The Bird of the River (5 page)

"Now we turn our backs and wait," she told them. "The same way we would if she was getting undressed, because really she's slipping out of her old body."

Eliss, who remembered Uncle Ironbolt's funeral, nodded. Alder looked unwilling but obeyed. Behind them the flame roared up, uncomfortably hot on their backs.

Mama, I'm sorry your life was so hard
. Eliss thought about that morning on the hill above the river landing, when Falena had wanted to camp, not to go down and ask for work.
If I hadn't made you get up and come with us, you'd still be alive. But, Mama
... A torrent of memory came back now and choked her prayer, of all the times Eliss had watched Falena making mistakes, simpering at the wrong men, men like Uncle Steelplate who beat her and stole from her and told her how worthless she was.
Why, Mama? Why did you only ever love men like that?

Eliss pushed the memories away. Falena coming home glassy-eyed, with that funny fixed smile, and telling her something had happened to the rent money. Falena waking her in the night and telling her to dress quickly and quietly, because Uncle Bellows was very, very angry and they had to get out of the house before he came back. Falena lying beside her, wracked with sobs in the darkness in the abandoned shed where they were sheltering from the rain, weeping endlessly as the rain falling.
Why, Mama? You could have done anything else with your life.

And the new life Falena had just begun was finished, and there would be no apologies and no promises to change, not this morning or any morning ever again. Falena's story was over. The anger swelled and swelled in Eliss until she felt she couldn't breathe.

She lifted her head and screamed. The anger shot out with the scream, leaving her empty and sick. Eliss sagged against Mrs. Riveter, who put an arm around her.

They walked back down to the river afterward. The men stayed to scatter the ashes.

THE CORPSE THEY HAD FOUND in the river was packed in salt and carried ashore, like a package. The priest took charge of it. Mr. Riveter had to make a report to the town's magistrate and Chief Warden, and came back looking pale and scared.

"They think the dead boy was one of the Diamondcuts," Eliss heard him murmuring to Mrs. Riveter. Mrs. Riveter made a shocked noise, and gestured to ward off evil. Eliss felt like doing the same. The Diamondcuts were one of the great families in Mount Flame, wealthy and powerful, far above the levels of the gangs.

"They won't come after us?" Mrs. Riveter said.

"They shouldn't," said Mr. Riveter, but his eyes widened in panic. "We just found the body! We treated it with respect. We took it to the proper authorities. Why would anybody start a vendetta against us?"

" 'When a great house burns, the neighbors lose their huts too,' " Mrs. Riveter quoted the proverb. Captain Glass, who had appeared to be dozing on his feet by the mast, gave a mirthless laugh.

"If there's any blood debt, they owe us," he said quietly. "Their dead man killed one of our women."

By law they were required to remain at Slate's Landing until the dead boy's family came for his body, but the
Bird of the River
had a job to do, -- so the town magistrate granted them an exception, and the next day they set sail again.

"DON'T LOOK DOWN," ADVISED SALPIN. Eliss shook her head and took a firmer grip on the shrouds. She climbed steadily, proud of her steadiness. There was only one dizzying moment as she got past the crosstrees, when she had to let go and reach up through the hole in the mast platform, sliding her elbows above her head. Salpin caught her hands and guided them to the gripping bar, but she pulled herself upward and through without assistance.

"Well, you're obviously born to this," said Salpin, grinning. He was the concertina player among the musicians, a young man, black-bearded and handsome, just the sort around whom Falena would have giggled and nudged Eliss. Eliss was in no hurry for romance and, in any case, didn't approve of people who smoked pinkweed. She only smiled at him politely and accepted the safety line when he handed it to her. She fastened it on herself.

"Thank you," she said. She turned and looked out at the wide view, catching her breath. The whole world was spread out in an immense circle like a compass rose, and the
Bird of the River's
mast was the pivot of the compass needle. Ahead of them the river valley stretched out to the east forever, -- to the north were the marshlands and the distant sea, -- to the south were forests, rising to the great black mountain where demons were supposed to live. "Oh, it's beautiful!"

