The Bird of the River Page 5

  “No. Just Eliss.”

  He followed her to the tent, where Alder was sitting in the doorway. “Mr. Stone, this is my brother, Alder,” said Eliss, bracing herself for the shocked look. But Krelan merely smiled at him as he leaned past to put his bag inside.

  “Pleased to meet you, Alder.” Alder merely nodded, staring at him. “Well, I suppose I’d better find the galley if I don’t want to be showered with more colorful invective. Good afternoon, Eliss.”

  When he had gone, Alder looked up at her. “Who’s that? Is he sharing our tent? Or have you taken yourself a boyfriend already?” he asked sullenly.

  “Don’t be silly!” Eliss felt her face grow hot. “He hasn’t got a place yet and I was just being polite. What’s the matter with you?”

  “Nothing,” said Alder, looking down at the deck.

  He continued in a sullen mood. In retaliation Eliss left him to himself and spent more and more of her time up on the mast platform, watching the river. Sometimes Salpin was on duty there; sometimes it was the boxhorn player Drogin, who was lean and taciturn and answered her questions impatiently.

  So Eliss stopped asking questions, and watched the river instead. She learned how to tell a sandbar from the outflow of a stream, and the different shades of water where the riverbed was gravel, as opposed to mud. She watched where Captain Glass steered, and began to play a game of betting where he’d guide the barge next, based on what she could read of the river. She discovered that the boats that passed them, coming downriver with cargoes of quarried rock or grain or ore, left long trailing wakes that could be mistaken for snags.

  There was the social life of the barge to watch too. Laundry Day, when the gears in the mill were connected to the great washtub, and afterward women quarreled over whose laundry was whose, and drying laundry fluttered from the rigging like bright banners. Corn-grinding day, when the gears were connected to the grindstone, and men went up and down into the hold with sacks of grain, or meal or flour. The mill drove the potter’s wheel one day, the carpenter’s saw the next, the blacksmith’s bellows the day after, round and round the cycle of days.

  Eliss watched and learned which groups of families were friends, who tended to eat and wash all together. The divers were the queens in the little society, deferred to by the wives of the artificers like the carpenter or the blacksmith or the potter, who were in turn deferred to by the wives of the bargemen; below them in rank were the wives and girlfriends of the musicians, except for those who were musicians themselves, who enjoyed a somewhat higher status. Pentra Smith seemed to occupy a place of her own, perhaps on a level with the divers, but she never seemed to socialize much. She came on deck every morning as soon as the anchor was raised, and kept to herself at her post until the anchor dropped again at night, when she went back to her cabin.

  And there were things to be learned from the bits of conversation that drifted upward. Drogin was cross because he didn’t have a girlfriend at the moment, which was because he insisted on keeping his boxhorn in his blankets with him at night, which he did because the horn’s wood was sensitive to cold. Mr. Pitspike was cross because he suffered from a stomach ailment that prevented him from eating onions, which he loved, and he had to watch other people cooking them all day. Mr. Crucible had been too poor to buy Mrs. Crucible a wedding bangle, so he had tattooed one on her wrist instead, with great artistry, and she boasted that it couldn’t be stolen, couldn’t be lost, and never got in the way when she was washing clothes or cooking.

  The Bird of the River drifted along bearing its little world through the breathless heat, as the musicians played and cicadas on the bank droned in counterpoint, and there were days when the country beyond the riverbanks seemed as distant and unreal as a landscape painted on a screen.

  “I suppose you know enough to keep watch for a couple of minutes,” said Drogin, shifting where he sat. Eliss nodded. He swung himself around and climbed down along the shrouds. Eliss focused her attention on the river.

  A small craft was coming downstream toward them, someone’s private boat. There was a pleasure pavilion on deck, with what looked like a couple of noblemen and three or four ladies in it, laughing and waving at the Bird of the River as they passed. The Bird’s musicians began to play the same tune the noblemen’s musicians were playing, and the melodies echoed back and forth across the water. The boat’s tillerman, shaking his head, gave them an ironic salute as the boat fell astern.

