The Bird of the River (10 page)

"It's all right," he said, trying to sound nonchalant. "Now we go up the chimney! But nobody ever gets killed."

"I'm glad," she said shakily. The great well filled and they kept rising on its surface. The circle of sky at the top grew wider and wider. Eliss was sure they would emerge from the top and spill over, to fall thousands of feet to the river below. She mastered her terror and sat still, telling herself nothing bad would happen.

And nothing did. Some ten feet from the top, the well was open on one side, connecting to a waterway like the widest aqueduct in the world. There were even a pair of footbridges on either side. Quite calmly, the polemen stepped out onto them and began to push the
Bird of the River
along the aqueduct. And, after all, they hadn't far to go, -- for opening out beyond it was the great basin of a lake.

"Set sail!" cried Mr. Riveter. Eliss couldn't imagine how the top-men dared to scramble up so high, in such a precarious place, but they did. The sail opened out, was secured, and filled at once with a gentle breeze. The polemen jumped aboard hastily. The
Bird of the River
moved out upon the surface of the lake, serene and untroubled. Eliss heard a whistling whoosh beside her; Wolkin, who had been holding his breath, had just let it go.

"See?" he said. "We didn't fall off."

"SHOULD I GO ALOFT AGAIN, SIR?" Eliss asked Mr. Riveter as he paced along the starboard deck.

"No! No need here," he said. "This is the Lake! Strictly speaking, this is the Agatine House Memorial Lake Sacred to the Gracious Memory of Brandax Fifth of That Name."

Captain Glass, at the tiller, made a rude noise.

"We generally just call it the Lake," added Mr. Riveter. "But the Agatines did build the Lock, I'll say that for them. And the dam that made the Lake deeper. Used to be this was just a little lake spilling over in a waterfall. Used to be they had to haul the old
Bird
out on rollers and drag her up a portage road until they got above the falls. It must have been Hell!"

"But the white water was beautiful," murmured Captain Glass. Mr. Riveter pursed his lips. Eliss, looking about, thought the Lake was beautiful now. It was a fathomless clear blue. Far off on one shore a town rose, all white arches and red roofs, like so many little castles on the green hills.

"Are we going there?" Eliss pointed at it.

"There? No! They don't want to see
us
there. That's Prayna-of-the-Agatines. A private town. We're going to Moonport, over there." Mr. Riveter pointed to the opposite shore. Eliss looked and saw big stone warehouses and docks, with many boats and cargo barges moored. It looked busy and crowded. People had already come out on the decks to stare at the
Bird of the River
, and as she approached some fetched out great curved brass horns and sounded greetings to her. In return the
Bird's
musicians assembled on the aft deck in their full strength and played a ceremonial march.

The music made Eliss's heart dance. She looked around for Alder, wanting to see if he was as happy as she was. He was sitting in the bows with Mr. Moss, who was pointing to the town and, apparently, telling him all about it. She sighed. Krelan emerged from the galley deckhouse, staring around, as the lake breeze ruffled his hair. He spotted Eliss.

"I've been given the afternoon off, would you believe it?" he announced to Eliss. To Mr. Riveter he said, "Good day, sir. I trust you're well?"

"Yes, thank you," Mr. Riveter replied, a little nonplussed by his formality. Krelan came to the rail by Eliss and leaned there, gazing out.

"Gods below! Look at this blue water! You're not needed up the mast either, I see," he said to Eliss.

Eliss shook her head. "No snags to spot," said Mr. Riveter. "Not until we go out the other side and on upriver."

"How very nice," said Krelan. "May I use the tent, Eliss? I'd like to change my clothes."

"Go ahead," said Eliss. Krelan walked forward to the tent and disappeared inside. Mr. Riveter leaned down to speak beside her ear.

"If he's, er, infringing on your privacy, I can always tell him to keep his bag in our cabin," he said.

"Oh, no," said Eliss. "It's no trouble."

"As long as you're sure."

As SOON AS the
Bird of the River
docked, it seemed the party began, -- not the big dance proper, but a certain air of holiday everywhere. The
Bird's
crew were putting on their good clothes and going ashore, or crossing over to the other barges and greeting members of their crews like long-lost family. There were freighters loaded with coal, ore, quarried stone, or grain, but all of them were sprucing up their decks and hanging up strings of brightly colored pennants. Eliss, who at least had a clean change of clothes, went into the tent to put them on. As she was ready to emerge, Alder stuck his head in the tent.

