Frank was suddenly aware of breathing sounds echoing softly behind him, from the river. He leaped off of the sill and turned around, pushing his sweaty hair out of his eyes. Peripherally, he saw Rutledge come up beside him and stare wordlessly out.
The river was jammed. Boats, rafts and logs covered its surface, and every floating thing carried silent, staring passengers. Children huddled in blankets in the bows of rowboats, while haggard old men worked the oars; string-tied bundles and frying pans and guitars were roped in piles on rafts that old women paddled along with boards; sunken-eyed men floated past with their arms around logs, their bodies immersed in water up to their chests. None of these drifters spoke, even to each other.
“What in God’s name?” began Rutledge. Bones climbed unsteadily up his master’s leg and perched beside him on the windowsill.
“Who are you?” called Frank to the people on the nearest raft. “Where are you all going?”
A man stood up on the raft. He looked about forty, with brown hair beginning to go gray at the temples; he wore overalls with no shirt under them. “We’re farmers,” he said, “from the Goriot Valley.” The echoes of his own voice seemed to upset him, and he sat down again.
“Where are you going?” repeated Frank.
“To the Deptford Sea,” answered a woman from a heavily-loaded rowboat. “We can’t go overland because we don’t have travel permits.”
“Give us the monkey,” called a boy perched on a log. “We don’t have food. Give us the monkey, at least.”
“Yes, the monkey, give it to us,” came a shout from farther out in the river. In a moment the waterborne fugitives were chorusing madly: “The monkey!” “God save you for your gift of the monkey!” “My boy here hasn’t eaten! Throw the monkey to me!”
Frank looked down at Bones, who squatted drunkenly on the stone coping of the window, blinking his eyes at the clamoring floaters. The monkey’s stomach was jerking up and down like an adam’s apple, and as Frank watched, the beast leaned forward and noisily vomited vino blanco into the water.
“Give us the damned monkey! We’ll have it! You can’t keep it from us!” moaned and wailed the refugees. Frank leaned out and pulled the heavy shutters closed. He latched them, and then slid a bolt through the iron staples.
“Let’s close up shop,” he said to Rutledge. “You were my last pupil of the day anyway.”
They hung up the swords and jackets, blew out the lamps, and locked the front door behind them. The Rovzar Fencing School was in a fashionable understreet neighborhood, so they talked freely and left their swords in the scabbards as they walked. Spicy cooking smells wafted out of restaurant doors, and Frank was beginning to get hungry.
“Have you paid off your bond to Orcrist yet?” Rutledge asked.
“No,” Frank answered, “but with the money I’m making from the fencing classes, I should have it paid off in a month or so.”
“You’ll be getting digs of your own then, I expect.”
“Yes. I've been looking at apartments here in the Congreve district, and I think I could afford to live near the school, which would be handy.”
They rounded a corner and found themselves facing four uniformed Transport policemen, each armed with a standard-issue rapier. Their faces showed tan in the lamplight, proof that they were new to understreet work.
“Good evening, gentlemen,” grinned one of the Transports. “May I see your identification and employment cards?”
“ Since when have they been necessary for understreet citizens?” queried Rutledge with icy politeness.
“Since Duke Costa signed a law saying so, weasel! Now trot ’em out or come along with us to the station.” Each policeman’s hand was on his sword hilt.
Rutledge drew his sword with a salty curse. Frank and the four Transports followed suit simultaneously. One of the Transports lunged at Rutledge, who parried and jabbed the man in the wrist. Bones, terrified, leaped from the lord’s shoulder to the ground.
“Nicely done!” called Frank to Rutledge as two of the Transports centered on him. He feinted ferociously at one, and the man retreated a full two steps. The other man aimed a beat at Frank’s blade, but Frank dropped his point to elude it and then gored the man deeply in the shoulder. The clanging and rasp of the swords rang up and down the street. Frank stole another glance at Rutledge and saw the lord thrusting furiously at one of his opponents.
“Watch your weapon arm!” Frank shouted. “Hide behind your bell guard! Don’t be impatient!” Frank held his two men off by whirling his point in a continuous horizontal figure eight. It was dangerous, but it gained him a breathing space. After a few seconds the shoulder-wounded Transport got angry and ran at Frank in an ill-considered fleche attack; Frank stepped away from the blade and drove his point through the man’s neck. The other policeman was close behind, so Frank hopped backward as he pulled his sword free. Bright red blood jetted as the stricken Transport sank to his knees on the street.
“How goes it, my lord?” Frank called as he crossed swords with his remaining opponent.
“I poked one of them in the belly,” gasped Rutledge. “Be careful ... he’s crawling around in the middle of the street. Don’t let him get you ... from below.”
Frank glimpsed the man, who was on his hands and knees on the pavement, and kept clear of him. Frank tried two feints on his own man, but the policeman was being cautiously defensive—maybe waiting for reinforcements? Frank wondered.
“I can’t quite get that ... six bind,” panted Rutledge. “How do you ... take the blade to start it?”
“Watch,” called Frank. He hopped forward, took his opponent’s sword from below, and then whirled his point in around the other man’s bell guard; he lunged, and the point punctured the eye and brain of the unfortunate Transport.
“Thus,” said Frank, holding the position for Rutledge’s benefit. “Begin it like a standard counter six. And finish with a moderate lunge.”
“I see,” said Rutledge. Frank straightened up to watch his pupil. After a moment the thief-lord leaped forward, caught the man’s blade, and, lunging, spun his point into the man’s eye. The Transport dropped like a puppet with its strings cut.
“Well done, my lord!” Frank nodded. “You see the advantage of practice. Now let’s get out of this incriminating street.”
Rutledge quickly dispatched the wounded policeman, and Bones, who had been sitting on a curb during the encounter, hopped up on Rutledge’s shoulder. Lights had gone on and people were leaning out of windows, but Frank knew none of them would ever tell anything to any authorities. It was entirely possible, in fact, that the local citizenry would dispose of the bodies and weapons, leaving the Transport with, apparently, four more cases of unexplained desertion. Frank and Lord Rutledge strolled away down a cross street as casually as if they were leaving a poetry reading.
Frank escorted Rutledge home and then walked thoughtfully back toward Orcrist’s dwelling. He was upset, but could not precisely say why. The killing of the four Transports tonight seemed stupid—not cruel or murderous, because those four officers certainly intended to do him harm—simply stupid. Why do I feel that way? he asked himself. Actually, it was quite a brave thing, two against four.
Brave? his mind sneered. You and Rutledge are superior swordsmen. You were safe. It wasn’t bravery, it was showing off. You want to know what would have been a brave thing to do? To have pulled the trigger of Orcrist’s gun, that night at the Doublon Festival. To have avenged your father.