The Book of Fire (35 page)

N’Doch already feels bad about Köthen’s roughness. He leans on the ax handle, crouches in front of the girls, and thumbs his chest. “N’Doch.”

Mari shakes her braided head. “Tallman.”

N’Doch shrugs. “Okay, girliegirl. Have it yer way. Yu gotcha som’other blade ta pull on me?” Meanwhile, he’s looking them over with his dragon vision. Not much on them to conceal a weapon of any sort. Their clothing is scanty, and he could probably count every rib and finger bone. But he lets them see he won’t lay a hand on them even to frisk them. “Truce fer now?”

Senda, the little one, nods. Mari screws her mouth up even tighter and steadies her glare. N’Doch gives her the thumbs-up sign, knowing approval’s the last thing she’ll be expecting. Then he stands, hands her the recovered arrows, and deliberately turns his back on her.

Köthen eases his grip, just enough so his prisoner can stand on his own. With his head still held back from the glimmering blade, the man shifts his weight off his bad hip, and groans softly with the relief.

N’Doch says carefully, “Y’know . . . this ain’t no war party, Baron K. The man’s clearly hurting. What say you let him go?”

Does he see a glint of disdain in the baron’s eyes, or is it puzzlement? But Köthen lowers his knife and steps back, as if removing himself from the argument. The man sags against the doorframe, breathing hard. Behind him, just as the dragons announce her, the girl’s head swims up out of the darkness.

The man senses her and turns. “Yu got more ou’ deah?”

N’Doch smiles, thinking of the dragons. “Mebbe.” He lets this sink in, then adds, “But ain’t none o’ us lookin’ fer troubba.”

“Not heah, neitha.”

“So, good. So, whachu say, den? Let’s get easy someweah, and talk.”

The man nods. There’s not even much resentment in him, not like the girls, for all his being tossed around a little. This guy’s got some mileage on him. He shoves off from the doorframe and moves past N’Doch on the gangway, heading into darkness and driving the kids in front of him with gentle cuffs to their heads. His limp is worse than N’Doch has expected, and he doesn’t try to hide it. Probably he can move faster in his rhythmic rolling gait than if he tried to walk straight. N’Doch follows him. Köthen and the girl fall in behind.

Cripple or no, he leads them across the lightless room with a blind man’s confidence. N’Doch’s own hands stray to the guide rails. He sees the railings as a clue to the joint’s real purpose. It’s not a death trap like he feared. It’s an oversized tollbooth, and you can’t run a good operation if you’re killing off your customers. He knows some drug dealers oughta learn that lesson.

They pass through one more dark room, then the night thins. N’Doch can see the man’s outline as he hauls back on a thick drape. Red light streams in through an outside opening, another window made doorlike with the liberal use of a sledgehammer. The girl-babies scamper into the light while the man stands back to hold the drape aside for the others.

N’Doch becomes aware again of the sounds of water. Squinting, he ducks through the opening onto a brief step and a shorter, steeper gangway leading down to a floating dock. The back of the building looks onto a kind of deepwater courtyard, a harbor with tall brick walls. The dock is another jerry-built assemblage of old doors and floorboards bobbing on aging plastic canisters and rusted oil drums. N’Doch is amazed they’re still afloat. Some of them look as old as he is.

There are a couple of little boats tied up alongside, tarred and patched six ways from Sunday, and a larger raft-thing up on pontoons like the dock. The raft has a stubby mast in the center and some shreds of a sail. There’s not a lick of paint on any surface N’Doch sees. Just keeping these tubs above water probably takes all these folks have got.

Mari and Senda take up stations beside the two small boats. N’Doch detects a personal involvement there. He eases down the gangway and onto the float. It’s good to feel the sea beneath him again.
All this started for me
, he muses,
because of the water.
The air is thick and steamy, but the buildings across the courtyard harbor throw a welcome shadow across the dock. He finds a faded plastic crate and tests it with his foot to see if it’ll still hold weight. He sets the ax down, drops his pack beside it, and sits.

The girl comes into the light next, then the man, then Köthen, who has insisted on mounting a rear guard. The girl’s a bit unsteady on the gangway as it stirs to the roll of the water. She makes it down to the float, then just
stands there. A weird moment of suspension settles in, as they all get a first real look at one another. Each, N’Doch decides, is a surprise to each.

