Trouble's got this sure stink about it. The homeless don't hang round here, honest boats don't stop, and nobody else is hereabouts. Usually six or seven ratty skips and nothing.

They smell it, smell it all over Tidewater.

Lord, are they watching out the windows?

No waterside ledge on Megary either. And above, it showed nothing but barred windows, closed shutters, top story to canal side. She could not, in the way of things looked at and looked past all her life, recall the look of mat building's upper storey on the other sides.

She signaled turn at Megary's north corner, there off West Canal, familiar turn that she had taken many a night, shortcut on the return from Hafiz', down the way. But she had never looked upbefore.

Northside was the front landing. That door looked solid. Windows to either side were barred and shuttered. Not the least sliver of light showed inside. The windows above were barred and sealed with weathered shutters that ought to leak light if any existed,

Suppose they got the windows blacked from inside?

Lord. Suppose—suppose they already took 'im on from here, suppose they sawthat storm from them upper windows, and took him somewheres else and I can't find 'im—

Suppose they never came here at all—

"Ya-hin." She took a deep breath, used it all in a push to slew the skip close to the Isle and around the turn, there where Hafiz' south point showed in the Tidewater canal. She looked up, strained to see the few windows at Megary's narrow end. They were dark as the rest.

Megary's comer bent on round by Southdike. Their bow aimed a moment at the short channel to Marsh Gate, and that was no more than a dark pit ahead with an ominous flicker of lightning-lit dark beyond. Dead Harbor out there. The Ghost Reel.

Storm, stalking up virtually silent the way sea-storms did, pushing the tide before them to flood those earthquake-frozen sea-gates.

They kept swinging, brought the bow round to the buttressed point of the dike, to the narrow bend between Megary and Amparo.

And Megary had a balcony on this side second level, Lord and Glory, a great beautiful balcony without a stairway. Not one damn bridge to anybody. Rostov had had one to Megary from the north, and dismantled it in a feud. The south to Amparo—that fell in a quake and nobody put it back. Amparo went across to Calder. Rostov had its back turned to the slavers.

But there was that hanging balcony, to left of the boat-cut, and that cut had two boats tied up, one a dilapidated skip, one a sleek pleasureboat.

Lord, that's uptown. That's a fancy. Lookat that paint shine.

"Ssst. Ho." She braced the pole to slow. Rahman set his side and the skip's motion ebbed down as she looked up and up that cut. "I got to get in there."

"Yey," Rahman said, and put out the hook, snagging the old skip's bow. She shipped the pole without a rattle, felt her belt for the hook and the knife, then got down cat-footed into the well and pried the lid on the match-can there by the edge of the hidey, put a few in her pocket and glanced over at Ali, who huddled close by.

"You mind what I said."

"Jones, we're going to die."

"Likeliest be your fault, then. Hear?"

"I got ye. I got ye." Ali's teeth were chattering again. He kept his arms clenched across his gut. She looked up at Rahman's sullen face, at Tommy's wide eyes.

"Rahman," she whispered, "that engine, takes three tries, light prime and ye got to hold the choke out by hand, Here." She handed him up the matches, reached down and picked a quiet handful of metal out of a second can. Nuts and bolts and screws. She held one up and pocketed the rest. "I toss one of these, you hear that splash, you put Ali here t' that door. You get that freight door open. Hear? You take one of them bottles. You toss 'er and you get the hell down this way and toss the other right into these boats."

"Yey." Rahman's sullen eyes flickered in the shadow, thinking-moving. Calculating as she got to her feet and the wind skirled in the cut.

Damn, neverdo a Revenantist a favor. He suspects it, he'll hate you for it. Man wantsto die. Wants Mary and his kids clear. Damn, he hates me.

She got to the drop by the engine, took out the gun and pocketed a few extra shells. She held it in plain light to check the chambers, and when she looked up Rahman had a different kind of look.

The kid ain't planning anything small, man. This kid ain't the fool you thought. This kid's her mama's daughter. Figure that, Rahman Diaz.

She rose up off her knee and took off her cap, passed it to Tommy. "Hold that. Lose it and I'll skin ye."

"Yeah," Tommy said. Terrified.

She stuck the pry-bar in her belt, and looked up, up at the underside of the balcony, at the timber bracings mat laced back and forth inside the cut.

A tumbledown boatshed finished off that cut at the back, there by the boatdock door. Windows around the cut were all barred, all shuttered, and no light showing.

She stepped aboard the old skip, a wary eye to the hidey; but nothing stirred there. She crossed onto the sleek deck of the fancy and walked it to the ledge of the cut.

The door there was locked. Of course it was locked. She looked up at the shed, looked at the old timber piled there.

She laid the gun down and took a plank, set it to the boatshed roof, tested it for angle and looked up again where the bracings kept Megary's upper story true. Right above the shed,

She's going to creak, she's going to squeal the moment I stand on that roof.

But, Lord, ain't that pretty, how they got that brace going from that wall, that's good black upriver timber and the cut wall's all brick, solid as an uptown bridge.

If I don't break my fool neck getting up there.

She picked up the gun, gauged her angle and the traction of bare feet with the grain of the plank going up-wise. Drew a deep breath.

Ain't no different than a deck in weather, is it? Damn lot steadier.

Do I wonder whether that roofs rotten? Where would them roof-studs be?

She ran the plank, hit the roof and a shingle went loose. It fell. Her knee came down on the yielding roof, found a rotten spot and she sprawled, afraid to move while the awful noise of the broken board resounded in the cut. She shuddered convulsively, felt acute pain in her thigh and gasped for air as she dragged her weight up.

Didn't lose the gun, damn, I didn't lose the gun and I didn't drop nothing.

Am I cut? Is that a nail?

She dragged the leg farther and farther off the broken board, spread like a seastar across the rotten shingles as a wind-gust fluttered a loose board and thunder rumbled, the pain blacked her vision, eased slowly. She kept crawling, up and up to the rooftree.

If that gives way, I'm done, I'm dead or worse—

O Lord, Lord, if I can just stand up and reach that timber up there—

She cast a look back, at her skip riding quiet in the dark, like any skip at night-tie. Another hitch higher on the shingles. Another shingle slipped and slid and hit the water with a splash.

Lord, no, no, Rahman, that ain't no signal, don't go for that door.

Climb, you got to hurry, fool!

Breath came hard. She edged up and up and felt the whole building protest.

Don't leave your weight on that rooftree one second longer'n need be, and what you going to do with the damn gun, Altair?

Her mother's voice. Retribution perched up on the tim here, in the big black fork of them where they held tottering Megary's upper section apart.

Blow my damn gut out, mama.

She stuffed her sweater into her pants and tightened her belt till it hurt, pulled her sweater collar wide and stuffed the gun down her front. Then she rose up on her knees, scrambling for that timber with both arms as the shed trembled under her departing feet.