Angel with The Sword

Chapter 3

MORNING was for slow waking; a little more of what they had done before under the stars on the halfdeck. And finally another swim: that was four baths in two days and Altair was amazed at herself. She washed her clothes too, soaped them up good and left them on the tiller to dry a bit in the wind, and he washed his, and they sat having breakfast in the afternoon wrapped in towels and letting the wind dry their hair. Hers went straight. His went curly and fine as pale silk. He was beautiful, every move he made was beautiful, the way the muscles stood when he reached for a bit of bread, the way the sun hit his face and turned his hair to light. She ate and stared at him every chance she got. And sighed.

"Where do we go now?" he asked finally, and she shrugged, not wanting to talk about it. He took that for his answer, it seemed.

But when she had put the breakfast dishes away, when she stood up and saw the rafters out floating like little islands on the Dead Harbor rim—she remembered the night and remembered what it might be like to try to find their way around the rim of the Dead Harbor, poling because they would be out of fuel. And that decided her. She sighed again and bent and took her pants from their hanging-spot over the tiller, and pulled them on. And the sweater.

"They're still wet, aren't they?" Mondragon asked, still wearing his towel, standing down in the well.

"We got to get moving is what, You want to tell me where?"

"Do we have some hurry?"

"Mondragon." She came and sat down where there was no need to yell it over the water-sound, on the declaim in front of him. "We go out there to the Rim again, that takes all the fuel I got. And poling back from there's a bitch. Through the rafters and the crazies." She hooked a thumb back toward the town, toward the low hazy hump of Rimmon Isle. "We got enough to get to the shallows under the Rimmon bridges. And I can pole her where you want to go after that, unless it's out in the bay. But I'm about out of everything except whiskey, I got a living to make, and the current here's going to generally drift us further and further toward me Ghost Fleet, which ain't a good place: crazies hang out there, 'gainst the sandbar, and it's opposite to Rimmon and I got only so much fuel to get us back; I been watching the drift. So all in all, I think you better tell me where you want to go, because where I'm going is back in the canals and I think you got reason not to want to do that. I reckon you've got a riverboat you'd like to get to, or maybe that Falkenaer ship. I can't pole you to the Det-landing, she's too deep, but I can set you out right at the dike, there's stairs at Harbormouth; and you just go up and over and right down the dike to the Det-pier and down again, easy walk. Best I can do."

He was quiet a moment. He looked down at the slats and up again, arms folded. "Let me out in the town," he said.

Her heart did a skip-beat and tightened up again. "You going to go hunt up trouble? Once in the canal not enough for you. Tell me where they'll throw you next, I'll keep my boat waiting."

He looked down at her with a tightening of the mouth. It turned into a wry smile "Stay out of my business"

"Right. Sure. Get your clothes on."

"Jones—" He took her face between his hands and made her look up at him. "I like you a lot, Jones."

That hurt. She drew a great breath and it felt like something would break. "Hey, you get me a kid, man, I'll kill you." Had her mother been that stupid? Was that how she had happened into the world? One time her mother let her guard down and liked a man like Mondragon? Or was it just some ugly accident or a rape somewhere her mother had lost a fight? She could not imagine her mother losing.

He brushed her hair back, kept looking at her. And let her go finally and skipped up onto the halfdeck to get his own clothes. When had he found his legs? When had he learned to move on the boat? Last night when he had to, when he stood there wielding that boathook with skill that grew by the minute—

—blade fighter, she thought. Fencer. Hightowner. They came in all types. Street rowdies. Duelists. The hightown had those too—some of them very rich. Some of them who would talk in that silk-soft kind of voice and not know spit about not dipping a iron skillet in the water or grabbing a prickleback round the fins.

He knew about deathangel spines all right. He knew how to take care of a good knife.

He had had no bad scars till the boathook caught him in the shoulder last night and he would carry that for the rest of his life—not a deep one, but wide as that blunt hook could make it. (He'll remember me, won't he? Rest of his life. Everytime some soft uptown woman asks about that scar.)

He knew how to fight. Which meant he was no easy prey for those black-cloaked devils on the bridge. How had they got him, anyway?

The knot was on the back of his head, that was what.

