Tom restrained his urge to laugh with a control he hadn't suspected he had. "You want me to help coach you, is that it?"
Raj nodded so hard Tom thought his head was going to come off. He sighed.
"All right, young m'ser, —let's see if we can create a gentleman out of you." He grinned. "You may wish yourself back in the swamp before this is over!"
PAPER CHASE
by Roberta Rogow
Klickett the knitting-woman glared at her two visitors and attacked her latest creation with vicious energy. "Absolutely no way!" she stated flatly.
"Come on!" Rif, the tall, muscular singer, tapped the manuscript in front of her on the square table.. "It's all ready to go...."
"And you want it day after tomorrow? Can't be done." Klickett unwound more yarn from the ever-present bag at her feet.
"Why not?" Rattail persisted. "You've always worked things out before."
"Ya don't believe me? Ask Miko!" Klickett bawled out, without leaving her chair, "Hey! Miko!"
From the back of the shop a tall, broadshouldered man emerged, wiping well-inked hands on a well-inked apron. His fair hair fell over his head in lank strings, mingling with a short blond beard.
"Tell 'em," Klicket said bitterly.
Miko looked from Rif to Rat. "I can't print up the book," he said apologetically. "No paper."
"That's crazy," Rif stated, just as flatly. "There's always paper."
"Not your kind," Klickett said. "Fine vellum, you said. Best quality, you said. Fit for hightowners, you said. Well, the paper mill's been flooded out since the rains, and it's shut till the water goes down."
Rat and Rif regarded the printer and bookbinder glumly. "We've got to get this out by next week," Rif muttered. "It's the best damned thing we've ever done, and we want to get it into the right hands... that is, we want to..."
Klickett snorted. "I know what you want to do, all right! Greening-day coming, right? Get a nice-looking book out on the streets, where the students can pick it up, right under the noses of Their High-and-Mighti-nesses! Get out Mother Jane's word... but it can't be done. Not till the paper mill opens."
"I tried," Miko said. "They were selling off the end-rolls, and I thought I could pick one up, but some pencil pusher out of the Signeury came along with a signed order, and the whole lot went off to the Signeury warehouse."
Klickett sighed. "Sorry, Rat, Rif. The only way you're gonna get that paper out of the warehouse is steal it."
Rif looked offended. "I'm a pickpocket, not a burglar," she sniffed.
Rat said thoughtfully, "You know, there just might be something to that."
Miko gulped slightly. "You don't mean you're actually going to take the paper out of the warehouse?"
"Well... not all of it," Rat demurred. "Just one roll. Enough for the DeLuxe Edition of the Collected Rat and Rif Song-Book."
"Let me see if I heard you right," Klickett said. "You just walk up to the Signeury warehouse, which is guarded by the blacklegs, and pick the lock on the front door, and walk out with a roll of paper, which is about as easy to carry as a small tree, and no one sees you? Tell me another one!"
Rifs eyes began to sparkle as she thought it over. "Sounds good to me. All we need is your skip."
"My skip don't go out without me, and I don't go out," Klickett said.
"It would do you good to get a little exercise," Rif commented.
"Find someone else."
"Like who?"
"The Jones kid... what about her?"
Rat shook her head. "We want to save Jones for really dangerous stuff. This will be dead easy. All we have to do is get to the dock, distract the guard, and get the paper."
"Who's going to haul it?" Klickett grumbled.
Rat grinned happily at Miko. The printer blushed fiery red under his inkstains. Klickett shook her head vigorously.
"Oh, no. No way is Miko going to get himself locked into the Dungeon. You're not the only folks who need printing done around here, y'know. And that skip of mine won't hold all of us and the paper at the same time. And this guard... now, how am I supposed to deal with him all by my lonesome?"
Rif nodded. "What we need is a really good distraction," she murmured.
There was a tinkle from the bell above the door of the shop. "Excuse me," came the well-modulated tones of Ariadne Delaney. "I meant to come sooner, but I was distracted by... Oh, dear. Do I intrude?"
Rif blinked rapidly and smiled suddenly. Klickett could feel what was coming.
