She thought she had run out of shivers finally. One sharp tremor ran through her. The gold pieces lay in her hand, huge and heavy and unfamiliar. She had never so much as touched a gold piece like that. Not one. It was a fortune in her palm. "I can't use these damn things, I show these round, they'll call the law on me, I can't walk ina place they'll change these pieces. Dammit, Mondragon, you got no sense! Hide me, hide my boat—man gives me what I can't use and gives me advice how to keep away from trouble—how good's your advice, from a man who'd dump my best and only skillet in harbor water?"
"Hush." He touched her face, laid a finger on her lips. Tipped her chin up and followed it with a kiss, the night all giddy with the thumping of the engine, this crazy business of hiding in a barge's gut. She caught her breath.
"Jones," he said. "You'll do all right. I have confidence in you."
"I ain't going."
"You're going," he said softly.
"Maybe I'll just find the law, maybe I'll tell the blacklegs just what—"
He stopped her mouth with a hard grip. "You could die. You could die, Jones. You hear me?"
She bobbed her head. He took his hand away. It had bruised her jaw.
"So you get off this barge," he said. "You take what I gave you, go take care of yourself. I haven't got time to."
"Where was mytime? Where was my'haven't got time to' when I fished you out of the harbor, where was me shivering my teeth loose keeping you warm all night and maybe losing the only damn customers I got while I'm keeping you away from them damn killers, huh?"
The engine chugged on. Water whispered under the hull.
"I can't ever pay you," he said. "That's all. I can't ever pay you. Do what I told you."
"In a—"
Water showered and thundered down into the well, over the deck, pouring down from above; Lord, no, not water: there were fumes. "Damn!" Altair cried, wiping her eyes from the splash and scrambling to her haunches. And: " Ware, hey!" from a bargeman above. Fire meteored down into the well, a lantern that shattered, glared, and licked out fire, fire running in instant tongues, serpents of fire flaring up in the bilge, through the wooden slats toward them. "My God, my God," Altair cried, and shoved at Mondragon in panic fear: out, outof this hole!
He was dragging at her in the same moment, and the fire leaping up in their faces, running under the slats that floored the hidey the same as the well. It was inferno, instant and complete: searing heat and glare in their faces, men screaming and herself with a fistful of Mondragon's sweater as she scrambled for the stairs, him grabbing at hers, and it was both of them on the stairs at once, trying to climb to the deck with a sheet of flame at left and hellish glare off brick and doorways at right.
She grabbed her cap and dived, still with a fistful of sweater; and he came with her all in one wild wobble for balance, all legs and change of center. She fell sideways, water solid as a floor when she hit, and the breath near left her. She kicked, clothing weighted with water, hunting the surface with Mondragon's sweater still in one fist. She felt him kick and let him go as of a sudden something huge and rough brushed her shoulder—God, the barge, the propeller—O God—She heard the thumping getting nearer and kicked in cold panic, ran into Mondragon or someone and broke the surface with the glare of fire everywhere, with fire running and burning on the water, and the giant black shape of the barge a moving wall as it slewed about and ground against a brick wall. She saw other splashes of hell-lit water, other dark heads bobbing, fighting for their lives. Doors opened. Alarm bells pealed and boomed.
Fire! Fire on the canal!
She trod water and cast about wildly, saw Mondragon's pale face close at hand. He shouted something against the roar of the fire, waved toward the bank, and waved again.
She discovered herself clutching the damned cap, thought of letting go and then in profoundest bewilderment simply slapped it on her head, water and all, and struck out swimming. Clothing dragged at her, had her breathing in great gasps, scissor kicking and dogpaddling and any other stroke that gave her room to breathe. It was Mars over there. It was Mars' narrow rim, and crowds appeared suddenly everywhere, black figures pouring out onto bridges, onto walkways, desperate cries and shrieks drowning in the roar of the fire.
The bank loomed up, closer and closer, a blank wall there, where Mars had sunk: window-arches and former doors were bricked, the old ground-floor filled, the merest rim of the old walk left as a tilted slab a boat had to remember the breadth of when it skirted that isle. Mondragon pulled ahead of her with hard strokes, hit that sloping shelf and floundered ashore with a firelit splash of water as he staggered to his feet, turned and caught his balance. He had lost the black scarf: his pale hair was plastered down around his face. Somehow he had kept the rapier; it swung at his side, its guard winking as he got down on one knee on the submerged and tilted edge and leaned out with his hand outheld to her.
She mustered a last few hard kicks, calm and sane, and reached up to his grasp, reached up a second hand when he grabbed after it, and he rose up and backstepped, pulled her out with her scrambling after footing and near taking them both in before he caught his balance and held on to her—"God," she said, and choked and just leaned on him breathing and with her clothes weighing half as much as herself.
"Come on." He faced her about, got her into motion, his hand on her elbow. She went, splashing along with him, trying to flail her arms for balance, but his grip tightened about her left arm and he pulled her faster, she gasped and spat water that ran down from her hair and her cap, and nigh tore her knees keeping her balance on the outside of the ledge where his hold put her. Her feet went: the ledge just quit; and she went hi up to her waist before he hauled her up again and she scrabbled to solid stone, gasping and feeling a stitch in a rib.
Then they reached clear ground, staggered round the corner and full into a crowd of locals trying to get a floating-boom across the side canal, to stop the fire that might come drifting that way on the water. The crowd yelled, vague angry shouts, curses at two wet fugitives who might have some responsibility in the calamity—"That your boat?" one yelled, dropping his part of the makeshift boom to grab at Mondragon. "That your boat out there?"
"No!" Mondragon yelled back, his voice deep and furious. "We were on a poleboat, the damned barge nearly killed us!"
It was quick, it was credible, Mondragon's hightown accent, the outraged uptown passenger who would have nothing conceivable to do with a barge—it confused the man, who let Mondragon tear past, dragging her with him; and now Altair tried to run in earnest, past other arriving crowds. Two wet people now were far enough away from the immediate calamity they might be soaked firefighters, and they had the advantage of moving fast, before questions could get organized. Altair gasped for air and squished along in Sodden, weak-kneed jolts.
A vaster pealing added itself to the night - the great bell of the Signeury ringing in alarm: Help, fire, catastrophe, turn out, turn out!
Mondragon reached Mars' north stair at the landing, laid his hand to the rail and headed up, hauling her along. She gasped like a fish and stumbled on the steps, caught herself with her left hand as Mondragon hauled on her sore right arm.