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

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

"What? Whatd'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 Iknow?" 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, heain'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 tryingto 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 killedfour 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 himand 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'sa 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.