"There you are! Mr. Moss is taking me ashore to meet some other Yendri but he told me to tell you I was going."

"Oh." Eliss scrambled out of the tent, hastily tying back her hair. "Where ashore? How long will you be gone?"

"I don't know!" said Alder. "I'm going now, all right?"

"All right! You don't have to be so impatient," snapped Eliss, but Alder was already gone. She watched him running to Mr. Moss, who spoke to him questioningly before they turned and went down the gangplank together. She stood there alone a moment as they walked away across the docks.

"Eliss?" Tulu tugged at her hand. "Mama wants to know: would you like to come shopping with us?"

Eliss turned and saw Mrs. Riveter watching her, beside Wolkin who was dancing with impatience, an outsized market basket in either hand. "Come on," said Tulu, and took her hand and led her to them.

"Come
on
!" said Wolkin. "All the good bargains will be gone!"

"You don't even know what a good bargain is," said Tulu.

"Yes I do! It's ten carrots for a copper bit!"

"You just want to buy jelly."

"No I don't!" Wolkin dropped both baskets and put his fists up.

"If you hit your sister you aren't going anywhere. Tulu, stop teasing him or you're not going anywhere either," said Mrs. Riveter calmly, drawing a shawl over her hair. Eliss picked up one of their baskets and they all went down the gangplank together.

THERE WERE NO GRAND HOUSES in Moonport, -- not even a central square with a fountain. There were rows of stone commodity warehouses, a guards' barracks, a forge, a restaurant, and a tavern. The tavern was called the Green Girl. Its painted sign depicted a Yendri woman, dressed like the ones Eliss had seen working in the orchards, but with a rather more welcoming expression and no gardening tools in her hands. This shocked Eliss a little. It was nothing to her surprise, however, when she came to the market.

Every city marketplace she had ever seen had been made up of shops selling out of the lower floors of stone houses, and an occasional handcart. In Moonport, the market was a row of stalls along the edge of a creek. The stalls were made of cut willow poles driven into the earth and lashed together. The older ones had taken root and sprouted green leaves. The shopkeepers were all Yendri men. The market might look like part of the wildwood, but it was thronged with folk of both races, buying and selling.

Eliss saw people from the river barges eagerly looking over wicker baskets full of fruit and vegetables. Some stalls were selling woven cloth, dyed in beautiful blues and purples and peacock greens. One Yendri was offering freshwater pearls for sale. Another was selling perfumes and essences in tiny cut-crystal vials. Several stalls sold honey and preserves, lined up to catch the light so they glowed red or gold. Eliss wondered where Yendri would get glass until she saw a glassblower of her own people trundling up crates of jars and bottles in a cart, and greeting a Yendri merchant cheerily before they got down to trading.

No one was staring, no one was muttering darkly. The Yendri were blank-faced and polite and the Children of the Sun were boisterous, but all of them were there to do business in good temper.

Eliss remembered cities where no Yendri would have been permitted to sell food, on the assumption that a Yendri would naturally try to poison people. Eliss remembered all the places her family had been asked to leave, once someone caught sight of the color of Alder's skin. And yet here--

And then
there
was Alder, standing with Mr. Moss before a booth festooned with beeswax candles. Alder was saying something in a breathless tone of voice to the Yendri man who kept the booth. The Yendri man smiled at him and leaned over the counter to shake his hand. He shook Mr. Moss's hand too and they laughed and spoke together. Someone said something funny and Mr. Moss's dark features creased in a grin. Eliss had never seen Yendri smiling before, except for Alder, when he'd been younger, -- recently he had become as stolidly blank-faced as an animal most of the time, and she had assumed it was because all Yendri were that way.

But they weren't, were they? They must only smile and laugh when they were around people with whom they felt comfortable. When had Alder stopped feeling comfortable around her?

Eliss dragged her gaze away from the candle booth, so angry she felt a lump in her throat. Wolkin and Tulu were deliberating before a stall that sold sweetmeats, including fantastic flowers of pulled sugar, and Tulu turned and caught her hand.

"Eliss, what should I get? Should I get a sugar rose or a sugar lily?"

"Don't get those! They just break into nothing in your mouth and then they're all gone," said Wolkin.

