"Not me," one said. "I ain't half that fool."

"Moghi—"

"They ain't too enthusiastic," Moghi said. "They ain't fools. I ain't. We'll get 'em, we'll get 'em, but I ain't ordering no man of mine to go breaking into Megary. Jep?"

"I ain't too enthused either." Jep shifted his feet and scratched his neck. " Blacklegsdon't go in there."

" I'llgo," Ali cried. And: " Ow!" when Moghi hit him.

"We can block the harbor out," Moghi said. "Do this the smart way. Carlos, Pavel, you're going round to the harbor, maybe help them canalers. Maybe talk to old Chance on that riverboat. Done him a few favors, he'll talk to me."

"Dammit, that won't help him!"

"I'm telling you, Jones, you leave the thinking to them that has to do the bleeding! You want to go out there, they'll get them damn Megarys a nice pretty piece of merchandise if they don't blow your head right off. And then they'll sell you all the same, to them doctors. You'll end up on a slab up to the College, that you will! Or in some whorehouse up to Nex. You want that?"

"I'll take care of myself, dammit! I'll find someonethat's got the—"

"Me!" Ali yelled, "Jones! Jones! I swear I never do it again, I made a mistake, Jones, I'll go, I'll go, I swear I will, I'll make it good, Jones, I'll make it, swear on my mother, Jones, I swear, I swear, I swear!"

"I give ye Ali," Moghi said, with that sweet-nasty look in his deepset eyes. "Go with you right to Nex, he would."

"Dammit, Moghi, I'll take him, you give 'im to me, I'll take him!"

"You're crazy."

"I ain't crazy. I'm looking for a manin this damn hole! If he's all I got, he's what I'll take!"

"Damn you, Jones!"

"You said it, give him to me! If he can walk I'll take him."

"I c'n walk," Ali said, hoarse and bubbly. "Jones, I c'n walk, I c'n—"

"You want this trash," Moghi said, "you got 'im." Moghi drew his belt-knife and cut the cords, one, two, three.

"Ow!" Ali yelled: Moghi grabbed him by the hair and flung him out of the chair and face around again.

"If she don't get back," Moghi said, looking close into Ali's eyes, "you'll die for it. But you die slower. And I'll find ye, ye know I will."

"With my life," Ali said, a faint, bubbly voice, "with my life, I swear, Moghi, I swear on my—"

"Get!" Moghi flung him. Altair turned her back and stalked out of the hall and through again to the main room, with Ali shuffling and limping along at her back, all bubbly and snuffling. Canalers stared.

"Ye eavesdroppers," Altair called out around her, "ears in a body's business, any of ye want a piece of the Megarys?"

Eyes shifted the other way, shoulders turned. Del was there. He stared at her, his white-stubbled chin working. "I'll go," Del said.

"You got responsibilities," Altair said, and evaded the took in the old man's eyes. "C'mon, Ali."

She went out the door onto the porch—looked back at Ali shambling along after her holding his gut, saw a ring of staring faces around them both, canalers on the porch, out in the boats. "Megarys!" she yelled out. "It was Megarys helped them that done this! Anybody want to go over there in my boat? We got a man to get out of there!"

No one stood up and volunteered.

"Well, damn," she said, "Then some of you might at least get out there round West and here and there and clutter up them canals so they don't get a boat through."

"I'll do 'er," Mintaka Fahd cried out, waving her scarf. "Lord and Glory, I'll do 'er!"

"Who's this fellow?" That was old Jess Gray calling up from the middle of the boats. "Who's this they got?"

"Name's Mondragon!" Thatfor you, Boregy, and all your secrets. "He come to town to get away from them devils up in Nev Hettek. Megary's been trading with Nev Hettek and they got foreign help, it was Nev Hettek gold bought that poison, it was Nev Hettek and Megarys carried him off. You got no stake in him, but you damn well got one in what the Megarys done tonight!"

"You want them canals blocked, Jones, they get blocked!"

"Good!" She swung off the porch onto the ladder. Ali came down after, faltering on the rungs. She stepped down to the well of the Newell skip and Ali made it behind her, a grunt of pain and a stagger that rocked the boat. Newell kids squatted with mouths agape and eyes wide as she took her bloody shadow through the well.

Across that skip and onto Lewis's and the Delacroix. To her own, and Ali struggling and gasping to keep up with her. She heard another thumping across boat-wells, and a second, lighter, behind that. A man besides Ali landed in her well, all shadow against the light, a big man with a ragged coat.

"You got my help," he said, a voice half-familiar. She remembered the coat then, the cant of the battered hat.

Mary Gentry's man. Rahman Diaz. Mary who had lost the baby. Mary still had a son left, and her man came volunteering. Rahman scared her, scared her with the whole karma of it.

"Damn," she said. And another scrambling figure reached her deck, skinny-limbed shadow, spiky hair blowing in the wind, "who's that? Who's that? Tommy? Damn, get off of here."

"I come along," Tommy said in that high adolescent voice of his. "I ain't scared."

"Ain't scared!" She headed past her troop to the halfdeck. "Ain't scared! Damn! Rahman, get that rope free!"

Rahman moved for the bow-rope. Ali hunched his bent way up to the deck-edge and sank down there, arm on the deck, the other holding his gut. "Jones. Jones, I swear I never, Jones, I never had no heart for killing."

"Sure you didn't." She ran out the pole while Rahman got the boathook from his position in the well and Tommy dithered this way and that. "You going or staying?" she yelled at Tommy. "Get yourself back here off that bow, dammit, make ballast out of yourself, you c'n at least do that much—"

"Jones," Ali said, "Jones, that place is a maze, they got doors and doors—"

"You going to tell me that now?" She put the pole in, shoved past Del's skip. "Watch 'im, Mira—"

Mira lifted a forlorn hand and waved, that was all, And Mintaka Fahd waved her scarf. "Hooo," Mintaka hooted after her. "Hooo, there."

Hooo-oo, from a dozen mouths,

Mary Gentry's face she never tried to see.

"You got to go south," Ali stammered; it came out all liquid. "Jones, they don't use no big boat, it's Wharf Gate, they take their cargo out Wharf Gate—"

"Rahman, yey." She left the stroke to Rahman, swung the pole inboard and squatted down where she stood, toes tense on the deck. Her shadow fell on Ali's face, Moghi's lights falling behind them. "You want to talk truth, you damn flesh-peddler? Where?"

"It's truth, it's truth, Wharf Gate. They take 'em all that way."

"You damn sneak. How d'I believe ye?"

"I ain't lying. I ain't, Jones, I swear to you. Wharf Gate. They got these riverrunners, they come right up by the Dead Wharf, I heard 'em talk. Jones, Moghi give me this poor old sod to throw in harbor—he come to, he begged me, he begged me, Jones, he didn't want to go in that water. I ain't no killer. I sold 'im. That was the first. Ain't they better off? Ain't they? They wantedit, Jones, they wanted it—I ain't never thrown nobody in harbor. Megarys don't kill 'em. They just—"