Now that she had come this far she suddenly knew all sorts of ways to get a man off her boat. Like wait till he was asleep and do for him. Or hail a fellow like One-Eye Mergeser and start a fight; or a dozen strategems she could think of, if things went wrong.
But they would not. He was not like that. He had a gentle way about him, even if he was asleep. He would be grateful, for a few days, in the strange nowhen that had cast this pretty bit of flotsam up onto her boat.
Old Del gave a gift, that was what.
A lover from a past life?
Only if the Revenantists were right.
She doubted it.
One got what one took in this life. Her mother told her so.
Chapter 2
SHE waked again in that close, unfamiliar warmth— chagrined: she had not meant to sleep so long or so soundly. But her passenger was still warm without feeling fever-warm; healthily sweating, in fact, with the closeness, as the first stir of activity came in the dark outside the hidey, and some coaster out in the harbor churned up a wake with its engine as it beat along toward the shallow channel to the sea. Getting an early start on the world.
The sweaty warmth against her stirred, burrowed closer and snuggled down with a sigh as if a woman's arms were part of his ordinary sleep. Or he was awake and damn well knew where his hands and his face were. She wriggled aside and out of the shelter, searching up her clothes as she went; and sat outside with the fresh wind chilling her skin and the gentle rocking of the boat all part of a strange, still-black morning, there beneath the wharves.
She ran a hand through her hair, found it itchy and none so nice. Her clothes were not as bad: she had washed them three days gone; but she was sweated and hated to get into them. She never minded a few days unbathed: weather sometimes set in with a chill that discouraged bathing, and she was alone on her boat; in fact she cultivated a certain griminess—too clean and a woman looked like she was looking, which invited all sorts of trouble. She made a spitting sound in self-disgust, not at the dirt, but at the silliness that made her care for a day; for once—well, not to be thought dirty. Hewas not; he was clean-shaven, without even a stubble, she recalled, until this morning when she had felt his chin against her shoulder—
(So he went fresh-shaven to his murder—A woman? Had he been meeting with some lover? But those black-hooded skulkers had had no look of someone's outraged kinfolk.)
—a fastidious man, at least. If there had been dirt on him the canal had left only its own fishy stink, which passed for clean in Merovingen-below. So could she be— fastidious when she wanted to be.
She had soap. She found the little cake of lye and lard and slipped over the side of the boat in the safe halflight before dawn, bobbed up again treading water in the gentle slap and toss of the chop. No danger of drift. She scrubbed her hair not once but twice and three times, and scrubbed herself with the white froth floating away on the waters beneath the pilings, while the sun came up enough to give a little rust color to the peeling paint of the boat-side.
And just as she surfaced from her final ducking she found herself staring up at a pale, very live face peering over the rim of the boat.
So there she was, with a naked man on her boat above her and herself at decided disadvantage down in the cold water. "Get back," she said, sharp and hostile. "Back." Thinking if he should turn surly there were still ways, and the knife and the hook for him, and the bones at the bottom of the bay. She glared up at him and bobbed there. Flung a splash of water up at him. "Back."
That seemed to wake his wits. He moved backward in some haste and retreated up a few feet toward the bow as she glared at him, elbows on the rim. He did not look threatening, rather dazed as a man might be who came back from the dead stark naked on a crisp morning.
She pitched the soap into its bucket and gave him a hard, misgiving look just to be sure he stayed put. He had settled as modestly as he could, knee tucked up and sideways. So she glared again, gave one great duck and heave and came up over the edge, slithered aboard in a wash of water and sat down and snatched after her clothes, dropped them all into her lap fast, and struggled into her sweater without a pause to dry her hair or to towel off. Pants next, quickly. She got up and hauled, not fool enough to turn her back in modesty. She just fixed him with her eye and glared to show she was in no way embarrassed and that he had only tentative welcome on her boat.
He stared. Not like the dirty boys that spied on the barges from the bridges; and hooted and called down insults, imagining they saw more than they did. He stared as if a naked woman was a holy and unexpected wonder to him, while the boat swayed in the chop a passing coaster kicked up; he sat leaning on his hands and swaying too, with the boat-motion.
He was so damn nice-looking. Her heart did a curious little quickening and she felt—warm. And oddly safe and unembarrassed and expansively content with what she had done. Reckless. Ancestors, she was not wont to be so soft-headed. But maybe it was natural that people took chances when they were in love. Like shooting the Det Bore when it came, though it tipped boats and took the unskilled; it was that kind of feeling, heart thumping, everything aslide and uncertain and by-the-Ancestors alive.
"My name's Jones," she said. "Altair Jones. This is my boat.*' And when he did not respond to that: "I've decided," she said, "you can be my lover."
He blinked and got a wary look, slid a bit back till his back hit the wood of the far side. In one heartbeat she was dismayed; in the next felt the fool; and in the third she knew for certain that she was. A man had a right to say no. She never heard of one who was inclined to, unless— Maybe he liked men, that was all. Which was a waste. But he was very pretty. Maybe too much so. She gazed at him with regret.
"Well, you don't have to," she said sullenly. She pulled out her other breeches from the side of the hidey, the over-size ones; and pulled out a sweater (she had three, all twice the size she needed); and flung them both at him. "Try those."
He blinked and let them lie there on the slats.
"You want 'em in the bilge, dammit?"
He gathered them up hi one reach and never made another move. His face showed all white in the tentative dawn, his fair hair dried and curling. Another ship thumped to life, a fishing boat sending out a wake as it passed; and the water lapped and splashed against the pilings.
"You mute?"
He moved his head. No.
She squatted and rummaged the other little packet she had there by the hidey, unstopped a jug and took a bit of bread and cheese out of their wrapper. Offered it toward him. He shook his head.
Fool. Rushing at him like that. Man's been hit over the head, swallowed all that water. Offer him to be his lover, and him with a cracked skull. Damn silly, Jones. Try to use the brain you got. Probably thinks you're crazy. "You sick at your stomach, huh?"
A nod.
"Head hurt?"
A nod.
"You got a voice?"
"What am I doing here?"
Not what'm'i'doin'ere. Clear and pure as a voice could speak it, a quiet, immaculate voice that brought her and her outheld hand to a frozen stop.
She heard that kind of accent at distance, at the distance of lordly voices drifting from the heights of bridges and the insides of buildings and the other side of grilled doorways.