Angel with The Sword

Chapter 7

THE boat was there, out to the front of the second-hand store, beyond Fishmarket Stair—sleepy-looking scene, boat on black water, boatman drowsing on the halfdeck, nearest of four boats night-tied at that corner. But that one boatman was watching: he lifted his head as Altair padded barefoot down the stone bank. Ali was back there— watching. Tommy the potboy was installed somewhere, probably high up on the bridge, sitting there with feet adangle and young eyes alert. She resisted the impulse to look and see: Tommy was Moghi's; and if Ali said he was there, he was there or Moghi would kill him.

Tommy was there the same way that Del Suleiman would haul himself out of a sound sleep and pole a boat across town just because Moghi's men suggested it. Not unpaid, of course. Moghi paid. She had paid Moghi. Value for value.

She came up to the edge and the halfdeck, her own precious deck, her little bit of planking and everything she owned in the world. "Hey," she said by way of greeting, set her cap firm against the light breeze—a little wind kicking up, clean air, a clean night: she landed on her own deck and a wealth of things were better.

"Hey." Del Suleiman, pole in both hands, tucked both bare feet up on the deck rim and stood up on the deck with his toes curled over—canaler's sense of balance. "Hey, damn lousy hour, Jones."

"Sorry. I got worried."

"Moghi's men. Moghi's men. Come rousting the canalside—"

"Hey, I never set 'em at that."

"Where'd you get to shift Moghi's crew yey and haw, huh? Damn, next you be out collecting."

"Give me that pole. I get you back."

"Ne, ne, not to get aslant, ye. Cm on. You want starb'd?"

Lord. Generosity. Del was going to pole double with her into the bargain. The old man was in a hurry. "Ne. You c'n call it." Altair dropped onto her haunches and pulled the side-tie, waiting-tie. Del would have bow-tied for any longer wait, stern-anchored (if there was one) and never chosen this stone-bottomed shelf in the first place, where the bottom was like to scrape on the ebb if some big barge came by. (If there was one. If there was any likely to move, if they had gotten the hulk and the bridge out of Port—) Not Del's way, this skulking around shallow ties and back doors. The old man was nervous. It was in the way he moved.

I don't blame him none. Mira off to herself and him off with them bullylads. She's got to be wondering, Lord, Lord, Del come with them and her left off in the dark somewheres.

The boat drifted free and bumped bottom. She snatched up the boathook from the rack and crossed over to the left side while Del shoved off. She put the boathook's pole-end down on stony bottom and leaned on it when Del's push ebbed down. "Bow a-port," Del said, and she kept her pole grounded while Del shoved, bringing the bow around to the bridge. "Hup." Signal to lift. She took her time from Del, from starboard-side poler, hit the stroke again as the boat slipped along. "Hin," Del said, which was warning he was grounding on his side and the final turning shove was hers.

She shoved. The bow came round with the skip nosed neatly toward a gap in the bridge pilings. "Hup," she said. Del shoved and lifted.

"Yoss," she said cheerfully, meaning straight on; and "yoss," Del echoed, as the skip slid into shadow.

Poling double with her mother. Her young arms hardly strong enough to handle the pole if it got off its center of balance.

Miss it, I do. Lord, how she flies. Got me a man and he don't know hin from hey on a skip.

He could learn, couldn't he? If he wasn't uptowner.

Sword of God. O Lord and my Ancestors, if he could shake all of that and stay on the canals, if he could learn—

If he wouldn't leave—

If he wouldn't ever leave—

The skip shot out from the shadow of Fishmarket Bridge. Lantern light gleamed brightly out unshuttered windows and open door, onto the porch and a huddle of boats tied up around Moghi's porch. The wan notes of the gitar and the voices of canalers flowed out onto the water and lost themselves in the dark.

"This lander you went off after," Del said. "That deal still going?"

Her heart sped beyond what the poling needed. "Hey, I lost m'skip, I got enough business tracking you, don't I?"

"Where you got the stuff to get Moghi out, huh?"

"I work for 'im. He's doing me a favor, ain't nothing to him to send a few fellows around, is it?" Ventani Pier passed on the right. Hanging Bridge loomed up ahead. Stroke and stroke, and the skip flew along. Damn, think. Man's curious. Man's been brought here on Moghi's money, going to hit me for the why of it surer'n hell. What'd I tell 'im already? What's he heard? O Lord. Mintaka. Altair drew breath and shoved. The depth was increasing, chancy poling with the boathook. "Damn, she's a wash. Let her ride."

"Yoss," Del agreed, and the skip glided in the center of the barge-channel, between the two sets of piers. He turned his gaunt, unshaven face her way in the starlight. " 'Bout Moghi now—"

"Hey, I don't gossip Moghi's business."

"That blond fellow Moghi's?"

"Dammit, Del—"

They were slewing. Del trailed his pole and the drag brought them true again. "Heard a lot of gossip today. Lot of stories. How long I known you, huh? Knowed you since you was a babe in your mama's arms. Damn, you listen to me, girl. Your mama'd knock you to next week, you taking up with some damn landsman."

Heat mounted in her face. She probed for the bottom with the boathook and it was still too deep. "My mama had a word 'bout gossip too. Who said I took up with anybody? I run Moghi's freight."

That shut the old man up a moment. He gave a brief shove at the pole as they slipped under Hanging Bridge shadow. "You better watch that kind, young'un, and I don't mean Moghi. He'll talk real fine, but that ain't how he'll do ye."

"Who said? Who said I been with anybody?" She fended off a piling. "Ware, there, dammit, Del."

"Hin, you got bottom, use the damn piling, hain't your mama taught you?"

"All right, all right, you want to take port, let me call it, I'll give you hurry."

"I'll give you hurry. That I will. Hin, there. Damn nonsense. Damn nonsense you got mixed up in, just like your mama."

Her heart skipped. She missed another stroke. Her blistered feet burned on the boards. "What about my mama?" Her whole life was hint and innuendo. Retribution Jones did this. Retribution did that. "What was she into?"

