The jetty leaned over the channel like a broken ladder. Its lowest beam cleared the water by scarcely the height of a sitting person.
Sorell brought them alongside. “Everyone off who can walk. We pull her under.”
There was a strip of mud beside the posts, no wider than Selka's foot. Darr took the prisoners along it. Kerr and one of the escorts helped the man who had been carried from the enclosure; Kerr kept his sound leg toward the channel and used the posts to steady himself. Anet stayed seated. So did Ruun.
Even emptied of most of its passengers, the boat rode low. Beneath the jetty a ridge of silt crossed the channel; the loaded keel pressed into it, stopping them short of the lowest beam.
“That goes too,” Sorell said, pointing at the stone.
Ruun's hand closed.
Selka climbed into the bow. Footsteps and voices came faintly through the reeds behind them. The pursuers were finding the bend.
“We can't pull it under,” she said in tide tongue.
“Break the beam.”
“And drop the jetty on us?”
It looked toward the tilted posts. She waited for it to offer a tide, then remembered the open wound and the failed pole.
“We can drag it ashore.”
“And take it later.”
“Not with us.”
Ruun stared at the stone. Its intact fingers traced the boat, going over the deep-cut bow and along the shallower stern. Someone had carved that awkwardly, the line wavering where a damaged hand might have slipped.
“He sat there,” it said. “When he worked. Not on the other step. He thought this one was less wet.”
Selka saw sunlight on the temple entrance, a man turning a plank over his crooked hands. She wondered how many times the god had heard him complain about being damp.
“Was it?”
“I moved the water.”
She almost smiled. The god did not.
“There's a dry place under that broken stair,” she said. “We can put it there.”
“You do not understand.”
“No.”
Anet shifted behind her, making the mouthpiece rattle against the box. Ruun looked over Selka's shoulder. The girl was frightened and trying to look annoyed instead. She had one hand on the bench and the other pressed against her dim pendant.
The god took its hand off the stone.
They got a rope around it. Darr and two prisoners hauled from shore while Selka pushed. For one terrible instant the weight dragged the boat toward the mud, tipping water over the side. Ruun bent forward. The channel lifted beneath the bow just enough to let the stone slide onto the bank.
It landed with a dull thud.
Selka jumped ashore and helped the men turn it upright beneath the old stair. The carved boat faced the channel. Reeds would cover it when the tide changed. Someone else might find it, or no one would.
She returned to Ruun. Its palm lay open on the vacant boards.
“Thank you.”
“Do not.”
The boat scraped under the jetty. Sorell and Iven lay flat, guiding it by the posts. Selka pressed herself beside Ruun, her cheek almost against its ribs. The lowest beam passed so close that it dragged a thread from her coat.
Beyond the jetty the channel joined a deeper reach. They took the passengers aboard and raised the small sail. The bank voices faded behind them.
Ruun stood for a moment at the stern, looking back. Selka stood beside it, without speaking.
“I could have brought the water over this whole place,” it said.
“Before.”
“You keep saying that.”
“You keep remembering it.”
Its head turned toward her. She thought she had angered it beyond any right she had to speak. Then a short rough sound came from its throat.
It might have been a laugh. It might have hurt.
They turned away from the old mouth toward the upriver passage. Without the stone the boat answered Sorell's hand more readily. Selka hated noticing that.