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 mecall it, I'll give you hurry."

" I'llgive 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. " Whatwas 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.

" Thisend 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. Heardyou 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; sheknew where the holes were, shecome 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.