"Every damn thing in town. Moghi. Hafiz. You come along, and she never slowed down. Mira and I, we told her, we told her, 'Jones,' we said—'You go taking that baby up them dark ways, that's asking for grief. Tried to talk her into giving you over to us, we did, you might've been ours—hell of a surprise we'd of got, you being a girl—Yoss, there. —But hain't no difference t'me or Mira. We'd of taken ye. I offered when your mama died. 'Member? I told ye I'd treat ye fair. I guess you was scared. I guess I know why. You was still a boy then. Still playing your mama's game, doing Moghi's work, running them dark ways, getting in darker and deeper."

Her heart beat for something other than that work. It was the old business. Give a man a word and two and he moved in and tried to run things. Anger rose up in her, blinded her. "Hin," Del said. She shoved and the bow slewed off to the Snake current, headed for the corner, high end of the Snake.

"This end o' town, was you! Damn, Del, I searched up and down this morning. Where was you?"

"Snake tail. Down by Mantovan. Moghi's men found us. By then I was hunting you. Heard you been in and out of Moghi's. Hell, with all's been going on, you got that tank near empty, I ain't spending mine on you, and Moghi's boys hunting your boat and shoving folk around—yoss, there, yoss."

"I'm sorry."

"You say."

"I say; it's the truth. You want to say I been lying?"

"I'm saying you're a kid. I'm saying all your mama's life she was on the edge'tween here and the law; she knew where the holes were, she come over that line one side and t'other, I knowed it, ain't no one don't know she done it; but your mama, she never took her one foot off that safe side. Maybe she's born again off this sorry old world; maybe she's born somewheres better'n us, but she sure weren't through with here yet, neither, leaving a kid and all, and you taught 'bout half she knowed, you going to that Moghi and freighting them barrels in and out of the Tidewater—-"

There were tie-ups alongside the Snake, on this stretch between Bogar and huge Mantovan, skips and poleboats tucked up one after the other, sleepers on their decks and in their wells."Hush," Altair hissed, with a foul look Del's way. "You got a free way with others' business. I asked you watch my boat. That's all."

"I watch it all right. And here come these rumors—I'm towing your skip, young'un, you don't expect talk come with it?"

"I said I was sorry!"

Del looked at her, stared with the pole trailing in his hands. Then: "Damn—hin, there, hin, slow. Fourth-on. We're on'er."

Come in, Del meant. He swung the pole up and in again to brake, slowing along the side of Bogar. Fourth boat was a skip, was his: of a sudden the human hulk on the halfdeck made itself into Mira's seated self, the boat revised itself into familiar lines. Altair shoved the hook-pole down hard and slewed the bow, while Del timed his approach and slowed them on his side.

Slower and slower. Mira stood up in the well, deep in Bogar's shadow. ''Ain't taking no tie-on," Altair muttered to Del. "Ain't got time to talk. I swear, I pay you what I owe, I get myself back to where I got business, and I'll tell you and Mira the whole story next week." She held the boathook to one hand and skipped down to the well to toss the portside tie over for Mira to hold while Del boarded— courtesy, not to scar Del's boat up with the hook. Mira bent her large shadowy self, grabbed the rope and drew them close in, with a whisper of the rope on the pin. "Hey," Altair said, "don't tie 'er, Mira."

Del racked the pole. Altair walked across the well to drop the boathook into the rack with it, eased her cap back on her head and walked back again with her hand in her pocket, seeking after the pennies there.

And stopped cold, with a reach to the barrelhook instead, Mira bending over, Mira a shade hard of hearing anyway and doggedly going on to make the tie-up, her big bulk oblivious to shadows on the Bogar bank, shadows creeping up and dropping suddenly into the skip at Mira's back. "Ware! Mira!"

There was a rattle of a pole behind her, Del running out a weapon. But Mira never turned. Mira straightened as if she had never felt a half-dozen feet hit her well. Del came behind with the pole, with the shadow-figures at Mira's back rocking the boat and Mira paying no attention—wrong, wrong, from the gut, wrong. Altair snatched her knife out left-handed in panic and lunged for the mooring rope.

The pole whacked down onto the rim, rope and all, shy of her knife and her fingers. Del's pole. As the shadow-figures surged up about Mira and vaulted over into her own well, all in a rush.

"Damn you!" she yelled at Del, and vaulted the side to Del's deck, barreled straight up against Mira with that knife in her fist. Mira yelled and staggered backward.

"No!" Del howled. "No!"

About the time men hit her back and she grabbed a handful of Mira's shirt in the same fist as the knife; gave a wrench, as the hands on her shoulders hauled her off the deck to the well.

"Dammit!"

Fool!

Hard arms immobilized either elbow, knife-hand and hook-hand together. "Don't you hurt her," Mira was saying, "don't you hurt her, damn your hides!"

Someone was on her side. Her victim was. She quit kicking and fighting; the men who held her let up so that some feeling came back to her hands. She drew a breath, sense getting back to her brain as she saw Del and Mira and boaters standing up solemn as judges in every boat well and deck along the side of Bogar Isle.

Canalers. All of them. Canaler-law. Canalers with a grudge or questions or something in mind. There was no place to run, not in all Merovingen.

"She never hurt me," Mira was saying. "Let *er go, let go. Altair, Altair, sweet—Let her go!"

"Let me go," Altair said. "Damn, you want to talk to me, you get your damn hands off me!"

Hands pried the hook and the knife from her numb fingers. They let her go then; and she hugged her arms back with a wince, holding them till it felt the joints had settled. She recognized a few of the men. And women. "Come on," a male voice said, and caught her arm and dragged her across the slats toward the shoreside.

She flailed out, braced her feet, trying to free herself. "I ain't—"

"You'll go with us." Another hand caught her left arm again, and bent it back till it was near to cracking. She yelled and winced to save it, and banged her knee on the boatside as they dragged her bodily over it.

"Let me go, dammit!" The arm strained at the socket. There was no fighting it. She stumbled on the uneven brickwork of Bogar Cut ledge, knew where they were taking her. "I'll walk, dammit, you're breaking my arm!"

Pressure eased up. Her vision came and went in flares of pain, and she stumbled again as a man shoved her toward a break in the wall. "Ow!" she yelled. And bashed her head on a brick as the man pushed her in through a rubbled split in Bogar's foundations. She was blind for a moment, free and reeling and staggering until some other man grabbed her and held her arm.

