Chapter 10 – Proof

	“Hey, can you show me how to quick-draw?”  Sawyer was asking.  The young lion had been sitting on the fringes of our camp all morning, replacing his mother, who’d taken a shift last night.  Unlike her son, she’d kept her presence quiet and hadn’t engaged with us at all.  But she also wasn’t hiding.  I’d heard her, smelled her, knew full well she was there, all night.  She wanted us to know.
	I was busy packing our remaining supplies for an extended trip on-foot, which was different than just lashing them in place on our raft.  They needed to be less cumbersome, more tightly-bundled.  I’d be carrying most of them and one of my shoulders was still injured, so I was paring down to essentials.
	Finnegan was tending the campfire, stirring the hearty stew of carrots, potatoes and half a chicken we’d purchased in town.  After we’d spent an additional night in Broen, (mostly sleeping, after Finn and I had a long talk) I’d been feeling a lot better.  But a good hearty meal felt like a real necessity before we made the trek to my tribe.  When I’d noticed they were slaughtering a bird a few campfires over, I’d offered to purchase half of it off of them for double what it was worth, just so that we didn’t have to go to the market.  They’d readily agreed.
	I was only vaguely listening in on the chattering young Sawyer while he’d been pestering Finnegan all morning, who’d mostly been ignoring him.  The teenager must have been profoundly bored to be trying so hard to start up conversation with the man they’d been hunting not days ago.  Finnegan was having none of it.
	“You’re inside the boundaries of our camp again,” he muttered.  “I’d appreciate some space.”
	I heard rather than saw the mountain lion take a few steps back, then sit, likely again on the stump he’d been favoring nearby.  “What’re you cookin’ there?”
	“You’re not getting any of our stew,” the wolfdog replied tersely.
	“I don’t want yer bleedin’ stew,” Sawyer groused.  “I want y’to show me how to pull a pistol that fast.  I ain’t ever seen anything like that before, but I’d ‘eard it could be done.”
	I turned, taking in the sight of the young lion as he leaned forward, elbows on his knees, rifle unceremoniously tipped against his side.  He was looking at Finn, who was cocooned in his dark coat against the cold, stooped over the soup like a miserly, grouchy old man.  The illusion was completed by the most ornery expression imaginable, focused squarely on the young, impudent lion like he could burn him with his eyes if he tried hard enough.
	“C’mon,” the teenager pleaded.  “Can I just see it again?  Maybe I kin pick up some tricks.”
	“I don’t.  Do.  Tricks,” Finnegan said emphatically.  He stood slowly, wincing as he stretched his hip.  “You want a lesson?”
	The expression on the mountain lion’s face said he most certainly did.  I began to wonder when I was going to have to get involved in this.
	“Never pull a weapon, any weapon,” Finnegan said, “unless you intend to use it.”
	He turned and began to make his way back towards me.  I saw Sawyer move a second before he did and began to raise my voice to cut off what would certainly be a bad thing.
	Sawyer stood quickly and tried to reach for the pistol on Finnegan’s hip, but before I could shout at him to stop, Finnegan had clearly felt his presence behind him, and whirled around to face the lion.  His gun was in his hand in a flash, just like two days ago in the street.  It was almost too fast to follow.  I was again astounded that anyone could move so quickly.
	“Whoa-haha-“ Sawyer back-pedaled, chuckling nervously.
	“Lesson two, you little wanker!”  Finnegan snapped, advancing on the boy.  “Never fool around with a loaded firearm!”
	I was on my feet by then, approaching the two of them.  “Alright, enough-“ I growled out.
	“That was amazin’!”  Sawyer exclaimed, for some reason thrilled by the turn of events.  But then, he’d gotten what he wanted.
	Finn seemed to realize that suddenly, dropping his pistol with a disgusted noise, stalking back towards our lean-to after holstering his weapon and wrapping his coat back around himself.
	“Please show me how t’do that?!”  Sawyer called after him.
	“No!”  Came the muffled response from inside the lean-to, where the wolfdog had retreated.
