The Bird of the River

by Kage Baker

  She shrugged now, pretending that what he’d said hadn’t bothered her. “Suit yourself.”

  “Alder!” someone whispered hoarsely from outside their tent. “Alder, he’s awake and practicing his moves! You have to come see!” Wolkin stuck his head through the tent’s doorway and widened his eyes for emphasis. Alder threw his bowl down and scrambled out on hands and knees.

  “You have to finish your dinner first!” Eliss scrambled after him, but he ignored her. She looked out to see the two little boys standing side by side, staring at Mr. Moss, who had emerged from his own tent. He was standing in the light of the early moon, his arms raised, his palms together. Wolkin nudged Alder, who cleared his throat.

  “Hello again,” he said. Mr. Moss turned and regarded them.

  “Good evening,” he replied.

  “This is my friend Wolkin,” said Alder.

  “Then good evening to you, Wolkin.”

  “Good evening,” said Wolkin. “Er. Those look like pretty good fighting moves.”

  Mr. Moss blinked slowly. “Fighting moves? No; in fact I was praying.”

  “Oh.”

  “I told you,” said Alder in an undertone.

  “Well . . . do you know any fighting moves?”

  Mr. Moss looked from one to the other. “I do not fight. We only learn defense.”

  “That’s almost as good,” said Wolkin eagerly. “My daddy taught me some defensive moves. Do you want to see?”

  “I don’t think he does,” said Alder, but Wolkin had already struck an attitude, balanced on one foot while blocking furiously with his arms. He uttered a high-pitched shriek. Unfortunately that drew the attention of Mr. Riveter, who was consigning the watch to Mr. Turnbolt. He turned, scowling.

  “You were supposed to be in bed by now!”

  “But I’m learning something!”

  “I know what you’re going to learn next,” said Mr. Riveter, starting toward him, and Wolkin gave it up and fled below. Alder was left staring up at Mr. Moss.

  “Can you—would you please tell me—who are our gods?”

  Mr. Moss smiled gently. “We have none.”

  “But you were praying.”

  “I pray to the Unwearied Mother.”

  “She isn’t a goddess?”

  Mr. Moss studied Alder a long moment. “Sit down. I will tell you about her.”

  “Excuse me,” said Krelan. Eliss looked up at him, startled. He was standing by the tent, clutching a bowl of broth and a chunk of bread. “Would you mind a little company while I eat? There are four polemen playing dice in my usual corner in the galley, and I wasn’t quite brave enough to tell them to move.”

  “Go ahead and sit,” Eliss told him. She looked at the broth and bread as he lowered himself to the deck beside her. “Is that all you’re having?”

  “It’s all that was left. I don’t get to eat until the rest of the crew dines,” said Krelan. “I’m only the spitboy, after all.”

  “It must be quite a change from what you’re used to.”

  “Yes, but it’s better than being killed because someone has a contract out on my family.” Krelan gave a dry little chuckle. “Besides, I don’t eat much.”

  “You’re too thin,” said Eliss.

  “I prefer to think of myself as fashionably slender.” Krelan dipped his bread in the broth and slurped it. His shoulders were bowed with weariness, and his tunic stank of grease and soot. His bare feet were silvered with ashes, but they were narrow and shapely, with high arches. Eliss supposed that was because he was an aristocrat.

  “So.” Krelan swallowed another mouthful of bread. “How are you getting on?”

  “All right.” Eliss was surprised that he would ask.

  “That was nasty, at Synpelene.”

  “Oh. Yes, it was.” Eliss remembered him sitting by the innkeeper, encouraging him to talk. “That man you were talking to, was he a friend of yours?”

  Krelan looked sideways at her. “A client of my family’s. I didn’t know him personally, but it was my duty to convey our condolences.”

  “Oh.” Eliss thought how odd it must be to belong to a family so big and important you had duties. “I felt so sorry for all of them. How could that have happened?”

  “From what I heard, someone unbolted the sewer grate from the inside,” Krelan replied. He blew on his broth and sipped it. “That was how the bandits got in.”

  “Unbolted it from the inside? How could they have done that?”

  “No one seemed to know.”

  “And somehow or other the bandits got a key to that man’s front door.” Eliss remembered the gaping hole where the door had been. “So . . . someone who lived there must have been working with the bandits. They went down and unfastened the sewer grating, and they stole a key from the innkeeper.”

  “Or had a copy made.”