He pulled his pants on, wet around the seams as they would be. Sun would go on drying them: no worry of taking fever.

Altair sighed again, men bent down beside the hidey and swept up her well-worn cap, pulled it on hard against the wind, and winced and suffered a jolt of the heart: there was a knot on the back of her skull too, right where the band touched. She settled the cap a little back of that, tilted on her head, jammed it down and skipped up onto the halfdeck.

The traitor engine started on the third crank, regular as could be.

* * *

She shut the engine down finally with maybe enough fuel left for a startup, maybe a little more—"Never you run nothing down to empty." Her mother had dinned that into her. "You plan so's you don't. You lay yourself open and Murfy'll get you, sure he will." Even Adventists believed in Murfy. He was a saint in the Janist pantheon. "You gave old Murfy a chance," her mother would say when she slipped up. "I tell you, you can't give chances away. You need all you got."

She hauled the rudder up, pulled the tiller-pin and let the bar fall to be hooked stationary to the engine-box. So the boat coasted toward the tall pilings between the dike and Rimmon Isle on the way they had left; and she gauged it right. The bow skimmed over shallow water, the line that was dark and not green, without a pole to push it; and while it was crossing that line she unshipped the pole and walked to the front of the halfdeck to put it in, walking it along on starboard; then crossed over and walked it on port, while Mondragon stood out of her way in the well.

"Can I help with that?"

"Hell, no! You'd be clinging to that pole and the boat off on her own. I seen many a beginner go right off the deck."

Back to starboard. She was flatly showing off, keeping the boat moving at a reckless clip, making it look easy as it headed for the pilings. Moving cheered her. His bright face in the sunlight did, for what time she still had his company. Not raining on tomorrow, Retribution Jones would say. Or the afternoon. Her bare feet were sure on the deck. Not hard shoves. Deft ones. At the right time. "This kind of boat's called a skip, dunno why. Skip's got a halfdeck and an engine and she's bigger'n any poleboat. Moves real sweet in the water if you know her tricks; any boat's got 'em. She's engine-heavy and she slews bad, but you can use that on the turns, if you know what to do with the pole. She starts slow and she stops the same way when she's loaded; then you use the currents much as you can—canals have 'em, same as the harbor or old Det himself, and some of 'em's fierce. You plan way ahead. You don't feel that load right, she can ram a wall or another boat and tip everybody right over if her load shifts."

They were coming up on the pilings. Mondragon turned as the shadow fell on them, and staggered when he faced that perspective, the black maze of pillars that was coming fast. "Jones—"

"I know my way.'* She worked it fast, this side and that. "Better be right, hey?"

They shot in amongst the pilings, into the dark of the bridges that linked the city to Rimmon Isle and its fortified mansions. Light gleamed hurting-bright at the end, which was the harbor, and the pilings rushed by them. Mondragon stood in silhouette against that light.

Trip through hell. Or purgatory.

She had her line planned. No way the boat was going to skew from it, except at the end when they hit the inflow from the harbor. They kited out into the dazzling light, the water throwing it back off its surface and swirling brown into the lucent jade of the deep bay.

"Ware!" she sang out, meaning she was about to turn, and bottomed the pole and swung the bow over so smartly and shoved her off so deftly there was never a jolt. Mondragon kept his footing with a little stagger, turned and looked up at her as if he thought that was a trick designed to unsettle him.

"Hey, you got your legs, Mondragon." She grinned at him. "You'll roll like a proper canaler when you walk ashore."

"I don't drown easy, Jones."

She grinned wider. A light sweat stood on her and the breeze cooled her skin. The wind smelled of waterfront and old wood, which was the smell of Merovingen and its harbor alike. They went into the dark again, under another pier. An idle boat was tied up there down the way, likely a fisher cursing the luck that kept him in for repair. The sound of hammering came to her, and echoed off the docks and the dikes. They slowed: they had lost a little way in the turn and she did not pick it up again. She just headed for the series of bright-dark water stripes ahead, between the series of water-blackened pilings.

"Where you going in town, Mondragon?" she asked. "You didn't tell me that."

He turned again and looked up at her. Sun hit his face as they skimmed into the light again, and he grimaced and shaded his eyes. "Jones, forget my name. Don't talk it around, just say you had a passenger, say my name was— whatever's common here."