	I began to make my way back over there as well, before I noticed Odina standing near the edge of the clearing.  She was leaning against one of the few maples in the area, casually.  I was worried for a moment that she might take issue with the fact that Finnegan had once again pulled a gun on her son, but she seemed relaxed.  She was smoking a pipe, just watching us.  And she had that odd pack over her back again.  Looking at it now, it actually more resembled a big basket of some kind.  My tribe made baskets like it, otters were usually well-known for their reed weaving.  But it stood out because it was shoulder-holstered and large.  I couldn’t imagine what she used it for, where a normal backpack of some sort would have sufficed.
	Considering what had just happened and that soon, I’d be bringing her to my tribe, I thought it might be best if I made sure we were still on good terms.  So I crossed the small clearing towards her, stopping a few feet away.  She levelled a placid look my way, slowly blowing out a smoke ring.  
	“I’m sorry about that,” I said in our language since I knew she spoke it.
	“You’ve nothing to apologize for, bearchild,” she said, tapping her pipe against the nearby tree.  The pipe weed she was smoking reminded me of the kind my father smoked sometimes and made me nostalgic for home.  It’s possible she even traded for or bought hers from our tribe.
	“Finnegan’s not,” I paused, “in the best of spirits, right now.”
	“He is facing the consequences of his actions,” she said, shrugging.  “I wouldn’t expect him to be happy about that.”
	I decided now wasn’t the time to argue the semantics on that.  Instead, I said, “Your son’s being precocious, but that’s no excuse.  I’ll try to make sure he keeps his temper in better check in the future.”
	She gave me a searching look.  “You think you can change an Otherwolf’s behavior?  Oh, child,” she blew out another puff of smoke.  “You really haven’t been in the world long.”	
	“I don’t know,” I admitted.  Then, something occurred to me.  “You didn’t intervene,” I pointed out.
	“My son is growing into a young man,” she waved a hand.  “I can’t pick him up every time he falls, or he’ll never learn.  I watched.  If I thought your ‘friend’ had any intent to actually shoot, I’d have gotten involved.”
	“Then you’ve realized he’s not just some heartless murderer,” I reasoned.  Maybe this was a chance to make some ground.  “Were the circumstances of his bounty ever explained to you?”
	“No, and I don’t really care to know them,” she said point-blank.  “I need that bounty.  And it’s triple if I bring him all the way to the southern lands alive.  Those are the only facts I need to know.”
	“Why did you shoot at us, then?”  I asked, confused.
	“Less coin is better than none,” she reasoned, then smirked.  “And I was aiming for you.  We thought you were just some guide he’d taken on, remember?”
	“Maybe don’t tell my father that part,” I muttered.
	“I’ve always been honest with Takoda,” she said, shifting the straps over her shoulders to put her basket-pack down.  “This time will be no different.  He gets the full story.”
	Something about the basket caught my eye.  There was a small opening in the side facing out, only large enough that I’d be able to fit a few fingers through.  I was perplexed what it could possibly be used for, until I saw a pair of eyes staring out from inside of it.
	Odina noticed my gape-jawed stare and casually reached down to lift the lid off the basket.  “You may come out and meet Tulimak,” she said, extending an arm down.
	The tiny child who clung to her thick arm as she lifted her out was a fawn-colored, tufty-furred little mountain lion, with oversized ears and an even more oversized tail.  She had her mother’s eyes, deep mahogany brown, and lighter fur along her facial features that reminded me of Sawyer.  But her overall hide color was lighter than both of them, suggesting she must have had a very light-furred father. 
	She was, to put it mildly, one of the cutest little creatures I’d ever seen.  And I’d grown up with otter siblings.
	She clung to her mother’s leg once she set her down, staring up at me with those big brown eyes, clearly intimidated, but also curious.  I lowered myself to my knees by habit, something I’d learned to do amongst my otter brethren.  
	“This is Nuka,” Odina said, stroking her daughter’s head.  “My young one.”
	I looked up at her.  “You gave your son an Otherwolf name, but her a Tribal name?”
	“Her father named her,” the mountain lioness said, explaining it no further than that.
	I looked back to the little girl, who had boldly begun to approach me and was reaching up to gingerly pet the fur on my arm, near my markings.  I let her do so for a time.  I’d actually gotten quite used to being around small children, given my upbringing, but that didn’t mean I was about to scoop a stranger’s child up into my arms.
