The Bird of the River

by Kage Baker

  “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. R
iveter.

  “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.

  “What did he want?”

  “I think he wanted to be sure I’ll be at the party tomorrow night,” said Eliss. “And he offered to share his pinkweed with me.”

  “But you told him ‘No thank you,’ didn’t you?”

  “Of course I did.” Eliss felt her smile fading away. “What did you think I’d say? And where’s your Mr. Moss?”

  “He’s sitting up talking with Mr. Nightvine, but he told me I had to go home because you’d be worried if I didn’t.”

  “Well, he was right! You’re only ten! I’m supposed to look after you!”

  “I’m safe with my people,” said Alder. “I’ve never felt so safe in my life. They’re all like me! Did you know Mama could have found my father any time?”

  “I know now,” said Eliss. “But I don’t think Mama ever knew.”

  “She was probably too—”

  “Don’t! Don’t you say that!” Eliss clenched her fists. “She never did that back then! She didn’t even start drinking until you were three! If Uncle Steelplate hadn’t—” Her voice choked off in her throat. Abashed, Alder shrugged and shuffled his feet. After a moment he sat down.

  “It’s just that it would have been a lot easier if I could have grown up with the Yendri. Don’t you think? It would have been easier for you too. If it had been just you and Mama, you wouldn’t have been thrown out of all those places we tried to live. A-and I’d know who my father was.”

  “But you and I would be strangers,” said Eliss. Alder studied the deck and finally shrugged again.

  “It was wonderful today,” he said in a faraway voice. “Everybody talking to Yendri just as though they were people too. There’s one old man, Mr. Yellow Broom, and he makes musical instruments—pipes and harps and even a fiddle. And the musicians from our boat were buying things from him. And they were telling each other how great he is, that he’s just a master craftsman. Everybody up this end of the river knows about Mr. Yellow Broom, they said. And I got to meet him. He said I had good manners, considering I’d been raised by—by other people.”

  “Mama taught us good manners,” said Eliss.

  “The Yendri are good,” said Alder. “They aren’t sneaky, or poisoners, or, or anything. Do you know what I found out? They—we—used to live in this valley far away, a long time ago, and then some bad people came—but it wasn’t the Children of the Sun—and conquered them, but Mr. Moss said then this holy man came, a real holy man who could do all this magic to help them. And then there was this other holy man who got turned into this bird? And he flew into the spirit world and brought back this magic child who made all the bad people let them escape? And it was only a little girl, and she was only a baby at the time!”

  He was speaking rapidly, almost as if to himself, eyes wide.

  “We have legends too,” said Eliss.

  “But these aren’t just legends,” said Alder. “They’re real.”

  “Well, so are ours.”

  “If you say so,” murmured Alder, not meeting her eyes.

  Early next morning he went ashore again with Mr. Moss. Eliss, to show that she didn’t care, threw herself into helping with the preparations for the Summer Party, and actually forgot about Alder for a while. As the men moved the trimmed snags down into the hold, the women drew up buckets of water and sluiced down the broad expanse of the deck. The children—and Eliss—moved across with push brooms, scrubbing the bare planks until they were clean and smooth. Then a crate was brought up from belowdecks and opened, revealing dozens of blown glass oil lanterns, in all shapes and colors.

  “Where’s the blue fish?” fretted Tulu as Mr. Riveter dug through the box.

  “There’s mine!” Wolkin reached in and pulled out an amber demon-head. The other children crowded around, picking out green stars or fat red birds or purple seashells. The topmen strung lines out along the rail and hung up the lamps. As they were so engaged, the happy air was disturbed by Mr. Pitspike storming up the companionway from below.

  “Stone!” he roared, and glared around. “Where’s the wretched boy? There’s coal needs to be fetched up, and the baking ovens to be lit!”

  To Eliss’s mortification, everyone turned and stared at her. “I don’t know where he is,” she said. “The last time I saw him was yesterday. He changed his clothes in my tent.”

  “He went ashore,” said Mr. Riveter, turning to Mr. Pitspike. “I saw him hiring a boatman to take him over to Prayna, across the lake. That was yesterday afternoon. He isn’t back yet?”

  “No, the slacker,” said Mr. Pitspike. “So he’s gone over to visit some of his lah-di-dah friends in their palaces, has he? When I only gave him the afternoon off? So much the worse for him! Triple potscrub duty when he gets back.” Rubbing his hands together, he went into the deckhouse. Somehow the coal was fetched and the ovens were lit, and good smells came wafting from the galley as people baked goods for the party. Wolkin and Tulu stationed themselves on the roof above the galley skylight, watching avidly as the sweet
s were prepared.

  Eliss carried the folded-up tent and her bundles below to the Riveters’ cabin, where she had been invited to spend the night. She found herself wondering where Krelan was, and when he’d be back. She blushed, annoyed, when she realized what she was doing. She went back up on deck and looked across at Prayna-of-the-Agatines, with its palaces, its beautiful white walls and red roofs.

  Places like that are as far away as the Moon, for people like me, thought Eliss. And, really, they’re pretty, but who’d want to live there? Always fighting to keep your place. Always looking over your shoulder to see who’s coming after you with a dagger. She thought about the dead boy tangled in the snag, and shuddered.

  The musicians did not stir until long after noon, when Salpin and a few of the others, red-eyed and shaky, came creeping out to beg strong hot tea in the galley. Krelan had still not returned and so Mr. Pitspike was in an even fouler mood, but some of the women had pity and made tea for them.

  So they were all alive and tuning up on the aft deck when the guest musicians began to arrive from the other barges and the shore. There was a tattooed fiddler, a black-whiskered man with a hurdy-gurdy, and a stout man with a bass fiddle that he wheeled ahead of him on a little cart. There were four bright-haired girls with fiddles and flutes, and a pair of brothers with their boxhorns slung across their shoulders in velvet bags. And Yendri came too bearing drums and pipes, and one great harp that had to be carried by two young men while the old harpist followed, carrying his cushion under his arm. Eliss tried not to stare, since obviously everyone else was well accustomed to the Yendri visiting here.

  Wolkin popped up at her elbow, chewing something. “See that old greenie with the harp? He’s famous. His name is Yellow Broom. He talked to me, once.”

  “You shouldn’t call them greenies,” said Eliss automatically.