Visitors (Pathfinder 3)

“Loaf,” said Leaky. “He isn’t going back to get even.”

Umbo didn’t want to discuss this anymore. “See you within a few hours.”

As he said this, he heard Leaky finish her thought. “He’s going back to save his brother’s life after all.”

Then Umbo was gone, so he didn’t have to hear Loaf shout at him about how dangerous it was to try to do that. He knew it was dangerous. But he had to try.

Ironic that it was Leaky who remembered Kyokay’s death, though she hardly knew Umbo, while Loaf, who had traveled with him for years, thought Umbo would go home for revenge. But maybe it wasn’t about who knew Umbo better. Maybe it was just that Loaf was thinking of the kind of thing he himself might do—punish someone who had done wrong—while Leaky was better at remembering personal things, like how Kyokay had died right before Umbo’s eyes.

Umbo jumped back easily enough to a time before he had left Fall Ford with Rigg. The real problem was that he was still in Leaky’s Landing, and he had to get upriver. It had been a long hike to here, and that was with Rigg, a skilled trapper, providing food along the way.

On the other hand, Umbo had a little money now. Compared to then, in fact, he had a lot of money.

He was in the kitchen yard of Loaf’s and Leaky’s roadhouse and he took a moment to inspect his coins to make sure none of them were new—so new that they wouldn’t even be minted for a few more years. He didn’t need someone to accuse him of counter­feiting.

Then he heard the kitchen door open and he realized that Leaky would have no idea who he was. And if she saw his face and took him for a thief, she’d remember him when he and Rigg showed up a few months from now, and would never let them in.

Fortunately, he wasn’t far from the fence, and it was no problem to vault over it. He didn’t even drop his moneypurse or snag it on anything. All she could possibly have seen was his back. And since he was now at least a hand taller than he had been when Leaky first met him, she’d never connect the boy Umbo with the thief she surprised in the kitchen garden.

If it was Leaky. For all he knew, it was a patron staggering to the privy to void himself. But it would have been stupid to turn and look to see who it was, showing his face.

He walked between a couple of buildings to come out on the road, and as he did, he jumped another day back in time, so he could walk right past Loaf’s and Leaky’s roadhouse without fear of her seeing him and calling him a thief.

There were two boats docked at Leaky’s Landing, but they were both heading downriver. That was all right. Umbo knew he had plenty of time to get upriver. He could wait.

As he waited, he thought through the dangers Loaf would surely have warned him of. Saving Kyokay would not be easy. If Umbo saved him by bodily preventing him from going up to the top of the falls, then Rigg wouldn’t have needed to drop all his pelts to try to save the boy from falling, and therefore Umbo—younger Umbo—wouldn’t have “seen” him push Kyokay from the cliff, and so Rigg wouldn’t have been forced to leave town in a hurry, and Umbo certainly wouldn’t have felt any need to go with him to make amends for having nearly gotten him mobbed, and . . .

A part of his mind insisted that none of that could possibly change, because—well, because it hadn’t. But they had made plenty of changes before, and as best they understood the rules of how this sort of thing worked, whoever made the change continued to exist, even if his own past was obliterated. But this change would be Umbo’s alone, so he was the only one who would be preserved.

It wasn’t till the next day—only a few hours before Leaky, or someone else, would catch a glimpse of Umbo jumping over the fence—that a boat came upriver and tied up.

“Not going all the way to Fall Ford,” said the pilot.

“How far then?” asked Umbo.

“Bear’s Den Crossing,” he said.

“Never heard of it,” said Umbo.

“I have,” said the pilot, looking irritated.

“Left bank or right?” asked Umbo.

“It’s Bear’s Den Crossing,” said the pilot. “If you don’t like which side of the river I tie up on, you can cross to the other side.”

“Oh, you mean like you can ford the river at Fall Ford?” asked Umbo.

The pilot did know the river top to bottom, so he got the snide joke. Fall Ford hadn’t had a usable ford in centuries, but nobody bothered to change the name. The pilot glowered. “Every smart remark just raises the price.”

“Then I’ll try to make it up to you by being useful on the trip,” said Umbo.

The pilot looked him up and down, sizing him up. “Slender arms.”

“I sure couldn’t pole the boat alone,” said Umbo. “But I know how to poke and push and lift a stick, and I also know how to sit the prow and watch for debris coming down and call a warning in plenty of time.”

“So you’ve made the voyage before.”

“Only once. Not enough to be an expert like you, sir,” said Umbo, “but there were many days of work, and I worked hard all those days.”