Angel with the Sword, page 16
part #1 of Merovingen Series
Body after body came into the place. She heard them in the dark, heard the shuffling and heard someone else bash his head on the same brick and swear. She jerked at the hands that held her. "Dammit, you can let go, I ain't running."
A match flared. A single candle took light, picked out a tumbled cavern of water-dripping brick and rubble-piles of fill, and a score of canalers, all in the same gold. It was the old Bogar warehouse, gone rotten at the foundations, halfway to its use as a new stone base for the isle, to shore it up from ruin.
Canalers knew such places. Like the vermin and the cats knew them.
There was a flat rock, a large slab of rock. A big man with an open shirt and a neck-scarf brought the candle there, sat down and fixed the candle on its own wax in front of him. Sweat glistened on his unshaven face. It showed like a devil's in the flicker of breeze from outside. Rufio Jobe was his name. He was not official. Nothing was, in the canals. But Jobe was a man who did things. Who got things done. Direct and final. And no one backtalked him.
"Give me my stuff back," she said.
Rufio Jobe settled his largish bulk square, set his hands on his knees. "Maybe you give us some answers, Little Jones."
"Answers. What answers?"
"Like what you been doing."
"I ain't doing nothing!"
"Del," Jobe said, and looked aside. She looked, and spotted Del Suleiman and his wife at her left, silent, his white hair and white stubble gone all neutral gold in the candlelight, her face gone all to tear-streaked jowls.
"Where you been?" Del asked.
"Where've I been?" Altair sucked air and shook her arms loose again, the left one fit to bring tears to her eyes. "I been trusting a damn liar, that's what I been doing! Ye might've knifed me while you was at it, mightn't you, Del? All that talk was a lie, Del Suleiman! Damn liar! You want my boat, that's what you want, that's what you wanted for years—"
"You set your hand to Mira again, I'll show you, you—"
"She never did!" Mira yelled; and: "Shut it dawn!" —from Jobe.
There was quiet then, the yell reverberating off the brick. A bit of stone fell Water dripped. Brick shifted under someone's foot. Altair shook off hands that threatened to grip her arms again. She was shaking. Her gut felt like water. The faces ringed her round and round. "Damn liar," she muttered and looked up and glared at Jobe. "I got private business. I left my boat with somebody I thought I trusted. That's what I done."
"You being a kid," Jobe said, "we ain't got no desire to be rough with you. Just want to talk. It was you took the knife out."
"How'd I know what you was? First I thought you was going for Mira's back. Then I still didn't know what you was. Old friends've sold out friends before. Like now. Am I going to wait round to see? Hell, I'm going to cut my boat loose an' when someone I know goes at my back and stops me I'm getting clear of 'im. World's gone crazy. World's gone clear crazy. Never would've knifed Mira; she didn't knife me neither, I knew that. But I figured if Del'd gone crazy she wouldn't be too."
"Now that may be and that may not be. Fact is, we got a lot of craziness going on. Like that fire the other night. Like killings in the uptown and them that did it is moving round me city somehow, I tell you, Little Jones, it ain't any real pleasure for me to be asking you: I was a friend of your mother's. But we got a real serious question for you. You know anything about that fire?"
"I was down there. Doesn't mean I did it. I was just there."
"You got this passenger. You want to tell us about 'im?"
''What's that got to do with it?"
"They got you to leave your boat. Suleiman can swear to that. You was following after some tall fellow dressed all like a canaler and walking like an uptowner. Later you was heading away from that fire with this tall fellow looked like a Falkenaer. You rode Mintaka Fahd's boat down from Oldmarket and told her he was running after some hightown girl."
"So I found him when I went off across the city, so we happened to be cut off by the fire and couldn't get back to Moghi's till we ran into gran Fahd. Who's this been so interested in my business?" Her heart was pounding in her chest. Lying to these was a fatal thing to do. A little he was one thing; a big lie and something going wrong, that was a way to die, just to turn up dead some morning and no one caring at all. Even suspicion was enough to starve on, harassed and pranked till a body had nowhere to go but the Harbor. If she ever got out of this basement alive. "Who said I was up to no good? Who said? Was it you, Del Suleiman? Was it you?"