"It's a good sign that you think so," said Salpin, sitting down and stretching out his legs. "Some people come up here just once. They look around, the way you're doing, and they make a funny little sound and their arms go around the mast, and they can't let go of it. Last time that happened it took three of us to get him down again."

"Him?"
Eliss was gleeful. "It was a man?"

"It was a man. A big ex-soldier. Wasn't afraid of anything or anybody--and kept telling us so--but he got up here and he turned into a whimpering rag," said Salpin. "We had to rig up a rope chair and lower him down. He didn't stay on board long after that."

"That's funny," said Eliss. She sat at the edge of the platform, leaning on the rail to look down. The sight was heart-stopping, yes, the deck so far below and the people foreshortened and so small. Eliss spotted Alder sitting at the rail with Wolkin, who was gesturing as he talked. Automatically she began making plans for what she would ever do if she fell.
I could grab for that rope there--and if I missed it I could still try to throw myself
that
way and maybe hit those ropes... .

Salpin pushed himself forward to the rail. "Well, let's begin. You know what to do if you see a buoy?"

"Shout out. And say what color, and where it is."

"That's right. But you use the Calling Voice. It's how you make yourself heard without getting hoarse. You sort of push your voice out of here--" Salpin reached for her waist to show her and, when Eliss drew back involuntarily at his touch, put his hands on his own diaphragm. "And you breathe like
this
. Watch."

He took a few deep breaths in a certain way. Eliss watched closely.

"And now I sound like this, but
now
--" said Salpin in a normal conversational voice, before booming out:

"Then cried our noble duke, 'Who calls From Lagin's bare and broken walls?' "

His voice echoed from the riverbanks. Below on deck, faces turned upward to them. Someone catcalled, "It's me, noble duke! Your tailor! You still haven't paid me!"

"You try, now," said Salpin.

"But I don't know that poem."

"You can say anything."

"Er ...
Hello! Can you hear me?
"

"That's good!" Mr. Riveter called up to them. Eliss was pleased.

"Old Sandgrind used to sing out so loud, they could hear him all up and down the river," said Salpin.

"Who was he?"

"Sandgrind? Sandgrind the fiddler. He had the best Calling Voice in the whole crew. Had the sharpest eyes too. He could spot a buoy from two miles away. He read the river like a book. He could tell you if a single twig lay on the bottom three fathoms down, just from the look of the water." Salpin shook his head. "But he was a gray old man. One fine morning I climbed up in the windmill tower to ask him what he'd have for breakfast and there he was, stiff in his blankets. We've still got his fiddle, -- nobody could bear to send it through the fire with him. I hope he doesn't mind."

"People sleep in the windmill?" Eliss turned her head to look down at its briskly turning vanes.

"
We
do," said Salpin. "It's our prerogative. You can't leave a fiddle or a boxhorn out in the damp, can you? So we need to be indoors. But we don't rate cabins of our own, so we get the tower. When nobody's using the mill," he added.

Eliss remembered a rainy night she and Alder and Falena had sheltered in a windmill. "How do you get any sleep? Windmills make noise all night long!"

"Best thing, for a musician," said Salpin. "The wheel goes around and the rhythm works itself into you. Makes you play better."

Eliss shrugged warily. She could never be sure when an adult was saying things to be silly, as opposed to truthfully speaking of something absurd. She looked down at the water.

"Tell me how to read the river."

"All right. See how smooth it is, all across here? The water's deep. But look ahead, look at that circling, surging patch there. There's a rock under that water, and if the
Bird
was just a boat, she'd bash her hull on it. She's too big to have to worry much about rocks, but you can bet that every freight captain has that place marked on his charts.

"And, speaking of charts! See that lady up in the bow?"

Eliss looked down. A sunshade had been pitched there, so she couldn't see much, but she had noticed the person under it before. The woman sat at a table with drawing pens and ink, and a pair of scrolls open before her, and she studied the river intently and now and then made notes. "Who is she?"

"That's Pentra Smith. She's our cartographer. She maps the changes in the river, and there are changes every trip. Every time we end a transit, she takes the changes in to the Bureau of Maps in Port Ward'b and they publish a new one. And all the freight captains buy them. If they didn't, they might find themselves stuck on a sandbar or even in the middle of the woods, next trip."

