The bow came into the open again, and Altair kept a steady pace, her hands swearing on the pole now as Port Canal outflow and the boats and the fire glare came closer and closer.
Questions, dammit, we don't need.
"… you buy that sweater uptown?" Mintaka was saying inside the tarp-shelter, with doubtless professional interest. "Lord, now they done used too big a needle, stuff stretches, them stitches got too much give. Now I could make ye one—"
Altair scanned the floating gathering ahead for the easiest course through, and suddenly thought wistful thoughts of taking the long way round, up the Foundry canal and up and around. It was a chancy backwater, old warehouses, an area where old Det was winning and buildings would have to be filled and torn down and built again. It had not happened yet.
Evade the questions, that was all. And oh, Lord, now there was Mintaka to reckon with.
Closer and closer, watching that fire-sheen and the drift of boats. She managed a steady pace, sweating now despite the chill of her clothing, breathing in great raw gasps.
It's all right, you're just Altair Jones, coming back with old gran Mintaka, doing a kindly act, just mind your own business—
She glided in amongst the first boats that anchored there, anchored, no less, right in the Grand channel. Families huddled on skip half decks, all wrapped in blankets, watching the commotion like it was holiday or a hanging. Intent on the fire and not on her, thank the Ancestors. Intent on the commotion of distant shouting round the bend where Port met Grand, where fire still showed, but dimmer now. Boats clustered there too, black and busy against the glare.
Mind your business, Jones, knock into someone and you'll have more than one question to answer, that you will.
There was a great deal of commotion now, noise from other boats as she worked and glided her way through. And the tarp stirred. "Lord, look at this," Mintaka's high voice said, and Altair cringed and kept poling.
"Ain't nothing, gran," she said. "You found that cap for him yet?"
"Oh, that I do." Mintaka hauled herself up and staggered perilously in the well, hunched, irregular silhouette against the fire-reflections and the passing shadows of boats. "Look at this, look at this—I tell you I ain't seen such a to-do since them two barges jammed up in the Grand. I tell you, they ought ter have a law, governor ought to do something, them damn bargefolk got no respect for nothing."
"They don't," Altair agreed.
Damn, the lonely old soul was a tale-teller. Chatter your brains away.
And come dawn gran Mintaka would have a good one, how Jones and a fair-haired uptowner showed up all wet and draggled and poled her back to safety. O Lord, Jones, now what do you do?
Scatter stories wide, that's all.
"I heard this barge run down a poleboater," she said. "There she was all blazing fire and come grinding up the bank there by Mars Bridge; and this poler, he jumped and his passenger did; and here was this uptown man swimming down the Port—did you know who that was, ser?"
"No," Mondragon said from beneath the tarp. "Myself —I had to jump when I ran afoul of a crew bringing a boom up. I hardly knew what hit me."
"I saw him go," Altair said cheerfully. "Right off the Mars walk, he went, damn fools rushing off to get to the fire. I got down and gave him a hand and this damn fool trod on me, never a care in the wide world. Stepped right on me leg. I tell you I'd like to've got up right men and settled with him, but it was bad enough this m'ser got shoved in, I couldn't leave off pulling him out. I asked him did he swallow any of that water, he said no. I just get my boat off old Del Suleiman and get to moving—"
The sight off the starboard distracted her: a welter of boats; watchers clustered there: and beyond that, fire-glare, a huge black hulk run up against a wall, something else ablaze in the river. One of the bridges was missing, thatwas what was burning in the river, and that black, dead hulk listing down onto the bottom—that was the barge they had been in.
A cold feeling hit her, belated shock. She glided a moment, recovered her wits and moved quickly to turn the bow from a potential scrape along another boat's anchor cable. She rocked them. Heads turned her way, silhouettes. The light was at their backs and on her.
"Oh, she were close,*' Mintaka said.
"Sorry, gran." She sweated and made a close turn amid the still boats and anchor-ropes.
We were onthat black thing. We were under that deck. Lord, if we'd been a second slower to get out of that hidey we'd have been trapped in there, that fuel running back in the slats under us—cinders and bits of bone. They never would've told us from the rest of the charcoal. Did everybody get offthat thing?
What kind of folk'd do a thing like that?
"Ain't no place t' anchor," Mintaka said. And shouted at the next boat: " Ain't no place t' anchor, hear?"
" Shut it down!" a voice yelled back, and voices yelled other things. " Who's that?"
" I'm Mintaka Fahd," the old woman yelled back, " and this here's Retribution working my boat, no thanks to you that left me!"
" She's crazy," someone else sang out. " Who is that?"
Altair gave a shove on the pole. ' ' It's Altair Jones,'' she yelled to the night at large, " taking this boat to dock, no thanks to them that ran off and left her! Who's seen Del Suleiman?"
A moment of relative silence and no answer. "You tell 'em," Mintaka said, and waddled forward. " You hear?"
"I think they did," Altair muttered. "Gran, your arthritis is going to do you bad, you better sit."
"I'm doing fine," Mintaka said, standing wide-legged in the bow. Probably she was not doing fine. Too cussed to agree.
And Del had not answered the hail.
The crowd of boats went right under Foundry Bridge, in the center as well as on the sides by the pilings. Altair went gingerly, fearing collision in that dark place; while Mintaka waddled back closer to the tarp.
"Almost there, gran," Altair said. "You want to sit a while?"
"Hey," Mintaka said; and Altair heard the silence too.
The great bell had stopped, proclaiming the emergency done.
"They got 'er," Altair said. Of course they had. Merovingen could not burn, her people were too canny and moved too quick, whatever the hood-wearing crazies did. Whatever she had gotten herself involved in.
She gave a shrug to rid herself of the chill it gave her, and shoved the boat on, past other moored boats, these with sense to clear the channel, boats tied up thick as birds at roost. Safer territory. The skip moved faster now, easy in the water on the outflow. Southtown Bridge loomed up, and the tall triple span of Fishmarket Bridge was the imagination of a shadow behind that.
"Oh," Mintaka said, standing by the tarp, "she do move, she do move. I used ter push her like this."
"She's a good boat," Altair said.
Mintaka said nothing then. Folded her arms up till she made a roundish lump in the dark.
Southtown bridge shadow went over them, narrowest span in the city. A body listened sharp for a barge bell here at night or early morning and got over right smartly if one sounded.
"Where you got in mind?" Mintaka asked. "Love, I ain't got no strength to fight Snake current."
"Well, I wouldn't leave you at the Southtown narrows, gran. I tell you, how's Ventani corner do you?"