Body after body came into the place. She heard them in the dark, heard the shuffling and heard someone else bash his head on the same brick and swear. She jerked at the hands that held her. "Dammit, you can let go, I ain't running."

A match flared. A single candle took light, picked out a tumbled cavern of water-dripping brick and rubble-piles of fill, and a score of canalers, all in the same gold. It was the old Bogar warehouse, gone rotten at the foundations, halfway to its use as a new stone base for the isle, to shore it up from ruin.

Canalers knew such places. Like the vermin and the cats knew them.

There was a flat rock, a large slab of rock. A big man with an open shirt and a neck-scarf brought the candle there, sat down and fixed the candle on its own wax in front of him. Sweat glistened on his unshaven face. It showed like a devil's in the flicker of breeze from outside. Rufio Jobe was his name. He was not official. Nothing was, in the canals. But Jobe was a man who did things. Who got things done. Direct and final. And no one backtalked him.

"Give me my stuff back," she said.

Rufio Jobe settled his largish bulk square, set his hands on his knees. "Maybe you give us some answers, Little Jones."

"Answers. What answers?"

"Like what you been doing."

"I ain't doing nothing!"

"Del," Jobe said, and looked aside. She looked, and spotted Del Suleiman and his wife at her left, silent, his white hair and white stubble gone all neutral gold in the candlelight, her face gone all to tear-streaked jowls.

"Where you been?" Del asked.

"Where've I been?" Altair sucked air and shook her arms loose again, the left one fit to bring tears to her eyes. "I been trusting a damn liar, that's what I been doing! Ye might've knifed me while you was at it, mightn't you, Del? All that talk was a lie, Del Suleiman! Damn liar! You want my boat, that's what you want, that's what you wanted for years—"

"You set your hand to Mira again, I'll show you, you—"

"She never did!" Mira yelled; and: "Shut it dawn!" —from Jobe.

There was quiet then, the yell reverberating off the brick. A bit of stone fell Water dripped. Brick shifted under someone's foot. Altair shook off hands that threatened to grip her arms again. She was shaking. Her gut felt like water. The faces ringed her round and round. "Damn liar," she muttered and looked up and glared at Jobe. "I got private business. I left my boat with somebody I thought I trusted. That's what I done."

"You being a kid," Jobe said, "we ain't got no desire to be rough with you. Just want to talk. It was you took the knife out."

"How'd I know what you was? First I thought you was going for Mira's back. Then I still didn't know what you was. Old friends've sold out friends before. Like now. Am I going to wait round to see? Hell, I'm going to cut my boat loose an' when someone I know goes at my back and stops me I'm getting clear of 'im. World's gone crazy. World's gone clear crazy. Never would've knifed Mira; she didn't knife me neither, I knew that. But I figured if Del'd gone crazy she wouldn't be too."

"Now that may be and that may not be. Fact is, we got a lot of craziness going on. Like that fire the other night. Like killings in the uptown and them that did it is moving round me city somehow, I tell you, Little Jones, it ain't any real pleasure for me to be asking you: I was a friend of your mother's. But we got a real serious question for you. You know anything about that fire?"

"I was down there. Doesn't mean I did it. I was just there."

"You got this passenger. You want to tell us about 'im?"

''What's that got to do with it?"

"They got you to leave your boat. Suleiman can swear to that. You was following after some tall fellow dressed all like a canaler and walking like an uptowner. Later you was heading away from that fire with this tall fellow looked like a Falkenaer. You rode Mintaka Fahd's boat down from Oldmarket and told her he was running after some hightown girl."

"So I found him when I went off across the city, so we happened to be cut off by the fire and couldn't get back to Moghi's till we ran into gran Fahd. Who's this been so interested in my business?" Her heart was pounding in her chest. Lying to these was a fatal thing to do. A little he was one thing; a big lie and something going wrong, that was a way to die, just to turn up dead some morning and no one caring at all. Even suspicion was enough to starve on, harassed and pranked till a body had nowhere to go but the Harbor. If she ever got out of this basement alive. "Who said I was up to no good? Who said? Was it you, Del Suleiman? Was it you?"

"Girl," Jobe said, "there's just been a lot of gossip. Lot of gossip. Now you knows the rule: trouble ain't good for canalers. Ain't good at all. We got canalers ain't moving, we got a canal blocked, we got the law out poking round the canals, we got a whole lot less freight 'cause of this trouble in the town, and that means hungry kids and hungry old 'uns. Now d'you agree we got a legitimate concern here?"

"Same's me. Same as me, dammit!"

"Not same as you if ye're running a different kind of freight."

"What? What d'you say I'm doing? I ain't doing nothing illegal, and I don't owe you nor nobody my private business! Where's things got to, huh? Ever'body got to tell their business to ever'body? Tell ever'body what's in their barrels? Where we go? That ain't what it is!" She drew breath, Never you back up, mama said. Go to 'em, Altair, "Think you can shove Jones around, think you all can bully Jones 'cause she runs solo. Well, I'll remember, I'll damn well remember who shoved, and don't you ever try to nose your damn boat in front of me and don't you try no tricks, 'cause I know all of 'em! Ain't no way you'd've tried this on my mama and you'll learn you don't try it on her daughter, that you will, Jobe!"

"Being as you're a kid," Jobe said when she left a gap.

"I ain't no kid!"

"You ain't grown neither. You better tell it plain, Little Jones. You better tell it plain whiles we got the patience. What kind of business is going on and why's Jones' kid all of a sudden going here and there round all the trouble in town?"

"Who said I was?"

"Half the town said! You want us to discuss this the hard way? Now we ain't liking to do it. But we c'n just start to talk real serious here, you and me and some of your neighbors, we c'n just talk all night here; and we c'n do things you won't like. So you want to talk, or you want to find out what we'll do?"

Two dozen and more of them, mostly men and mostly huge. She refused to look, to give them the satisfaction. Her gut went queasier still and her muscles went to water.

Don't give way. Don't you back up none, don't back up or they got you once and all.

Think, Jones! You got to tell 'em most of it; busted up, ye can't do nobody any good; and lying to this bunch, that's dead inside a year.

