Jobo looked like she was barely containing her terror, but at this point she dared say nothing. Still, Rigg wasn’t cruel. “You must have forgotten when you went out toward the hayers. I don’t know if you were feeling better and thought to join them, and then changed your mind, or maybe you were just going to see if they were coming back.”

“I never went out of the house,” said Jobo, too fervently.

“You were ill,” said Ram Odin. “You might not remember. It might seem to you to be part of a dream. But if Rigg says he knows where it is, then he knows.”

The fear drained from her face, but what replaced it was not relief, but the same contempt she showed when she was sniping at Bak. She thinks I’m a fraud, thought Rigg. Well, let her think that. “Let’s go get it,” said Rigg. “It has to be you that finds it.”

“Why me?” asked Jobo. “I don’t think I went out there, so why should I go looking where I never was?”

“We learned a good time ago,” said Ram Odin, “that if Rigg’s the one as picks up whatever was lost, then folks will whisper that he had it all along, that he stole it in the first place. So he won’t come near it. You’ll find it.”

“I won’t.”

“But not for lack of trying,” said Bak softly. “You will try, because it’s very important to find that button. I paid good money for it in town. Because my wife should have brass buttons instead of common wooden ones.”

“I should never have nagged you for those foolish buttons.”

“They were the desire of your heart. And you were proud of them,” said Bak. “I try to get you your heart’s desire, when it’s within my reach.”

And in those words Rigg heard a lifetime’s tragedy. He didn’t know what it was, not without looking. But there was something Jobo had longed for that Bak could not obtain for her. More children than two, perhaps? Or something else unguessed. Rigg could follow the paths back and see the whole story, but he’d found out enough of their secrets for now.