"I saw him go," Altair said cheerfully. "Right off the Mars walk, he went, damn fools rushing off to get to the fire. I got down and gave him a hand and this damn fool trod on me, never a care in the wide world. Stepped right on me leg. I tell you I'd like to've got up right men and settled with him, but it was bad enough this m'ser got shoved in, I couldn't leave off pulling him out. I asked him did he swallow any of that water, he said no. I just get my boat off old Del Suleiman and get to moving—"
The sight off the starboard distracted her: a welter of boats; watchers clustered there: and beyond that, fire-glare, a huge black hulk run up against a wall, something else ablaze in the river. One of the bridges was missing, that was what was burning in the river, and that black, dead hulk listing down onto the bottom—that was the barge they had been in.
A cold feeling hit her, belated shock. She glided a moment, recovered her wits and moved quickly to turn the bow from a potential scrape along another boat's anchor cable. She rocked them. Heads turned her way, silhouettes. The light was at their backs and on her.
"Oh, she were close,*' Mintaka said.
"Sorry, gran." She sweated and made a close turn amid the still boats and anchor-ropes.
We were on that black thing. We were under that deck. Lord, if we'd been a second slower to get out of that hidey we'd have been trapped in there, that fuel running back in the slats under us—cinders and bits of bone. They never would've told us from the rest of the charcoal. Did everybody get off that thing?
What kind of folk'd do a thing like that?
"Ain't no place t' anchor," Mintaka said. And shouted at the next boat: "Ain't no place t' anchor, hear?"
"Shut it down!" a voice yelled back, and voices yelled other things. "Who's that?"
"I'm Mintaka Fahd," the old woman yelled back, "and this here's Retribution working my boat, no thanks to you that left me!"
"She's crazy," someone else sang out. "Who is that?"
Altair gave a shove on the pole. ' 'It's Altair Jones,'' she yelled to the night at large, "taking this boat to dock, no thanks to them that ran off and left her! Who's seen Del Suleiman?"
A moment of relative silence and no answer. "You tell 'em," Mintaka said, and waddled forward. "You hear?"
"I think they did," Altair muttered. "Gran, your arthritis is going to do you bad, you better sit."
"I'm doing fine," Mintaka said, standing wide-legged in the bow. Probably she was not doing fine. Too cussed to agree.
And Del had not answered the hail.
The crowd of boats went right under Foundry Bridge, in the center as well as on the sides by the pilings. Altair went gingerly, fearing collision in that dark place; while Mintaka waddled back closer to the tarp.
"Almost there, gran," Altair said. "You want to sit a while?"
"Hey," Mintaka said; and Altair heard the silence too.
The great bell had stopped, proclaiming the emergency done.
"They got 'er," Altair said. Of course they had. Merovingen could not burn, her people were too canny and moved too quick, whatever the hood-wearing crazies did. Whatever she had gotten herself involved in.
She gave a shrug to rid herself of the chill it gave her, and shoved the boat on, past other moored boats, these with sense to clear the channel, boats tied up thick as birds at roost. Safer territory. The skip moved faster now, easy in the water on the outflow. Southtown Bridge loomed up, and the tall triple span of Fishmarket Bridge was the imagination of a shadow behind that.
"Oh," Mintaka said, standing by the tarp, "she do move, she do move. I used ter push her like this."
"She's a good boat," Altair said.
Mintaka said nothing then. Folded her arms up till she made a roundish lump in the dark.
Southtown bridge shadow went over them, narrowest span in the city. A body listened sharp for a barge bell here at night or early morning and got over right smartly if one sounded.
"Where you got in mind?" Mintaka asked. "Love, I ain't got no strength to fight Snake current."
"Well, I wouldn't leave you at the Southtown narrows, gran. I tell you, how's Ventani corner do you?"
"Oh, Ventani's fine, love. I tell you I don't know what I'd of done."
"Good thing I come along, that's what." Altair put her over to the side, where dozens of boats were moored, some few to each other thinning down as they came down to shallows where Ventani's rock stood firm, one of four upthrusts of stone in all of sinking Merovingen. "Hey," she said, spotting a vacancy. "There's one. Uptown canalers probably scared of the bottom, you got no problem light as she rides. Tide's already run." She gasped after breath, walking the skip in. "You want to tie her in, gran?"
They slid in next a number of skips—"How's she doing down there?" one man asked as they tied in, "They got that out?"
"They got 'er out," Mintaka said, walking to the side. And started filling in the details.
Lord. At it already.
Altair ran in the pole and got down on her knees on the halfdeck. Likely Mintaka collapsed and raised the tarp to get about, what times she moved at all. But there was no tie to the halfdeck and Altair slid down into the shelter, got head and shoulders under, into that closeness. It stank of old blankets and wet wool and mildew. "You awake?" she asked Mondragon.
"I assure you," he said in a voice all frosty cold. "Now where?"
"Forward." She found him in the dark and gave him a push, reaching then to keep her cap on as she crawled out the curtain after him into the dark.
"—Jones here got me in," Mintaka was saying to the folk next over, and: "Lord, here's the nice uptown lad, ain't he fine? And Jones here pulled him from the water—I got to tell ye that—"
"Gran," Altair said, and took her by one thick sweatered arm and drew her across the well to the other side. "Gran, I got to go, I got to get my boat and take this nice m'ser uptown. And I'll pay you next week."
"You sure you want to go? You want to take me around while you find Suleiman—why, I'd even ride along when you go take the m'ser home."
"Gran, she's right across the way, right over Fishmarket, not a bit of trouble, and I don't want that arthritis to bother you."
"Gran Mintaka," Mondragon said, and fished in his pocket and came up with coin two of which were silver-pale among the copper-dark. "I want you to have this. For the loan of your boat."
Mintaka's face was a cipher in the shadow.
"Will you take it?"
She cupped her hands beneath his, and took the coins. "That be fine," she said, and there was a quaver in her voice."That be right fine."
"I'd like to come back and get that sweater sometime."
"Oh, I be by Miller's Bridge a lot." It was reverence in her voice. It was adoration.
Damn you, Mondragon, you got no heart, lead an old woman on like that. She believes you, you know it?
"Come on," Altair said.
"M'sera," he said to Mintaka, "but say I was small and dark, because if my father knew I was down on Port he'd take his stick to me. There's this girl down there, and our families—It's trouble for her too, do you see?"
4'Oh," said Mintaka, "oh, I do."
"Come on, ser," Altair said, and swept off her cap and beckoned sternly shoreward.
Chapter 6
THE shore was a brick rim that held the tie-rings and made a walk all uneven and shadowy around Ventani's great bulk and the towering triple structure of Fishmarket Bridge. Altair walked along rapidly, dodged her way along the storefront on the corner and headed for the bridgehead and a gleam of light from Moghi's. Till Mondragon caught her by the arm. "That's Fishmarket," he hissed. "That she is."