  Eliss watched its wake, rippling away and fanning out . . . and there, just where it vanished ahead, was a spike of water running up. She drew in breath and used the Calling Voice.

  “Unmarked snag to starboard!”

  At once the shouting began below, and topmen came racing up toward her to take in sail. The Bird of the River slowed, reversed, stopped; but before the polemen could take her ahead, Mr. Riveter walked forward and peered out at the water off the starboard bow.

  “Are you sure?” he called over his shoulder, and turned to look up at her. “I think that’s just the wake of the boat.”

  “I’m sure,” Eliss called down.

  Mrs. Riveter, who had undressed and put on her goggles, came to stand beside him, looking out at the water. So did a few others of the crew. One or two shook their heads and looked up at Eliss doubtfully. Eliss clenched her fists on the rail.

  “Captain, sir, it’s just the wake of the boat,” Mr. Riveter cried.

  “Send in a diver,” said Captain Glass, where he stood at the tiller. He didn’t shout, but his voice carried.

  “Send in a diver anyway?”

  “That was what I said.”

  Mrs. Riveter said something to her husband and climbed down into the water. She swam out to the jetting water, examined it closely a moment, and then dove under. After a moment the jet disappeared. A moment later Mrs. Riveter surfaced, holding up a black branch.

  “That was all it was,” called Mr. Riveter. But Mrs. Riveter shook her head, swimming to the barge.

  “This is just what was breaking the surface,” she said, laying the branch on deck. “The rest of it goes down a fathom to a bigger snag. An ugly one. The next flood will shift it if we don’t get it now.”

  “Seven hells.” Mr. Riveter scratched his beard. “She was right, captain, sir.”

  Captain Glass only nodded.

  “So,” said Krelan as he rummaged in his bag for clean clothes. “I understand you were quite the heroine today.” Eliss, who was eating her dinner, lifted her head to stare at him.

  “What?”

  “He’s talking about you seeing the snag nobody else thought was there,” said Alder. It was so rare for Alder to say anything when Krelan was around that Eliss turned and stared at him too.

  “What? Who said I was a heroine?”

  “It’s the talk of the galley,” said Krelan. “I hear everything when I’m in there turning the spits. Mrs. Riveter says you’re a natural spotter. Jeela Smith says you’re another Sandgrind, though I haven’t the faintest idea what that means. Mrs. Crucible says the gods send a good with every evil, and you’re obviously the good that came with, er, something nasty I gather happened at Slate’s Landing.” He turned his back, pulled his tunic off over his head, and pulled on a clean one.

  “Oh.” Eliss felt the wave of sorrow for Falena coming. She braced herself, as she would with a real wave, and it broke and passed away. When she knew she could reply calmly, she said: “That was when our mother died. And we found the body of somebody who’d been murdered.”

  “Oh! I didn’t know. I’m sorry.” Krelan turned around, pulling his tunic down. “Was it somebody from Slate’s Landing?”

  “No, it wasn’t,” said Alder coldly. “It was some rich boy from a city.”

  Why are you so nasty to him? Eliss wondered, glaring at her brother. To Krelan she said: “I guess he might have drifted down from the landing, but the priest asked around and he didn’t seem to belong to anybody. Besides, he was a nobleman.”

  “Really? How did they k
now?”

  “Well . . .” Eliss thought about it. “He had on a big gold armband, shaped like a coiling snake. And some tattoos, not just gang tattoos but the kind some of the great houses wear. That was what I heard.”

  “It should have been easy to identify him, then,” said Krelan, folding up his grease-stained tunic.

  Eliss shrugged. “Maybe they did. I don’t know.”

  “And he can’t have been murdered by thieves, or they’d have taken that gold armband.”

  “Nobles kill each other all the time over nothing,” said Alder. “You ought to know that. That’s why you’re hiding here, isn’t it?”

  “Alder! That’s rude!”

  “But too true,” said Krelan, with a sad chuckle. “Er . . . I don’t suppose I could put my dirty clothes with yours, to be laundered?”

  The musicians all made a point of bowing elaborately to Eliss the next day when she went aft to climb up to the mast platform, and struck up a tune she hadn’t heard before. Salpin was already at the top, applauding her, when she climbed through. She ducked her head in embarrassment.

