She tucked up reasonably neatly, arm around his back, her cheek to his heart, and sniffed clean cotton and warm Dag. Happy nose.
“This is so nice,” she murmured, cuddling in tight. “But I won’t close my eyes. I don’t want to miss a mile of the Tripoint Trace.” Although so far, all the miles had looked rather alike, flat farm country broken up by shaded brown watercourses. At least all the looming trees, bearded by swags of that gray hanging moss, were different from Oleana. Bald cypress and magnolia and live oak… what a dozy afternoon…
–-
“Spark? ”
At Dag’s murmur, she unglued her eyelids. “What? What did I miss? ”
“About four miles of nothing. Swamp, mostly.”
“I slept for an hour? ” She squinted, hoping she hadn’t drooled on his shirt. “Your arm must be ready to fall off!”
“It’ll stick. But we’re coming up on Alligator Hat.”
“Oh!”
Dag stopped to let her down, and she seized an invigorating stretch before remounting Magpie. They trotted after the others, which also helped bounce her awake.
Alligator Hat seemed typical of the small villages straggling up the Trace. A few dozen wooden houses were set back from the road, with gardens of varying neatness. Some front gates bore painted signs advertising rooms and stall space for rent for weary travelers. A sturdy bridge led over a weir for a mill. The road widened into a square around which clustered businesses that served both the local farmers and the Trace: a couple of alehouses, a neat two-story inn with its own large stable out back, the village clerk’s office, another livery, signs for harness and repair, a wagon wright’s, and a big smithy. Finch waved his arm and led their caravan around