"Altair." Mira's voice came soft. The big woman's jowls wobbled, stangely shadowed in the light. "Altair, sweet, you ain't done nothing wrong, I know you haven't. And these is your own, they ain't going to do nothing t' you, whatever you done, all you got to do's tell 'em what you got into—"

"That's right," said Jobe. "You tell us what you know, ain't no one going to lay a hand on you. It ain't personal, Little Jones, ain't no way we want to hurt no kid—ye're just all we got."

"I ain't Little Jones no more! I'm the only, I run my boat. And I ain't done nothing against the Trade!"

"Well, now, you're going to make us believe that, then, right now, or 'fore morning. Or 'fore next day. You know what we do to them that hurts the trade? We starts with fingers and toes, Jones. You don't need all of 'em. But they make work pure hell. Grown men cry about the time we gets from just breaking 'em to taking 'em off. And there's ears. You don't need 'em both. And if ye don't talk—well, Bogar Isle's not going to mind a canaler's bones down here. You want to start losing fingers, Little Jones. We c'n break the littlest. Won't damage you too much."

She spun around as the man by her grabbed her arm, and Mira screamed: "No, no, no—" The scream went right into her nerves; and the man—it was one of the Mergesers, short on wits and long on muscle—Mergeser got her hand and flexed the little finger back and back, despite her wincing and kicking. She pounded his shoulder; as soon hit the Rock itself. She flung a wild look at Jobe. "All right, all right—ow! Damn you, stop! dammit—"

"Stop," Jobe said, and Mergeser stopped and let her go. She clutched her sprained hand and gasped for air. "So?" said Jobe. "Tell it, Little Jones."

She gasped another breath, jerked free as Mergeser laid a hand on her arm. "It's this rich man, this rich man—"

"Who?"

"I dunno his name. Tom, Tom, he calls himself. He got crosswise of a gang. They been trying to kill him."

"Rich men got ways to stop that kind o' thing."

"Well, they been trying. The governor ain't doing damn nothing, what'd'ye expect? This is some damn uptowner mess, and this client o' mine ain't in the wrong of it."

"Who set the fire?"

"How'd I know?" She flinched again as Jobe made a move. More truth. Faster truth. Much as she had to tell. Pain ran up her arm like fire. "Dammit, he ain't the one burned that barge. Them that's after him is pure crazies, pure damn crazies. The governor's hauled Gallandry in 'cause that's his way o' keeping peace, can't damn well find the crazies that burned Mars Bridge and set a fire in the town, so he goes and hauls in Gallandry that was the victim! Ain't that sense? Ain't that the way things work in this town?"

"Where's you in this?" Jobe asked, cold and calm. "What business you got? What freight you running?"

"I ain't running nothing but a passenger and I ain't on the side of nobody that goes setting fires, I been damn trying to get this fellow uptown wheres he's got friends, which is what's going to stop this bunch before they do some other damn crazy thing—They broke in uptown, they killed four people, you want to lay a silver to it that there ain't uptown folk going to sit on these crazies? Damn right they will! Damn right that's alls' got the way to settle with 'em, ain't no canaler got that kind of resources—I ain't done no damn thing against the Trade, I ain't got no damn deal with no damn fools going to burn a bridge, and if I see 'em at Hanging Bridge I'll cheer for it!"

"Maybe you ought to have thought of that early, huh, Jones? Maybe you ought to have thought about your friends."

"Listen, I never knew they was crazies when I left my boat with Del and Mira here; I never brought no trouble on them knowing it, I just left my boat to make sure my passenger got where he was going, I caught up to him and he got worried, 'cause he knew then they might kill me and I didn't; he hid me out over to Gallandry a few hours and when these crazies burned the bridge I took him and I run for it, 'cause by then I knew sure they was going to kill him and get clean away with it—Is that against the Trade? Is that wrong, what I done?"

"You're a damnfool, Jones."

"What's a damnfool? Is a damnfool someone that'll reach out a hand to a man that tried to do 'er good? Then I'm a damnfool, but I ain't no slink, Jobe, I ain't going to be, if I got to be one or the other!"

There was a muttering. It hit, hit solid. Jobe stuck his hands in his belt and stood up in the wind-fluttered candlelight like a towering monument of shadow.

"She told ye," a different voice said, a woman's voice; and a small, wispy woman pushed her way through the shadows. "She told ye true, now ye let her go, hear?"

Mary Gentry. And the big man who came through behind her was her man Rahman. Altair looked their way with her pulse thumping away in her throat—Mary Gentry from that boat all those years gone, Mary's the baby boy she had tried to save, and near drowned doing it. And there was never a time that Mary Gentry could look on her after that boy took fever and died.

Till now.

Till now, when it counted.

Lord take you to something better, Mary Gentry.

"What do you know?'* somebody asked Gentry and: "Shut it down," her husband yelled; and her son, her living son, dark as Rahman and growing fast and big: "You don't downtalk my mama, Stinner, I'll have your guts on a hook!"

Altair drew a breath and let it go. The whole business went to shoving and threat of hooks till someone got the Gentry-Diazes and the Stinners apart, the candle-light all crazy with shadows and the hollow echoing and racketing with shouted argument.

"Shut it down!" Jobe roared; and it shut down, slowly. Altair stood there with her knees quaking and Jobe clenched his fists. "Jones, this account you give better be straight. It damn sure better be straight!"

"You go accusing somebody of setting fires, Rufio Jobe, you damn well make sure you're right!" She clenched a fist of her own and made a gesture at him, ancient and evident. "I make my living on the water same's ever'one, I haul barrels and I never got crosswise of no one, not me nor my boat, dammit! I do my tie-ups proper, I watch your boats, I pays my debts—which being, Del Suleiman—" She found Del in range and swung that hand his way, flat-out and contemptuous. "You tell me what I owe you, you name me what it is for watching my boat, and you name it here in front of ever'body. I'll pay ye. I'll pay ye ever' penny."

"Penny'll do 'er," Del muttered, shifting his feet. "Jones—I was trying to help—"

She stared at him. "Ye called council on me trying to help?''

"Ye damnfool kid, ye're in with scoundrels!"

"So you want to break my fingers?"