"What's that?" Eliss pointed to a curious pattern she had noticed in the water. It foamed and ran up the way the water did around the snag markers, but there was no buoy in sight.

"What?" said Salpin, and went pale when he noticed it too. He leaned forward and, in the loudest Calling Voice Eliss had heard so far, shouted: "Snag! Unmarked snag to larboard!" and in a normal voice to Eliss: "Excuse me. Stay there."

He scrambled out on the yard as orders were shouted on deck, and all the topmen hurried after him. Eliss had a good view as the sail was caught up and furled. The
Bird of the River
halted at once, -- the panorama of valley and trees seemed to march backward a moment, and then the polemen took over and the
Bird
inched forward once more. Salpin was sweating and breathless when he came back to the masthead.

"And that's why we're not supposed to sit up here in pairs, usually," he said. "Because if you start chattering away and not noticing things, then we could have a disaster. But you noticed. Good for you.

"I'm good at noticing," said Eliss. She had spent her whole life watching faces for the signs that meant a shift of mood, the signs of impatience or anger or other things. The river seemed easy by comparison. "Why wasn't that one marked with a buoy?"

"It might have just fallen in today," said Salpin, watching the divers as they went to the rail. "Or maybe the boat captains have been in a hurry and nobody stopped to mark it for us. They're supposed to, though."

The divers went in, with more caution these days than formerly. But nothing was found below, other than the snag itself, which was winched on board and stripped down with methodical speed. Salpin and Eliss watched in silence. Eliss felt a tightening around her heart, thinking of Falena. She looked down and saw Alder sitting alone on the aft deck, face turned resolutely away.

When the trunk had been stowed away and the sail let out once more, when the
Bird of the River
crept on her way upstream, Salpin cleared his throat.

"Let's go on. See those places there, where the water's a different color? Those are sandbars. Very important to know where those are. Even the
Bird
would be in trouble if she grounded on one of those."

"Should we call out?"

"We don't have to. The captain knows they're there," said Salpin. They looked down at him where he stood, a massive figure at the tiller, barely shifting his weight as he steered the barge. "They aren't like snags, which can fall in anytime and you'll never know where or when. Besides, he's got a feel for the water, has Captain Glass. He knows this river."

"He doesn't seem to do much," said Eliss. "Mr. Riveter gives most of the orders."

"Well, Rattleman's the first mate." Salpin waved vaguely.

"Does the captain get drunk a lot?"

Salpin looked at her obliquely. "Only when we moor at a town. He takes a barrel of wine and he rolls it into his cabin and he locks the door. Usually we don't see him again until we cast off. He never goes ashore."

"Never?"

"Never that I've seen, and I've worked the river ten years now."

"I wonder why?"

"There are a lot of stories," said Salpin, and shivered. "And there I go again, chattering away. Look, look ahead. There's an island, see? Look at the water and tell me: will we pass her to starboard, or larboard?"

Eliss decided she liked him, even if he did smoke pinkweed.

THE BOY CAME ABOARD at Chalkpit Landing.

Nobody saw him arrive. They were taking on supplies, with a line of men proceeding up the gangplank bearing sacks of dried beans on their backs, and when they had all filed on the boy was standing there, patiently waiting to get Mr. Riveter's attention. Eliss spotted him as she was keeping the toddlers back from the gangplank. He was small and pale, nondescript, with sleepy-looking eyes.

"Are you Mr. Riveter?" he asked. His voice was like the rest of him.

"What?" Mr. Riveter looked around and noticed the boy.

"I'm Krelan Silvering, Mr. Riveter." "Oh?"

"You, er, got Captain Crankbrass's letter about me?"

"Emon Crankbrass?" Mr. Riveter stepped closer, looking puzzled. "Retired? Used to captain the
Turtle
?"

"Yes, sir. That's right, sir. You got his letter?"

"No."

The boy drooped. "Oh. Oh, and I've come all this way ... and I suppose it went astray somehow. You really never got it?"

"Well, no." Mr. Riveter scratched his beard, studying the boy. "What was the letter about?"