"They was going to tell! They was going to tell if I didn't do it this time—Jones, it wasn't supposed to go this way—"
"I'll bet it wasn't." She stood up, caught sight of Tommy's pale, round-eyed face.
Accomplice? Or innocent?
She ran the pole in, took up the stroke. "We're going over to Megary. First. Look it over. Know what we're dealing with."
"Jones!" Ali protested.
"You shut it down."
Rahman just made his stroke and never said a word.
Chapter 9
IT was easy work, moving the skip with Rahman on the other pole. No panic now, just the rhythmic move of water, the same as any night-time trip through Merovingen-below. Altair took her strokes sure and quiet, letting Rahman do most of the real push.
Man ain't been t' one end of town and the other tonight. Lord, how much time have we got? Just after dark when I was with Jobe; past midnight getting back from Boregy, damn his guts.
We got, what, three, four hours to dawn. Shy side of two hours before the tide clears boat-draft at those gates.
If they're going to leave town tonight.
They got to. Too damn many people looking for Mondragon— Sword'll get wind of that gathering over by Moghi's—they'll sure know when them canals get blocked and they try to get anywhere. And what's Megary doing with all of this? Megarys has got to be scared, is what. Megarys bought themselves trouble, got their arm twisted right good with their foreign friends—
Sword's running this. Nobody else. I got to get him loose, I got to be ready when the Trade gets those canals blocked. Got to be ready to do something, got to have it figured.
Got to get him out of there before they know they're trapped.
—Got to get 'im out of Merovingen.
Find him some ship, out to sea.
Get him out of here. For good.
Never see 'im again.
What else can I do?
She shoved hard, til her arms hurt more and her gut hurt less.
Damnfool, Jones. Tomorrow ain't in reach, is it? Ain't nothing good there, is there?
So stop thinking on it.
Mama, mama, you gone away tonight? I don't blame you. This is a proper mess I made. No wonder you ain't too proud of me.
The way bent to Old Grand, and shadow closed darker still beneath the maze of bridges that roofed the Old Harbor's onetime thoroughfare.
Boats were moving, somewhere at their backs. Those skips and poleboats tied up here were few and far between, mere shadows along the edges of buildings. Old folk. The disinterested. The isolate.
Those so far into the dark ways that they had no part or traffic with honest canalers.
Those same honest canalers back at Moghi's were making haste as fast as canalers were apt to, and trying to sort out just where what boat was going: she could figure how long that would take. And the canals and those sea-gates would get blocked. In about an hour or so, when enough of them got organized and got into position. When they had talked enough hardheaded water-rats never at Moghi's into going along with a jam-up around Megary, and settled who was going to block those places where there was likely to be shooting.
More talk and more delay.
"Cut over to Factory," she said to Rahman, and swung the bow over for that turn. The eddy of the Old Grand jog was shoving at the skip; wind hit in a gust. It slewed, but practice borrowed the slew into the turn, her pole down for the moment it took, Rahman picked up the push again with never a word, not a piece of advice since he had come aboard.
Rahman never did talk. He never did talk all those years ago when I brought his and Mary's baby up from Det-bottom, when he come up from hunting that bottom empty-handed.
He knew, that's what, he knew that baby was gone, even when it was still alive. Mama knew and he knew, him standing there and never saying thank-you. He don't talk now. What's he know that I don't?
Lord, he's Revenantist. I put karma on 'im, didn't I, bringing that baby up alive. I laid karma on that dead baby's soul, on all of 'em, Rahman and Mary and Javi, and Rahman ain't having me get killed without he clears that debt, he's got to save all their souls from what I done saving that baby, or they can't never get free of this world till they and me all get born together again and they pay me off. He's thinking on his next life, that's what he's doing, Lord and my Ancestors, I got a suicide on my hands.
Tommy—he's just plain fool, coming out here, whatever brought him. And I know why I got Ali.
A suicide, a fool, and a damn traitor.
They passed Mendez Isle and Fife, where vermin scampered along the narrow ledges and squeaked and squealed at a passing skip. A cat eeled round a starlit corner of Mendez, shadow as much as its intended victims.
"Hey, we got a marker up there," she breathed, spotting the standing pole at Ulger's crumbling corner. "Hin."
"Yey," Rahman agreed. "Ware hook," The bow swung under his strong push.
"Ware afore." She swung the pole into me well past Ali's head and squatted where she stood, let her bookman cross past her to grapple the tie-up nearest that marker. She read that aged pole where she squatted, peering through the dark at the rope-banding on the pole while she made the jury tie to hold them at the ring. "Damn place," she said, seeing how the topmost rope was rotted and gait-crusted. "Level's changed here and they ain't fixed this thing in a ten-year."
"Running in fast," Rahman said. "Tide'll go high, we got that seawind."
"Smugglers is bound to be wise to that too," she said, and sat there and gnawed her knuckle. The wind gusted. then something boomed, boomed and rumbled with authority. Explosion? It seemed a trick of the wind for the moment. Then she took that instinctive look skyward all the same, and it rumbled out again. "O God, that's thunder."
"Sounds like something's blowing in," Rahman said, crouched by her.
Nothing showed yet. The stars were still clear above the black hulks of Tidewater isles. Her mind built sea-storm, black wall rolling in, pregnant with lightnings, the way such storms came. Calm before it, and the winds—the winds—
Thunder rumbled again, distant and not distant enough.
"They'll hear that. Lord, that boat coming in—they'll have their eye to that, they'll move in early—"
"Or pull out."
"I ain't betting on it. O Lord, it's us got the trouble, we got that sea coming in and they ain't organized back at Moghi's yet—I know they ain't—"
"They hear the thunder," Tommy said, "they hear it, Jones."
"So do the damn slavers! They'll go early, go while it's still dark. Lord knows who else is moving—We got to go, we got no time to wait around."
Rahman grunted, shrugged his big shoulders and spat off the deck. "Yey."
Karma.
Suicide. Thunder rumbled again.
"Dammit—" Her focus shortened to the dark, curly-headed lump huddled there in front of her. She shifted the pole in her hands and nudged him so that he looked up at her. "Ali. How d'they go out? Megary Cut?"
"I don't know."
She nudged him hard. "Ali, I thought you was going to be more helpful than that."
"I ain't lying!"
"Well, you ain't helping, either."
"There's this landing south. By the Cut."
"I know it."
"An old freight door, little slip there." Ali's breath hissed and faltered. Wind rattled a board somewhere. "I run Moghi's boat right up there on the slip. I knock at that door. They come out and they take—take the delivery."
"That how it works."
"Jones." He shifted up, leaned on the deck-rim. "My God, Jones, you ain't getting in that way, you can't get in, they'll kill us."