The Bird of the River (24 page)

The
Bird of the River
took on a holiday atmosphere. Children ran ashore and played. Mr. Pitspike shouldered an ancient crossbow and went ashore to hunt, and returned near nightfall with a deer and four ducks. Special hot drinks were brewed up in the galley and taken out for the divers. Eliss babysat, walking up and down the deck with Mrs. Crucible's fat toddler clinging to one hand and Mrs. Firedrake's fat toddler clinging to the other, as their respective mothers worked in the green swirling water.

As evening drew on she saw a low spreading pall like smoke to the southwest, a distant stain on the sky, and wondered uneasily what it might be.

WHEN IT GREW TOO DARK to work, the divers came aboard and were robed in thick quilted gowns, and brought hot food while a fire-basket was lit on deck for them. Wolkin and Tulu came and snuggled themselves close against Mrs. Riveter to warm her, one under either arm. The musicians played for them.

Salpin told a story about a legendary shipwreck that had been loaded with a duke's ransom, and made the crew who had found it so rich, they had all retired to Salesh-by-the-Sea. He told another about a haunted wreck. He told another about a ship that had been transporting a bride to her wedding when it sank, and how years had passed before the wreck was found and raised, -- but when the cabin had been opened they found the bride still there, dressed in her wedding finery, as beautiful as the day she had set out, -- yet as soon as the air came into the cabin she'd melted away like mist, leaving only her braided hair and her rings and bangles.

Late in the evening, after the children had been put to bed, Mrs. Crucible asked Salpin to play
The Ballad of Falena.
Eliss sighed and stared into the fire as the musicians played. Her mother had become a beautiful melody, a sentimental story, and Falena would have been pleased by that. Alder had been right. It was just the sort of thing she would have enjoyed listening to herself.

So why does it still make me angry?
Eliss wondered.
It's not just because it isn't true. It's because it feels as though she got away with living her life the way she did. All the stupid mistakes she made, all the lies and broken promises, and she gets to become a pretty legend in the end.

Mrs. Crucible, noticing her expression, nudged her gently. "I hope the song doesn't make you sad," she said.

"No. It's all right."

"It's just that it's so beautiful. And it's our song, after all. Nobody ever wrote a song about divers before."

"Really?"

"He's got it right. We do run the risk of leaving our souls down there, every time we go into the water," said Mrs. Firedrake. The other divers nodded. Eliss looked uncertainly from face to face. It hadn't occurred to her that the song was about more than her mother.

And the adult Eliss voice in her mind murmured,
Maybe Mama's life was about more than Mama too.

AS SOON AS THE SUN was high enough to light the water next day, the divers went back in. Eliss collected sacks of rice and peas from belowdecks and stacked them like sandbags to make a sort of pen. She laid down blankets on the deck inside, filled it with as many toys as she could find, and climbed in with all the toddlers and not-yet-crawling members of the crew.

The babies thought this was novel and diverting. Eliss rolled balls back and forth with the toddlers, changed diapers, offered teething toys, and watched with one eye as the divers came aboard and gave descriptions of what they were finding to Pentra. Captain Glass walked by at one point, looked into the pen, and snorted.

Around noon Krelan came out of the galley and wandered over to Pentra's drafting table. Eliss watched as he looked over Pentra's shoulder at the drawing in progress. He was frowning. He spoke briefly with Pentra. He turned, looking around, shading his eyes with his hand, and at last spotted Eliss. He strode across the deck to her.

"What ho! You've built a baby bunker?"

"It works," said Eliss. "Do something for me?"

"Your servant, my dear. What?"

"Rig up a sunshade for us? Just a tarpaulin or something."

"At once, madam." Krelan busied himself with a tarpaulin and bits of rope, and shortly had a serviceable awning in place. He leaned on the piled sacks and stared absently at Mrs. Tinware's baby, who was reducing a biscuit to a mass of crumbs and drool.

"It would appear that the wreck is somebody's pleasure-boat," he said.

"Really?" Eliss turned around to peer at him. "And it's been burned. Maybe it was the river pirates."

"Perhaps."

"How badly is it burned? Are we going to be able to salvage it?"