"Girl," Jobe said, "there's just been a lot of gossip. Lot of gossip. Now you knows the rule: trouble ain't good for canalers. Ain't good at all. We got canalers ain't moving, we got a canal blocked, we got the law out poking round the canals, we got a whole lot less freight 'cause of this trouble in the town, and that means hungry kids and hungry old 'uns. Now d'you agree we got a legitimate concern here?"
"Same's me. Same as me, dammit!"
"Not same as you if ye're running a different kind of freight."
"What? What d'you say I'm doing? I ain't doing nothing illegal, and I don't owe you nor nobody my private business! Where's things got to, huh? Ever'body got to tell their business to ever'body? Tell ever'body what's in their barrels? Where we go? That ain't what it is!" She drew breath, Never you back up, mama said. Go to 'em, Altair, "Think you can shove Jones around, think you all can bully Jones 'cause she runs solo. Well, I'll remember, I'll damn well remember who shoved, and don't you ever try to nose your damn boat in front of me and don't you try no tricks, 'cause I know all of 'em! Ain't no way you'd've tried this on my mama and you'll learn you don't try it on her daughter, that you will, Jobe!"
"Being as you're a kid," Jobe said when she left a gap.
"I ain't no kid!"
"You ain't grown neither. You better tell it plain, Little Jones. You better tell it plain whiles we got the patience. What kind of business is going on and why's Jones' kid all of a sudden going here and there round all the trouble in town?"
"Who said I was?"
"Half the town said! You want us to discuss this the hard way? Now we ain't liking to do it. But we c'n just start to talk real serious here, you and me and some of your neighbors, we c'n just talk all night here; and we c'n do things you won't like. So you want to talk, or you want to find out what we'll do?"
Two dozen and more of them, mostly men and mostly huge. She refused to look, to give them the satisfaction. Her gut went queasier still and her muscles went to water.
Don't give way. Don't you back up none, don't back up or they got you once and all.
Think, Jones! You got to tell 'em most of it; busted up, ye can't do nobody any good; and lying to this bunch, that's dead inside a year.
"Altair." Mira's voice came soft. The big woman's jowls wobbled, stangely shadowed in the light. "Altair, sweet, you ain't done nothing wrong, I know you haven't. And these is your own, they ain't going to do nothing t' you, whatever you done, all you got to do's tell 'em what you got into—"
"That's right," said Jobe. "You tell us what you know, ain't no one going to lay a hand on you. It ain't personal, Little Jones, ain't no way we want to hurt no kid—ye're just all we got."
"I ain't Little Jones no more! I'm the only, I run my boat. And I ain't done nothing against the Trade!"
"Well, now, you're going to make us believe that, then, right now, or 'fore morning. Or 'fore next day. You know what we do to them that hurts the trade? We starts with fingers and toes, Jones. You don't need all of 'em. But they make work pure hell. Grown men cry about the time we gets from just breaking 'em to taking 'em off. And there's ears. You don't need 'em both. And if ye don't talk—well, Bogar Isle's not going to mind a canaler's bones down here. You want to start losing fingers, Little Jones. We c'n break the littlest. Won't damage you too much."
She spun around as the man by her grabbed her arm, and Mira screamed: "No, no, no—" The scream went right into her nerves; and the man—it was one of the Mergesers, short on wits and long on muscle—Mergeser got her hand and flexed the little finger back and back, despite her wincing and kicking. She pounded his shoulder; as soon hit the Rock itself. She flung a wild look at Jobe. "All right, all right—ow! Damn you, stop! dammit—"
"Stop," Jobe said, and Mergeser stopped and let her go. She clutched her sprained hand and gasped for air. "So?" said Jobe. "Tell it, Little Jones."
She gasped another breath, jerked free as Mergeser laid a hand on her arm. "It's this rich man, this rich man—"
"Who?"
"I dunno his name. Tom, Tom, he calls himself. He got crosswise of a gang. They been trying to kill him."
"Rich men got ways to stop that kind o' thing."
"Well, they been trying. The governor ain't doing damn nothing, what'd'ye expect? This is some damn uptowner mess, and this client o' mine ain't in the wrong of it."
"Who set the fire?"