"Only if you crunch them up like a greedy pig," said Tulu.

"Get the cherry eggs. They're the best."

"No, because then you'll come and eat mine when yours are all gone."

"No I won't."

"Yes you will!"

"Stop fighting," said Mrs. Riveter, but distractedly, because she had spotted Mr. Riveter making his way through the marketplace with a great glass jar of something colorless in his arms. She leaned out and put a hand on his shoulder.

"Rattleman, that's
Yendri brandy!
"

"I know," said Mr. Riveter, looking a little desperate. "What am I supposed to do? Captain's orders. 'Get me as much plum brandy as this will buy,' he says to me, and gives me a fistful of gold. Nobody will ever say Rattleman Riveter didn't follow orders."

"But he'll kill himself if he drinks all that! You know he will."

"You haven't seen him drink the things I've seen him drink," said Mr. Riveter. "He'll weather it. Really. He went through a barrel of whiskey at Synpelene and his eyes didn't even turn red."

Mrs. Riveter just shook her head. Mr. Riveter hurried away through the crowd.

Tulu had by this time made up her mind to get a sugar lily. "What will you get?" she asked Eliss.

"Oh, I don't have any money," said Eliss.

"Mama, will you give Eliss some money so she can buy candy?"

"No!" Eliss was mortified. Mrs. Riveter, who had been watching Mr. Riveter struggle away, turned around.

"Tulu, mind your manners."

"It's only like a half of a copper bit," protested Tulu.

"Please, no," said Eliss.

"She'll have plenty of money of her own when we get paid," said Mrs. Riveter.

"Paid?" Today was just one shock after another.

"Didn't you know you'd be paid? You've been working every day," Mrs. Riveter said.

"I thought only the divers got paid!"

"
We
get paid for every snag we bring up, as contractors. You're earning a regular salary, though, as the masthead spotter. Nobody explained this to you? The crew gets paid at the end of every run, when we get back down to the coast."

"Oh." Eliss was dazzled.

"So you can
loan
her enough to buy candy, and she can pay you back with interest," persisted Tulu.

"Don't do it!" Wolkin said. "Tulu charges terrible interest."

"Don't borrow from me, then," said Tulu serenely.

In the end Mrs. Riveter loaned Eliss enough to buy a sugar rose, interest-free. Wolkin, on the other hand, borrowed from Tulu at an exorbitant rate and purchased a blue and green shawl woven of silk, which he gallantly presented to Eliss. "So you can look more beautiful at the dance party tomorrow night and maybe get a boyfriend who isn't so weasely looking," he told her in a hoarse whisper. Fortunately Mrs. Riveter, who was buying herbs from a Yendri apothecary, did not hear him.

THAT NIGHT, AS ELISS SAT UP waiting for Alder to come back, the musicians came stumbling aboard. Apparently one of the other things the Yendri grew was pinkweed.

"The absolute and total best," said Salpin, swaying slightly as he stood before her tent. "Green Valley Rose. You commune with your ancestors. I mean it. Old Threstin Cloud Fern is the only Yendri with a stone shop like ours. Want to know why? He used to keep his bundles of drying weed in one of their little shacks and then one night a lamp got tipped over or something and the whole place caught fire. People tried to put it out with buckets, but everybody who got too close just fell over and had lovely dreams. They say even the deer and the rabbits went wandering around in the woods walking into trees and giggling for days afterward. In fact, I'm going to fix up a pipeful right now, would you like to partake?"

"No, thank you," said Eliss.

"Oh, well, more for me. But there was something I was going to ask. You. I know there was. Think, Salpin! Oh! I have it now. You are coming to the dance tomorrow, right? I mean, I suppose you'll have to, because the whole deck gets cleared for dancing and all the tents get struck for the night. Hmm, where will you sleep? We can always fix up a place for you in the windmill." He waggled his eyebrows at her suggestively.

"No, but thank you," said Eliss.

"Don't mention it. Did I miss the point again? I think I must have. Please be sure to attend the dance tomorrow night, eh? At least to listen to the music. Promise me?"

"I promise," said Eliss.

"Thank you. Was that it? Yes, I think, no, I'm
certain
that was it. And off I go to commune. Good night, fair duchess." Salpin went weaving away across the deck. Eliss watched him go, smiling. When she turned back Alder was standing there, staring after Salpin.