The Bird of the River

by Kage Baker

  “So I should be haughtier?” Eliss gazed about her in enjoyment, trailing her hand along the marble balustrade.

  “Moderately. Too haughty is wrong too, though. A really refined lady doesn’t deign to react to anything much. She lets her servants do it for her.”

  “What if I stub my toe? Do you swear for me?”

  “Yes, actually.” Krelan snickered. “I run around in circles exclaiming over the shocking condition the walkway is kept in, and I fall to my knees and examine your foot, and if I’m a very privileged servant I remove your dainty sandal and inspect your foot for injury and massage it. And then I scream abuse at whoever’s responsible.”

  “Nobody’s responsible for a stubbed toe!”

  “Somebody’s always responsible. Someone can always be blamed. You, as a real lady, are going to gaze into the middle distance as all this is going on and pretend you haven’t noticed. And if I do collar some luckless gardener or groundskeeper and drag them before you, with kicks and threats, you will look down from your unimaginably high distance and say ‘That’s enough, Mr. Stone. I am sure he has learned his lesson,’ ” Krelan added in a genteel falsetto.

  “That’s not what some of the rich people I’ve seen would do,” said Eliss. “They’d yell and kick the servant, and probably the gardener too.”

  “Ah, but those aren’t nobles. They are merely rich. Even my family is rich. The aristocracy have a whole other code of nice behavior. The ladies, anyway. You would never dream of shrieking at an underling.

  The very idea! And when you’d gently pardoned him for his offense, he’d cringe and say, ‘Oh, thank you, gods bless you, your ladyship!’ And he’d mean it too.”

  “How silly.”

  “My dear young lady, this is the very foundation of Society,” said Krelan in a pompous voice. “You mustn’t question it. Right, here we are; now I’ll have to stop talking and laughing with you, or all these people will assume you’ve given me undue privilege.”

  Eliss looked around. It was a world of white marble. White columns held up the arching sign that read SILVER TROUT LANDING, with a trout of real silver curved above the letters. White marble lined the canal that led back inland a quarter mile from the landing, to a distant circular pool out of which a white fountain jetted crystal water at the sky. The walkway along either side of the canal was paved with marble, edged with more balustrade, and the quaint buildings visible off above the pool seemed to be marble as well. Before her, the dozen or so pleasure-boats drawn up into slips were white too, fresh spotless paint without so much as a trace of mud. Only their canvas awnings were blue or green or red. They all had names like River Princess, Idle Days, Vulpina, or Goldpin’s Folly.

  Krelan was staring intently at the boats. “Do you see the Fire-Swift?” Eliss asked him.

  “No. I need to look more closely, though. Now, we need to play out a little scene for the benefit of the Harbormaster, who is watching us. Can you gesture inland and seem to be telling me to stay here while you go, er, admire the famous fountain?”

  “You mean like this?” Eliss made a graceful gesture. “Now, you stay here, you terribly ordinary person, and don’t get into any trouble, because I’m going to go admire the famous fountain. How long should I be gone?”

  “Can you find something to do for twenty minutes?” Krelan bowed and rubbed his hands together, the picture of servileness.

  “Ladies don’t do anything,” said Eliss airily. “They just look down from on high.” She turned and sauntered away along one side of the canal, feeling pleased with herself.

  Before she had gone very far she was uncomfortably aware that Pentra’s jeweled sandals, while pretty, were thin-soled, and the white-paved walkway was hot; all her green silk draperies were hot too. Still, Eliss managed to proceed in a dignified way past more busts of old balding men and thin-nosed women, each one with a little golden plate underneath giving the name of a former president of the Mooring Owner’s Association and the dates they had served in office. Further down the canal walkway these gave out and instead gilded bronze statues of the gods looked across the canal at each other.

  Now and again a pleasure-boat emerged from the pool at the other end, making its way along the canal out to the river, and Eliss stared frostily at the wealthy people on deck. I’m too refined and highborn to do something like wave, she told herself. However, when a lady reclining on pillows under a sea-blue sunshade nodded to her, Eliss unbent so far as to nod back.

  She reached the pool. At its far edges a few boats were moored, each in its own slip above which white marble steps led up to an arcade, which ran in nearly a complete circle around the pool. The fountain still jetted away in the very center, a series of concentric bowls rising one out of another. In the lowest, and widest, a clever device set a pair of mechanical swans flapping round and round, endlessly pursued by a mechanical swimming fox. Even the swans and fox were enameled white.