"How'd I know?" She flinched again as Jobe made a move. More truth. Faster truth. Much as she had to tell. Pain ran up her arm like fire. "Dammit, he ain't the one burned that barge. Them that's after him is pure crazies, pure damn crazies. The governor's hauled Gallandry in 'cause that's his way o' keeping peace, can't damn well find the crazies that burned Mars Bridge and set a fire in the town, so he goes and hauls in Gallandry that was the victim! Ain't that sense? Ain't that the way things work in this town?"
"Where's you in this?" Jobe asked, cold and calm. "What business you got? What freight you running?"
"I ain't running nothing but a passenger and I ain't on the side of nobody that goes setting fires, I been damn trying to get this fellow uptown wheres he's got friends, which is what's going to stop this bunch before they do some other damn crazy thing—They broke in uptown, they killed four people, you want to lay a silver to it that there ain't uptown folk going to sit on these crazies? Damn right they will! Damn right that's alls' got the way to settle with 'em, ain't no canaler got that kind of resources—I ain't done no damn thing against the Trade, I ain't got no damn deal with no damn fools going to burn a bridge, and if I see 'em at Hanging Bridge I'll cheer for it!"
"Maybe you ought to have thought of that early, huh, Jones? Maybe you ought to have thought about your friends."
"Listen, I never knew they was crazies when I left my boat with Del and Mira here; I never brought no trouble on them knowing it, I just left my boat to make sure my passenger got where he was going, I caught up to him and he got worried, 'cause he knew then they might kill me and I didn't; he hid me out over to Gallandry a few hours and when these crazies burned the bridge I took him and I run for it, 'cause by then I knew sure they was going to kill him and get clean away with it—Is that against the Trade? Is that wrong, what I done?"
"You're a damnfool, Jones."
"What's a damnfool? Is a damnfool someone that'll reach out a hand to a man that tried to do 'er good? Then I'm a damnfool, but I ain't no slink, Jobe, I ain't going to be, if I got to be one or the other!"
There was a muttering. It hit, hit solid. Jobe stuck his hands in his belt and stood up in the wind-fluttered candlelight like a towering monument of shadow.
"She told ye," a different voice said, a woman's voice; and a small, wispy woman pushed her way through the shadows. "She told ye true, now ye let her go, hear?"
Mary Gentry. And the big man who came through behind her was her man Rahman. Altair looked their way with her pulse thumping away in her throat—Mary Gentry from that boat all those years gone, Mary's the baby boy she had tried to save, and near drowned doing it. And there was never a time that Mary Gentry could look on her after that boy took fever and died.
Till now.
Till now, when it counted.
Lord take you to something better, Mary Gentry.
"What do you know?'* somebody asked Gentry and: "Shut it down," her husband yelled; and her son, her living son, dark as Rahman and growing fast and big: "You don't downtalk my mama, Stinner, I'll have your guts on a hook!"
Altair drew a breath and let it go. The whole business went to shoving and threat of hooks till someone got the Gentry-Diazes and the Stinners apart, the candle-light all crazy with shadows and the hollow echoing and racketing with shouted argument.
"Shut it down!" Jobe roared; and it shut down, slowly. Altair stood there with her knees quaking and Jobe clenched his fists. "Jones, this account you give better be straight. It damn sure better be straight!"
"You go accusing somebody of setting fires, Rufio Jobe, you damn well make sure you're right!" She clenched a fist of her own and made a gesture at him, ancient and evident. "I make my living on the water same's ever'one, I haul barrels and I never got crosswise of no one, not me nor my boat, dammit! I do my tie-ups proper, I watch your boats, I pays my debts—which being, Del Suleiman—" She found Del in range and swung that hand his way, flat-out and contemptuous. "You tell me what I owe you, you name me what it is for watching my boat, and you name it here in front of ever'body. I'll pay ye. I'll pay ye ever' penny."
"Penny'll do 'er," Del muttered, shifting his feet. "Jones—I was trying to help—"
She stared at him. "Ye called council on me trying to help?''
"Ye damnfool kid, ye're in with scoundrels!"
"So you want to break my fingers?"
"It was Jobe said it about the fingers," Del cried. "Lord and my Ancestors, Jones, Jobe never would've done it—Jones, f'rget the penny, I don't want no pay."
Her breath came and went in a series of dizzy gulps.
Kill him, I'll kill 'im.
Damn, this sad old fool. Him an' Mira, Like Gran Mintaka. No kid. All these years, no kid.