	No matter how badly I wanted to.
	“She’s beautiful,” I said earnestly.  “But you had that pack with you the other night.  Do you bring her with you. . . everywhere?”  The rest was unspoken, but it hung there.  Do you bring her with you while you hunt people?
	“I have no choice,” Odina said plainly.  “We have no land any more, no place to lie our heads except the road.  For some jobs, I can leave her with Sawyer.  But when I need him, she must come with us.  She’s safer on my back than she would be hiding somewhere, alone.”
	She was probably right about that, but the explanation still left me feeling concerned.  The little girl was wrapping a hand around one of my fingers now, toying with the long claw.  When she looked up at me again, she smiled, and it felt like my heart ripped in half.
	We could have destroyed this family.  And it wouldn’t even necessarily have been the wrong thing to do, given that we were fighting for our lives.
	It just felt like the world wasn’t supposed to work this way.  What was right and what was wrong, anymore?  A week ago, I thought I’d known.
	Now, I wasn’t sure.

	When I re-joined Finnegan in the lean-to with two steaming bowls of soup, he looked pensive.  He took the bowl from me all the same, quietly.  But he didn’t immediately begin to eat.  I did.  
	Things had just. . . been like this, since the talk.  Whereas before I’d spent nearly every hour awake with him talking, eager to listen to his stories and his wisdom, and he eager to hear my thoughts on whatever it was we found to speak on, now we measured our words more.  When we did speak, it felt important.  But serious.  Always serious.  No pleasantries.  And it wasn’t that the spark between us was gone, exactly.  Just tempered.  There was an uneasiness between us that I knew hinged mostly on me, and my feelings.  I’m not sure exactly how I knew, but I felt that I had the power to lift it, to dissolve the tension between us, if I chose to.  It was an odd feeling, knowing you were the one causing discomfort and awkwardness.  But it also felt warranted.
	I wasn’t sure how long I could go before I gave in, to be honest.  It was hard to intentionally hold yourself at arms’ length, to protect yourself like this, from someone you wanted and preferred to be close to.
	And I did still want to be close to him.
	Despite everything I’d learned, or maybe because of it, my feelings for Finnegan were still deepening.  They weren’t all positive, the good was so entangled with the bad it had gotten hard to separate the two.  It was complex.
	The strangest realization that I’d come to, primarily thanks to some very illuminating introspection, was that some part of me enjoyed how dangerous Finnegan was.  It wasn’t that I wanted to be hurt by him in any way, but more that my life before meeting him as opposed to now had been so much smaller.  Finn had brought a world of experiences with him and as awful as some of them had been, I wouldn’t go back.  
	It was exciting.  It felt twisted to admit that, even inwardly.  But it was true. 
	The more he’d told me about his life before this and the task ahead of him, the more I’d wanted to know.  And the less I wanted to part ways with him.  I was still very confused about my feelings for him, personally.  But the thought of going back to my life with my tribe as it had been only a few months ago, even though that would clearly be the safer option, made me feel hollow inside.
	“Kid doesn’t even use a pistol,” Finnegan muttered, randomly.  “He barely ever bothers to hold his rifle correctly.  Muzzle’s covered in dirt.”
	I glanced at his bowl, then said, “Eat your soup.”
	He slowly brought the bowl to his muzzle and sipped some of the broth.  I watched him for a time, before getting back to my own.  “He’s impressed by you,” I said.  “Wants to be as skilled as you.”
	“He shouldn’t be,” Finn murmured.
	“I’m impressed by you,” I admitted, at length.  “I don’t particularly like firearms, but. . . you are a master of your craft.  In a way.  How did you get so fast?”
	“Becomes second nature after a while,” he said, plucking at a piece of carrot with a claw.  “But in Amuresca it’s more about accuracy.  I was already an expert marksman by the time I was twenty.  I only started practicing the draw when I knew I’d be coming to Carvecia.”
	“Why?”  I asked.
