The Skies Discrowned by Tim Powers

going?”
    A man stood up on the raft. He looked about forty, with brown hair beginning to go gray at the temples; he wore overalls with no shirt under them. “We’re farmers,” he said, “from the Goriot Valley.” The echoes of his own voice seemed to upset him, and he sat down again.
    “Where are you going?” repeated Frank.
    “To the Deptford Sea,” answered a woman from a heavily-loaded rowboat. “We can’t go overland because we don’t have travel permits.”
    “Give us the monkey,” called a boy perched on a log. “We don’t have food. Give us the monkey, at least.”
    “Yes, the monkey, give it to us,” came a shout from farther out in the river. In a moment the water-borne fugitives were chorusing madly: “The monkey!” “God save you for your gift of the monkey!” “My boy here hasn’t eaten! Throw the monkey to me!”
    Frank looked down at Bones, who squatted drunkenly on the stone coping of the window, blinking his eyes at the clamoring floaters. The monkey’s stomach was jerking up and down like an adam’s apple, and as Frank watched, the beast leaned forward and noisily vomited
vino bianco
into the water.
    “Give us the damned monkey! We’ll have it! You can’t keep it from us!” moaned and wailed the refugees. Frank leaned out and pulled the heavy shutters closed. He latched them, and then slid a bolt through the iron staples.
    “Let’s close up shop,” he said to Rutledge. “You were my last pupil of the day anyway.”
    They hung up the swords and jackets, blew out the lamps, and locked the front door behind them. The Rovzar Fencing School was in a fashionable understreet neighborhood, so they talked freely and left their swords in the scabbards as they walked. Spicy cooking smells wafted out of restaurant doors, and Frank was beginning to get hungry.
    “Have you paid off your bond to Orcrist yet?” Rutledge asked. “No,” Frank answered, “but with the money I’m making from the fencing classes, I should have it paid off in a month or so.”
    “You’ll be getting digs of your own then, I expect.”
    “Yes. I’ve been looking at apartments here in the Congreve district, and I think I could afford to live near the school, which would be handy.” They rounded a corner and found themselves facing four uniformed Transport policemen, each armed with a standard-issue rapier. Their faces showed tan in the lamplight, proof that they were new to understreet work. “Good evening, gentlemen,” grinned one of the Transports. “May I see your identification and employment cards?”
    “Since when have they been necessary for understreet citizens?” queried Rutledge with icy politeness.
    “Since Duke Costa signed a law saying so, weasel! Now trot ’em out or come along with us to the station.” Each policeman’s hand was on his sword hilt.
    Rutledge drew his sword with a salty curse. Frank and the four Transports followed suit simultaneously. One of the Transports lunged at Rutledge, who parried and jabbed the man in the wrist. Bones, terrified, leaped from the lord’s shoulder to the ground.
    “Nicely done!” called Frank to Rutledge as two of the Transports centered on him. He feinted ferociously at one, and the man retreated afull two steps. The other man aimed a beat at Frank’s blade, but Frank dropped his point to elude it and then gored the man deeply in the shoulder. The clanging and rasp of the swords rang up and down the street. Frank stole another glance at Rutledge and saw the lord thrusting furiously at one of his opponents.
    “Watch your weapon arm!” Frank shouted. “Hide behind your bell guard! Don’t be impatient!” Frank held his two men off by whirling his point in a continuous horizontal figure eight. It was dangerous, but it gained him a breathing space. After a few seconds the shoulder-wounded Transport got angry and ran at Frank in an ill-considered fleche attack; Frank stepped away from the blade and drove his point through the man’s neck.