Fever Season

  "House Hannon," she said. "They got word this is the rat what killed that Hannon girl last Festival. They're offerin' a big reward for his head."

  "Shit! Trouble!" Jones stabbed her pole hard into the water. Smuggling, thieving, politics—and now you want to get into assassination, too? "Leave me out o' that! Th'old Hannon-Gregori feud's pure poison, an' everyone knows it."

  "It's good money," Rif wheedled. "Five big ones. I'm not askin' ye to do anything; just keep yer eyes open. You see 'im, you tell me. I'll cut y'in fer a good share."

  "No chance! I'd as soon be caught in Kalugin House with them Swords runnin'— Too much! Jones bit off the last word, scrambled to cover it. "Uh, no way," she finished lamely. Damn, short on sleep. Stupid.

  Rif hadn't missed it. "Swords?" she asked, very quietly, not looking away.

  Johanssen, in the bow, kept her head down and crocheted at a furious pace—for all appearances oblivious to the world.

  "Altair," Rif almost whispered, "If there're Swords rooted in at Kalugin House, then you an' me an' all our… connections are nose-deep in bilge-water. We all better know when, where an' how to jump."

  Jones said nothing, gritted her teeth, and sped the skip forward with hard, angry thrusts.

  "Fer Goddess' sake," Rif insisted, "Don't keep me in the dark! I don't wanta get hit from behind."

  Jones flinched at that, remembering all the times she'd said as much to Mondragon. The not knowing was the worst. The not knowing could get you killed.

  And Rif, with her connections, was an escape-way for Mondragon, herself, and maybe Raj too if Anastasi Kalugin went under or turned on them.

  Snapping a short curse, Jones pulled in the pole, went to the hidey, brought out the jerry-can and started the engine. The motor coughed, belched a clot of smoke, caught and rumbled to work. The skip began to pick up speed.

  Jones crouched at the tiller, glaring at Rif as she slid close and sat down.

  "… The new fuel seems t'agree with'er," Rif offered, glancing back at the engine.

  "Yey," Jones admitted. "Runs cleaner." That too was Rif s—and the Janes'—gift. Fuel-alcohol did run cleaner than petro-fuel, smooth and strong and loud in the old engine. Loud enough to cover quiet conversation, anyway. "The Nev Hettekers ..." Jones sighed. "The ones what got invited to that bombed-out Festival party uptown. A friend of mine spotted 'em, recognized 'em from back when, knew they was Swords."

  "Raj?" Rif whispered, wide-eyed.

  Jones ducked her head and shrugged again. Let Rif think it was the kid who saw, not guess it was Tom. "I ain't sayin' who, an' don't ye go askin'. Point is, one of 'em's got in real cozy with Tatiana Kalugin ..."

  The islands of Fishmarket, Calliste and Foundry swept by as Jones told the whole Festival story, all she knew, had seen, had learned from Mondragon and elsewhere. Rif listened carefully, prodded little, took it all in, and ended gnawing her lip.

  "That's bad. Real bad," she muttered. "Hightown rotten with Swords, Nev Hettek behind 'em… Hell, this time next year, Nev Hettek could be runnin' the town without a shot fired."

  Jones shrugged again, but shivered. Maybe Anastasi Kalugin could stop it, maybe not. A year ago she wouldn't have cared who ruled in Hightown; it made no difference to Merovingen-under, nothing to change life on the canals. But now there was Tom Mondragon. Nev Hettek rule meant Swords high and low, and they knew Mondragon was here. He'd have to run to Lord-knew-where, someplace where she couldn't follow or wouldn't know how to live—if he didn't wind up floating in the canals first. Politics mattered now.

  "C'n yer friends stop it?" she asked, desperate enough to ask.

  "Dunno. C'n find out, maybe." Rif glanced again at the chortling engine. "I'll pay ye back for the fuel." She got up and went back to her former place in the bow, and sat down beside the crocheting old woman.

  Jones couldn't tell, over the engine noise, if they were talking or not. Maybe just as well. Just watch the water, mind the traffic—thickening now, out here on the Grand. Mostly skips and haulers, making morning deliveries. Mostly known faces, no danger anywhere—not yet, anyway.