  “That’s right. There are people who can do that.” Eliss remembered Uncle Ironbolt, whose friends had been thieves. “They push a key into soft wax, like a mold, and take it away and make a copy from the impression.”

  “So they do.”

  “But . . . nobody would let a demon live in a city like Synpelene,” Eliss continued, frowning. “Full of gold like that. Which would mean it had to be one of us. But we wouldn’t do a thing like that to our own people! So it had to have been somebody else.”

  “You think so? Well, so did the townfolk. And that’s why Mr. Moss was escorted out of town, one step ahead of the mob with torches and swords.” Krelan nodded toward the Yendri, who seemed to be telling Alder a story in a low voice. “Does he look like a conspirator to you?”

  “No . . .”

  “And why shouldn’t one of us do such a thing to other Children of the Sun? What do you think Shellback is?”

  “I don’t know anything about Shellback. What is he?”

  “One of us. A mercenary soldier turned bandit.”

  “But what kind of a name is Shellback?”

  “Mercenaries like to give themselves demon names. It makes them sound scarier. And he’s apparently recruited an army of other mercenaries, and some demons. They say the Master of the Mountain is keeping his army home these days, since he got married.” Krelan glanced back at Mr. Moss. “Maybe Shellback thinks he can step in and become the new bandit lord.”

  Eliss shuddered. “What makes people do such horrible things?”

  “They want the loot, my dear.” Krelan tilted his bowl and drank the last of the broth. Eliss looked at him askance. No one had ever called her my dear before. He set the bowl aside. “May I trouble you for my bag?”

  She pulled it out and handed it to him. He dug through it and pulled out a change of clothes. Once again he turned his back on her to pull his tunic off. The moonlight gleamed silver on his pale skin. Eliss remembered a fountain statue in a city she had lived in once, of a young fisherman holding up a fish that spouted water. The fisherman had been slender, shining-wet, and had the same narrow waist and triangular chest that Krelan had.

  Krelan sniffed at himself dubiously. “I think it’s more than time I had a bath,” he said. “Please excuse me, won’t you?”

  “All right.” Eliss watched him grab up his clean clothes and pick his way over to the Bird’s larboard side. A moment later she heard him splashing in the river. All the men Eliss had ever known would just have stripped down right there in front of her without a word of apology, and laughed when Falena had protested. It was nice, Eliss thought, that Krelan had the manners of a nobleman, as well as the name.

  Next morning, Alder was an unconscious bundle in his blanket beside her, only grunting a protest when she shook his shoulder and told him it was daylight. Eliss wondered how late he’d stayed up listening to Mr. Moss. She felt guilty for going on to sleep without making certain he’d got safely to bed at a reasonable hour.

  She crawled out on deck and stood up. There was Mr. Moss, praying again, as though he hadn’t moved all night. Hesitant, Eliss approached him.

  “I’m sor
ry if my brother pestered you last night,” she said. He lowered his hands and turned to her.

  “You are his sister, Eliss? Yes, I can see. It was no trouble. It was my duty to answer his questions. But may I, in turn, ask you—how does it happen that he knows nothing of his father’s people? Even in your coastal cities, we keep bathhouses. Your mother might have gone to any one of them and asked for help. We might have found his father for her. He would have gladly taken his child.”

  “Mama probably thought your people wouldn’t care. And she wasn’t very . . . organized,” said Eliss uncomfortably. “But she would never have given him away. She couldn’t have given up her own baby.”

  “With respect, it would have been easier for the child,” said Mr. Moss. “Will you permit me to teach him, while I travel with you?”

  “What are you going to teach him?”

  “What he is. What we are. He has never heard the Long Songs, never even heard of the Unwearied Mother before last night. She holds out her hands to all children, but to lost children especially.”

  “But he’s not lost,” said Eliss. “He has me.”

  “To you also, she grants her grace.”

  “But I don’t . . . Will it make him happier, to know what he is? Or will it just make him feel more like an outsider here?” Eliss gestured around her at the deck of the Bird of the River.

  “It will make him whole,” said Mr. Moss. “Who can live, being only half of what he should have been?”

  Unwillingly, Eliss nodded. “All right, then. Just . . . just remember, he’s my brother too.”

  Mr. Moss bowed. He looked like a tree bowing in the wind. “Of course,” he said.

  “Well. I’ll . . . just let you go on with your praying now, all right? I have to go get my brother’s breakfast,” said Eliss, and hurried away.