  Eliss walked around the pool slowly, looking up from under the brim of her sun hat at the shops within the arcade. No screaming banners or hawkers here; gold lettering above each doorway, silently informing her that this was a bank, and this was a ladies’ salon, and the place next door sold fine wines and spirits. Next to that was a Provisioner’s—nothing so ordinary as a market. Oh, and here was a fine hotel, taking up all the rest of the circle. On the terrace under its arcade languid women sat on tiny wrought-iron chairs and had iced drinks brought to them by obsequious waiters.

  But there aren’t any walls, thought Eliss in wonder. All this money, and anyone could walk in here by a trick, like I did, and steal things. . . . Well, perhaps not as easily as that. She noticed now that other men in white tunics stood silently here and there, unobtrusively keeping watch from between statues. All the same, someday a fox is going to catch these swans.

  Eliss dawdled in front of each of the boats, long enough to determine that none of them was the Fire-Swift, nor did any of them look as though their names had been recently painted over with something different. When she judged twenty minutes had gone by, she wandered back along the other side of the canal.

  Krelan stood by the Harbormaster’s booth, speaking with him in a low voice. The Harbormaster glanced over, let out the crank that lowered a tiny ornamental bridge, and Eliss picked her way across.

  “I’m bored, and nobody I wanted to talk to was there,” she announced in a petulant voice. Krelan turned and bowed.

  “I am disconsolate to hear it, my lady. Shall I not fetch your trunks from the barge after all?”

  “No. I think I want to go on to a real city.”

  “It is my pleasure to obey.” Krelan took her arm. Nodding at the Harbormaster, he escorted her back along the walkway to the loading dock.

  “Did you find anything out?”

  Krelan nodded. “Encilian was here, all right, and he spent a lot of time on the Dancing Girl, but Lady Chrysoprase spent a lot of time on board the Fire-Swift while Lord Chrysoprase was drinking up at the hotel, and everyone thought it was an outrageous scandal but no one mentioned it to Lord Chrysoprase.”

  “Were any of those boats the Fire-Swift?”

  “No. Encilian only spent about a month here before going on upriver. He filed a destination of Karkateen with the Harbormaster. Lord and Lady Chrysoprase sailed about a month later, and they’ve been back twice since. They live in Prayna. But Encilian hasn’t been back.”

  “Well, he couldn’t be. He’s dead, isn’t he?”

  “And didn’t die here.”

  “What about his manservant? Was he here too?”

  “Yes.”

  “Have you thought about trying to find the servant? If he wasn’t the murderer, and he wasn’t killed at the same time, he might know who murdered his master.”

  “Oh, he’d have been killed,” said Krelan confidently.

  “How do you know?”

  “He’d have died protecting Encilian. Any sworn man would.”

  Eliss turned to stare at him. “You mean you wo
uld have too?”

  Krelan nodded. “And, yes, I know, he was a disgrace to the Diamondcut name. But he was one of the Family, so I’d have protected him. You don’t understand loyalty oaths.”

  “I really don’t,” admitted Eliss. “It seems crazy to me. Was the servant a sworn man like you?”

  “I . . . I assume he was. I don’t know.” Krelan frowned. “You know, I don’t know where the servant came from.”

  “Because, you see, if he was just an ordinary person, he might have run for his life when whatever it was happened to your lord,” said Eliss, trying not to sound sarcastic. “I may not understand loyalty oaths, but I understand ordinary people.”

  Krelan thought about that as they walked along. “So,” he said, trying to regain his composure, “what did you think of the famous fountain?”

  “It was pretty,” said Eliss. They came to the Bird of the River, and the polemen hauling on sacks of rice paused in their work to let them aboard. Somebody in the line hummed Duke Rakut’s Processional. Eliss turned and stiffly waved her hand at them all, like a noblewoman, and everyone laughed.

  As she stepped down on the Bird’s deck, Wolkin came running to her. “Eliss! Look what happened to me—” He stopped short, with his mouth open. “You look like a goddess!”

  “How very kind,” Eliss drawled. Then she saw the purple mess in his hair and the purple dye all over his face and chest. “What did happen to you?”