"It was Jobe said it about the fingers," Del cried. "Lord and my Ancestors, Jones, Jobe never would've done it—Jones, f'rget the penny, I don't want no pay."

Her breath came and went in a series of dizzy gulps.

Kill him, I'll kill 'im.

Damn, this sad old fool. Him an' Mira, Like Gran Mintaka. No kid. All these years, no kid.

Look at 'em. Crazy. Crazy with wanting to push me around.

Crazy with wanting.

"Man wanted to'dopt me," Altair said, looking around at Jobe. "Him and Mira. —I don't hold no grudge. Not you either, Jobe. But you better get it in your heads good—" She swung round and shouted at the lot of them, looking one and the other in the eye, Mergeser in particular. "If I was guilty I'd've gutted half of ye! Take advantage of a body 'cause they ain't looking for no wrong from ye, shove 'er around and call 'er a liar, huh? Del, I'll pay you that penny next week. I don't want no debts, but I ain't going to argue it here."

"Jones," Jobe said, "you'd do real well to get out of that business of yours. You ain't all that clean. I'm telling you, you got yourself in fast water. Real fast. A kid's balance just ain't that good."

"Thanks," she said sourly. And rubbed a sore arm. "Give me my stuff back. Where's my knife?"

There was silence. "Give it to her," Jobe said, and Alim Settey moved up and gave the knife over. One of the Casey brothers gave the hook into her other hand, and she sheathed both of them. Her hands were shaking, bad as her knees, but it was her hands they could see in the light, her hands shamed her so her face went hot and rage wound tight down in her gut. "Thanks," she said. Be polite, Altair. Her mother's voice in her head. Retribution's ghost sat over on a pile of brick, feet a-dangle, cap tilted back. They ain't so bad, Retribution said. They're your neighbors, they're all you got, you got to be civil 'cept when they're fools.

They're fools, mama.

They didn't believe you, half, Retribution's voice said inside her skull. And they let you go, didn't they? Is that a fool? Or is that neighbors?

The Mergeser's youngest offered her cap, all solemn-faced and polite. Altair knotted her fist up and unknotted it and took the cap without snatching it. Set it on again, and walked to the exit through the others, her legs shaking so she could hardly negotiate the nibbled passage. She came out into windy Bogar Cut, and drank down a cold lungful of air.

A bell was ringing somewhere far away, whisper of sound in the night. The wind and the bridges and the twisting waterways played games with such sounds, making it near and far by turns.

She started to move, jogging down the narrow strip of stone on knees that wanted to go out from under her all the way. Others came behind her, multiple footfalls on the nigged bricks.

"Somebody's got trouble," someone said. And then the ringing stopped.

She jumped Del's side to his halfdeck and jumped on over to her own skip, got down on her haunches and started untying as the rest of the crowd reached the canalside. Some delayed to talk. Others stood and stared. Her knees wobbled and her hands shook, the knot resisting.

Bells happened many times a night in Merovingen. A shop got broken into, a shopkeeper hailed the blacklegs and his neighbors. Nothing unusual.

But she cursed and got the knot loose, stood up and rattled and fumbled with the pole as she ran it out, gritting her teeth against the pain of her arms. She nearly had her legs go out from under her as she skipped down into the well and hurried up forward to put the pole in and turn the skip about.

"Jones." It was Del. Del had made it back to his boat, Mira panting a distance behind. "Jones, I got to talk to you. Mira—"

"I ain't got time." She fended a bit from Del's boat, shoved the bow out against the Snake's current and let the current slew her hard as she ran back to stern again, getting underway.

"Jones," Del called out. And: "Altair!" from Mira.

"Where's she going?" someone asked.

Water lapped noisily at the sides of Bogar and Mantovan, and voices dimmed as she came out and got moving.

Damn fool panic, ain't no cause of it, folk'll see you.

Slow down, Retribution said in her mind. You want those fools back there to see you run like this? What you thinking of, Altair?

I dunno, I dunno, mama. I don't care, damn them all. I got to get back again to Moghi's. I got to find Mondragon, something's wrong, something's wrong somewhere.

And wrong's got this way of finding him.

Breath came hard, came on an edge of grinding pain as the pilings of Hanging Bridge closed all about her, with the skip riding the Snake current. No boats, her eye picked up not a single skip or poleboat moored under Hanging Bridge, nowhere about the point—there had been a single skip making its slow way down the Margrave, under Coffin Bridge. No one else. The desertion was ominous, but the boats that belonged hereabouts were mostly down at Bogar—Council called was a good enough draw to account for scarce boats: she had seen it scarcer on a rumor or a wedding or a wake—A hundred reasons.

Past Hanging Bridge shadow. Ventani Pier loomed blackly into the sheen of water and bright light glittered on the water in front of Moghi's open door, showed a half-dozen or so boats moored to Moghi's porch. That was normal. The windows were unshuttered, the door wide.

Fool. See? Kill yourself for nothing. Mondragon's abed, sleeping all nice and warm and never knowing a thing.

Got to get him up and moving. Got to get him up to Boregy fast as we can. Lord, my arms, my hand. Oh, damn, damn, my finger hurts.

But where's the music?

Where's the noise?

I ain't hearing music, not a voice. O Lord! Lord—why ain't there any noise yonder?

She poled another stroke, let the skip glide, wind cooling her skin through the sweater.

Tie up to the porch, slip round back, by the shed?

Walk that dark cut, back into who knows what kind of trap?

O Lord, O Lord! It was here, it was Moghi's bell— Where's the watch? Ain't the damn blacklegs going to come?

What'm I going into?

She veered off toward Ventani Pier, so sharply the skip crabbed along sideways and made way slowly toward that dark set of pilings and the sloping freight-dock.

Her mouth tasted of blood. Her ribs ached. She drove in hard toward the pilings, scraped the skip side against them so hard it staggered her in her footing.

No watchers along the stone rim. No homeless and no mendicants waiting there to pilfer a boat's goods. Nothing. The poor and the cats—they knew when to move. They had more sense than a fool canaler, than a meddler in others' business. They were gone. Safe. They saw nothing. And everything.

She turned the bow again and poled along the dark, shallow edge up to the south side of Moghi's porch, snagged a piling rope with the barrel hook, wrapped the portside tie around it and scrambled up the ladder in the light and the unnatural quiet from inside.