  They were almost under the Wex-Spellman Bridge when something hit the bow.

  Jones instinctively snapped off the engine, grabbed her pole and stopped the skip, then turned to look.

  On the bow sat a small stone. Not heavy enough to do damage, just enough to make noise. Rif and the old woman were staring up at the bridge ahead, not that Jones needed to see them to guess where the stone had come from.

  Up on the bridge stood Black Cal, peering down at them.

  Johanssen turned her gaze back to her crocheting. Rif kept watching, gone noticeably pale. Jones didn't move.

  Black Cal pointed calmly at Rif, then jerked a thumb skyward. 'Come up,' clear as day.

  "Why couldn't he just send a note?" Rif muttered. "Hell, pull over."

  Jones did, carefully keeping her head down. Nobody wanted Black Cal for an enemy, but she didn't care for his friendly attention, either. Tie up, let Rif out—note that she didn't take her bag with her—squat on the half-deck and wait, trying to be as calm as that old woman with her crocheting. Wait, and try not to sweat in the rising morning heat.

  Rif pattered up the bridge as if she were walking on eggs, hoping to high heaven that Black Cal was in a better mood than when she'd seen him last. "Hello," she chirped, trying to sound cheerful. "I see you're walkin' around again."

  "Not much." Black Cal raked her over with eyes as cold as green gemstones. He sounded hoarse, still looked a bit pale, but he wasn't coughing.

  "I told ye it wasn't the Plague," Rif grinned nervously, "Just the Crud. Told'ja you'd be up an' around in a couple of days, didn't I?"

  "Mhm." His noncommittal gaze held her for several long heartbeats, then turned to the skip below. "Where's your doctor going with all that baggage?"

  "Leaving town," said Rif, shivering in the sunlight. "It's gettin' a bit hot for her these days."

  "Not from me," Black Cal said quietly, leaving her with the implications. Maybe he was fishing for news, and maybe not.

  In any case he didn't sound happy, and that was bad news.

  "Uh, I got a little something for ye," Rif offered, pulling out the paper. She unrolled it and handed it to him. "That's a slicer named Chud. He's the one killed that Hannon girl last Festival. Now he's back in town, House Hannon's offering big money for 'im."

  Black Cal nodded absently, studying the picture. Then he snagged on a thought and turned a chill green stare on Rif. "I don't do extra-work," he said.

  "I wasn't saying that!" Rif backpedaled fast. "I'm just tellin' ye what's afloat. You get 'im first, you do what ye want. You find 'im in the canal, you'll know why."

  "Mm." Black Cal rolled up the paper, trapped it in the palm of his other hand. "No witnesses to the killing, no solid evidence." He frowned, eyes narrowing.

  "Aw, cheer up" Rif offered. "Maybe y'can prod him into takin' a shot at you, and then y'can blow him away."

  Black Cal rolled his eyes and snorted, not mollified by that, either.

  "Damn," Rif muttered, playing her last card. What the hell, maybe just as well now as later. "I heard somethin' else interesting that y'could maybe use. Did you know that yer boss' new sweetheart is a big Sword of God agent from Nev Hettek?"

  The old woman had very nearly finished the sleeve by the time Rif came back to the skip.

  "Took ye long enough," Jones complained as Rif scrambled in. "Gonna have t'run the engine full-throttle t'reach yer ship in good time"

  "Do it," said Rif. "I'm paying."

  Jones restarted the engine, casting another quick glance up at the bridge. Black Cal hadn't moved. "He plannin' t'stay there all day?" she asked, ducking her head away from his gaze.

  "So he says." Rif pulled her cloak around her and huddled in the bow. "He's gettin' over the Crud, and 'e's bad-tempered. Keep away from 'im if y'can."

  "I try, I try." Jones set the throttle, and the skip chugged rapidly up the Grand. "Funny how I only
run into 'im when ye're aboard."

  Johanssen raised her head, smiling sweetly. "Maybe he likes you," she said, eyeing Rif.

  "Goddess forbid!" Rif shook her head so fast that her hair flopped into her eyes. "It'd ruin my reputation!"