"You won't pass for a Hafiz or a Gossen, not with that complexion. You got a burn, you know that?"

He took a reflexive look at his arm, which was reddened, raised it to shade his eyes again. "Believe me. Forget that name."

"Why'd you tell me?"

A moment's silence. He stood there with the hand up and let it fall again as they headed under another pier and into deep shadow. "Must have been the rap on the head," he said, quieter.

"You got real troubles. You sure you don't want me to take you to the Det-landing?"

"I'm sure."

Mondragon—She stopped herself short of the name, wiped it out of her reflexes. "You want my help?" Fool! "You want me to keep you under cover awhile?" She hoped suddenly. She took the chance the way she took the chance with the pilings, because she knew the maze, she knew the ways, she was adept at surviving and took some chances because it was style. It was—whatever made life worth having. He was one. "I could do that. Do it easy."

He stood there with a look on his face that said it tempted him. With a look in his eyes that said he was thinking. "No," he said. "No, you better not."

"You being a fool?"

"No."

"You already got a cracked skull. You going to go back where they can get another swing at it? Second time they'll split it. Second time I might not be there to pull you out."

"Hey, you going to take me for another night out there with the crazies?"

Her accent on his tongue; it was deft, too. She grinned in spite of herself. "Not bad. Not bad hit."

"Jones—" The light came back and he squinted. "Jones—thanks."

They had reached the Mouth, where the dike towered up before them and the warehouses of Ramseyhead were at their left. Her bare feet hit the deck in short, quick strides as she positioned for the turn, touched the pole on that side and drove them hard for the Mouth; a little hard work now: the Mouth was always a hard crossing, where some of the sewer effluent created a wash. She heard that thanks and there was no time to handle it, just the boat, just that quick, hard rhythm of her life, which went on before him and would go on after him. And maybe there was nothing worth saying.

Something stupid like Come back?

He was going to end up in the canal again; or he was going to take off those canaler's rags and dress himself in hightowners' velvet and silk and walk the high bridges with no more interest in the boats that plied the shadows than he had in the vermin and the feral cats that conducted their war in Merovingen's sinks and bowels. Velvet and silk. Not his back on bare boards and a dirty blanket. Whether he was one of the shady sort of hightowner or something else—he had no business with her.

Unless he maybe wanted a bit of freight moved.

Or a cheap night.

He had turned his back again, the ridiculous too-large breeches having slipped a bit—Lord and Ancestors, he'll be a fine sight where he's bound. They jump him, the damn pants will trip him. Maybe old Kilim's got a pair he'd trade for.

What am I thinking of? Like I got time? Like he's staying? He'll throw those damn things in the canal when he's uptown and back with his own. No, he'll have some servant do it.

Can't be out of the gangs. He can't. Not with that way he talks. Not the way he talks when he's got his hands on me, not then—-couldn't talk fine words then except they come natural as breathing. I can't open my mouth, I can't think pretty, I wish I could. Wish I could.

She smiled and shoved the pole this side and that as the towering black wall of the dike glided past. As they went under Harbor Bridge and headed onto the Grand. Mondragon turned round and hitched the pants up on reflex. "You cover that hair of yours," she said. "And you put that sweater on. You're too white."

He climbed up onto the deck to retrieve the sweater; she snagged it one-handed off the engine housing as she switched sides, tossed it at him. He worked it on, tugged it down and hitched the pants again before he sat down on the half deck edge to pick up the black scarf where it lay. He wrapped it round with several deft turns and tucked the end. "You can take me to the Hanging Bridge."

"Easy done, but this boat can do the little canals too if you need 'em."

"Hanging Bridge is fine."

She kept the boat moving, push and switch and push. Her feet were warm on the deck. Her breath came hard. Traffic ahead. She kept her side, starboard of a slow-moving pole-barge. She let the boat slow more, city-pace.

"You always work this boat alone?"

Uhnn. Now it comes. Spends a night or so and now the man gets to meddling. So much for love, Jones. Mama said.

"Jones?"