She stopped dead in her tracks then, numb at the sight of bodies all over the well-lit floor, slumped at tables, in chairs, as if catastrophe had been sudden and violent.

"Moghi!" She wavered there in the impulse to run, to bolt back to the safety of her own boat and take herself where a canaler belonged.

But Mondragon—but him, asleep upstairs—

She took her knife and her hook in either hand and walked in, looking this way and that, finding nothing astir. She walked the length of the room, through puddles of spilled drinks. There was a lingering acrid smell, a haziness in the air. The smell made her head ache.

Through the back curtain, into the hall, and through that narrow doorway where the stairs were. Another body. More bodies. One moved.

"Ali!" She got to one unsteady knee and shook at him. "Ali! What happened? Where's Moghi? What's—"

"Uhhnn," Ali said, and raised a hand to point upstairs. It fell again. He made another effort. There was blood on his mouth. "Moghi—out back—" He was trying to get up. Altair left him and scrambled up the stairs.

The door of the Room was open. She ran to it, ran inside, where the nightlight still burned and the bedclothes lay ripped half from the bed. She ran to the other side of the bed, and there was nothing lying there but Mondragon's sword.

She flung the bedclothes this way and that. Not a trace of blood, nowhere any blood. Or of Mondragon's clothes, except the knit cap. That hung there. No boots. So he had been dressed when the trouble came. He had not been taken asleep. But he had been dragged across that bed— someone had.

She grabbed up the sword in her hook-hand and went back around the end of the bed to discover her own shoes still lying where she had left them. She squatted there and shook out the one with her knife hand.

The gold piece thudded out onto the floor, lay mere shining in the lamplight.

So they—They—had not bothered to rob, either. Had not searched the place at all. It was nothing in the world they cared about but Mondragon himself—so they were not ordinary thieves, not hired help; and him gone without a trace of a struggle but the bedclothes ripped and the sword lying and the air filled with that acrid stench.

She pocketed the goldpiece, sheathed the useless knife and hook and pelted barefoot across the hall to check the bath, in one last vain thought of finding him.

Nothing. Her head pounded, her eyes watered and her nose ran—she swiped her sweater-sleeve across the latter, hearing a commotion below, men's voices and muffled oaths.

They were alive down there. Whatever noxious stuff had gotten loose in the building, someone was alive, and someone was down there walking around.

If it was not the Sword of God themselves, come back to kill them all.

O Lord, ain't nobody heard that bell? Don't even Ventani care, upstairs of us? Governor's police won't come, they won't about come down here, 'cepting they might want their hands on Mondragon—

—and now there's me, up here in the upstairs with no way down but them stairs—

There were clear voices and muzzy ones, all male; then: "Jones!"

Moghi's distinct bellow, however strained and cracked. She clenched her fist on Mondragon's sword and headed stairward.

Moghi was down in the hall, propped on a bench against the hanging clutter of clothes and towels on the wall. Ali was there, with a half dozen of the bullylads and a single youth whose lavender-and-black silk shirt and outraged manner said Ventani all over him. Upstairs had come to call—the Ventani landlords sent to know what was amiss down in their basement and why the bell had rung. From the room beyond came thumps and weak oaths. A chair scraped and crashed. The pretty boy from Upstairs Ventani looked anxiously up at her and said something to Moghi: then he hurried out, avoiding witnesses, even if it was no more than a canaler headed downstairs with an uptowner's sword in her hand. Ventani got itself clear. It would be clear, if and when the law came calling. Ventani would see to that.

"He there?" Moghi asked, a ghost of his ordinary voice. The handful of men hovered around him, all of them with dour, ugly looks "He there, Jones?"

She clutched the sword in her left fist and stopped on the bottom steps, outnumbered and outweighed and with no more place to run than canaler justice gave her. Not raise a sword against Moghi, nor take a hook to him. That was a way to die, right off or in a few days, slow and painfully.

"No," she said. "He ain't there." And stamped the last two steps down to stand square in Moghi's little court. 4'Dammit, Moghi—how'd they get him?*'

"Smoke," Moghi said, "this damn smoke—" He waved a pasty-hued hand. Sweat stood on his face. He looked like a man about to be sick. "They came in, all hoods and masks—Wesh got to the bell and they flung one of them Chat stars—Wesh's 'bout dead out there—" Moghi coughed, the spasm rocking his whole body. "Ain't seen Tommy or Jep. Damn them. Damn 'em anyhow!"

"I got to get help—*'

"Ain't no help going to come—Ain't no blacklegs going to mix in this."

"Well see about that." She started past, for the door, but that door got blocked. Two men moved into it. She turned around and looked Moghi's way. "I got to find 'im!"

"Wait," Moghi said. "Jones. Come back here."

She came. With that tone of voice, with Moghi's men in the way, she had no choice. She stood in front of Moghi and Moghi's mouth made a thin pale line in his sweating face.

"You going after him," Moghi said. "You know what you're after?"

"I got names. Boregy. Malvino. They c'n get help somewheres." She squatted down on her heels, the sword across her knees, so that Moghi did not have to look up. "They got gold to buy trouble for them bastards, they can get him back."

"They ain't no gang," Moghi said, his voice all hoarse. "I seen 'em walk in—bold as boils, them and them black masks—never spoke a word, just this smoking pot rolled through the door and these black devils came through, just walked through, with customers dropping to the floor and that damn smoke—They flung a star at Wesh. Old Lewy cussed 'em and I thought he was gone, but they walked on through like they knew where they was going—They damn well knew, Jones."

"Well, I never told 'em!"

"They walk in here like they own it all, like they know where they's going—They ain't no gang, Jones, they ain't nothing like that."

"I got t'other half of what I give you." She fished desperately in her pocket and came up with the gold piece. "Moghi, I pay ye, I make it good as I can, I go away."

Moghi hesitated, staring at the gold round—just staring at it and not taking it, as if Moghi had ever hesitated at money in his life. Then he clamped his jaw tight, reached out a waxy hand and took it between two fingers to carry it back and hold it up. "You 'member what I said, the time you come in here looking to haul barrels, Jones? You 'member what I told you about that, how I give you them two silvers and put you up against that bullyboy of Hafiz's? You 'member what I said? If you got the load back you was hired and if you got to harbor-bottom I had me an excuse."