	He sighed.  “Dueling is different, here.  In Amuresca duels are officiated, for one.  Everything is planned out more precisely, time, place.  The rules are enforced more.  And you draw first, then there’s a count.”  He finally ate a chunk of carrot, which would be the first solid food I’d seen him eat in two days.  “Here, there’s a count. . . then you draw.  Or at least, that’s what I’ve been told.  But it sounds like it’s looser overall.  More chaotic.  It’s about reflexes, more than accuracy.  I thought I should be prepared for that.  I practiced a lot on the voyage over.  Wasn’t much else to do, since I could barely leave my bunk.”
	Knowing him, I could imagine him practicing the same thing hours on end, for days and days.  Finnegan was intense, driven, and probably a perfectionist.  
	“You were prepared to engage in these duels here?”  I asked, before chewing on a piece of chicken.
	“Death seems to follow me,” he said morosely.  “I wasn’t planning to make a career out of it here, but I thought it might be a possibility.  Anyway, it hasn’t really ended up serving me well, save at the bridge in Stuttgar.  And even then, I got the ever-living shite beaten out of me taking on the second man.  I only have the one pistol.  One shot.”
	“How did you. . . ?”  I asked, trailing off.
	“I got lucky,” he admitted.  “Managed to get him against the railing and tip him off-balance.  He fell over the side.”  He said it staring straight at me, like he wanted to gauge my response.
	I stared back at him, then continued eating my soup.
	“For what it’s worth,” he said.  “They weren’t trying to capture me, Tulimak.  They were trying to kill me.”
	“I know,” I said softly.  “Although Odina says your bounty is worth three times as much if you’re delivered alive to the south.”
	“Thrice as much?”  He repeated, disbelievingly.  “Why?”
	I shook my head.  “I don’t know.  But it means she prefers you alive.  Which is good.”
	“Yes,” he agreed, staring down at his soup.  
	“You really need to eat,” I urged quietly.  When he continued to simply look down at the food, unmoving, I said, “You know, you probably would be dead now, if not for these skills of yours.  Which means no one would be looking into these documents.  That’s something.”
	“Like I said, my ‘skills’ haven’t availed me much,” he said.  “They don’t equate well to the real world, where people don’t stand in a field and wait for you to shoot them.  I mean hell, when you first met me, I was about to get my bell rung by two mangy blighters armed with little more than pocket knives.  They just stuck one of them in my back and shoved me outside, and I could’ve drawn on one and hoped he didn’t realize I was out of powder, but then the other would have gotten me from behind.  Literally all it takes for me to be as helpless as a newborn lamb is one more man than I’m accustomed to.”
	“It was two-on-one, Finn,” I said.  “Now we’re two.”
	He looked at me, ears lifting slightly, hopefully.
	I smiled.  “Eat,” I reminded him.  “Or your fur will get thin.”
	That seemed to get through to him.  Self-consciously, he brushed back some of his cheek ruff, like he was checking it.  Then he began to eat the soup in earnest.

	The final stretch of the journey to my home village would take five days.  The brief rest we’d taken, the extra day we’d encamped in Broen, had done wonders for me.  Whatever the affliction that had taken hold in my wound, it was well and truly gone.  The apothecary, for all his eccentricities, had done good work.
	I’d spaced out drinking the tonic far more than he’d probably intended, but that meant I still had plenty left when we began our trek, which would prove to be a decent remedy for the remaining pain.  And honestly, I think it had done more than that.  Once I’d begun drinking less of it in the days immediately following the initial treatment, I realized it had surely affected my overall character.  It made me think less, or rather overthink less, about saying what was on my mind.  In the case of what I’d learned about Finnegan, loudly and angrily.
	He’d since assured me I had not been at all ‘out of line’, which apparently meant ‘in the wrong’.  But I did reflect on how much more severe the drink had made me.  Maybe in this case it had been for the best.  It’s not as though I’d said anything that wasn’t true.  But I didn’t like the version of me the harsh spirits brought out.  My otterfa was right about liquor.
	Or maybe I was using it as an excuse and the anger I’d expressed was all me.  It was so hard to say.  Either way, what was done was done and even now, I had to admit I was still a little angry.  The fact that Finnegan was being contrite about it all should have satisfied me some, but it mostly made me frustrated for some reason.  I think because the whole situation was so. . . confusing this way.