"Oddly enough, it's
not
very badly burned. So, yes, they're going to attempt to float it as soon as the documentation is finished." Krelan waved a hand at the windmill, where the cablemen and some of the musicians were busy hooking up its gears to a device like a large pair of bellows.

"I hope they don't find bodies inside." Eliss picked up Mrs. Iron-latch's baby, who was determinedly crawling over his sleeping brother. "You'd think the pirates would have burned it completely."

"Well, it's a funny thing: once you've set fire to a boat and jumped off it, you really don't have a lot of control over what it does next," said Krelan. "Especially if it decides to sink fast."

Eliss nodded. Mrs. Ironlatch's baby fretted and dug his fist into his eye. She rocked him in her arms a long moment, until he abruptly fell asleep with his head on her shoulder. She turned her head as far as she dared to look at Krelan, who was watching her, and quietly said: "Do you think it might be the
Fire-Swift?"

"I don't know what to think," said Krelan.

THE DIVERS WORKED IN SHIFTS. While some of them stretched out in the sunlight and drank hot broth, others worked on the wreck, closing up all the holes they could find and attaching cables. When that had been accomplished, a long air pipe of wax-soaked canvas was attached to one end of the bellows. The divers took the other end below and directed it into a tight aperture they had fitted through one of the wreck's portholes.

Mrs. Crucible surfaced and waved, and a cableman stationed at the windmill threw a lever. The gears engaged, the bellows began to pump, and the flat canvas serpent filled with air.

"It'll come up soon now," said Krelan. His voice was taut. The river began to churn above where the divers had been working. Carefully, Eliss put Mrs. Ironlatch's baby down beside his brother and rose to her feet.

She watched the water doming out, surging and curling, with here and there a few massed air bubbles belching to the surface. The divers were scrambling back aboard. Men waited tensely at the capstans, bars in place. More air broke the surface and then Eliss saw the blackened stump of a mast rolling upward, the thing that had drawn her attention to the wreck in the first place.

"Capstans!" roared Mr. Riveter. The men went round and round, the cables drew taut and dragged the wreck farther out of the water. Now she bobbed for a moment on the surface, a white-hulled pleasure-craft, fouled with mud and weeds that clouded and waved around her. All her spars and rigging were gone, and the roof of her cabin had been eaten away by fire, but the rest of her was intact. Air gushed from a hole in the side of her hull that had lain mud-downward, missed by the divers, and she sank down again until the cables pulled her hard against the
Bird of the River
.

Now the polemen ran forward with grappling hooks and hauled on her, as the capstans kept going round, and slowly the wreck inched upward and onto the
Bird's
deck. Black mud poured from her wound, as she groaned like a dying thing. She lay at last with her stern to the
Bird's
bow, trailing weeds, and crabs dropped from her and scuttled madly for the water.

Rigid with tension, Krelan made his way across to the wreck. Eliss watched as he walked about it, stepping around the men who were unfastening the cables. He disappeared behind it for a moment, and Eliss knew he must be looking at the name carved on the wreck's stern.

When he reappeared his face was pale. He walked rapidly back to Eliss. She saw that he was trembling.

"It's the
Fire-Swift,"
he whispered.

Mrs. Ironlatch's baby woke and began to wail.

FOR A LONG WHILE the wreck just sat there on the deck, as the divers waited for the mud stirred up by her raising to settle, so they could see whether anything remained on the bottom. The cablemen got busy disconnecting the bellows from the gears and hooking up a pump instead. Krelan sat in the baby pen beside Eliss, staring at the wreck.

"Are you all right?"

Krelan nodded. "It appears I was not quite ready for this," he said, with a weak-sounding laugh.

"But you knew your lord was dead," said Eliss, offering a wooden doll to Mrs. Ironlatch's baby.

"I know. I didn't like Encilian. I wasn't surprised to hear he'd been murdered. But the
Fire-Swift
... it wasn't even his boat, you know. It belonged to the Family. He must have 'borrowed' it, the way he 'borrowed' so many other things, and just took off on a pleasure sail. Everyone thought he'd vanished just to evade certain responsibilities he had. And months went by and nobody heard from him, and then his body came home in its box of salt... and you'd have thought the world had ended. Nobody missed
him,
but what an insult to the Family!" Krelan flexed his hands nervously as he spoke.