  “Another jar of blackberry wine exploded, and I was right there and saw everything,” said Wolkin proudly. “It was amazing.”

  Whether or not she looked like a goddess, it felt wonderful to pull on her own clothes again and scramble up to the mast platform. Eliss swung her bare feet in the cool air and watched from her high vantage point as the Bird moved upriver past Silver Trout Landing.

  The Bird’s gigantic wake made the boats at the outer moorings bob up and down like so many toys. Water splashed over the stern rail of the nearest and slopped on a spread carpet. Instantly a servant appeared from nowhere and sponged it off, pausing only to shake his fist and shout abuse at the Bird of the River.

  “Did the dress fit?” Pentra asked, that night after the lamp had been blown out.

  “Yes, it did. Thank you.”

  “I suppose I oughtn’t ask why you needed to go ashore there.”

  “We just . . . wanted to see the fountain. It’s a famous fountain.”

  “I know.”

  “And of course I couldn’t go dressed as I was.”

  “No, I imagine not. Was the fountain worth the visit?”

  “Oh, yes. But the Landing was a bit, you know . . . snooty.”

  “It is, yes.” Pentra was silent for a little while before asking: “Do you like young master Krelan?”

  “We’re just friends. He’s nice.”

  “He seems very nice. Very funny.”

  “He is. He makes me laugh.”

  “It looked as though he spent a while talking to the Harbormaster.”

  Eliss twisted a lock of her hair, wondering what she ought to say. “He chatted with him, yes, I think. But then he’d seen the fountain before.”

  “I expect he had. You know, of course, that sometimes young gentlemen of his station have certain matters to which they are obliged to attend?”

  “You mean vendettas? Yes, I know.”

  “Good. Then I’m sure you have the good sense to be careful, in the event those matters press for his attention.”

  “I know. I lived in Mount Flame once. Rich people kill each other in the streets all the time.”

  “They certainly do.” Pentra sighed. “I must say, that was one thing I didn’t miss while living among the Yendri.”

  A week later Eliss was reading the river when she saw something peculiar. There was the running rill that suggested a little snag, one perhaps a fathom down, nothing unusual. Just forward of it, however, was a funny welling pattern in the water she’d never seen before, and there the water seemed a lighter color. She drew a deep breath.

  “Unmarked snag at the mile marker!”

  As Mr. Riveter shouted orders and the topmen came hurrying up to take in sail, Eliss swung herself down through the shrouds and ran forward. While they anchored just below the snag, she found Mrs. Riveter pulling on her goggles for the dive.

  “It doesn’t look very big, but there’s something funny about it,” Eliss told her. “Be careful.”

  Mrs. Riveter nodded. She dove in, as the other divers got ready, and everyone recited the Prayer to Brimo. Long before they got to the end, however, Mrs. Riveter came back up and swam to the Bird’s deck.

  “It’s a wreck,” she said.

  “Oh!” Mr. Riveter’s face was a study in mixed emotions. “Fetch out the salvage buoys!” He went running aft and met Captain Glass, who was coming forward.

  “We’ve found a wreck, sir!”

  “Vigilance found it, did she?”

  “Yes, sir, and my missus just dove on it.”

  “I had a feeling. Had a feeling for weeks now. Where is it?” The captain addressed this last remark to Mrs. Riveter, who was still treading water as the other divers jumped in.

  “Two fathoms down, sir. It looks as though it burned.”

  Mr. Riveter’s shoulders drooped a little. “Badly?”

  “No, dear. It’s mostly intact.”

  “Maybe it can be repaired!” Mr. Riveter grabbed one of the salvage buoys as they were brought up and passed it to her.

  “Why does that matter, sir?” Eliss asked Captain Glass. He shrugged.

  “Wreck’s mostly intact, she can be refloated and she’s ours to sell. Wreck’s mostly not intact, we can still haul her out of there and break her down for the lumber. But if she’s just a lot of charred wood, she’s no use to anybody, and we’ve still got to dig her out of the hole she’s in.”

  The Bird of the River anchored there. The crew worked quickly to set out salvage buoys, big floating markers striped in red and black. Every diver on board donned her goggles and went down to help survey the wreck, for the law required full documentation on a wreck’s precise situation before salvage was permitted. Pentra rolled up her map and rolled out fresh paper. She began a drawing of the wreck based on the details the divers brought back.

  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 wou
ld 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.