"I come back, Moghi."

"I want these black fellows' guts on a hook, Jones. I ain't expecting to see you again. But I'm turning you loose. Ain't no lot of hooded bullies come into my place and take none of my guests. I'll have their guts for breakfast, ain't no way they get away with that. Now you tell me, Jones—" He reached out and carefully gathered the neck of her sweater in his fist and pulled her close, up in his whiskey-laden breath. The sword was still in her lap; she dared not touch it, more than to keep it from falling. "Jones, you tell me true—everything. Or I gut ye. And you tell me ever'thing and I give you the same bet I give you five years ago—I give you anything you need. This ain't a money-thing. This is killing. You understand me, 'Jones? Who is he? What's these black fellers? Why'd they bust up my bar and poison my customers?"

"Sword of God." The breath came out strangled, choked on its way; Moghi meant it. meant it about the killing and meant it about sending her out. It was in his eyes that stared into hers, it was in the fist that held her sweater and shook with rage. "Sword of God - He run afoul of 'em, he run from somewheres north, I think—he's a rich man, Moghi, I never lied. He's got rich friends, he's got money— You'll get it back—"

"It ain't money." The fist tightened more, twisted at the sweater and cut off her wind. "You going to go to them friends, are you?"

"Yes."

"Sword of God." He shook her. Her eyes rattled in their sockets. She went to her knees and the sword hit the floor between them. "Sword of God! Why d'they want him? Huh?"

"I think—" Another shake. Her brain reeled. "I think they want to shut him up. He—knows too much."

"They ain't killed him! They took him right out the front door! Right in front of ever'one, they took him away!"

"Then—I dunno, Moghi, I dunno. I think they want him back."

"Back!"

"I dunno, Moghi!"

The fist relaxed, slowly. Moghi's face stayed all white and hectic-flushed and beaded with sweat.

"You said—" Altair sucked a mouthful of whiskey-tainted air. "You said you'd give me what I need. Give me a can of fuel. Give me one of your boys to go with me—Moghi, my arms is like to break, I poled from one end of this damn town to the other—I got to get uptown, Moghi, I got to be able to run."

"Folk'll think I'm getting old. Folk'll think they can walk in here anytime and cause trouble. Folk'll think they can do any damn thing they like to my boys in the town— Damn them, damn them anyhow! You get your fuel, you get any damn thing you want, Jones. And you get back here with what you find out, you let me know it, hear?"

"I hear you, I hear you, Moghi."

"Get two of them cans," Moghi said, motioning back at the storeroom. "Mako, Killy, all o' you, you get that stuff out to her boat. Jones, you go out there, you get that boat round to the landing, you get yourself uptown and you get them rich folks moving. And you be careful, Jones, or I'll sink ye!"

She grabbed Mondragon's sword, scrambled up and pushed her way through the men around Moghi, past Ali, who delayed bewildered in the doorway. She jogged out through the common-room, where dazed customers showed life, where several were busy heaving up their stomachs where they lay. Canalers. She saw familiar faces, saw one in the doorway, young and pimply-faced and spiky-haired, staring at the scene as if his wits had left him.

"Tommy!" She grabbed his skinny arm and shook him till his eyes showed he knew her. "Tommy! There's a lot of canalers off by Bogar Cut! You run, hear me, you run and tell 'em what happened here, run say I said there's a blond man been carried off by them as poisoned folks here—hear me, Tommy?"

"Yeah," Tommy said through the chattering of his teeth.

"Moghi's alive. He'll skin you if you don't, hear that? Tell 'em report to Moghi, tell 'em to come here with what they know. Hear?"

"Huuuh," Tommy said when she shook him.

"Then git!"

He got. He turned and ran, was halfway to Hanging Bridge by the time she got down the porch ladder to her deck and looked to see. She shoved Mondragon's sword into the hidey, jerked the tie loose, ran out the pole and backed-Easy, Jones, use the wits, Jones. Hurry don't never move a boat from dead-stop.

She got it maneuvered around, used a shove from the bow and ran back to the halfdeck, fending from this and that piling, while a to-do down by the darker, deeper maze under the main bridgehead told her where Moghi's men were. She eased in there, and a hook out of the dark snagged her bow and helped her bring the bow in to the dark landing-slip.

Men brought two cans aboard, walked down to the slats, setting the skip to rocking—"You set one here," she said, tapping the spot with the pole-end. "You there—get 'er up here, tip 'er into the intake, she'll hold it." She racked the pole and hurried to fling up the engine cover to get at the fuel intake. A flip of the cap and Moghi's man unstopped the can and heaved the whole can nozzle-down into the intake, a fumy flood that gurgled into the empty tank.

If I'd've had time to work on the engine, if I could count on 'er starting, Lord and glory, I can't trust that thing less she's running and I known her to die outright when she goes cranky.

The last of the fuel spilled in. The man took the can and headed off the halfdeck in haste. "Who's staying?" she asked, seeing one and another man quit the deck. "Who's going with me?"

"It's me," a voice said, all hoarse and wobbly, and a smallish curly-headed man staggered his way up to his feet. "Moghi said."

"Ali?"

"I don't like boats," Ali said. "Jones, my belly hurts. My head's killing me."

"Damn, damn—" That was Moghi's help. The refuse. A man too sick to crawl. She ran out the pole again, feeling the boat let loose from its grapple up forward. "Get the boat hook," she said to Ali."

"We poling!"

"We ain't going to run the motor and get them black bandits on our trail out of here, are we? Get that damn hook!"

Ali staggered to the rack and got the hook. "I dunno how," he said. "Jones, I ain't no—"

"Ye stroke opposite me up to bow and ye don't fall in, ye useless baggage! Ye just don't fall in, or I swear I'll leave ye to drown!" She shoved with the pole. "We got upcurrent to fight, damn ye, shove!''

Ali got to point and got the blunt end of the hook in. It was not much of a push, but it helped; breeze at their backs helped. She counted for him—"hin, Ali, hin, dammit, ain't you got no feeling what I'm doing?" —and drove with all the strength left in her shoulders and her back. "Get back to here, get back here aft and move 'er, man."