	If Finnegan had been a lying con artist criminal who’d strung me along as a protector so he could skirt the law, I’d be on my way home now feeling stupid, but resolved.
	But what he truly was, I couldn’t build a clear picture of.  Not yet.  Was he lying?  I didn’t think so, at least I wanted to believe him, but I knew enough of the world now to know I was naïve.  Was he a criminal?  Even he didn’t seem to have the answer to that, and even if he was, how much did that matter to me?  The Carvecian laws had done nothing to protect my people and he was a foreigner besides.  Amurescan law was so far-removed from my world, I hadn’t even known about this ‘dueling’ practice.
	Did I believe his story?
	Would it even matter soon?  I was once again facing the inevitable, that we would be parting ways in a short time.  One way or the other, we couldn’t be together for long.  I was taking a risk by bringing him to my family as it was.  My only comfort was that I knew Odina and she knew my father and seemed to want to maintain good relations with my tribe. 
	Beyond who he was within his own story, I wanted to at least figure out who he was to me.  Was he a friend?  An interesting acquaintance I’d met once, that I could tell my children about some day?  The things I’d felt for him, would they be unique to him?  Had they somehow tainted or changed how I’d see relations like that in the future?
	Would I ever feel the way I’d briefly felt for him, for someone else?
	Did I still feel that way for him?   
	That last one was especially hard, because I was of two minds about it.  There was no longer any denying the physical attraction.  I might have been self-conscious about my big, cumbersome body, but I knew at least in this case what it was telling me.  There was no getting around the thoughts, the dreams that had been unleashed in my mind.  If anything, I was growing more certain by the day about that.
	But there was no future with Finnegan.  And I might have been inexperienced, but I’d always thought these feelings were meant to go together with other, more lasting ones.  My otterfa had explained it very clearly to me, that these yearnings were allowed, were part of being a man.  But that they should accompany other feelings, like respect, loyalty, a desire to protect.  All things I would someday feel for my wife.
	Perhaps even more frighteningly, what if I did feel those things for someone like Finn?  Even if and when the wolfdog left my tribe, what if this happened again, with another man?  What then?  I couldn’t. . . marry. . . a man.
	Would I ever feel this way about a woman suitable for me to marry?
	I’d asked the canine everything I could think of about himself over that last day we’d spent in the tent, and he’d answered me, even when it had seemed hard.  In retrospect, there were a few things I wish I hadn’t asked.  Things about his mother.  And what her profession truly entailed.
	But I certainly understood it all much more now than I did before.
	I hadn’t asked him about these fears of mine, though.  These worries about my future beyond him.  Because for one, he’d already told me back on the raft how to handle this problem, if it did indeed become a problem.  He’d said get a wife, (as if that were so simple) have children, and never talk about what we’d done together.
	And for two, what could he possibly tell me that would help?  He’d already given me what he deemed to be the best advice and he was probably right.  I didn’t need to know as much as he did about the world beyond our river to know these feelings I had for another man were unusual.  I’d never even known they were possible until I’d met him.
	Although thinking back, really digging through my memories, I suppose I might have suspected. . . .
	Finnegan had traipsed into my life, whisked me along on a dangerous journey with him, told me stories of a world beyond that was crueler than I could have imagined, and revealed a part of myself that might haunt me for the rest of my life.  And yet still, strangely, that wasn’t what I was angry at him about.
	I was angry he hadn’t told me more.
	Here we were yet again, moving towards a destination, and that destination would and should separate us.  And here I was again, mind spinning, trying to think of ways I could keep him from being taken away, somehow.  Not just because I was afraid for him.  I just knew there was. . . more. . . between us.  Even while I was angry and frustrated with him, I had so much empathy for him.  And I had so many more questions that he might have the answers for.
	I didn’t want to lose him.  I didn’t want to know he was being dragged off towards an uncertain fate. . . without me by his side, to protect him.
	Respect, loyalty, a desire to protect.
	Oh no, oh no.  No, this was a bad path to go down.	
