They turned upstream in the fading light.
The lifting lock had put them into the old cut below Harrowmere. Sorell pointed out the stakes at its mouth: this was the barge route, before the war closed it. The carriage road had wandered away from the river around the salt flats and broken crossings. Here the distance was shorter, though every mile had to be won against the current.
The wind turned against them at dusk. Sorell lowered the sail. Every bend brought a longer reach of dark water, and the capital remained beyond all of them.
Ruun stood at the bow. Wherever its intact hand pointed, the current slowed, then turned. The boat moved into that borrowed path. Selka watched the god's body grow thinner at the edges. It had not recovered the water lost in the lock.
“Rest,” she said.
“Then row.”
They rowed.
Darr took the first shift beside Kerr. Their strokes failed to match. The captain started to correct his brother, stopped, and laughed instead. Kerr was stronger in his arms than any of them expected. Prison had taken his leg and given him years of hauling ropes in one place.
Selka sat opposite Iven for the next shift. He watched the water, not her.
“How long have you known her?” she asked.
“Three years.”
“I should have known you better.”
“You came on paydays.”
She deserved that, though he said it without malice.
“Is there someone expecting you at home?”
“My aunt. She thinks bells are an unnecessary trade. People should shout if they need help.”
Selka smiled. She had shouted all day. It had helped less than Anet's knowledge of a rope.
In the stern Sorell held the mouthpiece while Anet slept against rolled blankets. The girl's reserve gave a faint pulse from time to time. The ordinary bellows filled the intervals when it did not. Selka counted ten movements, lost her count, began again.
Her oar caught the water badly.
“Look at the bow,” Iven said.
She did. Ruun was looking back at her.
She had to row, and Sorell had to work, and Anet had to be allowed to sleep without her mother's face appearing whenever she opened her eyes. Selka found the rhythm again.
Near midnight a patrol fire showed on the bank. Darr lowered everyone in the boat. Sorell guided them toward the deeper shadows, but the current carried them out. Ruun put both hands over the bow.
The fire rose above them as the water dipped. They passed through a hollow in the river, low enough that the bank hid them. Selka looked up at roots hanging from the mud. Fish moved through the wall of water beside her head, their pale bellies briefly visible.
Then the hollow closed. The boat lifted back to the surface, farther upstream. Ruun collapsed against the bow bench.
Selka crossed to it. Its throat was open again. She found the cleanest scrap of cloth and pressed it into the seam.
“No more like that.”
“There are more fires.”
“Then we wait behind a bank. Or row harder.”
“Your city will have men ready.”
“It already has.”
She leaned against the bench beside it. They were both shaking with fatigue. The god's wet shoulder rested against hers, its weight painful and welcome.
“The man,” she said. “The boat-builder. Was he old?”
“When he died.”
“That's something.”
Ruun looked at her. “He would have said so.”
It did not tell her the name. She no longer asked.
They rowed again before dawn, through another day of hidden rests and changed hands at the oars. They spent the next night tied under an overhanging bank. By late morning, after their second night upstream, the first towers of Harrowmere appeared over the bend.
The barrier had always made them shine. Selka had lived beneath that brightness, taken Anet walking along the river to see it reflected. Now one tower was dark. Steam rose from the city in thin broken plumes. The supply had faltered whenever Ruun's wounds opened on the road. This time it had not steadied.
Behind her Anet woke and asked for water. Selka brought it, letting Sorell hold the cup when the boat rocked.
“We're home,” she said.
Her daughter looked at the dark tower. “For a while.”