  * * *

  Another twenty minutes' wide-open running took them up the Greve fork to the farms depot and along by the piers where riverboats tied up. The place looked surprisingly busy, but then, this was shipping time for the North Flat harvest. Big ships put in here: grain-barges and steamers from up-Det, and little craft, some of which might not care for the public notice and the harbor-master's close attention, not so able to bribe inspectors as some.

  It was not hard to tell which category Rif's ship fell into: a huge steamer with the high sides of a heavy cargo-hauler, passenger-decks above. Its smokestacks could have topped some of the lower islands in the city. Cargo— mostly farm supplies and bulk rice—was coming off and going on, pur poseful crowds busy. Nobody took parti-cular notice of Jones' skip pulling in at stairs-side.

  Rif got out first, carrying the large bundle, and helped m'sera Johanssen onto the landing. "Wait here a bit, Jones," she said, sounding her old cheerful self. "Keep an eye on my stuff 'til I get back." She strolled away arm-in-arm with the older woman, looking like a harmless visitor seeing her mother off on a journey. The two of them disappeared quickly in the crowd.

  Jones took the opportunity to check on the potful of slurry-mash yeasting quietly in the hidey. Maybe tomorrow she could brew off some more fuel, but it wouldn't be ready by tonight. Maybe just as well. Carrying a fare all day, real public, she wouldn't have to work late tonight, could spend the night at Tom's place, keeping watch on him, catching up on sleep. It wouldn't hurt to take a nap right now, in fact, with the day getting warmer and all. She set the pole and hook close, spread out a blanket and curled up in the hidey, and shut her eyes.

  It seemed only five minutes later that someone shoved her, not too hard, in the ribs. Jones came awake blinking and gulping, reaching automatically for the barrel hook.

  "Haw! T's only me," Rif laughed. "Wake up, lazy. We got work t'do. Oh, an' I got something for you." She planked down two sloshing jerry-cans on the deck, and sat back grinning.

  Jones blinked at them, sniffed, recognized the smell. "Is that alkie-fuel? Here?"

  "Yey, cheap as water." Rif beamed. "Word's got around, and the yeast too. Plenty of vegetable-trash t'grow it on up here. Folks're just a little more open about sellin' it, this far outta sight of the College." She snickered. "If yer own yeast dies out on you, the best price in-city's at Mantovan—north slot, under. Buy raw slurry-mash, cheap, do yer own distillin' and get the yeast too. Neat, hey?"

  "C'n we get out o' here, ne?" Jones took the side-tie loose and skipped up on the half-deck. "Time's passin'."

  "Right, right." Rif thought a moment. "Get into the Grand, then west at the Signeury. No point wasting this stuff north'a Spellbridge."

  "No point usin' fuel up there, either." Jones cranked the engine over and eased the skip out into the current.

  * * *

  After all the buildup, the work was easy. Jones poled the skip into the lazy backwaters of Yesudian, Torrence and Eick, heading for Capone. Rif, her coin-catching basket set out on the bow played her flat-harp and sang sweetly under the windows and bridges, chirping at passers-by and collecting coins while anyone watched. She sang requests if asked, but generally came back to one particular song.

  "There's a wheel turnin' on muddy ground, Gains an inch every time it goes around.

  Come on, let's make another revolution. Turn, turn, turn ..."

  For all its vaguely-subversive words, the tune was slow, meandering and hypnotic.

  "There are wheels that turn through all of our lives

  And we sometimes see them clear.

  When the night comes down, when the first snow falls,

  We can mark the day or the year ..."

  Snow. First frost. End of fever season? Jones fixed her mind on the words, needing to concentrate on something, or the sleepiness would catch up to her. Do all Rif s songs have secret messages in 'em?

  "The circle's end we can tell too easy;

  The beginning is hard to see.

  And the wheel whose seasons no one knows

  Is the turn of the tide that can make us free."

  Tide? Free? That had to have some meaning, but what? And to whose ears? Did Rif have friends this far uptown who might be listening in, picking up signals?

  Occasional small coins pattered down, sometimes hitting the basket, sometimes dropping into the well. Rif duly picked them up between verses, not missing a beat.