	As if I could protect him, I chastised myself inwardly.  I had to look at this logically.  Finnegan didn’t even really need my protection.  For the whole of the trek over land, I don’t think Odina or Sawyer considered me a threat even once.  But they certainly still kept a wary eye on Finn.  All of the other more earth-shaking revelations from this trip aside, one humbling lesson I needed to take away was very clear.
	Size wasn’t everything.  I guess even though I’d long felt awkward and uncomfortable in my body, I’d assumed somewhere in the back of my mind that at the very least, my bulk would be an asset to my smaller loved ones if the time came that we were put in danger.  Indeed, it often came in handy with my tribe, performing tasks far more easily than the much smaller otter folk were capable of.
	But in a world full of firearms, it meant very little.  In that world, Finnegan Ambrose was a terror, and I was just a larger target and potential victim.
	But would he be alive right now if not for me?
	Would I be alive right now if not for him?
	I hardly knew what to do with myself, with these thoughts, these feelings.  I spent most of the trek up-river in a haze, wanting more than anything to talk to my otterfa.  As childish a notion as that was, I wanted it more than anything.  My mind was more tumultuous than it had ever been and the object of that storm was walking beside me every step of the way.
	Finnegan was similarly quiet and contemplative, and I believed, troubled.  He was having the other half of this maelstrom play out in his mind.  I wanted so badly to know what he was thinking.
	I could have asked.  But seeing as I didn’t know how to put my own thoughts into words, it hardly felt right to demand he give me more answers than he already had.
	Odina, Sawyer and their little girl kept a decent distance from us throughout most of the trek.  I was grateful Odina afforded us that respect and that her son was listening to her.  I’d been worried he and Finnegan might fight the whole way, or that Sawyer’s immaturity might grate on Finnegan enough that there would be some kind of incident.
	It was only on the third day that Finnegan noticed Nuka, and only because she’d bounded on ahead of her family and gotten close enough to us that he’d briefly been spooked by her.
	He’d nearly drawn on her, too.  Had his coat pushed back right up until he’d seen her peering out from behind a tree.
	Honestly, given our situation, I couldn’t blame him for that sort of instinct.  But it scared me.  It would have been so easy to make a mistake.
	What shocked me was that it seemed to scare him, too.
	“. . . fuck. . . .” he breathed out, like he’d just come up for air under water.  “I could’ve-“
	I put a paw on his shoulder.  I could feel him shaking.  His muzzle was drawn in a thin line, ears quivering.  He let out another breath after a few long moments, thrust his hand down to his holster and deftly pulled out the pistol, lifting it up to his shoulder, held by the grip backwards.
	It took me a moment to realize he was offering it to me.  Uncertainly, I took hold of it and slipped it away from his hand.  “Are you sure?”  I asked.
	“My nerves are shot to hell,” he said, voice wavering.  “I don’t trust myself.  And they’re going to take it from me when we make it to your tribe, anyway.  You may as well keep it.  Sell it, if you don’t want it.  It’s worth a decent amount of coin, even out here.”
	“Finn,” I said, trying to sound more confident than I was, “we haven’t spoken to my father yet.  He might be able to talk them down.”
	“Uh-huh,” he said, noncommittally.
	The crunching of heavier footsteps approached us and soon Sawyer came into view, rifle slung over his shoulder.  He called out, “Approachin’ from th’east,” before he came in closer to us, clearly heading for the little girl.  She was still standing partially behind a spruce tree, peering out at us curiously.
	Specifically at Finnegan, who was also looking at her.  I’d told him about her days ago, but this was the first time they’d ‘met’, as it were.  It was hard to gauge his reaction.
	“Sorry about ‘er,” Sawyer said, easing up behind the little girl and loosely curling his tail around her, protectively.  “She’s practicin’ stalkin’ up on folk and she’s got good enough at it tha’even I lose track o’her sometimes.”
	He seemed to read the tense silence that followed and just nodded, putting a hand down on her shoulder and trying to turn her back.  “Anyway.  We’ll get outta yer fur.”
	“Wait,” Finnegan said suddenly, surprising the mountain lions.  And me, if I’m being honest.  He slowly kneeled down, lowering his bag to the ground as well.  He looked across the ten feet that separated us towards the little girl and asked, “I’m sorry. . . Nuka, was it?”