Then there was just breath enough to push with, and none left for talk. There were her gasps and Ali's, and the slap of the water as the skip moved along at all the speed one poler and unskilled help could manage.

Damn 'em. Damn 'em all.

No boots. Mondragon had lain down to sleep but he had never undressed again—he must've been asleep and not heard the fracas below, til the smoke got to his door, til he was trapped in that room and the smoke got inside it.

She built a picture in her mind—Mondragon lying fully-clothed abed after she had gone. Falling back to sleep lying atop the covers til the smoke got to him and he knew something was wrong, til his kidnappers broke the door in and he put up a last railing defense, the sword falling to the floor on the far side of the bed as they overpowered him, a struggle that tore the sheets free and strewed them outward toward the door—

But the boots. The boots were gone. And the door—she did not remember any splintering about the doorframe.

A knock at the door? Mondragon being called to the door by a voice he knew—surprised and borne backward in a struggle that ended in a wild dive for the sword—

Mondragon handing her the money he had left. Holding the boot in his hand and complaining about her intentions.

Had he gone on to finish dressing?

She gasped for air and looked over to Ali—to the one who came and went in Moghi's Upstairs Room. "They get Jep?"

Ali turned a sickly, widemouthed grimace her way. "Dunno." Between breaths.

"You see 'em?"

"I saw 'em—Yow!" Ali wobbled, hanging his pole, and flailed wildly for balance on the edge of the deck. She crossed over and grabbed him by the back of the shirt.

"Who? How'd they get up there?"

"I dunno!" He swung about and his elbow grazed her ribs as she sucked air and skipped back. "I dunno!"

"I'll give that report to Moghi," She gripped the pole crosswise as she faced him. He had the boathook, but no landsman could use it right. "You want to try me with that thing?"

"You gone crazy?"

"How'd they get in? Why'd my partner have his boots on?"

"I dunno, I never saw—"

"Was it Moghi himself?"

"Front door." Ali's teeth chattered. "D-d-amn door was open, they walked in—"

"Smoke went off in the upstairs hall too. Didn't it?"

"Jep—Jep—done it."

"You did, ye damn sneak!"

He swung the boathook at her. She swung. Down. Ali slumped on the deck like a sack of meal, and she hit him with the pole-end when he showed signs of getting to his knees. The boathook rolled aft. She stamped on the pole and stopped it, No further sign of movement from Ali.

She gathered up the boathook and shoved Ali with her foot, thump, down into the well. He landed on his shoulders and twisted up.

"Damn! Moghi?"

No. Moghi weren't lying, that weren't no lie, I know him, I ought to take this traitor back to Moghi and let Moghi get truth out of him.

Lord, Lord, they got Mondragon somewheres, they want him alive—

What'll they be doing to him?

The timbers of Southtown Bridge hove up ahead. Canalers were night-tied there, along by Calliste. She put the pole in and shoved off in that direction, driving on pain in her ribs and pain in her arms. She came gliding in and fended off a poleboat with a clumsy scrape of hull against hull.

"'Damn fool!" a male voice yelled, a sleeper startled out of slumber with collision and damage to his boat.

"Name's Jones," she gasped, and squatted down there in the dark and tried to keep the skip immobile. "'I got to have help."

"Help—Jones, Jones, is it? There's a word out on you. You set that fire."

"Damned if I set it! I got that straight with Jobe an hour ago!"

"I ain't having no part of your business!"

"Go on!" someone else cried from another boat. "That's Jones, a'right. That's her what burned Mars Bridge!"

"You keep your distance!" She shoved with the pole and put water between her and the poleboatman. "This lander tried to kill me. There's been a fight down to Moghi's. This baggage of mine poisoned a dozen canalers, he's took a bribe from someone—Oh, damn!" There was life from the well. She sprang up and swung the pole, a sweeping crack across Ali's ribs—"Yow!" Ali screamed, and cartwheeled right out of the boat with a great splash of water.

"There," she said, "you better fish him out, I don't know if he swims!" She put the pole in and shoved off, and shoved again, with Ali flailing the water and choking in great shouts and gulps. "I don't think he does swim!" she amended that. "You tell Moghi ask him how come my partner didn't put up no fight and why that door weren't broke in! That fellow's worth money, there!"

More and more water between them. She faced about and kicked the engine cover up, primed it and pulled the choke and made the first try while shouts rose behind her. Thump, into a piling. The skip slewed around, dizzily following the current.

"Get after her!" someone yelled. "She's trying to start that engine."

Second try. Cough, tunk.

Come on, engine.

She heard the splashes, heard Ali screaming, heard boats moving. She never looked. She reset the choke. Tried again. Cougn-cough-chug-tunktunk.

She feathered it down, engaged the propeller and it faltered. Held. The skip lumbered forward, aimed at open water. Screams diminished over the noise of the engine.

She pulled the pin and got the rudder down; pulled the second pin and got the tiller up and home. She leaned on the bar and swung round as two canalers moved their boats out to stop her, stringing out from moorings.

Not fast enough. She put the throttle down and the engine lumbered away with more and more way on the skip. She let the pole lie abandoned on the deck, slanted into the well, put the tiller over hard to choose a clear way through the pilings of Southtown Bridge, and powered through. She looked back, where an unaccustomed white wake showed in the moonlight, and ahead where Foundry Bridge was.

All about her, boats were moored along the bridgehead, wherever the projection of pilings gave them shelter out of the Grand channel. All about her, eyes would peer into the dark and the commotion would spread. She thought of dodging round into Foundry Canal, getting at Boregy the quiet way—but there was no quiet way, canalers could cut her off, block any canal but the wide, free-flowing Grand.

She put the throttle in full and spent fuel recklessly, took time to rack the poles when there was a moment's straightway between Foundry and Hightown bridges, and got back to the tiller before it slewed in the current.

Boregy had already been hit once. Opposite the Signeury. So much for town authorities and the governor and all his militia. Damnfool and his clockmaker son and his whole damn pet police.

The night kept its false quiet, with only the sound of one boat engine running hard through the town heart, alerting every enemy that might be watching and listening.