"Sure." She was breathing hard. Sweat rolled down her face and she wished she had a man's option to take the sweater off in the town. She lifted the cap and resettled it on the knot on the back of her head before she thought, set it again and made the next stroke in time. Her feet burned on the deck. Damn showoff. "Do right well for myself." Liar. She sucked a breath and gave him a half-grin and a tilt of the head while she was on the crosspace. "Little different than your hightown sorts, bet they're all soft."

"I'm not."

She grinned wide. "Hightowner." Gasp. "Be you?"

"What would you have done out there—last night—when the crazies came at you?"

Damn, here he goes. Damn fool question. His damn fault, too, "Hey, man, I wouldn't have been sleeping deaf and blind in the hidey, then, would I? You can bless your Ancestors I got good ears, that's the truth. Never came so close. I tie up to the Rim, I sleep on the deck, I sleep like a cat, and they don't get up on me like that."

"What if that engine had failed?"

The thought chilled her. She weighed things like that before she did them; she was not prone to mull them over after. "Well, it didn't."

"It might someday."

"Look, usually I go to the Rim in bad seasons; then (here's more canalers and fewer crazies. If my engine goes down I get a tow and it costs me a hell of a lot—did it once." That was a lie. It was what she had done for another canaler, her fuel and theirs together in her struggling engine, and she had taken pay in bits and pieces for a month. "Any more of my business you want to know?"

He kept his mouth shut.

"Takes a damn fool man," she said, "to throw me off my regular ways. Take 'im out where his enemies can't get at him, risk my damn neck, I mean, you want a fool—that's a fool. How'd I know you wasn't a murderer? How'd I know but what that wasn't some uptown woman's kinfolk throwing you in because you up and jumped her, huh? That's a fool, being out there alone with you in my boat."

"Why did you do it?"

"Damnfool, that's why. Need a better reason?"

He was quiet a moment. Then: "Jones, what's wrong?"

"Nothing."

"Jones, slow down."

Current hit the bow. She gasped for breath and shifted hard, staggered a bit and lost her balance in the shift of current. Tired. Her sides ached. Her arms were leaden. Sweat ran in her eyes.

"Jones, dammit. Are you trying to kill yourself? We're not in a race."

She ignored him for another barge, maneuvered across the influx from the Snake's harborside loop across the Grand, and avoided the slew the current wanted to give her. It was no place to stop, folk would swear her deaf if she parked at the Jut and had herself in the traffic. Some barge would crack into her and just deserts for a fool. If she was alone she would pull off to the Snake's nearest tie-up and rest. She had shown him a fancy bit of moving; now the damn landsman had that worry-look on his face and that damn insistence in his voice—Fool woman. Quit. Pull off. Let me, lei me, let me—pushing right in to have the boat, his way, tell her what to do, when to breathe and when to spit, and then walk out again with things a damn mess, because he had more important things in life than a damn woman. Walking through the damn world messing folk up and so damn smug-sure it was help. Man with that tone didn't deserve to be listened to. Her mother never would. Spit in their eye, she would. Man catcalled from other barges—Hey, sweet, that boat's too big for you! And worse things. Hey, you want some help? Followed by just what help the bastard thought she needed.

Stay out of my business, she wanted to say. But it was not the kind of parting she wanted; Mondragon wasn't to blame for the world. He just did what others did. Slept with a woman and thought he could get his hands into her life and fix it all before he went back to his hightown ways. Never even thought he'd just seen the fanciest bit of boatmanship he was like to see on the canals. A skip-freighter never got to show off to passengers like the flashy poleboaters; she had just showed him a dozen tricks of the sort canalers showed when they wanted to impress each other, the kind that made a difference in the trade, how a boat could move and handle the tight places. She showed a landsman that kind of thing. And he just saw a woman sweat and got all bothered.

Dammit.

Damned if she'd rest. Take him to the damn bridge and dump him in, she would. Put him back where she found him. Ask for the domes back. That'd fix him good.

She sucked a quieter breath, easier now the strokes were fewer, up past the Jog, under Parley Bridge, and her breath rasped in her throat. She was resting. That was a canaler trick too, getting wind back while she worked. But he was blind to it, same as what it took to shoot the piers and all their currents.

"Jones—" he insisted, looking up at her from the well.

She managed a grin. "You got a problem?"

