So she gave up on cats. Slowly gave up on chance-taking And men,

Till she got, in a confused way, step by step, to be a fool for something else floating down the canal.

Well, she said to herself this night—she talked to herself now and again, in her head, in her mother's voice—well, you finally got a man on your boat, didn't you, same as the damn kittens. Or maybe like that ingrate cat. And you got yourself a problem, don't you, Altair? What you going to do? Huh? Let him die?

He ain't any harm the way he is. Hasn't got a chance, the damn fool, without I do something.

So she stirred herself and she crawled into that shelter and heaved and hauled the blanket out from under him and over both of them, because she knew what it was when water-chill had gotten into one's bones. —"Tuck your feet up, fool, get all of you inside."

He moved. She tried to get her arms about his damp, cold body and keep the blanket snug, but he was too heavy to get an arm under; she pillowed his head on her arm and put herself up against him as close as she could get. The cold went from him to her, until the shivering started, great racking tremors that knotted him up for minutes on end until the last strength went out of him.

Then he was still.

That's the end of it, she thought. Out of strength. Fever comes now.

Rain-chill, winter-chill, river-chill: but there was a way to make a body warm. Her mother had done it for her; she had kept the sick kittens close against her heart, trying the same. And it was notthe same as her mother and the kittens; but it was dark inside the hidey; and he was clean, Ancestors knew, clean as old Det let anybody be; and more, he was dying, not going to tell anybody or snigger about it later.

It was selfish, more than anything, just for herself, scraps, which wouldn't hurt anything, and wouldn't go anywhere, since he was dying. The last living thing she had touched, really touched and held, was five years ago, when her mother was alive. So it was selfish; and perhaps every wicked act put the Retribution further away; but every good one brought it closer—so maybe what she did to make him easy balanced the wickedness in her mind.

Damn. It won't hurt. It might help.

She flung her arms up and wormed out of her sweater, undid her breeches and worked out of them too, till she could get her bare skin next to his full length—no great thrill: he was cold as a day-old fish. But she rubbed him till her arms ached and hugged him against her and bled the heat of her exertion into him, and did it again when she had caught her breath. He came to in the midst of this and started shivering again, which made him hard to hold on to, but she kept working—nothing sensual in the business at all: it was a fight that she kept up, chafe his skin till she had to rest and warm him with her sweat and do it again till finally either she was chilled or he was warm as she was. She gave a great sigh when she realized that; she put her arms about that human warmth and snuggled in without a twinge of guilt.

So she would dream about him after he had gone into the water and fish swam in and out the sockets of his eyes and picked the last little memory out of his brain who he had been, or why he had died; but he would not haunt her for it. Her mother had, for a while; until she came in a dream and cursed her gently the way she had when she snuffled over the kittens. Damn fool, Altair. Damn fool. Everything dies. Old Det gets it all. Love life and cuss death and be as good as you can.

She drew a great breath and gave a long sigh, relaxing further, inside as well as out. She made up memories for her bit of flotsam. He was a rich merchant's son, fallen on hard times. He had come downriver and met misfortune.

His father and his mother would send searchers. But they would be too late. They would find a trinket or two in the markets. His bones would He at the harbor bottom, under the keels of the moving ships. She would stand on the quay and watch the fine foreigners come ashore and she would hold the secret they wanted, a little canalrat would hold the secret all to herself and watch them in their fine clothes and their jewels offering rewards for the recovery of this rich man.

But he had come to her with never a thing, and she could not prove her claim to rescue. So there was no good to tell; and dangerous anyway, to meddle in the affairs of rich merchants. There would be the smugglers and the brigands and the gangs after the rich men left. Theywere the law on the river and in the harbor and in the canals of Merovingen. And the collection of fish-picked bones down there in the mire of the Det was already considerable. She had no wish to join them. Hence her silence.

Their ship would steam back upriver, the rich relatives uncomforted.

She held him close and let him sleep, so that the life would go out of him that gentle way the way it went out of drowning kittens and birds that fell in the winter ice, just quietly, on a breath. She would roll him overboard in the morning, slip, splash. Her secret. The closest secret almost-event in her life, when she had almostsaved a rich man's son and almosthad a lover.

Somewhen she fell asleep and woke in an unfamiliar tangle of male limbs. A gentle snoring had waked her. The snoring stopped. He had a hand on her breast—her knee was tucked up against him somewhere embarrassing. She held still. He shifted a leg and nestled closer there in the sightless black of the shelter, his head burrowed against her bare shoulder. Then she lay there with her heart pounding, thinking whether to get up or not to get up, and since she had to wonder about it, it seemed all too much effort to escape a man who was, well, if not dead, at least not in a way to make himself a nuisance by morning. He was only warm, and different, and temporarily all her own in a way no one but her mother had ever been.

Merovingen was out to take, that was all: body, soul, life and property if a woman was once fool enough to give up that line that said No; and fool enough ever to share that little portion of the world that a pole and a boathook and the habit of sleeping lightly could keep solitary and safe from men bent on mischief and murder.

So, well—once. Maybe once, for a few days when he got well, if he got well; and thenput him off somewhere. On her terms. And let him do what was natural for a man the gangs were after, which was get on the First boat up the

Det and keep going. Far away from Merovingen. So he would never talk, one way or the other. So he was a safe kind of lover. She mulled that over in her mind and came to that conclusion. He had no grudge against her. He had every motive to stay out of sight and let her get him to some destination; and if he looked like he had designs, well, then, she would pick that up: she was good at reading intentions. Then it was the boathook for him—or she would find out who his enemies were and give him to them if he looked to turn ugly. If he made any threat to take her boat.

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.