	The little lioness nodded.
	“Did I scare you?”  He asked, quietly.
	She shook her head.
	“Good,” he forced a smile.  “I’m sorry, all the same.”  He reached down towards his bag and opened it, pushing aside a few things and digging about for a moment, before he found what he was looking for.  He pulled out a long, green ribbon and looped it around his fingers a few times, bundling it.
	“Your mother and brother would probably have given this to you eventually anyway,” he reasoned, looking right up at Sawyer, “after they take possession of everything that’s on my person.”  He looked back at her, and held it out.  “But I’d like to give it to you myself, if that’s alright.”
	Nuka looked up at her big brother, who simply shrugged.  “Jes’a ribbon.  You can take it.”
	She needed no further nudging.  She darted up to Finnegan and gingerly took the ribbon, turning it over in her hands with a growing smile.
	“When we wear cloth spats,” he said, patting his ankle to indicate the leather calf and ankle guards he currently wore, “we use those to tie them.  I always fancied green.  Enough there to use for a dress or something of the like, though.”
	She looked up from her new trinket at him and gave the kind of bright smile only a child’s capable of.  “Thank you,” she chirped in somewhat accented Amurescan.
	“You’re welcome,” he smiled back, a little more genuinely this time.
	“Actually while I’m here,” Sawyer cleared his throat.  “Ma’s been sayin’ we should hunker down early tonight.  Snowstorm comin’ in.”
	“Or we could just move on ahead of you, and lose you,” Finnegan said sardonically.
	“I’m fine to camp now, actually,” I said, setting down my things.  “Shoulder’s aching.  We should arrive late tomorrow, regardless.  Another hour won’t do us much good.”
	So we made camp and Finnegan started a dinner for us.  We were down to fish and potatoes, which didn’t exactly stew well together, so tonight it looked as though it was just going to be fish.  We’d been able to keep them frozen even since we’d left the raft thanks to packing them in snow at night.  And the freezing temperatures in general.
	We’d run out soon, exactly as I’d planned for.  Initially I’d saved enough for myself on the trip back home, but I’d been eating about two thirds as much as I’d planned on, so that Finn could eat.  It hadn’t been a hardship, really.  I’d just lose a little less weight this winter.
	Finn hadn’t been eating or sleeping well since our talk, so it was a relief to see him finish his meal and almost immediately fall asleep in the lean-to, even before the sun had set.  I guess the exhaustion finally caught up with him.
	It also meant we had as little awkward silence between us as possible, which admittedly, had been bothering me, too.  Before all of this, I’d loved talking to him at night.  During the day, while we were traveling, really any time we were together.  But all of our talks since Broen had been tense and dire, by necessity.
	And that closeness we’d had was marred by discomfort, by mistrust.
	I found myself sitting near the campfire, thinking on that.  And my eyes drifted to his bag.
	He’d left it just outside the lean-to with our other bags, covered by the branches of a thick-needled pine.  I could hear his even breathing, just feet away.  He was out to the world.
	He rarely let that bag leave his side and he’d never offered to show me its’ contents.  Of course, I knew primarily what was in there.  Documents.  The ones that supposedly proved his story, that he’d brought all the way across the ocean.  The ones he intended to use to prove his father’s misdeeds.
	My grasp of the written Amurescan language was poor, but I could read it.  How much would I be able to make sense of them, if I took a quick look?  Could I at least discern they were what he’d said they were?
	Was it right to go through someone’s possessions like that?
	No, I told myself immediately.  Of course it wasn’t.  But maybe this was a special circumstance.  I’d been hurt, physically hurt, at this point.  I’d put myself through a lot for him.  I was about to bring him home to my family.
	I needed to have more than just his word to go on.
	Making up my mind in that moment, I reached over for the bag and dragged it as quietly towards me as I could, unclasping it carefully.  I stamped down any further misgivings I might have had and reached inside for the bound stack of weighty papers, encircled with twine.  I made sure to undo the knot, rather than cut it, so I could bind them again when I was done.
	Spirits, I was covering my tracks now, was I?  This was feeling less and less warranted every second.