He evidently thought better of it. She grinned wider. And took it slower still, breathing easier. *'I tell you, man, there's places you don't stop. Park at the Jog back there, some barge'll run right over you. Current takes 'em real close to that wall and they don't see you. Don't care either. Bargemen got no regard for a boat."

That seemed to put some respect into him. He kept his mouth shut, maybe having realized he knew less than he thought.

Fine for you, Mondragon. Got a brain even if they did rattle it. I wouldn't do so good in your hightown. Be a real embarrassment, I would. Leave my boat to me, all right, Mondragon? You don't own everything.

I'll have me a dozen lovers.

Take precautions too, I will.

O God, if he's got me pregnant.

I'd work this boat same's mama did, that's what I'd do; have my kid; wouldn't be alone then. Have a daughter with hair like that—

Lord, I'd have to fight off the bridge-boys with the boathook; have to teach her to use a knife same as mama did me…

Give her to her damn father, that's what. I'd march right up to hightown wherever he's got to and hand him the brat and wish him luck.

Take precautions next time. Going to cost you a week's work, old Mag's drugshop's supposed to be good. Should of had the stuff aboard before now.

Have to walk in that shop in front of God and everybody and ask for that stuff, old Mag'll grin; she'll tell that sister of hers, Lord, it'll be all up and down the river by sunset and I'll be fending off boarders.

Hey the icewoman's done thawed!

Hey, Jones-pretty. You wanta see what I got?

Damn, nothing's simple.

The bridge-shadows came over them, the air went cold with that deep dankness of Merovingen's depths. The shadows went darker still, a moment of blindness that swept past to daylight. There was a copper taste in her mouth, the loom of a black boat passing beside her—she fended and evaded it, and evaded the gray rough-hewn stone of Mantovan's Jut on starboard. Another skip was ahead, dead-stopped at a mooring ring. "Damnfool." She maneuvered around it, slow drives of aching muscles. 4'Park in the Grand in daylight—" She reached out and rammed the pole end against the boat. "Damnfool, you!"

"Damn bitch!"

"Old man Muggin." She sucked wind as they passed. Looked at Mondragon standing just off the deckrim, gazing back at the boat and its ragged occupant. "Old man thinks he owns the water. He don't handle that boat so good nowadays, long stretches get him, and he won't stay off the Grand." She recovered her breath and poled along with steady strokes again. "You got rules here. You obey 'em, you get along."

"You want to rest, Jones?"

"Hey, I got no need. She's light today. You want to see work, push her when her well's full of cargo, then's work." She coughed from the bottom of her lungs, missed a stroke. "Just a little—" A second cough seized her, payment for the long push. "Damn." She coughed again, swallowed and got the spasm under control. "Cold. Change always does that to me. Going from sunlight in under the bridges." They passed a poleboat, out fareless. Hunting. It was true, they were well under Merovingen's bridges now, and the water was dark and the walls on either side un-tended and cheerless, their windows and doors barred with iron. No canal-level entry here, except to the lowest sorts of places, that served canalmen. The big isles took their canalside deliveries down guarded bays, within iron gates that guaranteed they got only what they ordered. "What's at Hanging Bridge?"

There was no answer. But it stopped the questions. She worked quietly, wiped the sweat. So much for clean clothes. Hardly dry yet and the sweat soaked them.

"You looking for Them?" she asked him.

He turned and looked at her. The easy manner was gone, the humor fled. Yes. He was looking for them. For something. Plain as an answer.

"Yeah," she said. He said nothing. "Who were they?" she asked.

"I'll take care of it."

"Real fine. Maybe they'll be looking for me, you ever think of that?" She drew a breath, two. It was the Hanging Bridge ahead, and the current of the Snake's other exit. She fought it the moment it took.

"I thought of it."

"That's real nice."

"It wouldn't do you any good, Jones. It might do worse. Just stay clear of it. Far clear."

The sun was on them now, one of the only places on the Grand that had a view; which was what made the Hanging Bridge. It hove up, conspicuous with its fretworks and its angel and its ominous wooden arches.

"That's there's the Angel, shining there," Altair said, between pushes. "Revenantists say Merovingen'll stand long as the Angel stands on the bridge. Janes say he draws that sword a bit more every time the earth shakes. Adven-tists say he'll stand till Retribution."