"I got your sweater right here, m'sera," she said, before Rif could utter a word. "All wrapped up proper for ye. Be on your way before it gets too dark for the boatman."
"Oh, I took the foot-path," Ariadne said blithely.
"No need to take the boatman from his dinner for such a small errand."
"So no one knows you're here," Rif said, her smile growing wider.
"Well, I mentioned to Farren that I would be doing some shopping," Ariadne said. "I didn't precisely say where I would be doing it. Is anything wrong?" She looked around the room, noting the expressions of disapproval on Klickett's face, the embarrassment on Mike's, and the almost palpable lamp-flares of genius over Rat's and Rif s heads.
"We have got a little problem that you can help us with," Rif said slowly."
"Of course, m'sera Rif. Anything I can do for the Cause!" Ariadne's voice took on the fervor of a New Convert.
"There's something we have to get," Rat said carefully. "But it's locked up in a warehouse."
Ariadne's eyes grew round with excitement. "Are you actually going to steal something?"
"Yeah... that was the general idea," Rif said, glancing at Rat.
"How very exciting!" Ariadne said cheerfully. "But I don't see what I can do to help. I'm not very good at violence," she added ruefully.
"There won't be any violence," Rat assured her. "All we have to do is get to the warehouse..."
"Pick the lock..." Rif said.
"And get the stuff out," Rat finished, glaring at her partner.
"But what do you want me to do?" Ariadne asked.
"Just keep an eye out," Rif said.
"Distract the guard," Rat added.
"And what makes you so sure we'll get away,clear?" Klickett brought them all back to reality. "Going to send a message to your bedmate?" She sang out:
"Old Black Cal patrols all the bridges here,
Keeps an eye on all of the fights;
But when Rif s at play
He looks the other way
On those dark Merovingen nights!"
Rif glared in Klickett's direction. "One day someone's going to stick you down in the Dungeon," she gritted out.
Ariadne's tremulous soprano quavered out:
"There's a shop that's down by the Grand Canal,
Often used by literary lights;
It's where Klickett sits
And gives her comrades fits
On those dark Merovingen nights."
Rat looked approvingly at her latest disciple. "M'sera, you're catching on!"
"She's going to be caught," Klickett grumbled.
"Not if we do this right," Rif assured her. "Just get the skip started, and get us to the warehouse."
"I don't even know where it is," Klickett complained, as she pulled on a many-colored garment that looked as if it had been knitted from the tag ends of a dozen other sweaters.
They filed out of the shop to the small dock alongside the island, where the battered skip was moored. Klickett muttered angrily as the skip rode lower and lower in the water.
"This here was supposed to be a two-person skip. How'm I supposed to get through without tip-turning?"
"Just get it started," Rat hissed at her.
"And be glad we gave you the gasolhol," Rilsaid.
Miko's weight brought the boat dangerously close to the waterline.
"Don't nobody move," Klickett growled. The engine sputtered into life. On a bridge above them, a tall man clad in black frowned into the dar
kness and began to pace after them, following their progress around the canals until they came to the by-water behind Fishmarket where a young man in Militia black stood against an inconspicuous warehouse door.
"You sure this is it?" Klickett asked, as she maneuvered her battered boat around the Fishmarket piers.
"Right here," Miko said. "I've been picking up their scrap paper for years. The stuff they throw away! Perfectly good stuff, only one side written on!" He shook his head at the profligacy of bureaucrats.
Klickett let the engine die. "One lamp. One guard. What now?"
"Let us out." Rat, Rif and Miko heaved themselves onto the nearest dock. "You get the guard's attention," Rif directed them.
"How long d'ya think we can keep him off your tail?" Klickett hissed. "We're not exactly the kind to sweet-talk him!"
Rif patted her on the head. "You'll think of something."
Klickett snarled, looked at Ariadne, and said, "M'sera, I'm sorry I got you into all this mess."
Ariadne was serene as ever. "I'm finding this all quite fascinating. Only fancy, me being the lookout for a... a heist? Is that the correct term?"
