When what he had was gone, it could not easily be renewed.

The carriage gone, the money in hand. Patience-still looking for all the world like a cocky young man-took Sken with her to buy a boat. Sken was a riverwoman, after all; who else could judge a boat's fitness for their upstream voyage? ;

"Not that one," said Sken, time after time. Too small, too deep a draft, in bad condition, doomed to sink, not enough sail for upriver travel, too hard to steer-reason after reason to reject boat after boat.

"You're too picky," said Patience. "I'm not planning to live the rest of my life on it."

"If you buy the wrong boat," said Sken, "that's exactly what you'll do."

As they walked the bustling wharf, Patience noticed that the boats were all being sold or hired out by humans.

"It was a gebling who bought our carriage," she said.

"Don't they travel by water?"

"Don't ask me about goblins," said Sken. "I hope those two don't travel by boat."

"They saved a life that's dear to me," said Patience.

"And if they do sail with us, I hope they remember who's captain of the ship."

"I'm captain of the ship," said Patience.

"Not any ship Til sail on, nor any sane person neither," said Sken. "You've got the money, that makes you owner. I've got the know-how, and that makes me captain."

"Supreme authority?"

"Not quite."

"Oh? Who's higher than the captain?"

It wasn't Sken who answered. The voice came from Patience's other side, and it belonged to a man. "Pilot!" he said.

Patience turned-and saw no one, just a monkey jumping up and down as it pumped at a bellows. The bellows was connected to a tube that ran down into a thick glass jar, then up into the windpipe of a head whose eyes just peered over the top.

"Pilot?" asked Patience.

Sken had not yet turned. "Yes, a pilot. Someone who knows the river. Every river is different, and different from year to year, as well." Then she saw the one who had spoken, the head perched in a thick glass jar. Sken wrinkled up her face. "A dead one," she said. "Lot of good he'll do."

"Been up and down Cranwater every one of the last two hundred years," said the head.

"Heads don't learn," said Patience. "Heads don't pay attention, and they forget too quickly."

The monkey kept jumping up and down. It was distracting.

"I pay attention," said the pilot's head. "I know this river. Some pilots, the river's like an enemy, they wrestle it up and down. Some, it's like a god, they worship, they pray, they curse. Some, it's a whore for them, they think they're in charge but she plays them for fools.

Some, it's a lover, a wife, a family, they live and die for it. But me-"

"Come along, young sir," said Sken. But Patience stayed to listen.

"For me, the Cranwater's not like anything else. This river is myself. That's my name, River, as God gave it to me that's my name, the stream is my body, my arms, my legs."

The monkey stopped to pick a louse. The head grinned, but because the mouth was lower than the lip of the jar, the thick glass transformed the smile into a hideous leer.

The monkey tasted the louse, swallowed, and went back to work. Again the breath came through the pilot's throat.

"My boat's good," said River.

"Your boat's a rotten old canoe," said Sken.

"So. You're the captain, you get a good boat, but you come back and buy me for pilot."

"We'll get a live pilot, thanks all the same," said Sken.

"That's right, walk away, you've got legs, you can just walk off, what's that to you?"

A hawk swooped low, circled, came back and landed on a small platform atop the pole where River hung. It held a squirming rat in one talon. It raked open the belly, spattering blood, snatched the guts into its beak, then dropped the rest of the carcass into River's jar. The jar lurched as the gools and headworms attached themselves and fed.

"Pardon my lunch," said River. "As you see, I'm a self-contained system. You don't have to feed me, though I'm glad if you can keep my jar full of Cranwater, and it's nice if you now and then wash my jar. Monkey's apt to smear it with a bit of his stuff."

"Where's your owner?" asked Patience.

Sken was irate. "You're not thinking of-"

"Go buy a boat, Sken. You have fifteen minutes.

Choose the best, and I'll come negotiate the price."

"I won't have this thing as pilot!"

"If Ruin and Reck have to put up with you as ship's captain, you'll learn to live with River as pilot. Weren't you the one said the pilot was most important?"

"You're enjoying this," said Sken. "You're making sport, and I thought we were friends."

"You're not making a mistake, young master," said River. "A pilot has to know the sandbars, the currents, the fast places, the slow places, the shallow channels, the spring rises, I know them all, I'll get you through, provided you do as I tell you, up to and including that Queen of Grease you have with you, what do you do, harvest her sweat and sell it as lamp oil downriver?"

Patience laughed. Sken did not.

"Buy the boat," said Patience. "I want this pilot, for reasons that are good enough."

River cheered her on. "For reasons of wisdom, for reasons of-"

"Shut up," said Sken to River. Then to Patience:

"Young sir, you don't know this man-"

"I know from how his face has aged and cracked that he's at least two centuries, in hard sunlight and bad weather much of the time,"

"Ah, it's the truth, the torture of my life written on my face," said River.

"So he's old," said Sken.

"He's been a head at least a century," said Patience.

"Plying the river all that time. And in those many voyages, he's never failed a customer. He's never broken up a boat on a sandbar or a rock."

"How do you know that?" Sken demanded.

"Because the young master's got the spirit of discernment of truth in him," said River.

"Because he's here," said Patience. "If he'd ever let an owner down, his jar would have been broken, and he would have been poured out into the river long ago."

Sken glared, but had no answer. So she went farther along the dock, examining all the boats with an even more skeptical eye.

"You've got wisdom," said River. "I hope that among the hundred sons I conceived when I could still do the mattress hornpipe, there's one as well-favored and intelligent and-"

"And rich."

"As your most gracious self. Though I could wish a son of mine might have more of a beard on him."

"As he would no doubt wish his father to have more limbs."

River giggled, an artificial-sounding laugh because it all came from his mouth. There could be no belly laugh, with the monkey pumping the bellows with the same steady rhythm. "Ay, there's something lacking on both of us, I can't deny it."

"When will your owner come back?" asked Patience.

"When I send the monkey to fetch him."

"Then send."

"And miss out on conversation with such a likely young man? I buggered a few as fair as you in my time, I'll have you know, and they thanked me afterward."

"As I'll thank you for mislaying your practical buggery tools before we met."

River winked. "Nothing shocks you, does it?"

"Nothing that lives in a jar, anyway," said Patience.

"Send the monkey. If you want to talk, I can read your lips."

River made three sharp kissing noises. Patience realized that it was a sound he could make without the bellows. The monkey immediately dropped the bellows and clambered around to perch on the lip of the jar, pressing his forehead against River's. A few more chirping sounds, tongue clicks, lip pops, and the monkey dropped to the wooden dock and ran off through the crowd.

River made a single clicking sound, and the hawk took off and flew away.

Patience stood, reading his lips as he made jokes, told stories, and studied her with his eyes. All the while, Patience felt Unwyrm calling her. Come faster, I need you, you love me, I'll have you. Not in words, it was never words, it was just the need. Fly to me now.