The Bird of the River by Kage Baker

closely a moment, and then dove under. After a moment the jet disappeared. A moment later Mrs. Riveter surfaced, holding up a black branch.
    "That was all it was," called Mr. Riveter. But Mrs. Riveter shook her head, swimming to the barge.
    "This is just what was breaking the surface," she said, laying the branch on deck. "The rest of it goes down a fathom to a bigger snag. An ugly one. The next flood will shift it if we don't get it now."
    "Seven hells." Mr. Riveter scratched his beard. "She was right, captain, sir."
    Captain Glass only nodded.

    "SO," SAID KRELAN AS HE RUMMAGED in his bag for clean clothes. "I understand you were quite the heroine today." Eliss, who was eating her dinner, lifted her head to stare at him.
    "What?"
    "He's talking about you seeing the snag nobody else thought was there," said Alder. It was so rare for Alder to say anything when Krelan was around that Eliss turned and stared at him too.
    "What? Who said I was a heroine?"
    "It's the talk of the galley," said Krelan. "I hear everything when I'm in there turning the spits. Mrs. Riveter says you're a natural spotter. Jeela Smith says you're another Sandgrind, though I haven't the faintest idea what that means. Mrs. Crucible says the gods send a good with every evil, and you're obviously the good that came with, er, something nasty I gather happened at Slate's Landing." He turned his back, pulled his tunic off over his head, and pulled on a clean one.
    "Oh." Eliss felt the wave of sorrow for Falena coming. She braced herself, as she would with a real wave, and it broke and passed away. When she knew she could reply calmly, she said: "That was when our mother died. And we found the body of somebody who'd been murdered."
    "Oh! I didn't know. I'm sorry." Krelan turned around, pulling his tunic down. "Was it somebody from Slate's Landing?"
    "No, it wasn't," said Alder coldly. "It was some rich boy from a city."
    Why are you so nasty to him ? Eliss wondered, glaring at her brother. To Krelan she said: "I guess he might have drifted down from the landing, but the priest asked around and he didn't seem to belong to anybody. Besides, he was a nobleman."
    "Really? How did they know?"
    "Well ..." Eliss thought about it. "He had on a big gold armband, shaped like a coiling snake. And some tattoos, not just gang tattoos but the kind some of the great houses wear. That was what I heard."
    "It should have been easy to identify him, then," said Krelan, folding up his grease-stained tunic.
    Eliss shrugged. "Maybe they did. I don't know."
    "And he can't have been murdered by thieves, or they'd have taken that gold armband."
    "Nobles kill each other all the time over nothing," said Alder. "You ought to know that. That's why you're hiding here, isn't it?"
    "Alder! That's rude!"
    "But too true," said Krelan, with a sad chuckle. "Er ... I don't suppose I could put my dirty clothes with yours, to be laundered?"

    THE MUSICIANS ALL MADE A POINT of bowing elaborately to Eliss the next day when she went aft to climb up to the mast platform, and struck up a tune she hadn't heard before. Salpin was already at the top, applauding her, when she climbed through. She ducked her head in embarrassment.
    "Why are they playing that?"
    "Why? That's Sandgrind's Fancy . They're playing it in your honor. Everybody's saying he must have been your grandfather, because you can read the river too."
    "I don't think he was," said Eliss. She wasn't sure how she ought to feel. Nobody had ever done anything in her honor before. "On the other hand ... you never know. At least, I don't."
    "What was your family?"
    "Poor people," said Eliss, looking down at the river. "They left Mama at the Divers' Motherhouse when she was five. She doesn't ... she didn't remember much about them, except they couldn't feed everybody so they had to give their children away. And she always said my father was a sailor she met in port, but his ship sank and he drowned."
    How threadbare and sad it sounded, the history of