shimotsuki | TSK discussion | Passage, ch 13-24 (Reply)

I'm sorry it's taken me so long to post this one! We got back home ~~from Greymouth~~ Monday evening, but then things picked right up at work, so evenings have been short this week. :( The second half of Passage is really fun, too -- I've been looking forward to discussing this part in particular.

Summary

Chapter 13: The Fetch arrives at Silver Shoals. Berry goes to inquire about her father's missing boat, and meets Cap Cutter of Tripoint, who is likewise looking for several lost boats -- the problem is bigger than we knew. Meanwhile, Remo continues to learn about farmers, and Hod develops a talent for managing Bo when he's in his cups.
Chapter 14: They go and explore the mint in Silver Shoals, and Dag continues experimenting with ground-ripping food items (the apple pie doesn't go so well). The river falls some, and Bo runs the Fetch up onto a sandbar. More experiments with ground, and Dag admits he's concerned about how similar what he's doing seems to be to what a malice does.
Chapter 15: Dag works out how to unbeguile Hod, and comes to the novel conclusion that avoiding beguiling farmers is as easy (and difficult) as accepting farmer ground when a ground reinforcement is given. He and Fawn steal a chance to, um, scout for squirrels, and conduct more, um, intimate ground experiments. Then Fawn and everyone else conspire to give Dag a surprise party for his birthday -- although the biggest surprise of all is Barr turning up, in search of Remo.
Chapter 16: Barr makes a general nuisance of himself trying to get Remo to go back to Pearl Riffle with him, since the camp leader had said that was the only way for Barr to get back on the patrol. Fawn finds herself having thoughts of a home and children, someday. Cap Cutter's keelboat passes the Fetch, and news is exchanged. Barr finally goes too far, attempting to plant a persuasion on Berry, but quick thinking by Whit and Remo intervenes. Barr and his narrowboat are thrown off the Fetch, with, as we learn later, no provisions.
Chapter 17: A hungry Barr keeps pace with the Fetch through cold and rain, and finally asks to be brought back on board to go with Remo to the sea if Remo won't come back to Pearl Riffle. Dag gives Barr a very thorough talking-to, and he apologizes to everyone and promises to behave. Flatboat boss Wain, who was involved with the carpenter's wife's appendicitis incident (and didn't help with the sandbar), offers a mutton roast if Berry will fiddle for the party. Fawn learns that some poor farmer was cheated out of his sheep, and eventually there's a comedy-of-errors with her conscripting Whit and then Barr into helping her try to return the ones that hadn't been roasted yet: Barr is starting to really join the group.
Chapter 18: Training: Whit with Berry on the steering oar, and Remo and Barr doing ground-veiling drills with Dag. But then they rescue one Ford Chicory and his band of hunters-turned-boatmen from Raintree, stranded after their flatboats sank, and bring them on board the Fetch. It turns out the Raintree men have some experience with malices; they've seen blight, and during the Raintree malice affair they discovered that if you drag mind-slaved farmers far enough away from the malice, their minds clear. This latter information is of great interest to Dag. The next morning, the Fetch is hailed by two men in a skiff, offering to pilot them through a tricky patch of the river. One of them turns out to be Berry's lost Alder.
Chapter 19: Berry has her happy reunion, but it doesn't last long. Alder starts spinning tales, but Dag can tell that he is lying, and that Skink, the man with him, is beguiled. Dag finally decides he'd better let Berry know that Alder's stories are lies. Skink tries to get away, Dag breaks the beguilement, and Skink begins to talk -- it turns out that Skink and Alder are both part of a gang of river bandits, led by a renegade Lakewalker called Crane, who hijack boats, steal their cargoes, and kill or conscript their crew. The Fetch ties up and waits for Boss Wain's boat to turn up, and collects a few more boat crews as well. That night, Dag, Chicory, and Wain lead an attack on the bandits' cave. Back on the Fetch, Alder tries to sweet-talk Berry again, but she works out (and Fawn confirms) that he wasn't beguiled at all.
