Chapter 140: CORWIN

The cut was where four channels met in a slow brown pool. The forager was already waiting for him by sunrise.

Her punt rested against the bank with a plank laid across the middle. Salt sat in twists of waxed cloth beside good twine, a curved hide needle, and a clay jar of fat for waterproofing leather.

Her beast swam a slow circle around the boat.

Aiden came through the reeds with the cured bog-thing hide over one shoulder. Miasma had recovered and followed beside him. Nyx stayed in his shadow.

Cinder had stayed behind to guard the camp. At least, that was what Aiden had told her. Mostly, he wanted her to rest.

The forager looked at the hide.

"You actually finished it."

"You sound disappointed."

"Surprised."

Aiden dropped it beside the punt.

She crouched and ran her fingers along the cut edge, then checked the underside.

"Cured clean. Most men rush the drying and lose half the hide to rot."

"You gave me three mornings."

"Most men waste two."

She's getting harder to impress every time she speaks.

The forager straightened and pointed across the plank. "Salt. Twine. The fat. Curved hide needle too."

Aiden looked at the pile. "For one hide?"

"For a good bog-thing hide."

"You're going to ruin my understanding of commerce."

"You have one?"

"About lamps, oil, and cheap meals from the row. Not about powerful beasts' hides."

Something close to a laugh escaped her. She reached toward the long knife at her hip, then stopped.

"Knife."

She wasn't talking to Aiden.

Miasma stood beside him with her spines slightly raised and her weight on her back legs.

The forager waited until Miasma settled before drawing the knife.

Most people needed one free sample of coma before they learned to respect Miasma's spines. This woman already knew.

She used the knife to lift one edge of the hide.

"There's one more part. If you've got the sense to take it: where not to fish."

"I'll take that one."

She started wrapping his supplies even though there wasn't a single coin on the plank.

Aiden had spent most of his life measuring what he could afford in copper. Out here, a clean hide bought salt because one kept rain off a roof and the other kept food edible. Eel fat bought twine. Knowledge bought whatever the person giving it decided they wanted next.

No clerks. No fees. No one telling me a piece of paper costs two silver.

The Row would love this place right up until it discovered everything useful requires work.

The forager pushed the bundle toward him.

"North channel is safe near the banks. The middle gets deep fast. Don't cross the green water when the surface insects disappear."

"Why?"

"Something underneath is eating them."

She didn't elaborate.

"Fine. Green water without insects. Avoid."

"West channel floods after hard rain. East channel..."

She stopped.

Aiden leaned forward. "The one beside my camp. What's wrong with it?"

"Deep water."

"I'd worked that part out."

"You worked out enough to get your boots wet and come back."

"That was a very educational morning."

The forager's beast surfaced beside the punt. She rested one hand briefly against its scaled back.

"She won't enter the deepest channels."

Aiden looked at the beast.

It had spent their first meeting swimming ahead of the punt and sensing whatever moved beneath the surface.

"She can feel what's down there and she still refuses to swim there."

"Yes."

That answer did more than the warning had.

Aiden looked down the eastern channel.

Great. Even the beast whose job is knowing what's under the water has professional boundaries.

The forager finished tying his bundle.

"The marsh wasn't always this empty either. There were camps, families, foragers, hunters. People who knew which plants you could touch and which water you left alone. They pulled things out of the fen and traded them downriver."

She sat on the edge of the punt.

"Then came what people here call the year the records went sideways. The marsh still had people in it, but the registry started writing like it didn't. Men we'd eaten with stopped existing on paper."

Aiden thought of the registry file. No claim in sixty years. But this woman was talking about people who had lived here during that time.

"The man before me," Aiden said. "You knew him."

The forager went quiet.

"Corwin was the last man to hold your ground. A quiet tamer. I never got a proper look at his beast, only something dark that kept close to him."

Nyx slipped out of Aiden's shadow beside him.

The forager looked at her.

"Something like that one."

Aiden's attention sharpened.

"A shadow beast?"

"I said I never got a proper look. Corwin kept going toward the low water," she continued. "More often than anyone sensible would. Said there was something down there worth finding at the deep end of what you call your camp."

Nyx had been pulling that way since before he entered the fen. The bog-thing had fled that water. Something beneath it had nearly taken his legs.

Corwin had followed the same pull.

"What happened to him?"

"One day he went down and didn't come back. Not long after, the registry was already claiming that ground had been empty for decades. I don't know what Corwin found. He never told me. But before he disappeared, he left something with my mother for safekeeping. Said she'd give it back when he returned."

Aiden's stomach tightened.

That's not records being badly filed. That's a lie.

The forager finished tying Aiden's bundle.

"Whatever he left isn't part of today's trade. You've bought supplies, the story, and enough warning to keep yourself out of the wrong water. If you want the rest, stay alive long enough that telling you isn't wasted."

Aiden accepted that. Barely.

Of course the dead man left something behind. Nothing useful in my life has ever come without another price attached.

The woman pushed the bundle toward him but didn't leave.

"And staying alive might get harder soon. Word is moving downriver. Someone took the dead claim. He has a fire beast worth stealing, a shadow beast nobody recognizes, and another beast carrying enough venom to drop things much larger than herself. That's the kind of story that reaches takers.

"Some are thieves. Some call themselves traders. Doesn't matter. They hear about a holder alone on ground nobody watches closely, decide his beasts are worth more than he is, and arrive with cages and enough men to make the difference."

Her eyes moved toward the direction of Aiden's camp.

"Your fire beast makes you look harder to rob than most. She also makes you valuable. And anyone who knows fire beasts will notice the fen isn't giving her back what she spends. She can eat until she's full. That won't refill her Ember Motes."

That part Aiden already knew.

He'd kept her fire use low for exactly that reason.

"So they'll wait until she's spent enough," he said.

"If they're smart."

Wonderful. My environmental problem has developed a criminal audience.

"The good part is that men like that prefer easy work," the forager said. "Make the first ones regret coming and the story changes. You're not the soft holder on a dead claim anymore. You're the man nobody wants to rob. Hold this place long enough, and people stop hearing dead claim. They hear your claim."

The forager stood and took up her pole.

"I'll be here in three mornings. Bring eel fat if you've got extra."

"And if I don't have extra?"

"Then we won't see each other for a while."

Her beast turned beside the boat. One push of its wide tail pulled the punt away from the bank. The reeds closed behind them.

Aiden watched her disappear into the reeds, his bundle in hand and more useful information than he'd wanted.

Corwin had gone into the same deep water Nyx wanted. Now takers might be coming while Cinder couldn't afford to waste fire.

He shouldered the bundle and walked back toward camp.

Miasma moved beside him through a patch of drifting Vesperian Spores. She paused to gobble an insect with a stinger the size of his pinky. She washed it down with a mushroom so dark red Aiden mistook it for clotted blood.

He slowed.

Cinder had a problem the fen couldn't solve.

Nyx had something in the east she couldn't stop seeking.

Miasma was different. The fen was feeding her everywhere he looked.

I've spent so much time worrying about what this place isn't giving Cinder that I haven't been paying attention to what it's giving Miasma.