He knew how to fight. Which meant he was no easy prey for those black-cloaked devils on the bridge. How had they got him, anyway?
The knot was on the back of his head, that was what.
He pulled his pants on, wet around the seams as they would be. Sun would go on drying them: no worry of taking fever.
Altair sighed again, men bent down beside the hidey and swept up her well-worn cap, pulled it on hard against the wind, and winced and suffered a jolt of the heart: there was a knot on the back of her skull too, right where the band touched. She settled the cap a little back of that, tilted on her head, jammed it down and skipped up onto the halfdeck.
The traitor engine started on the third crank, regular as could be.
* * *
She shut the engine down finally with maybe enough fuel left for a startup, maybe a little more—"Never you run nothing down to empty." Her mother had dinned that into her. "You plan so's you don't. You lay yourself open and Murfy'll get you, sure he will." Even Adventists believed in Murfy. He was a saint in the Janist pantheon. "You gave old Murfy a chance," her mother would say when she slipped up. "I tell you, you can't give chances away. You need all you got."
She hauled the rudder up, pulled the tiller-pin and let the bar fall to be hooked stationary to the engine-box. So the boat coasted toward the tall pilings between the dike and Rimmon Isle on the way they had left; and she gauged it right. The bow skimmed over shallow water, the line that was dark and not green, without a pole to push it; and while it was crossing that line she unshipped the pole and walked to the front of the halfdeck to put it in, walking it along on starboard; then crossed over and walked it on port, while Mondragon stood out of her way in the well.
"Can I help with that?"
"Hell, no! You'd be clinging to that pole and the boat off on her own. I seen many a beginner go right off the deck."
Back to starboard. She was flatly showing off, keeping the boat moving at a reckless clip, making it look easy as it headed for the pilings. Moving cheered her. His bright face in the sunlight did, for what time she still had his company. Not raining on tomorrow, Retribution Jones would say. Or the afternoon. Her bare feet were sure on the deck. Not hard shoves. Deft ones. At the right time. "This kind of boat's called a skip, dunno why. Skip's got a halfdeck and an engine and she's bigger'n any poleboat. Moves real sweet in the water if you know her tricks; any boat's got 'em. She's engine-heavy and she slews bad, but you can use that on the turns, if you know what to do with the pole. She starts slow and she stops the same way when she's loaded; then you use the currents much as you can—canals have 'em, same as the harbor or old Det himself, and some of 'em's fierce. You plan way ahead. You don't feel that load right, she can ram a wall or another boat and tip everybody right over if her load shifts."
They were coming up on the pilings. Mondragon turned as the shadow fell on them, and staggered when he faced that perspective, the black maze of pillars that was coming fast. "Jones—"
"I know my way.'* She worked it fast, this side and that. "Better be right, hey?"
They shot in amongst the pilings, into the dark of the bridges that linked the city to Rimmon Isle and its fortified mansions. Light gleamed hurting-bright at the end, which was the harbor, and the pilings rushed by them. Mondragon stood in silhouette against that light.
Trip through hell. Or purgatory.
She had her line planned. No way the boat was going to skew from it, except at the end when they hit the inflow from the harbor. They kited out into the dazzling light, the water throwing it back off its surface and swirling brown into the lucent jade of the deep bay.
"Ware!" she sang out, meaning she was about to turn, and bottomed the pole and swung the bow over so smartly and shoved her off so deftly there was never a jolt. Mondragon kept his footing with a little stagger, turned and looked up at her as if he thought that was a trick designed to unsettle him.
"Hey, you got your legs, Mondragon." She grinned at him. "You'll roll like a proper canaler when you walk ashore."
"I don't drown easy, Jones."
She grinned wider. A light sweat stood on her and the breeze cooled her skin. The wind smelled of waterfront and old wood, which was the smell of Merovingen and its harbor alike. They went into the dark again, under another pier. An idle boat was tied up there down the way, likely a fisher cursing the luck that kept him in for repair. The sound of hammering came to her, and echoed off the docks and the dikes. They slowed: they had lost a little way in the turn and she did not pick it up again. She just headed for the series of bright-dark water stripes ahead, between the series of water-blackened pilings.
"Where you going in town, Mondragon?" she asked. "You didn't tell me that."
He turned again and looked up at her. Sun hit his face as they skimmed into the light again, and he grimaced and shaded his eyes. "Jones, forget my name. Don't talk it around, just say you had a passenger, say my name was— whatever's common here."
"You won't pass for a Hafiz or a Gossen, not with that complexion. You got a burn, you know that?"
He took a reflexive look at his arm, which was reddened, raised it to shade his eyes again. "Believe me. Forget that name."
"Why'd you tell me?"
A moment's silence. He stood there with the hand up and let it fall again as they headed under another pier and into deep shadow. "Must have been the rap on the head," he said, quieter.
"You got real troubles. You sure you don't want me to take you to the Det-landing?"
"I'm sure."
Mondragon—She stopped herself short of the name, wiped it out of her reflexes. "You want my help?" Fool! "You want me to keep you under cover awhile?" She hoped suddenly. She took the chance the way she took the chance with the pilings, because she knew the maze, she knew the ways, she was adept at surviving and took some chances because it was style. It was—whatever made life worth having. He was one. "I could do that. Do it easy."
He stood there with a look on his face that said it tempted him. With a look in his eyes that said he was thinking. "No," he said. "No, you better not."
"You being a fool?"
"No."
"You already got a cracked skull. You going to go back where they can get another swing at it? Second time they'll split it. Second time I might not be there to pull you out."
"Hey, you going to take me for another night out there with the crazies?"
Her accent on his tongue; it was deft, too. She grinned in spite of herself. "Not bad. Not bad hit."
"Jones—" The light came back and he squinted. "Jones—thanks."
They had reached the Mouth, where the dike towered up before them and the warehouses of Ramseyhead were at their left. Her bare feet hit the deck in short, quick strides as she positioned for the turn, touched the pole on that side and drove them hard for the Mouth; a little hard work now: the Mouth was always a hard crossing, where some of the sewer effluent created a wash. She heard that thanks and there was no time to handle it, just the boat, just that quick, hard rhythm of her life, which went on before him and would go on after him. And maybe there was nothing worth saying.
Something stupid like Come back?
He was going to end up in the canal again; or he was going to take off those canaler's rags and dress himself in hightowners' velvet and silk and walk the high bridges with no more interest in the boats that plied the shadows than he had in the vermin and the feral cats that conducted their war in Merovingen's sinks and bowels. Velvet and silk. Not his back on bare boards and a dirty blanket. Whether he was one of the shady sort of hightowner or something else—he had no business with her.