Klickett muttered, "Mother Jane help us!" under her breath. Aloud she hailed the guard: "Hey! Way-hen there!"
The guard snapped out of a dream of long-limbed uptown maidens and rich food. "Huh?" he asked, peering into the gloom beyond the ring of light thrown by the lantern above the door of the warehouse. "Who's there?"
"Us," Klickett shouted, uninformatively. "Where are we?"
"Who wants to know?" The guard watched as the skip drifted into the glare of the lantern. Behind him, Klickett and Ariadne saw three shadowy figures converge on the door.
"My good man, can you direct me to the Delaney Residence?" Ariadne's imperious soprano cut through the guard's mental fog. In his experience, limited though it might be, persons who used that tone did not belong in front of the Signeury warehouse in the middle of the night, accompanied by what looked like a refugee from the Swamp.
"M'sera?" The guard leaned farther forward to assess the situation. The door opened with a squeal that nearly got the guard's attention. Klickett kicked at her engine, drowning out any noise the burglars might have made.
"Damn-fool thing!" she snarled. "Got some damn-fool stuff from the damn-fool students. Said it would run forever! Hah! Give out on me, it did, and no lamp, and here's m'sera Delaney to be fetched off home, and where the hell are we?"
Ariadne sniffed delicately. "It might be Fishmarket," she offered.
"It might be Dead Harbor, for all the good that does us," Klickett retorted. "Next time, m'sera, don't drag a pore ole woman out on a dark night. Get yerself a reg'lar canaler!"
"The insolence of these people!" Ariadne said haughtily. She turned to the guard. "If you please, instruct this stupid creature in the best route out of this place."
"Stupid?" Klickett's voice rose over the heavy tramping of three pairs of feet, staggering under the weight of an object the size and shape of an oaken log fit to roast a whale. "Jest who you calling stupid, m'sera?
Who told me to take the left fork, hey? Catch me takin' any more hightown custom nowheres!"
The guard turned to the more articulate of the pair. "M'sera, you should have taken the right fork," he said diffidently. "If you could turn the skip around..."
"Turn it around?" Klickett's voice rose to a shriek. "And how do I do that in this-here bathing pool, hey? Back her out, maybe... Here, give us a hand...."
She reached out to the guard just as the threesome staggered into the lanternlight with the long roll of paper. Ariadne grabbed the guard's other hand. Between them, Klickett and Ariadne sent the guard headfirst into the murky waters of the canal, while Rat, Rif and Miko frantically tried to work the paper roll over the dock and into the skip.
From his perch on the bridge above them, Cal could see it all: three people and a long whatever-it-was they trotted out of the warehouse, at one end of the boat, and three more people struggling at the other end of the boat. The guard splashed, cursed, and tried to get back onto the dock, while the two women did their best to see that he didn't get there. The would-be paper thieves lay flat on the dock in their efforts to ease the heavy roll into the boat without tipping it (and the paper) over into the canal. When the guard had been ducked for the third time and the roll was safe, Cal felt it was time to bring the scene to a conclusion.
"What the hell's going on here?" he demanded, as the guard floundered up onto the dock and lay there, dripping and panting. The three others faded into the shadows of the warehouse. The roll of paper lay safely under a tarpaulin, in the skip.
The guard cursed, spat out canal water, and rolled over. From his spot on the dock he looked up the endless stretches of Cal's legs and torso to the man's grim face, now set in lines of total disbelief, disgust, and disapproval.
"I was on duty, sir," the guard sputtered. "And these... these..." He searched for a word.
"Ladies," Cal said ominously. "This is m'sera Delaney, the wife of the Under-Prefect of Waterfront and Harbors."
"What's she doing here then?" the guard wanted to know.
"I was on my way home," Ariadne answered with aplomb. "And we lost our way." She turned to Klickett for confirmation. The knitting-woman shrugged.
"Can't let a lady like m'sera Delaney go out alone," she demurred.
"This ain't no Delaney Residence," the guard insisted. "This is miles away from any residence!"
Cal regarded the dripping watchman with disdain. "M'sera Delaney just told you she got lost. You believe her, don't you?" Or I'll know the reason why! was implicit in his words.
