Northshore Read Free Page B

had the old woman called him? Fulder Don. ‘Fulder Don,’ he asked casually, as though he were only another standabout, ‘why did your wife go in the River? How do you know that she did?’
    The man looked at his feet, mumbling, ‘A fisherman saw her. She was sick. She was afraid to die. Afraid to risk Sorting Out. My mother… was always at her. Telling her how bad she was. How incapable. I guess she thought…’ His voice trailed away into nothing as he stared into the water, his long, mournful face intent upon another time. ‘She was so beautiful,’ he whispered at last. ‘So very beautiful.’
    Something in the intonation made Thrasne look at him again. Yes. Under the shabby cloak the man wore the smock of the artist caste. An artist. Not a successful one, from the looks of it. For which Fulder Don’s mama probably blamed the dead woman. Thrasne turned quickly to return to the
Gift of Potipur,
his hands itching for his carving knife. The man, the woman and child; if he was lucky, he could get both the carvings started before Blint found something else for him to do.
    They spent three days in Baris. The merchants wantedspice, but they insisted on trading bulk pamet for it. Blint would take no more pamet. ‘Silly blight-heads,’ he complained as still another delegation left the boat unsatisfied. ‘Can’t seem to understand every town in this section has more pamet than they can use. We’ll have to go all the way to Vobil-dil-go before anyone will want pamet. I told them we’d take toys, or those dried puncon candies, or woven pamet cloth, provided it was something out of the ordinary. They’ll come to it eventually. Just takes them two or three days to make up their minds.’
    On the third day they did make up their minds, and Blint did a brisk business. By dusk all the trading was done, and the crew of the
Gift
went into Baristown for some jollifications. Thrasne offered to guard the ship. He wanted to finish the carvings and brought them on deck to do so, working in the lantern light from the owner-house windows. He had caught Fulder Don to his own satisfaction, the sorrow, the loss. Now he was finishing the carving of the woman, Delia, and the child.
    There were no sounds except the soft push of the water along the sides, an occasional burst of laughter or song from the taverns. The soft bumping had gone on for some time before he even heard it.
    Once alerted to the sound, it still took him a while to find it. It seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere. At last he leaned over the side and heard it clearly. Something in the River, knocking against the side of the boat.
    He lowered a lantern on a line to see only the oily shifting of the water. Then she came from under the wavelets to look up at him for an instant, turning in the ripples to glance sideways at him from half-closed eyes.
    ‘Suspirra!’ He set the lantern down, shaking, rubbing his eyes with his hands. The face was Suspirra’s face. The bumping went on. He lowered the light again, and again she shifted to look upward at him, the water flowing across her face, the line in which she was tangled making a silver streak across her breast.
    Sick cold in his belly, he could no more have left her therethan he could have burned his own Suspirra for firewood. It took long moments to realize the bumping made a wooden clattering rather than the soft sound of flesh. He thought of a carving, first, and only then of the blight. This was the woman they had been dragging for. The woman who had been so beautiful, who was so beautiful. Blighted now. Wooden. And deadly. Still, he could not leave her there.
    He brought up one of the small nets, safe enough after its frag powder soak. He rigged a line to the boom. Working silently, cursing the amount of time it took, he pushed the net under her with poles, then heaved the boom all alone against her weight, heavier than he’d thought, to lift her dripping body to the deck.
    She turned in the lantern light,