The man and the little girls are dark, as he’s guessed. But they’re all a different color, and none of them as ebony-dark as he is. Their faces are as mixed-blood as their skin tones. The man’s skin is almost red-brown, and he is absolutely hairless. The girl Mari has Asian eyes and straight black hair intricately braided to frame her full nose and mouth. N’Doch predicts she’ll be a heartbreaker when she’s grown, ’specially since she’s such a little spitfire. All of them are small. Walking behind the bald man, he’s seen how the gleam on the top of his head comes barely to the level of his own heart. And the girls are petite. Their clothes are a grab bag of cheap faded sportswear, bits of heavier duty stuff like the man’s scuffed work boots and his stained safety-orange vest, plus a lot of handmade bits, or pieces worked over so many times that their origins are unrecognizable. The plastic water bottles they all carry are scarred and scorched where heat has been used to mend them. N’Doch sees nothing on these folks that looks like recent manufacture.

Meanwhile, the three of them are doing some serious study of their own. They eye the girl’s paleness, but her hair is dark like theirs, and N’Doch is darker and taller than them, but otherwise no big deal. It’s Köthen who snares the stares, perched like he is in lordly manner at the top of the gangway, his thick blond hair ruffling in the drafts up from the water and his mailed sleeves glinting in the late sun. The girl-babies are openmouthed. N’Doch can’t tell if they think he’s the absolute finest thing they’ve ever seen, or the butt-ugliest. Given their own complex mix, maybe they’ve never seen a real white man before.

Finally, the bald man breaks the spell. He kicks a crate a little closer to N’Doch and lowers himself onto it. He reaches a hand across the gap between them. “Reuben Stokes. Call me Stoksie. Blind Rachel Crew.”

N’Doch takes the hand. The man’s grip is firm but brief. N’Doch is relieved there’s no complicated shake ritual he’s supposed to know. “N’Doch. Water Dragon Crew.” No point in dumping the fiction now. Besides, it’s not like he’s
lying to the guy. He nods toward the girl, who he notices has not been offered a seat. “This ’ere’s Lady Erde.”

The man Stoksie struggles up halfway to reach and offer the girl his hand. So he’s got no problem sitting down with women, N’Doch notes. He just don’t see a need to give up his chair for one. And the girl, it turns out, has been keeping track. She gives the man’s hand a proper shake, then looks around for her own crate.

N’Doch sends her an approving nod. “Pull up a seat.”

This leaves Köthen, who is watching the parley assemble down on the float like he has no part in it. N’Doch finds this irks him just a bit. If the good baron wants to think of himself as more than the muscle, he’d better act like it.

“Hey, Baron!” he yells, with what he hopes is a really irritating grin. “How do I introduce you to these folks? Can’t ever remember all your names!” His voice echoes among the red brick walls. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees the girl shaking her head in mute dismay.

Köthen breaks off a methodical survey of those surrounding walls. He stares down at them for a moment, and N’Doch again envies the man’s total feel for the Commanding Entrance. He’s waited until he has every ounce and scrap of their attention. But as he starts down the gangway, N’Doch understands something else. Köthen’s slow grace on the bobbing walkway is also caution. The girl had staggered a little coming down. These are inlanders, N’Doch recalls. Landlubbers. Köthen doesn’t want to make a fool of himself while he’s getting his sea legs, but he isn’t gonna give up the Entrance. His balance is superb, though, and he gets the rhythm of the dance right away, so that he’s striding across the float with confidence by the time he presents himself to the man Stoksie with a small bow and a gesture to him not to rise from his seat. Nervous, N’Doch gets up, just in case. But Köthen offers Stoksie his hand. “Dolph Hoffman,” he says.

N’Doch stares at him, speechless.

Stoksie nods, returns a tight little smile, and the two of them shake like a knife at the throat is all in a day’s work.

Köthen feels N’Doch’s stare. He shrugs, with his eyes still on Stoksie. “If Hal Engle can do this, so can I. I am not so great a fool as you think.”

“My lord, I never . . .” N’Doch bites back the words so hard he nearly chokes.
Where the fuck did that come from?

