Chapter 14 – Flotilla

On their way there, Mas elicited quite a lot of information from his new companion, Geema. She was a first timer at crime: she had a litter of pups to bring up and her brother had taught her the old bandit technique. Her mother was drinking any money their tiny boat made from fishing and right now, she was supposed to be minding the pups while fishing was taking place. Her brother down one passage, she down another. It sounded to Mas like a precarious existence.

“What would you have done if you’d killed me?” he said.

“Dunno,” said Geema. “Not got that far. Clean up I guess.”

The paddle made that reassuring sploosh-gloop noise that only paddling a canoe seemed to make. He even found the water dribbling down his arms and the ache in his lower back comforting.

“It changes you, you know.”

“What does?”

“Taking a life.”

“So?”

“Don’t do it lightly. A little bit of your life gets left behind in everyone that you end.”

“You sound like you’re speaking from experience.”

“Trust me,” said Mas.

“We’re not far now. I can smell fish soup!”

“Sounds like lunch to me.”

“I’m hungry,” said Geema.

“When did you last eat?”

“Dunno. Coupla spans I guess?”

Mas sighed. They rounded a bend in the pipe and as the curve wound itself straight again, Mas picked up a mass ahead of them: a barricade.

“What’s the story here then?” he asked.

“New gateway to the flotilla. It’s in the Stacks this time, so there’s lots of ways in, very difficult to guard. They pile lots of the smaller pipes with junk.”

“What do we do? Move it?”

“No. It’d collapse on us. It’s stacked so it’ll fall out if we move it. There should be a bell over our heads in the middle of the pipe. Ding it and wait.”

Sure enough, at the apex of the pipe over the barricade was a hanging piece of something metal. Mas whacked it with the end of his paddle. It made a dink noise. He wondered if that would be loud enough to attract anyone. He didn’t wonder for long.

“Who’s fishing here?” A standard River-folk hail, from a young impatient voice.

“Geema Flatboat, let us in Vemin, you idiot.”

“Who’s your friend?”

“Someone I found in my net.”

Mas laughed sharply.

“Well nearly,” she added.

“This your brother?” said Mas.

“What’s it to you?” said Vemin

“Tetchy,” said Mas, “I have made friends with your sister here.”

“Why?” said Vemin.

“I find it better than making enemies.”

“Just open the barrier, moron,” said Geema.

Vemin started the process of dismantling from the far side. Very little needed to be removed before there was a passage through the junk. They’d have to duck, but Mas couldn’t help marveling at the construction, easily put up and removed from the defensive side, but tricky and noisy from the other.

“The Stacks is somewhere I’m not familiar with,” said Mas.

“Gods, you have been away ages. They found it after a battle between the Pikefish and the Bottom-feeders. Stray harpoons punched a hole in a wall that wasn’t real stone. Some kind of ‘found’ material. It broke down really easily and the other side was the Stacks. Useful place. Enough space for a whole Flotilla if everyone turns up, lots of easy mooring, but not easy to defend now we’ve explored it and knocked through the rest of the walls.”

Vemin was as quick sealing the gap in the barrier, as he’d been opening it. He climbed down and into a tiny barrel coracle, which he paddled with his hands. “This way,” he said.

“How are the pups?” said Geema.

“Noisy,” said Vemin over his shoulder.

“And Mother?”

“Yeah, she is too.”

Geema huffed and turned back to Mas, they could all hear the noise and smell of the massive gathering building slowly in the passage. “You never said why you were here.”

“I don’t recall you asking,” said Mas.

“Well I’m asking now,” she said.

“Oddly, I’m coming home to meet my mother.”

The smell of the fish soup allowed Geema to guide them to the nearest mooring pillar in the Stacks. The Air-sense feel of the place was curious: a water-filled cavern, but with spindles of varying heights protruding from the surface, some all the way to the roof, some hardly breaching the water. Mas pulled the bow of the boat up to the pillar and tied off his rope. The pillar was wooden and carved with grotesque faces, geometric figures, some words. It had been worked on by many hands, some obviously talented, some not. The rear of the canoe was steered by Vemin, to be tied to the back of a sailboat next to them. That, in turn, was tied to the mass of the Flotilla. Vemin hopped up and offered a hand: “Welcome to the Flotilla, I believe you offered to buy lunch.”

Walking on the Flotilla was an acquired skill, and Mas was decidedly rusty. Too long spent ashore, anyone here would’ve told him. The collection of flatboats and canoes and punts, suddenly giving way to sailboats or even war-cutters and frigates. Gangplanks and cargo-nets, swings and slideways provided the thoroughfares between the vessels, and nowhere felt level. Mas had left the two to find their own vessel. He’d also hidden two tally sticks in the girl’s pocket. She could always pretend she’d stolen them from him if she needed to. And Geema turned out to be right, the soup was really worth waiting for. Odd how fish soup never sounded that exciting, but sometimes, just sometimes…

The buzz on the rafts was all about the end of the war of the Overfolk and the start of a ‘republic’, whatever one of those was. It required a single representative from each tribe of Folk and it seemed the heads of all the families were meeting in the middle of the flotilla. If his mother was anywhere, as the sole living member of the family they’d once been, that was where she’d be.