tent-rights despite the farmer girl, and the medicine booth at the farmer’s market! Maker Challa’s actually become very interested in that, since you’ve shown her all about your unbeguilement trick.”
Arkady blinked. So did Dag.
Barr looked around. “I have a better idea. Why don’t you all come north with us? At least for a while. We’re better’n halfway there, and I was told last fall not to come home without you, Remo. I’ve a suspicion nothing about Pearl Riffle Camp will look the same to me, but I’d like to finish up proper, before making a clean start doing… whatever else. You might, too.”
Remo shook his head. “You don’t see. I’ve found a new place for myself-a place that doesn’t think I’m dirt under its boot heels. I don’t have to go back and crawl on my belly to get a place in a good patrol. New Moon really wants me!”
Shedding his imagined sins as a snake sheds its skin, along with his past and his faultfinding family-Dag could understand the appeal of the southern camp to the boy.
“Wants isn’t the same as needs,” said Barr. “New Moon Cutoff has enough patrollers. There isn’t a camp north of the Grace that would make that claim.” He glanced meaningfully at Tavia, who touched her lips in doubt.
Neeta tossed her head. “Barr can suit himself. We were sent to escort Arkady and Dag home.” She did not, Dag noted, add Fawn to that tally. “Anyway”-she turned to Arkady-“surely you’ve had enough of living rough, sir, at your age. We can whisk you right back to your own comfortable house. It’s all being kept for you.”
Arkady rubbed his sleeve across his eyes. “Gods. I can’t think when I’m covered with trail filth.”
Dag didn’t see that Arkady was any grubbier than anyone else, but he bit his tongue on saying so. Fawn and Sumac had been collaborating on rustling up the breakfast tea. Sumac rose and wordlessly handed the first sweetened cup to Arkady. He took it with a grateful grimace, and sipped.
Sumac looked Neeta over rather coolly. “No one’s going forward or back for another day. If our animals are due for a rest, your mounts must be in worse case, from covering the same distance in two-thirds the time. Dag can’t leave his party scattered over ten miles of trail-it would be very poor patrol procedure. At the very least, we need to get everyone safely to the bottom of this pass and reorganized. There’s plenty of time to think about all this later. After breakfast.”
Dag said, “I agree.”
Arkady looked around the circle of faces and shrugged. “Dag’s the trail boss.”
Neeta doubtless sensed she was being outmaneuvered by the older woman, but couldn’t muster a reasonable objection, since it was quite true about the horses. With the reminder of breakfast, the debate broke up amongst growling stomachs, and was prevented from re-forming by the bustle of breaking camp.
“After lunch,” Dag overheard Sumac murmur to Arkady, “when we’re lower down, I’ll show you a patroller trick for finding warmer water to wash in.”
“That would help,” sighed Arkady.
It had taken a full day to get the party to the top of the pass, but only cost half that to descend the other side. It likely aided things that the cantankerous Grouse remained bedridden in his wagon, as his wife seemed the more sensible half of the couple. Ash and Indigo helped her out. They all made it to the bottom without losing any wagons over the edge of the twisty road, despite having to shift two fallen trees and a small rock slide along the way. Between the mist lifting and the lower elevation, it was a soft, warm spring afternoon by the time they’d found a new campsite in the valley. More bustle followed, to get the four southern boys and Whit fed and off back over the pass to fetch Bo, Hod, and the rest of their gear; they likely wouldn’t traipse in again till the following afternoon.
When Dag finally went to look for Arkady, he was nowhere in sight.
Nor in groundsense range.
“Did you see where Arkady went? ” he asked Fawn.
“Um…” said Fawn.
“What? ”
“Sumac took him off into the woods to find him a warm bath. She said.”
Dag raised his brows at her.
“Well, Arkady did take his scented soap and his towels and razor.”
She added after a moment, “Sumac had a blanket, which I guess you could want for a bath.” And after another, shyer moment, “Do you suppose they’ve gone to scout for squirrels? ”
Dag drew breath. “Not sure.”
Fawn eyed him uneasily. “You don’t think it’s your duty to go after them, do you? On account as Sumac is your niece? ”
“And get my other hand bitten off? No. Sumac is a woman grown. And Arkady’s… not an ineligible suitor.” Arkady’s maker bloodlines were plainly as superior as they could be, and the age gap between the pair was something Dag wouldn’t have dared remark on.
Fawn sighed relief.
A slow smile lifted Dag’s lips at a vision of Arkady and Tent Redwing tangling with each other, if he were to be dragged home as a prize by Sumac. Dag had no doubt Arkady could hold his own-blight, Dar wouldn’t last five minutes. And Cumbia-well, Arkady would doubtless be exquisitely polite to Cumbia. But she wouldn’t budge him half an inch from any course he’d chosen.
Don’t get ahead of yourself, old patroller. Arkady and Sumac were both complicated people, which might or might not help them suit. They’d not drawn each other out very deeply in front of Dag, Arkady seeming content to listen to Dag and Sumac reminisce. Concealing his vulnerable heart? A man would be wise to do so with Sumac, and Arkady was a wise man.
Still… Sumac and Rase had meant to leave the company days ago, back at the Hardboil, and be a hundred miles closer to Hickory Lake by now. Maybe the reunion with good old Uncle Dag wasn’t the sole reason for her delay?
And then had come Neeta, and the hot breath of competition, if of a rather indirect kind. Dag suspected Sumac wasn’t used to rivalry over men, seldom a thing she had to deal with when they all followed her like ducklings. Though as a patrol leader, she was trained to quick thinking and action in an emergency. And if Arkady went south tomorrow, it was unlikely they would ever cross paths again…
“Poor squirrels,” Dag murmured. “They haven’t a chance.”
Fawn grinned up at him. “Maybe we should go find some of our own. If Sumac can spot a warm creek in these woods, seems to me you could, too.”
“A fine plan, Spark.”
“I’ll fetch our soap.”
“And blanket. Which direction shall we scout? ”
“Any but northwest. I think the squirrel menace is likely covered in that direction.”
“Right.”
When Dag, smiling, went off to find Barr and warn him of their afternoon’s planned absence, he found Neeta and Tavia at the boy’s elbow.
“Have you seen Arkady?” Neeta demanded. “I have to talk some sense into him.”
“He went off to get his bath, I believe.”
“Which way? ”
“I didn’t see him,” said Dag, with perfect truth. And with less perfect truth, added, “Downstream, wouldn’t you think?” Southeast, as the creeks ran here.
“Come on, Tavia,” said Neeta. “Arkady shouldn’t be wandering around in these woods on his own. It’s not safe.”
“I don’t think he went far, and I doubt he’d care for your company,” Dag observed. “He’s a man who likes his privacy.”
Tavia set her heels at the alarming thought of interrupting Maker Arkady at his bath; the pair were sitting on a log still arguing when Dag and Fawn snuck away in their own right. Westerly.
–-
The languid afternoon was everything Dag had dreamed of, back when he’d still been envisioning this as a wedding trip. Deep in the woods, he and Fawn found a creek trickling over clean rocks into a sunlit pool, as warm as the season could give, with their bedroll even warmer laid beside it on a sun-dappled bank of soft green