Now Köthen looks up at him. “Ah,” he says, and tilts his head ever so slightly. Then he turns and walks away to the end of the dock to stare down into the water. N’Doch wants to race after him, quickly explain his awful lapse. But that would mean admitting to it in the first place.

No way.

He sees the girl watching him with sudden interest. Damn her. She doesn’t miss a thing. He turns his attention back to Stoksie, struggling to imagine what he can possibly say next. Stoksie, the better trader, helps him out.

“Yu speak fer ’em, den?”

N’Doch nods. He guesses he does, for now at least.

“So whatsa news, out onna road?”

“Da road’s hot and dry,” N’Doch replies truthfully. He hauls over his pack and fishes around for his water jug. The jug gets Stoksie’s immediate attention. N’Doch unstoppers and takes a swig, then much against his better judgment and for the sake of diplomacy, he offers the jug to Stoksie. Like, who knows what the man might be carrying? Except, he’s just
small
, not sickly-looking.

Stoksie slides the jug past his nose for a quick sniff before he drinks. N’Doch can see he’s trying not to look too cautious. He swallows without comment, then falls to studying the jug. He runs a dusty, tar-stained hand over the grainy stoneware curves and turns the rich blue glaze into the light. “Good work, dis. Hand stuff.”

N’Doch nods.

“Trade it?”

A commodity. N’Doch appears to think about this.

“Givya gud value.”

N’Doch counts. He’s got three others. Meanwhile he’s thanking the Deep Moor potters for this unintended favor. Good thing he didn’t insist on dumping the ceramic for the plastic. “Whachu offerin’?”

“Da night air camp, ha? Food n’ shelta?”

They must look worse off than he thought. Or maybe this is the standard offer around here. “All three, fer one?”

Stoksie nods.

“Done.” Now that it’s too late, he wonders if he’s made
the deal too quickly. Still, seems like a fair enough deal to him.

They shake on it. N’Doch shows him how to soften the beeswax stopper in his hands, not too much trouble in this climate, and how to remold it around the jug’s tapered neck. “You got good water at camp?”

“Da bes’! Blind Rachel watta!” Now Stoksie grins, and his teeth are such wrecks that N’Doch can barely look at him. “Yu frum way long way, ri’?”

“You got it, man. Way long.” N’Doch passes the jug to the girl. “Take all you want this time.” He looks over his shoulder at Köthen, standing so still by the edge of the dock, head bowed like he’s contemplating jumping. “Hey, Dolph!” N’Doch hits the name and the German as hard as he can. “We need you back here.”

Köthen lifts his head slowly as if being stirred from the deepest sleep. He sways to the roll of the float as he comes toward them and hunkers down, completing the circle of crates. N’Doch sees how the girl watches his every step, and he knows he shouldn’t be doing it, too, but the man’s body language rivets him. He posted bail once for a gang buddy who’d spent two weeks in solitary, a tiny windowless cage. Köthen just moved across that dock like that same buddy walked out of jail. N’Doch doesn’t understand any of it.

He nudges Köthen’s elbow with the water jug. Polite as always, the girl has left some. “Drink up. I just sold the bottle.”

Obediently, Köthen drains the jug. N’Doch takes it back, ceremoniously shakes out the last drop and hands it to Stoksie. “’S all yers. So wha’s da schedule?”

Stoksie glances upward. The sun is invisible behind the tall brick walls, but the sky is still bright and the building tops are hot with late afternoon glare. “Resta bit. Den we start.”

N’Doch likes a man who travels by night. He translates. “Sound good to you, Dolph?”

Köthen wets his lips. “Where are we going?”

N’Doch realizes this man of the killer stare hasn’t met anyone’s gaze since he rejoined them. “I bought us food, water, and shelter. In their camp.”

“With a water jug? A good exchange.”

N’Doch laughs. “Let’s hope so.”

Erde considered the tacit understandings of men, even between total strangers, and wondered if she would always be mystified by them. For instance, how could these three men who had been blade-wielding adversaries hardly a moment ago, now sit together in the shade, sharing nothing more than a companionable silence? At the very least, she would be asking every question she could think of. She’d already planned an information assault on the little girls, once they were done fidgeting with their tiny boats, unpacking and repacking the nameless objects stowed in every conceivable cranny.