  Little bright-eyed Tulu ran up to her as she waited in line for breakfast. “Eliss, you know what? We’ll be at the Lock and the Lake in two days! At Moonport! And you know what happens there? We have the Summer Party!”

  “What’s the Summer Party?” Eliss smiled at her, grateful to have something else to think about.

  “It’s where all the other musicians come off all the other boats and they all sit up there.” Tulu waved a skinny arm at the aft deck. “And we fix up the deck all nice with lanterns and sweep it clean so people can dance. And they dance all night. And all the other people bring lots of food and drink. Especially cake. And jelly. Last year Wolkin ate so much jelly he got really really sick.”

  “I did not!” Wolkin, infuriated, shouted from his place in line.

  “Yes, he did.” Tulu leaned in close to whisper. “And he cried. Anyway, won’t that be fun?”

  “It sounds like it,” Eliss agreed. They were by this time at the head of the line, where Krelan was ladling out porridge to all comers. He gave her an ironic salute with the porridge ladle.

  “I look forward to widening my cultural horizons, don’t you?” he said. “Two bowls, I assume?”

  “Yes, please.”

  For a few days now there had been bluffs rising on either bank of the river, and Eliss on the masthead was at eye level with the land as they sailed slowly past. This was open country, higher, not so much dense forest. Even dutifully watching the water, Eliss found herself observing details of the landscape: the distant scar of a quarry in a range of granite hills, or a flock of sheep grazing, or the red track of a caravan road. On the day they came to the Lock, she watched in amazement for hours as they passed field after field of vegetables and even trees, planted in neat rows, with Yendri tending them here and there. Now and again one would look up from his or her work and watch the Bird of the River as it glided past. All of them had silent thoughtful faces like Mr. Moss. Eliss couldn’t remember ever having seen a Yendri woman before. They wore elaborate skirts made of scarves, dyed in all the colors of an opal, but wore nothing to cover their breasts. Both the women and the men sang as they worked. The songs were nothing like the cheerful dance tunes of the Children of the Sun. This was music like the mist blowing through the trees, or wind in the eaves; Eliss couldn’t imagine anyone dancing to it.

  By noon, when the Lock came in sight, Eliss could look at nothing else.

  Ahead of them the river seemed to come to an abrupt end at a high cliff of stone like a wall. Eliss could make out stonework, something like a bridge and more walls, and on the starboard shore a few buildings. The water on the approach to it was smooth and deep-looking.

  “Strike sail!” Mr. Riveter shouted, from below. “Ahoy the masthead! On deck!”

  Eliss understood by this time that he meant she had to come down from her platform, and so she hurriedly swung herself down through the rigging, even as the topmen were racing up past her to take in the sail.

  “What happens now?” she cried as soon as her feet touched the deck.

  “Now? You just find a place to sit inboard,” said Mr. Riveter. “We’re almost there.”

  Eliss looked around for Alder and saw him sitting by one of the capstans, deep in conversation with Mr. Moss. A little irritated that he hadn’t even looked up to see what was going on, she wandered over and sat by the companionway. Wolkin appeared out of nowhere and sat beside her.

  “Don’t be scared,” he said. “I’ve done this hundreds of times. It’s easy.”

  She hadn’t been scared, but suddenly the water had become a good deal rougher. Eliss looked around and saw that the Bird of the River, now propelled forward by the polemen, was inexorably drawing nearer to the base of the tremendous wall. Water was roaring white from two great sluices to starboard and larboard in the wall, churning up the placid river and making it boil. Immediately ahead of them were two piers, extending to either side of a stone tower as big around as a city block and as high as the wall itself. On one of the piers stood a man, shouting something through cupped hands at Mr. Riveter. The thunder of the water drowned out his voice, but Mr. Riveter nodded and made signs to him. As the polemen guided the Bird forward between the piers, the man walked to one of two big levers and, jumping up and grabbing it, hauled on it with all his weight.

  A mammoth door rose in the base of the tower, dripping river-weed as the Bird passed through the opening. When it was entirely inside the tower, the door dropped behind it with a thunderous crash. Eliss looked around. Wolkin huddled against her, not quite clinging. The Bird of the River, appearing small as a toy, sat at the bottom of a gigantic well whose upper end soared unimaginably far up into a little circle of sky. As she stared, horrified, Eliss heard another crash that echoed from the wet walls. The Bird of the River began to rise, like a float inside a water clock. Eliss found herself clutching Wolkin’s hand.

  “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 topmen 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.”

  “Shou
ld 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.