  "There are wheels that turn in the natural world

  And there's some in the heart of man.

  Your will moves them, your hand proves them,

  So turn them the best you can ..."

  Back east now, past Deva, Novgorod and Bent, stopping once under an outdoor restaurant to play for a handful of diners until a complaining wine-steward shooed them away. Then on under Kass Bridge, still singing.

  "When you see your wheel you can add your shoulder—

  Or wait 'til it's rolling high.

  You can slow it down or speed it around,

  But you can't make it stop—even when you die."

  Between songs, between ends and beginnings of that same sleepy-strange traveling song, whenever nobody was looking, Rif quietly licked her fingers, dipped them into the open bag beside her, pulled out fingertips darkened with clinging seeds and trailed them in the water. No one who wasn't specially watching for the gesture would have noticed it.

  "There's a wheel that's moving fast through our time

  And we've seen the track it made.

  I believe you know where it has to go,

  And the way that the game is played ..."

  After a time Jones saw the pattern of the scattering: always done in backwater corners, places where the current was slow. The seeds could sink there, root and grow undisturbed. A few mixed weeds grew already in such out-of-the-way corners; newer ones would scarcely be noticed, surely not cared about.

  "So night's come down and the turn is hidden,

  But it never stops rolling 'round.

  So lay on your hand, 'cause we're coming to land.

  Just another strong pull, and we're on hard ground."

  Jones decided she was getting tired to death of that song. Talk to Rif, then. Quick, before it started up again.

  "What'll they look like?" she asked, poling slowly between Bent and Kass. "They gotta break surface sometime."

  "Thick flat leaves and pretty yellow flowers," Rif smiled, trailing her laden fingers in the water. "Clusters of flowers on one stalk, even smell nice. Nobody'll mind, not unless they spread so thick as to block the canals. That ain't likely, not with the steady traffic."

  "They good f'r anythin' besides cleanin' garbage out o' the water?"

  "Oh, sure. The leaves'll feed yer yeast, good as any other weeds. Dry 'em, if ye can, an' I suppose they'll burn too. I don't know if the flowers're good for much, besides being pretty, smelling nice—an' spreading the seeds. They'll drift downstream, wind up in Dead Harbor probably, after everywhere else." Rif dipped and trailed her fingers again. "Might even make this town smell downright good… Hey, what do I see?"

  Rif sat up and peered ahead at a figure running madly along the Kass-Borg Bridge. He was tall, skinny, dressed in the rusty blue-black colors of a College art student—and running with a flapping, wobbling, exhausted desperation. The sight was laughable, but Rif only wore a faint, intrigued, calculating smile.

  "I know him," she said. "Pull over there, and let's catch 'im."

  Jones sighed, and poled over. The customer was always right, sure. But when the customer was Rif, anything could happen. She didn't trust that calculating smile.

  Rif, following the running student with her eyes, hopped out of the skip and scurried up the stairs toward bridge-end to intercept him.
The chase passed out of Jones' sight. She jury-tied aft and sat down to wait.

  More of Rifs damn games. Can't she do anything simple?

  The sun was approaching zenith, the wind had died and the day was heating up considerably. Jones yawned in the seductive warmth and studied the water, noted that wisps of mist were rising again. Damn, if the sun kept up like this, the fog would be blanket-thick by sundown. Cautious poling through that, even in the slower-trafficked side canals.

  Then again, in a thick fog nobody could see them, either— nor see what Rif was doing. They could just pole around, scattering the seeds, not have to play-act at singing for pennies under the windows. Maybe Rif would prefer that, and maybe not. Gain cover, lose the extra money. Then again, somebody was paying Rif well for this work…

  Footsteps came rattling back: Rif, with the tall skinny student in tow. They hurried onto the skip, and Rif shoved him back into the hidey, out of sight. Without a word, Jones cast off and poled southeast, toward French

  Once they were well clear of Borg, the student began talking, babbling thanks at Rif. "—can't thank you enough, m'sera. That Krish, he remembers he owes me when he's sober, but when he's drunk he resents it. I swear, I thought he'd run me through if he caught me. He's that drunk."