The guard took a large gulp of air and coughed heartily. The threesome in the shadows tiptoed up the stairs and over the bridge while Ariadne solicitously patted the guard on the back, and Klickett kicked the engine into some kind of action.
"I can direct your driver out of here and back to your residence," Cal offered.
Ariadne perched on the end of the paper roll. "I think we are all right now," she said cheerily. "We get out of this by-water and take the left..."
"Right!" Klickett snapped.
"Left," Cal corrected her.
"Left fork," Ariadne said.
"I'd still better ride along," Cal said, easing himself into the skip. The loglike object lay in the bottom of the boat, covered by the tarpaulin. He glanced at it briefly, and looked away.
* * *
Farren Delaney himself was waiting at the Delaney residence dock, lantern in hand. He shook his head as he handed his wife out of the boat.
"Where have you been, Addie? We've had to hold dinner for you . _ . and who are these people?" He took in the equipage that had carried his wife across the city.
"I'll explain it all later, after dinner, dear," Ariadne said. "But I did want you to meet Sergeant Halloran. He has been most helpful. And this is the woman who makes those lovely sweaters you admired."
"Ah." Farren took this in. "Halloran? I've heard of you. Come see me tomorrow, and I'll thank you personally for helping my wife. And... ah... you..."
"Klickett'll do."
"A little longer in the arms next time." He led Ariadne into the house. "Addie, —you pick up the damnedest people!" The door closed behind them.
Klickett turned to the blackleg. "Where to now? Justiciary? Archangel Bridge?"
Cal hopped out of the skip, and gave it a shove with his foot. "Take whatever it is back where it belongs," he said. "And stop singing that damned song about me!"
Klickett sang into the darkness. " 'Tis advertised in Uppertown, and in the town below... a hundred healthy fellers, a-blacklegging for to go...' "
In the bottom of the skip the roll of paper lay, snug in its tarpaulin wrappings. It would make a lovely book.
The celebration at Hoh's was at its loudest when Ariadne and Farren Delaney walked into the room. Rat and Rif were passing out copies of the "Rat And Rif Songbook," while Klickett (in a bright orange sweater) took in the money. Mi
ko was surrounded by several young things, attracted by his un-inked charms. In a corner, Altair Jones carefully spelled out some of the poems to herself, puzzling over the meaning.
Rif waved frantically at Ariadne, who pulled her husband with her in this invasion.
"Hey, I didn't think you'd come! How d'ya like it?" Rif waved the new book at the Delaneys.
"Most attractive," Ariadne said. "Farren, dear, look at the tooling on this cover... and the vellum-quality... and the scratch-board finish..."
Farren Delaney was looking over the other guests. "I had no idea there were so many... interesting... people down here," he said, smiling at Rif. He was an athletic, jovial sort of man, with thinning hair, and an infectious smile. Rif smiled back, conscious that Ariadne could tell exactly what was going on...
"Farren!" Ariadne's voice cut through any thoughts of dalliance. "The paper!"
Farren frowned slightly. "Our best vellum-weight. I thought we'd sold it all to the Signeury."
"Farren, is that cider? Would you get me a glass? Please?" Ariadne dismissed her husband and turned to Rif. "I didn't want him to know what we'd been doing, but really, you should have told me what you were up to. You didn't have to steal the paper... we own the paper-mill. All you had to do was ask."
Rat looked at Rif. Rif looked at Rat. And they both began to laugh, while Ariadne stood there with the stunned expression of one who has just made an amazingly witty remark but doesn't quite know what it means.
A FISH STORY
by Nancy Asire
Springtime in Merovingen could be summed up in one word: flirtatious. One day would dawn clear and sunny, full of warm breezes and the promise of easier times ahead; then the following day would turn dark, full of gray, scudding clouds and a north wind that would sweep down the canals as if winter had never left the land. It did no one any good to pin hopes on one fine day's weather, but everyone, from the canalers to the denizens of Merovingen above, hoped for a day of warmth and sunshine to be followed by another, and another.