  “Why are they playing that?”

  “Why? That’s Sandgrind’s Fancy. They’re playing it in your honor. Everybody’s saying he must have been your grandfather, because you can read the river too.”

  “I don’t think he was,” said Eliss. She wasn’t sure how she ought to feel. Nobody had ever done anything in her honor before. “On the other hand . . . you never know. At least, I don’t.”

  “What was your family?”

  “Poor people,” said Eliss, looking down at the river. “They left Mama at the Divers’ Motherhouse when she was five. She doesn’t . . . she didn’t remember much about them, except they couldn’t feed everybody so they had to give their children away. And she always said my father was a sailor she met in port, but his ship sank and he drowned.”

  How threadbare and sad it sounded, the history of her family. Eliss had never told it to anyone before. She didn’t think she’d tell anyone again.

  “Oh. I’m sorry.” Salpin’s ebullience faded. He leaned on the rail, studying the water. After a while he said, “At least you know your mother is with your father now. She went under the water and met her true love there, maybe. Waiting to carry her away to a good place.”

  Eliss nodded. It was a nicer thing to imagine than what Falena had actually met under the water.

  They sat in silence a long while, except when Salpin would point and say things, such as, “That’s not a town, that’s somebody’s private boat landing,” or “See that red color in the mud? That’s where the stream comes down from the iron mine at Branka.” Twice they spotted marker buoys—Eliss saw them first—and after the second one, while the Bird sat unmoving in the stream and the divers went in, Salpin scrambled down through the rigging and came back up with his concertina. When the Bird sailed on again, he sat with his back against the mast, a faraway look in his eyes. He played no proper song, but only little fragments of melodies that wandered like raindrops down a window, and now and then joined up to make a longer tune. Eliss watched the river all afternoon, while the music came together in bigger and bigger pieces. By the time the sun sank down behind them, throwing the mast’s long shadow across the world, the song was complete. It was a bittersweet melody, sad but beautiful. The other musicians below left off playing and listened.

  “Why’s your brother mad at me?”

  Eliss looked up in surprise. She was alone on the mast platform, so intent on the river she hadn’t noticed Wolkin’s climb through the rigging. He sat down beside her now, looking mournful.

  “Are you supposed to be up here?” Eliss asked him, looking to see if he wore any kind of safety line. She couldn’t see one.

  “It’s safe,” said Wolkin, putting his legs through the rail. “Anyway. He won’t talk to me. Why is he mad?”

  “He isn’t mad at you,” said Eliss, and then thought about what she’d said. “I mean . . . he isn’t mad at anybody. He’s just mad. Probably because of what happened to Mama. He’s only ten.”

  “I’m almost ten,” said Wolkin. “I’d be mad if my mother died. But she won’t, of course.”

  Eliss sighed, but decided to say nothing. Wolkin fidgeted.

  “You think he might be mad because I said he was a greenie?”

  “Maybe.”

  “I said I was sorry. I didn’t mean it mean.”

  “I know.”

  “I mean, I get mad when people say my daddy was a bad captain. Tappy and Boley said it and I beat them up. You think if I beat up the other kids for him he’d stop being mad at me?”

  “Are the other kids calling him a greenie?”

  “Sometimes.”

  Eliss winced to herself. “No wonder he’s unhappy. But I don’t think he wants you to beat up anyone for him.”

  “I could. I could beat up anybody on this ship,” said Wolkin. “That was my age, I mean. It wouldn’t be any trouble.” He edged a little closer to her.

  “No. Thank you. Really.”

  “But I owe you a blood debt. Your mama saved my life. I have to kill anybody who hurts you. Or him.”

  Eliss bit her lip, trying not to smile. “It’s very nice of you to offer, but I think you have to wait until you’re grown up to pay blood debts. Besides, we aren’t important enough for anybody to start a vendetta against us.”

  “You are so,” said Wolkin. “And people will always go after Alder, won’t they?”

  “Maybe not.”

  “What’s it like, being a Yendri?”