Chapter 20: The attack on the bandit cave goes fairly well, though it turns out that Crane, and his cruel lieutenants the Drum brothers, aren't there after all. Whit shoots an arrow at an escaping bandit and kills for the first time. Dag heals Chicory and another boatman, both gravely wounded, and spends most of his strength. He heads back to the Fetch to question Alder about where Crane might have gone -- and to reassure himself that Fawn and the others are safe. Except, of course, that they're not; Crane goes to spring Alder, and when the others wake up, he stabs Bo in the stomach, threatens Hawthorn, and grabs Fawn as a hostage. Just as the bandits are trying to get the Fetch launched, Crane opens his ground, and Dag ground-rips his spine, paralyzing him from the neck down.
Chapter 21: The clean-up after the fight. While the Fetch makes its way around the Elbow to the bandit cave, Dag heals Bo, and he along with Barr, Remo, and Fawn question Crane. Crane turns out to be the Lakewalker that Saun had once warned Dag about, the one who was banished from Log Hollow Camp for taking a farmer lover and giving her things from his camp share. Dag gives Crane a choice: hang, or share. Crane chooses to share. So, Dag will try to rededicate an unprimed knife that was found in the bandit cave, so that he can bond it to Crane in order to let Crane share his death. Once the Fetch reaches the cave, Berry (and Fawn and Whit) go to look at the boats that were captured. Berry finds her papa's flatboat, one of the very oldest ones. Whit actually turns to Fawn for advice on how to help Berry with all this; Fawn tells him just to be there for her.
Chapter 22: Dag avoids having to distinguish beguiled bandits from freely acting bandits by reminding the boatmen that Lakewalkers shouldn't be placed in the role of judging farmers (especially not by criteria that farmers can't verify for themselves). He also persuades the boatmen to let Crane share rather than hang, claiming the priming of the knife as his salvage share from the cave. He turns the priming -- and the sharing -- into another chance to educate farmers about Lakewalker ways, and certainly does make an impression.
Chapter 23: While the hangings go on at the cave, Dag, Fawn, Whit, and Berry, and later Remo and Barr, find solace for their souls and grounds in the meadow where the bandits have kept their horses. Whit manages to give Berry a comforting hug and a chance to talk. Remo and Barr manage to find one of Crane's treasure caches, and Wain lets them have it for their salvage share. The Fetch sails on down the river, Dag writes up a report for Fairbolt Crow out of habit and a sense of rightness, and they reach the confluence of the Grace and the Gray Rivers. One evening, the weather has warmed, and Fawn suggests more archery practice to lift the mood. Whit confesses that he sees archery differently now that he's killed a man and seen how easy that is; this leads to Dag confessing some of what he's been doing with groundwork, and admitting that he's very disturbed. Fawn, bless her, points out that lots of useful tools can be used to kill. Archery practice happens, and things do lighten a bit. But the fact remains that farmers can't guard themselves against the kind of ground-ripping that Dag used on Crane.
Chapter 24: Graymouth, at last. Whit presents a dubious Fawn with what can only be a flounder, and he arranges for a fishing boat to take them all down to the sea for a day. There, we see Barr and Remo splashing in the waves with Hawthorn, but we also see Dag all tied up in knots because he doesn't know how to make enough of a difference in the world. Fawn cheers him up a bit; they build a driftwood bonfire and watch all the unexpected colors in the flames; and Whit and Berry re-emerge, announcing that they're going to be married. As the fishing boat returns to collect them all, Whit says they've found the end of the world, and Fawn opines that if you look at it another way, it's really the beginning.

Next week (Tuesday?), I'll put up a discussion post for the first half of Horizon -- let's do chapters 1 through 11, because that makes a good stopping-point. I know this is shorter notice than we've been having, but I've been getting the sense that a lot of us are already on the last book now, anyway. ;) Anyone who wants me to hold off later than Tuesday for posting the next discussion, though, feel free to squawk in the comments. And if anyone is reading the series on a slower schedule, by all means feel free to jump in on past discussions!

Past discussion posts: