"Mind your step," Hale said; and Mondragon held her arm tightly as she groped for the banister of a stairs.
Down and down, in total dark. She freed her arm, shifted her clothes bundle and clung carefully to the bannister as she went down the steps on new slick soles, blind in the dark with a cluster of Gallandry men about her and them all smelling of foreign stuff and waterfront and something her nose could not identify past the soft familiar canal-smell of the old clothes in her arm and the bath-smells on her skin. There was too much rush. They jostled her. Mondragon crowded her behind, down and down until they picked up a little light two levels down. A nightlight was in its niche; it flared and leapt and set their shadows to jumping in huge perspective on the walls and on the stairs as they came around this last turn. Her knees shook: a half dozen grown men slinking about like this and all of them clinking and rattling with swords and knives—What are you doing here? she heard her mother ask in her mind. She saw Retribution shake her dark head and look at her with stem disapproval. Altair, what in this sorry world are you doing?
I wish I knew, mama.
Forgive me, Angel.
It's this man—
She came down off the last step with her knees like to collapse to shivers under her and her feet all but numb in the pinch of the shoes and the socks—Damn, if I've got to skip fast I can't do 'er. She flexed her toes with a resolute effort, and watched solemnly as the men around her while Hale unbolted another door: the gold light flared in the draft as it opened and cast sinister lights on somber faces. Mondragon in his black scarf and his dark clothes was all hollow-cheeked and hawk-nosed and grim as any hangman. He turned that face her way as the men started through the dark beyond; he caught her arm and pulled her along with him—
—He don't trust 'em. Stay with me, he's saying. Lord, I hopethat's what he's saying.
She drew a long breath as she went into the black closeness of a tunnel that smelled of old brick and damp and mold. Someone closed the door at their backs and it was utterly black then.
"Not far." someone said. Mondragon's hand squeezed her arm.
Lord, they could murder us both, they could take us here, this is Gallandry territory, they know this dark, we've come down near the water and it's an easy thing to dump us in and no one the wiser.
Someone up ahead opened a door before any of them could have gotten to it. It just opened, with less dark there than elsewhere, a trick of the eyes and the lap of water louder than the noise they made walking. It was the kind of sound water would make under a building vault, an echoey noise. Gallandry Main Cut, that was where they had come out: she had poled past it all her life.
They came out into that dark watery vault, that got only the ghostly starlight bounced from outside and not much of that. A black huge shape loomed up in front of them in the Cut, an impression of something blacker than the rest of the place and moving to the waves, and this was the barge. Black human figures moved along the narrow stone dock, silhouetted against starlight-on-water outside, going about their business of tending this monster in a deathly hush.
There was movement at their side; a scuff of a leather sole. Mondragon tugged at her arm and she went where he led. Someone led him, someone else crouched down waiting for them at dock-edge where a shadow-plank went up to that barge—no, two someones, one on a side, who knelt there and reached out to keep them steady as Mondragon headed up that plank—Damn. Unexpected cross-boards and the shoes made her feet slip with their unaccustomed heels: she felt Mondragon falter and recover on the tilted, moving surface; felt a hand reach up the inside of her knee and close hard, nothing familiar, a man trying to keep her upright. A second shove steadied her on the other side, and she caught her balance, clutched her bundle and made a quicker, steadier step as the plank rose and fell with the surge, sure of the cross-board interval now. Two more Gallandrys waited at the deckside end of the plank to steady them as they came off it; and as they hit the narrow wooden sideboard that ran around the huge cargo well. She knew these craft. She walked that narrow rim carefully, shook her arm to free it of Mondragon's assisting hand as she walked after the shadow-figure to the deck-edge and the ladder. The guide waited there, stopped her and gripped her sore arm. "Step," the man whispered, and gave her unwanted help, hauling her along down the short railless ladder to the well. Then he pushed her head and shoulders down and shoved her onto her knees toward the barge's version of a hidey, which was a cavern compared to a skip's.
She went in pushing her bundle of spare clothes in front of her on the slats, and crouched there facing the dark inside with the panic fear someone in that black hole might be waiting to grab her and do God knew what, and her not knowing whether to defend herself or not. Her teeth started to chatter and she clenched them. She heard faint footsteps thump overhead and on the boards outside and turned around as someone else came in after her.
A hand groped out, brushing her leg. "That you?" she whispered, hoping it was Mondragon, stifling a reaction if it was not.
"It's me," the whisper came back; and it had better be. The owner of it crouched down and felt his way up her leg and put his arm around her, hugging her close against him. She had not been shivering since upstairs. She began to men, and tried to stop. It was the hour, it was being roused out of bed and bundled out without breakfast, a body always shivered when she was waked prematurely and had to work in chill. His arm tightened as if he thought it was terror, damn him. He trusted this lot of pirates and knew where he was going on their barge.
"Yo," someone called out, meaning they were starting to make natural noise now, just a barge going out of
Gallandry the way big barges had to, by night. A lantern flared, bright after ail that dark: the deep empty well of the barge showed bare slats and a clutter of folded tarps and coils of rope. Shadows moved crazily across the narrow view of vaulted ceiling and disappeared into the dark of the canal. Steps thumped on the deck overhead, bargemen cursed and made ordinary conversation.
"They'll know," she objected to Mondragon.
"They'll know, I don't doubt. But they'd have to do something about it."
The engine coughed and coughed under its crank. Caught and tunked away till the helm engaged the screw and the resistance brought the engine down to a steady low thump and echo in the confined Cut. Water surged and washed aft. "Ware cable," someone yelled, which meant they were casting off. Altair felt the motion and put her arm about Mondragon's waist, her head against his shoulder. Cold. Lord, this place was cold. The engine beat and beat its power into her bones.
Big barge could ride a small boat under. Engine noise lumping through the night was no strange thing: biggest barges always moved by night, avoiding traffic. Their lonely sounds haunted the dark—rare, thank the Ancestors; from time to time a bell tolled on darkest nights: Ware, ye little folk, give way, give way, the giant'll roll ye down, grind ye to splinters, send your bones to old Det. Moor a skip too wide beneath the bridges when such as this wanted through and it was ruin; she had seen the like once. Man, woman, and a boy ridden down one rainy night that canalers tied up too numerous beneath the Midtown Bridge; voices screaming, canalers trying in chorus to make themselves heard—Fools, her mother had said after, couldn't have stopped that barge nohow, they knew it. But a body yells anyhow. Makes the gut feel better. —A horrid scrape of wood on iron. Splintering sounds. Cries of rage; and that great black shadow chugging on through the rain, wreckage bobbing near Midtown pilings.