  Eliss looked down at Alder far below. He sat, small and forlorn, by the aft rail, staring into the trees on the far shore. She felt a pang of guilt. “I don’t know what it’s like,” she told Wolkin, and thought: Alder doesn’t know either, does he?

  “WOLKIN!”

  Mrs. Riveter stood below, staring up from the deck with an expression of outrage. Eliss hadn’t known the divers were taught the Carrying Voice too.

  “Oh.” Wolkin looked down. “Well, time to go.”

  Much to his embarrassment, he was lowered from the platform in a painter’s seat, strapped in too tightly to move, and his mother dragged him below the moment his toes touched the deck.

  “So some of the kids here are calling you a greenie?” Eliss shook out her blanket. Alder, shaking out his own blanket, shrugged.

  “Sometimes.”

  “Do you want me to talk to their mothers about it?”

  “No!”

  “But they shouldn’t be calling you names like that.”

  “But they do. There’s always going to be somebody calling me names, wherever I go. Haven’t you figured that out by now?” Alder crawled inside the tent and wrapped himself up in the blanket. He punched irritably at Krelan’s bag. “Hasn’t your boyfriend got a place to put this yet? It takes up too much room!”

  “He’s not my boyfriend!” Eliss crawled in after him and smacked his arm. “Moron! People from great houses don’t marry beggars like us!”

  “Boyfriends don’t always marry girls,” said Alder, as though she were a half-wit to whom he was explaining something very basic. “Remember all the uncles? And anyway, we’re not beggars! Mama was a diver!”

  “We might as well have been, at the end,” said Eliss. “And you might as well be a beggar now. I’m working to earn our place here and you just sit and look grumpy all day.”

  Alder’s face crumpled up as though he was going to cry, but he kicked her instead. She kicked him back. They flailed at each other briefly.

  “What’s that?” Mr. Turnbolt, the night watchman, had just come on deck. Eliss and Alder froze, thinking he had heard their fight.

  “That’s the last of the sunset,” said one of the musicians.

  “Sunset? How much pinkweed have you been smoking? That’s in the wrong place for sunset!”

  “I don’t know, then, maybe it’s sunrise come early.”

  “Is something on fire?”

  “The forest’s
on fire!”

  “Get someone up the mast!”

  Eliss scrambled out of the tent and ran for the rigging, as Mr. Riveter ran up the companionway.

  “What’s going on?”

  “I’m finding out!” Eliss cried, conscious of a feeling of self-importance. Her hands and feet easily found the shrouds in the dark, and a moment later she had pulled herself up on the platform and looked away to the east. She caught her breath. A great column of opaque blue smoke stood in the sky, towering, underlit red by flames that leaped up from the forest below. The rising moon lit the upper reaches of the smoke with gold.

  “It is a fire!”

  “How far off?” Mr. Riveter shouted up to her. Captain Glass had come up on deck and stood beside him.

  Eliss looked hard at the flames, trying to get an idea. “Three leagues,” she answered. “It looks as though it comes right down to the riverbank!”

  Mr. Riveter looked at Captain Glass. “That must be at Synpelene.”

  “Has to be.”

  “Should we put out and moor in midstream?”

  Captain Glass shook his head. “Anybody comes downriver in the night, they’d be hard pressed not to hit us.”

  Eliss, who had been climbing back down, found the deck with her toes. “Are we going to be all right?”

  “Of course we will,” said Mr. Riveter. “Don’t worry. We’ll know in plenty of time if the fire comes this way.”

  “Do you want me to stay up there and keep an eye out?”

  “No. That’s what Turnbolt’s for,” said the captain. “You go on to bed.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Eliss went back to the tent. Alder was sitting up inside, but as soon as he saw Eliss he lay back down and rolled up in his blanket. Eliss felt a pang of guilt, wondering if he’d been scared.

  “Mr. Riveter says everything’s all right,” she said, and she pulled up her own blanket. Alder didn’t reply. “It isn’t very close. And anyway, how could it burn us up? We’re on the river.”

  After a long silence from Alder, Eliss sighed and said: “We have a place to sleep.”

  Another long silence, until at last: “We have a place to sleep and a warm blanket,” recited Alder.