Look at 'em. Crazy. Crazy with wanting to push me around.
Crazy with wanting.
"Man wanted to'dopt me," Altair said, looking around at Jobe. "Him and Mira. —I don't hold no grudge. Not you either, Jobe. But you better get it in your heads good—" She swung round and shouted at the lot of them, looking one and the other in the eye, Mergeser in particular. "If I was guilty I'd've gutted half of ye! Take advantage of a body 'cause they ain't looking for no wrong from ye, shove 'er around and call 'er a liar, huh? Del, I'll pay you that penny next week. I don't want no debts, but I ain't going to argue it here."
"Jones," Jobe said, "you'd do real well to get out of that business of yours. You ain't all that clean. I'm telling you, you got yourself in fast water. Real fast. A kid's balance just ain't that good."
"Thanks," she said sourly. And rubbed a sore arm. "Give me my stuff back. Where's my knife?"
There was silence. "Give it to her," Jobe said, and Alim Settey moved up and gave the knife over. One of the Casey brothers gave the hook into her other hand, and she sheathed both of them. Her hands were shaking, bad as her knees, but it was her hands they could see in the light, her hands shamed her so her face went hot and rage wound tight down in her gut. "Thanks," she said. Be polite, Altair. Her mother's voice in her head. Retribution's ghost sat over on a pile of brick, feet a-dangle, cap tilted back. They ain't so bad, Retribution said. They're your neighbors, they're all you got, you got to be civil 'cept when they're fools.
They're fools, mama.
They didn't believe you, half, Retribution's voice said inside her skull. And they let you go, didn't they? Is that a fool? Or is that neighbors?
The Mergeser's youngest offered her cap, all solemn-faced and polite. Altair knotted her fist up and unknotted it and took the cap without snatching it. Set it on again, and walked to the exit through the others, her legs shaking so she could hardly negotiate the nibbled passage. She came out into windy Bogar Cut, and drank down a cold lungful of air.
A bell was ringing somewhere far away, whisper of sound in the night. The wind and the bridges and the twisting waterways played games with such sounds, making it near and far by turns.
She started to move, jogging down the narrow strip of stone on knees that wanted to go out from under her all the way. Others came behind her, multiple footfalls on the nigged bricks.
"Somebody's got trouble," someone said. And then the ringing stopped.
She jumped Del's side to his halfdeck and jumped on over to her own skip, got down on her haunches and started untying as the rest of the crowd reached the canalside. Some delayed to talk. Others stood and stared. Her knees wobbled and her hands shook, the knot resisting.
Bells happened many times a night in Merovingen. A shop got broken into, a shopkeeper hailed the blacklegs and his neighbors. Nothing unusual.
But she cursed and got the knot loose, stood up and rattled and fumbled with the pole as she ran it out, gritting her teeth against the pain of her arms. She nearly had her legs go out from under her as she skipped down into the well and hurried up forward to put the pole in and turn the skip about.
"Jones." It was Del. Del had made it back to his boat, Mira panting a distance behind. "Jones, I got to talk to you. Mira—"
"I ain't got time." She fended a bit from Del's boat, shoved the bow out against the Snake's current and let the current slew her hard as she ran back to stern again, getting underway.
"Jones," Del called out. And: "Altair!" from Mira.
"Where's she going?" someone asked.
Water lapped noisily at the sides of Bogar and Mantovan, and voices dimmed as she came out and got moving.
Damn fool panic, ain't no cause of it, folk'll see you.
Slow down, Retribution said in her mind. You want those fools back there to see you run like this? What you thinking of, Altair?
I dunno, I dunno, mama. I don't care, damn them all. I got to get back again to Moghi's. I got to find Mondragon, something's wrong, something's wrong somewhere.
And wrong's got this way of finding him.
Breath came hard, came on an edge of grinding pain as the pilings of Hanging Bridge closed all about her, with the skip riding the Snake current. No boats, her eye picked up not a single skip or poleboat moored under Hanging Bridge, nowhere about the point—there had been a single skip making its slow way down the Margrave, under Coffin Bridge. No one else. The desertion was ominous, but the boats that belonged hereabouts were mostly down at Bogar—Council called was a good enough draw to account for scarce boats: she had seen it scarcer on a rumor or a wedding or a wake—A hundred reasons.
