"Shut it down!" Jobe roared; and it shut down, slowly. Altair stood there with her knees quaking and Jobe clenched his fists. "Jones, this account you give better be straight. It damn sure better be straight!"
"You go accusing somebody of setting fires, Rufio Jobe, you damn well make sure you're right!" She clenched a fist of her own and made a gesture at him, ancient and evident. "I make my living on the water same's ever'one, I haul barrels and I never got crosswise of no one, not me nor my boat, dammit! I do my tie-ups proper, I watch your boats, I pays my debts—which being, Del Suleiman—" She found Del in range and swung that hand his way, flat-out and contemptuous. "You tell me what I owe you, you name me what it is for watching my boat, and you name it here in front of ever'body. I'll pay ye. I'll pay ye ever' penny."
"Penny'll do 'er," Del muttered, shifting his feet. "Jones—I was trying to help—"
She stared at him. "Ye called council on me trying to help?''
"Ye damnfool kid, ye're in with scoundrels!"
"So you want to break my fingers?"
"It was Jobe said it about the fingers," Del cried. "Lord and my Ancestors, Jones, Jobe never would've done it—Jones, f'rget the penny, I don't want no pay."
Her breath came and went in a series of dizzy gulps.
Kill him, I'll kill 'im.
Damn, this sad old fool. Him an' Mira, Like Gran Mintaka. No kid. All these years, no kid.
Look at 'em. Crazy. Crazy with wanting to push me around.
Crazy with wanting.
"Man wanted to'dopt me," Altair said, looking around at Jobe. "Him and Mira. —I don't hold no grudge. Not you either, Jobe. But you better get it in your heads good—" She swung round and shouted at the lot of them, looking one and the other in the eye, Mergeser in particular. "If I was guilty I'd've gutted half of ye! Take advantage of a body 'cause they ain't looking for no wrong from ye, shove 'er around and call 'er a liar, huh? Del, I'll pay you that penny next week. I don't want no debts, but I ain't going to argue it here."
"Jones," Jobe said, "you'd do real well to get out of that business of yours. You ain't all that clean. I'm telling you, you got yourself in fast water. Real fast. A kid's balance just ain't that good."
"Thanks," she said sourly. And rubbed a sore arm. "Give me my stuff back. Where's my knife?"
There was silence. "Give it to her," Jobe said, and Alim Settey moved up and gave the knife over. One of the Casey brothers gave the hook into her other hand, and she sheathed both of them. Her hands were shaking, bad as her knees, but it was her hands they could see in the light, her hands shamed her so her face went hot and rage wound tight down in her gut. "Thanks," she said. Be polite, Altair. Her mother's voice in her head. Retribution's ghost sat over on a pile of brick, feet a-dangle, cap tilted back. They ain't so bad, Retribution said. They're your neighbors, they're all you got, you got to be civil 'cept when they're fools.
They're fools, mama.
They didn't believe you, half, Retribution's voice said inside her skull. And they let you go, didn't they? Is that a fool? Or is that neighbors?
The Mergeser's youngest offered her cap, all solemn-faced and polite. Altair knotted her fist up and unknotted it and took the cap without snatching it. Set it on again, and walked to the exit through the others, her legs shaking so she could hardly negotiate the nibbled passage. She came out into windy Bogar Cut, and drank down a cold lungful of air.
A bell was ringing somewhere far away, whisper of sound in the night. The wind and the bridges and the twisting waterways played games with such sounds, making it near and far by turns.
She started to move, jogging down the narrow strip of stone on knees that wanted to go out from under her all the way. Others came behind her, multiple footfalls on the nigged bricks.
"Somebody's got trouble," someone said. And then the ringing stopped.
She jumped Del's side to his halfdeck and jumped on over to her own skip, got down on her haunches and started untying as the rest of the crowd reached the canalside. Some delayed to talk. Others stood and stared. Her knees wobbled and her hands shook, the knot resisting.
Bells happened many times a night in Merovingen. A shop got broken into, a shopkeeper hailed the blacklegs and his neighbors. Nothing unusual.
But she cursed and got the knot loose, stood up and rattled and fumbled with the pole as she ran it out, gritting her teeth against the pain of her arms. She nearly had her legs go out from under her as she skipped down into the well and hurried up forward to put the pole in and turn the skip about.
"Jones." It was Del. Del had made it back to his boat, Mira panting a distance behind. "Jones, I got to talk to you. Mira—"
"I ain't got time." She fended a bit from Del's boat, shoved the bow out against the Snake's current and let the current slew her hard as she ran back to stern again, getting underway.
"Jones," Del called out. And: "Altair!" from Mira.
"Where's she going?" someone asked.
Water lapped noisily at the sides of Bogar and Mantovan, and voices dimmed as she came out and got moving.
Damn fool panic, ain't no cause of it, folk'll see you.
Slow down, Retribution said in her mind. You want those fools back there to see you run like this? What you thinking of, Altair?
I dunno, I dunno, mama. I don't care, damn them all. I got to get back again to Moghi's. I got to find Mondragon, something's wrong, something's wrong somewhere.
And wrong's got this way of finding him.
Breath came hard, came on an edge of grinding pain as the pilings of Hanging Bridge closed all about her, with the skip riding the Snake current. No boats, her eye picked up not a single skip or poleboat moored under Hanging Bridge, nowhere about the point—there had been a single skip making its slow way down the Margrave, under Coffin Bridge. No one else. The desertion was ominous, but the boats that belonged hereabouts were mostly down at Bogar—Council called was a good enough draw to account for scarce boats: she had seen it scarcer on a rumor or a wedding or a wake—A hundred reasons.
Past Hanging Bridge shadow. Ventani Pier loomed blackly into the sheen of water and bright light glittered on the water in front of Moghi's open door, showed a half-dozen or so boats moored to Moghi's porch. Thatwas normal. The windows were unshuttered, the door wide.
Fool. See? Kill yourself for nothing. Mondragon's abed, sleeping all nice and warm and never knowing a thing.
Got to get him up and moving. Got to get him up to Boregy fast as we can. Lord, my arms, my hand. Oh, damn, damn, my finger hurts.
But where's the music?
Where's the noise?
I ain't hearing music, not a voice. O Lord! Lord—why ain't there any noise yonder?
She poled another stroke, let the skip glide, wind cooling her skin through the sweater.
Tie up to the porch, slip round back, by the shed?
Walk that dark cut, back into who knows what kind of trap?
O Lord, O Lord! It washere, it wasMoghi's bell— Where's the watch? Ain't the damn blacklegs going to come?
What'm I going into?
She veered off toward Ventani Pier, so sharply the skip crabbed along sideways and made way slowly toward that dark set of pilings and the sloping freight-dock.
Her mouth tasted of blood. Her ribs ached. She drove in hard toward the pilings, scraped the skip side against them so hard it staggered her in her footing.
No watchers along the stone rim. No homeless and no mendicants waiting there to pilfer a boat's goods. Nothing. The poor and the cats—they knew when to move. They had more sense than a fool canaler, than a meddler in others' business. They were gone. Safe. They saw nothing. And everything.