"I've heard of him," Mondragon said. He turned his face to her again, looked ahead as they came closer to the bridge, looked back again.

She looked too, scanning the traffic. Her back prickled with the feeling she got skimming through some backwater. Running near crazies and rafters. Back to the starting-point. Fishmarket Bridge loomed beyond. There was Moghi's, dim and distant under Fishmarket shadow, Moghi's porch beyond Ventani Pier. There were skips and poleboats and the usual huddle of barges, the vegetable-sellers and the fish-sellers and the fish-freighters tied up to rings there by Fishmarket and spilling all the way along the edge. The wooden towers of Merovingen-above shone silver-gray in the sun above the dark, above the web of bridges beyond. And the Hanging Bridge Angel presided over it all, sword half-drawn. World half-ended.

Putting it away or taking it out again since the Great Quake?

Halfway between dooms.

She spied a place on the east bank and eased the bow over that way, there amongst the fish-sellers. Mondragon sat on the deck-edge, turned again to look up at her as they glided in.

Wondering what she wanted, maybe. Wondering how to make parting fast and clean. She was too busy; shipped the pole and took up the boathook. "Hey, Del," she hailed the old man of the neighboring skip, and snagged the ring, hauling mem close. She bent and took up the mooring rope one-handed, ran in through the ring and made them fast. Hopped down and walked up forward where her bow touched the other skip. "Hey, Del, you want to give me a bow tie-up there?"

"What you selling?"

"Not a thing. Not trading. Just a little stop."

No competition. Del Suleiman's old mouth snaggled into a grin. "I take 'er. Tie on."

"Well, you got to lend me the rope, I lost my anchor stem and bow."

White brows went up and lowered again. A scraggle-bearded chin worked. A gap-toothed woman sat aft on the half-deck, female mountain behind the baskets of eels. "How'd ye lose 'er?"

"Hey, got a lander." She reset her cap and in the move brushed knuckle to right eyebrow: got business going with this landsman; settle ours later. The old man grinned and the woman grinned and the old man got his boathook to do the tie-up.

She walked back to Mondragon, who stood in the well within a stride of the stone walk. Waiting on her.

He stood there a moment longer, looking into her eyes. And for a moment she remembered the sun on him in the morning.

Then he turned and skipped up onto the landing, barefoot as a canaler, in her misfit breeches, a blue sweater out at the elbows and a black turban that did nothing to hide that white, sun-burned skin of his. He looked back from that vantage. Once.

She stood with her hands in her waistband and her bare feet solid on her deck. "Luck," she said. "Mind your back next time."

It got a flicker from him, as if that had shot true. "Luck," he said, and turned and headed for the stairs.

Not another look back. Not one.

Not an offer to bring the clothes back. Too rich to think it was all she had but what she was wearing.

Or just not going to promise what he couldn't do.

She turned and walked down to the bow where old Del was tying up. She squatted down there. "Del, what I got to give you so's you watch my boat?"

The old man's wits were sharp. His face never looked it. He chewed the cud he had, spat a little green juice overside between her bow and his side. "Hey, watcher into, Jones? You clean?"

"Swear." She lifted a solemn hand. "What I got to give you?"

"I think on 'er."

"Well, think, ye damn sherk!" Altair sprang up in despair. Old Del knew how to wring advantage out of a bargain, and retreating quarry was a mighty lever. "I'll pay you, I'll pay you, my heart's blood I'll pay you; and heaven help you if I got a scratch on my boat!" She pelted up the slats, grabbed up the knife and the barrelhook and hit the stones running. Hooo—oo! The appreciation of other canalers followed that bit of theater. Hooo—Run for 'er, Jones! Hooo—Del!

Damn. He could get away, go either direction. She thumped up the age-smooth wood of the Hanging Stair, up and up the four turns to the wide bridge and its gallows-arches.

There, blue sweater and black turban heading over the bridge to Ventani.

Headed right for the neighborhood that dumped him into old man Det's jaws in the first place.

Man with his mind set on trouble, that was what. Crazy man. Crazy as the rafters.

She headed after him, bare feet soft-silent on the boards, belting on her knife and hanging the barrelhook from that belt too.