	Still, at that point they were in my hands.  And I began to look over them, slowly turning one to the back of the pile, then the next. The first two were folded three ways and looked to be letters written to someone.  I recognized the name ‘Eamon’ immediately, which I vaguely recalled had been the name he’d given me for his father.  It was followed by another name, ‘Lancaster’.  I was briefly confused, then realized Finn had likely taken his surname from his mother, not his father.  So far, so good.
	I spent quite some time trying to decipher the letter.  The script was flowing and fine, but that only made it harder for me to read.  To make matters worse, it had gotten a bit wet in places, so parts of it were blotted out.  I picked out a name that was mentioned many times, which was far simpler than Finnegan’s father’s, ‘Gezan’. As far as I could gather, the man who’d written the letter- presumably this ‘Eamon Lancaster’, since that was the name signed at the bottom, was asking this ‘Gezan’ about a shipment of livestock.
	I didn’t realize how long it had taken me to make out even that much, before Finnegan’s voice pierced the still night air.
	“Have you gotten to the ledgers yet?”  He asked, nearly right beside me.  I almost jumped out of my skin.
	I looked over at him guiltily, being caught in the act and all.  But he was just sitting on the other side of me near the fire, drawing his knees up to his chest, looking exhausted.  He made no move to stop me from reading any further.
	“I-I’m sorry-“ I stammered.
	“Stow it,” he muttered.  “If you really were, you wouldn’t have done it.  Here,” he reached over, taking the stack away from me and sorting through it.  “Look over Eamon’s letters to his Fleetmaster in Arbordale all you like, but what you really want to see are the ledgers.  I’m sorry I didn’t show them to you earlier, but I didn’t even know until we made it to Broen that you could read our language.”  He extracted a few papers from the stack and handed them to me.
	I took them slowly, while he kept speaking.  “The rest are mostly my memoires,” he sighed.  “Of this whole escapade.  And Eamon’s history with my mother, with me, with Ambrose Park in general.  I don’t know how much my account of any of that will matter to anyone, but I thought I should write it down for posterity all the same.”
	I looked to him, arching an eyebrow.
	“In the very likely case I die,” he explained, then stared back into the fire.  “I thought, you know. . . someone should hear my story.  I guess that’s a little grandiose of me, eh?”
	“Not at all,” I assured him.  “Every person’s story is worth telling.  There are stories in my tribe for every member, current and many generations past.”
	“I suppose you’ll care, then,” he said, leaning back on his hands.  Then, quieter, “that’s something.”
	“I’m confused,” I stated, my eyes sweeping the dense logs I was trying to read through.  “I’m not. . . saying you’re lying, Finn, but. . . that letter, and these papers here all seem to talk about ‘livestock’ a lot.  Horses, mules, cattle.”
	“That’s what’s on the books,” he nodded.  
	“But that’s not what you said. . . .” I trailed off.
	“The thicker paper, with the seal on the top?”  He pointed.  “Those are the official Dockmaster’s logs, for each vessel.  Turn a few pages.  Pull out some of the thinner, more yellowed ones.  Those are the logs from the Mercantile house itself, private logs.  Got into some real dodgy situations getting those, let me tell you.”
	I did as instructed and got to the pages in question.  After a cursory sweep of the page, I said, “still livestock.  Again, horses-“
	“Ah-ah,” he shook his head, “look three columns over.  Those are the Captains’ notes from each vessel, on the state of the cargo.  Usually, they’d use it to indicate when they take cargo on, if it’s already been damaged, waterlogged, gone rotten, what have you.  Read what’s written there.”
	I did so, slowly.  “Male.  Th-thirty. . . years of age.  There-a-bouts.  S. . . suitable. . . for. . . labor.”  I paused, then moved down to the next.  “Female.  Four. . . teen.  Years of age.  Suitable for. . . ho-use. . . work.”
	I lifted my head slowly, reality sinking in.  I felt Finnegan’s gaze on me, his green eyes catching the firelight, flickering like embers.
	“You should see how young they think is ‘suitable for companionship’,” he said, tone dead and lifeless.  “So you tell me, Tulimak.  How many fourteen-year-old mules do you think would make good maids?”