"But you're not a Diamondcut," said Eliss. "Why do you care?"

"Because ... you don't understand. Seeing something of
theirs
wrecked like this"--Krelan pointed to the
Fire-Swift
--"it just doesn't feel possible. All my life I've lived at the edge of the power and the grandeur of the Diamondcuts. They might as well be gods to us. It's one thing to kill
a
Diamondcut, but that someone would dare to do this ..."

Eliss shrugged. "But they aren't gods. And somebody did dare. Probably river pirates. They wouldn't care if your lord was a Diamondcut or a nobody, as long as he had something they could steal."

"You're right." Krelan knotted his hands together. "Well, they'll care now. The Diamondcuts will come after them. The earth will shake. The river will run with blood."

"Good luck. Getting rid of pirates is like trying to kill cockroaches," said Eliss, not unkindly. "I wonder if your lord's head is in that cabin? Or maybe the servant's body?"

"The head wouldn't be." Krelan sat up, making an effort to throw off his shock. "The head would have been a trophy, probably. Maybe one of the Family's enemies commissioned the pirates to take it. Oh, oh, and if that's the case it will start the old clan wars again. Gods below, I hope it wasn't one of the Fireopals. Please, gods, no. Anyway. Maybe the servant's in there. I'll have to look."

"Anyway, you finally know what happened." Eliss wondered if he would leave the
Bird
now.

"Maybe. I know
where
it happened, anyway. I'll have to get a message back to my brother." Krelan rubbed his face with both hands.

There came a hail from the far side of the river. A fishing boat was making her way upstream, under every scrap of sail she had. At least ... Eliss squinted at her. She looked and smelled like a fishing boat, but armed men stood on her deck. One came to the rail and called again.

"Bird of the River!
What's the wreck? Who did it?"

"Looks like pirates," Mr. Riveter called back. He went to the wreck's stern and peered at the name. "She's the Fire-something. A rich man's boat."

Someone on the fishing boat swore.

"What's it to you?" asked Mr. Riveter.

"How long since you passed Silver Trout Landing?"

"Not a week. What's happened?"

"The place has been sacked," the fisherman cried. "Boats looted and sunk. Hotel burned, bank robbed, all kinds of gentry killed or taken for ransom."

Mr. Riveter stared, openmouthed. Eliss felt chilled, as though a shadow had passed over the sun.

"They didn't do this." Captain Glass's voice boomed out over the water. "This wreck is months old."

"Was it pirates?" Mr. Riveter found his voice again.

"Shellback," called the fisherman, walking aft to shout over the stern as his vessel passed the
Bird.
"Renegades and demons. They came from the woods. Maybe working with some pirates too. The hostages were taken off inland though. You want to be careful! Arm your deck watch!"

"The fox caught the swans after all," murmured Eliss.

NOTHING ELSE WAS FOUND where the wreck had lain, and so the divers came back aboard. The water pump was attached to the canvas hose and sucked up water, which one of the cablemen played over the
Fire-Swift,
sluicing off mud. He aimed the water into the boat next. Water, and more mud, began to run from the hole near her keel. Krelan, biting his knuckles, climbed out of the baby pen and stood as close to the wreck as he could, watching the water gush forth.

Mrs. Ironlatch, wrapping her hair in a towel, came aft and peered into the baby pen. "There's my big boys! Did you miss Mama? This is a good idea," she added, nodding at the pen as she scooped up first one and then the other baby.

"I used to make pillow forts when my brother was little." Eliss glanced at Krelan.

"We ought to make some pillows and build a permanent one. I'll ask my man."

"That would work," said Eliss, just as a shout came from the direction of the
Fire-Swift.
A mass of something had blocked the hole. Krelan ran forward.

"I'll climb aboard and see what it is, shall I?" he cried.

"There could be something nasty in there," said Mr. Riveter.

"Let him," Captain Glass said. "He's nimble as a rat. Aren't you, Stone?"

"Yes, sir, thank you, sir!"

Mr. Riveter shrugged. He bent and made a stirrup of his hands for Krelan, who vaulted up and over the
Fire-Swift's
rail. Eliss heard him skidding on her tilted deck, and thumping and splashing as he moved around inside.