The first skiff had flowers painted over a rotten seam.
Chaska pressed her thumb beside a blue petal and looked through the split that appeared below it.
“That’s drainage,” the boatman said.
“Useful. Does it drain inward or outward?”
He took them to the next boat.
Ysabet carried Pip in a broad basket against her left hip. The creature could walk short distances, but the dragging leg caught on rough ground. Its mouse lay in the pouch with a little nest material around it; the familiar half-covered box was empty in Ysabet’s bag. She had tucked a few grains into a dry paper twist for later.
At the landing Pip lifted its face toward every knock of wood. Ropes creaked. A woman hauled traps out of the shallows. Something long and silver turned under the brown surface and vanished before Ysabet could see its shape.
The second skiff was narrow, patched near the stern and scraped almost bare along its keel. Chaska stepped into it while it was still on the rollers.
“Out,” the boatman said. “You’ll break the patch.”
“Then I’ll know before I buy it.”
He swore, but let her move.
They put it in the water with Ysabet watching from the bank. Chaska knelt by the seam, ran her fingers beneath the middle bench, and asked for a bailer. The boatman gave her a cracked pot.
“A sound one.”
“It holds water.”
“I’m looking for something that changes that condition.”
By the time they had pushed off and returned, a finger-depth of water lay in the stern. Chaska ran the skiff up beside a post and showed Ysabet the wet seam. She had borrowed a short length of line to mark how fast it filled.
“Usable,” she said. “After we pack this and seal it. Not before.”
The boatman named a price.
Chaska named another. They argued about the patch, the missing pole, the age of the painter, and an oar that had belonged to a different boat until the moment he claimed it came with this one. Ysabet stood quietly. She knew animals; she did not know what a split boat ought to cost.
At last Chaska counted five silver and six copper into his palm. The deal included the oar, a serviceable pole, and a pot of pitch the man measured with unmistakable grief.
“It’s yours,” he said.
“Yes,” Chaska answered.
She said it without looking at Ysabet, who had been preparing to say ours.
They hauled the skiff onto the mud above the waterline. Lilt lay on a clean patch beside the landing, watching Chaska’s hands. Her healed harness rub was a tender pink place where the leather had to sit differently. Chaska adjusted the new padding, then took the whole harness off while they worked.
“Will she travel beside us?” Ysabet asked.
“When the wind allows. When it doesn’t, we find a bank she can use. She won’t fold into the bottom because we’ve bought a boat.”
“I wasn’t going to ask her to.”
“You were looking.”
Ysabet had been looking. She moved the basket to the shade and mixed a little clean clay with water.
Pip refused it, reached past the spoon, and bit the edge of the pitch pot.
“No.”
The creature held on. Ysabet kept the pot still rather than pulling. Chaska tapped the ground twice with the oar handle. Pip released the rim to investigate the sound, and Ysabet moved the pitch behind her.
They looked at one another.
“That works on boatmen too,” Chaska said. “Though usually they want the oar.”
The afternoon became hot. Ysabet could hold the seam open with a wedge while Chaska packed fiber into it. Her bent right fingers could brace the light tool against her palm, but could not grip the mallet. Chaska did the striking. Later they traded positions so Ysabet could smear pitch with a flat scrap in her left hand.
A line of small bubbles rose beside the patch when they tested it again. Chaska stared, fetched the skiff out, and began over.
“We’ll miss tomorrow’s tide,” Ysabet said.
“Then we miss it dry.”
They worked until the shadows from the landing posts stretched across the channel. This time the inside stayed dry except where Chaska’s wet knees had dripped. She made Ysabet look at the seam, not merely at her pleased face.
“Better.”
“Will it last?”
“If we don’t drag it over every stone we meet.”
They left it above the high-water mark, tied to a ring the boatman permitted them to use until morning. Chaska locked the oar through the benches with her delivery chain. Ysabet lifted Pip’s basket. The original mouse poked its nose from the pouch and sniffed the unfamiliar air.
“Five silver and six,” Ysabet said as they walked.
“Yes.”
“I should repay part.”
“You can buy food when you can. You can pole when the bank won’t take Lilt. And when we find Suth, we talk about where I go next.”
Ysabet nodded.
Behind them, the boatman was repainting a flower on the first skiff.