Arthur Stuart knew he could do it. It was one of Alvin’s earliest lessons, but it was only on this trip that Arthur had finally understood what Alvin meant. About getting inside the metal. All this time, Arthur had thought it was something he could do by straining real hard with his mind. But it wasn’t like that at all. It was easy. Just a sort of turn of his mind. Kind of the way language worked for him. Getting the taste of the language on his tongue, and then trusting how it felt. Like knowing somehow that even though mano ended in o, it still needed la in front of it instead of el. He just knew how it ought to be.

  Back in Carthage City, he gave two bits to a man selling sweet bread, and the man was trying to get away with not giving him change. Instead of yelling at him—what good would that do, there on the levee, a half-Black boy yelling at a White man?—Arthur just thought about the coin he’d been holding in his hand all morning, how warm it was, how right it felt in his own hand. It was like he understood the metal of it, the way he understood the music of language. And thinking of it warm like that, he could see in his mind that it was getting warmer.

  He encouraged it, thought of it getting warmer and warmer, and all of a sudden the man cried out and started slapping at the pocket into which he’d dropped the quarter.

  It was burning him.

  He tried to get it out of his pocket, but it burned his fingers and finally he flung off his coat, flipped down his suspenders, and dropped his trousers, right in front of everybody. Tipped the coin out of his pocket onto the sidewalk, where it sizzled and made the wood start smoking.

  Then all the man could think about was the sore place on his leg where the coin had burned him. Arthur Stuart walked up to him, all the time thinking the coin cool again. He reached down and picked it up off the sidewalk. “Reckon you oughta give me my change,” he said.

  “You get away from me, you Black devil,” said the man. “You’re a wizard, that’s what you are. Cursing a man’s coin, that’s the same as thievin’ !”

  “That’s awful funny, coming from a man who charged me two bits for a five-cent hunk of bread.”

  Several passersby chimed in.

  “Trying to keep the boy’s quarter, was you?”

  “There’s laws against that, even if the boy is Black.”

  “Stealin’ from them as can’t fight back.”

  “Pull up your trousers, fool.”

  A little later, Arthur Stuart got change for his quarter and tried to give the man his nickel, but he wouldn’t let Arthur get near him.

  Well, I tried, thought Arthur. I’m not a thief.

  What I am is, I’m a maker.

  No great shakes at it like Alvin, but dadgummit, I thought a quarter hot and it dang near burned its way out of the man’s pocket.

  If I can do that, then I can learn to do it all, that’s what he thought, and that’s why he was feeling cocky tonight. Because he’d been practicing every day on anything metal he could get his hands on. Wouldn’t do no good to turn the iron hot enough to melt, of course—these slaves wouldn’t thank him if he burned their wrists and ankles up in the process of getting their chains off.

  No, his project was to make the metal soft without getting it hot. That was a lot harder than hetting it up. Lots of times he’d caught himself straining again, trying to push softness onto the metal. But when he relaxed into it again and got the feel of the metal into his head like a song, he gradually began to get the knack of it again. Turned his own belt buckle so soft he could bend it into any shape he wanted. Though after a few minutes he realized the shape he wanted it in was like a belt buckle, since he still needed it to hold his pants up.

  Brass was easier than iron, since it was softer in the first place. And it’s not like Arthur Stuart was fast. He’d seen Alvin turn a gun barrel soft while a man was in the process of shooting it at him, that’s how quick he was. But Arthur Stuart had to ponder on it first. Twenty-five slaves, each with an iron band at his ankle and another at his wrist. He had to make sure they all waited till the last one was free. If any of them bolted early, they’d all be caught.

  Course, he could ask Alvin to help him. But he already had Alvin’s answer. Leave ’em slaves, that’s what Alvin had decided. But Arthur wouldn’t do it. These men were in his hands. He was a maker now, after his own fashion, and it was up to him to decide for himself when it was right to act and right to let be. He couldn’t do what Alvin did, healing folks and getting animals to do his bidding and turning water into glass. But he could soften iron, by damn, and so he’d set these men free.

  Tomorrow night.

  Next morning they passed from the Hio into the Mizzippy, and for the first time in years Alvin got a look at Tenskwa-Tawa’s fog on the river.

  It was like moving into a wall. Sunny sky, not a cloud, and when you looked ahead it really didn’t look like much, just a little mist on the river. But all of a sudden you couldn’t see more than a hundred yards ahead of you—and that was only if you were headed up or down the river. If you kept going straight across to the right bank, it was like you went blind, you couldn’t even see the front of your own boat.

  It was the fence that Tenskwa Tawa had built to protect the Reds who moved west after the failure of Ta-Kumsaw’s war. All the Reds who didn’t want to live under White man’s law, all the Reds who were done with war, they crossed over the water into the west, and then Tenskwa Tawa . . . closed the door behind them.

  Alvin had heard tales of the west from trappers who used to go there. They talked of mountains so sharp with stone, so rugged and high that they had snow on them clear into June. Places where the ground itself spat hot water fifty feet into the sky, or higher. Herds of buffalo so big they could pass by you all day and night, and next morning it still looked like there was just as many as yesterday. Grassland and desert, pine forest and lakes like jewels nestled among mountains so high that if you climbed to the top you ran out of air.

  And all that was now Red land, where Whites would never go again. That’s what this fog was all about.

  Except for Alvin. He knew that if he wanted to, he could dispel that fog and cross over. Not only that, but he wouldn’t be killed, neither. Tenskwa Tawa had said so, and there’d be no Red man who’d go against the Prophet’s law.

  A part of him wanted to put to shore, wait for the riverboat to move on, and then get him a canoe and paddle across the river and look for his old friend and teacher. It would be good to talk to him about all that was going on in the world. About the rumors of war coming, between the United States and the Crown Colonies—or maybe between the free states and slave states within the U.S.A. About rumors of war with Spain to get control of the mouth of the Mizzippy, or war between the Crown Colonies and England.

  And now this rumor of war with the Mexica. What would Tenskwa Tawa make of that? Maybe he had troubles of his own—maybe he was working even now to make an alliance of Reds to head south and defend their lands against men who dragged their captives to the tops of their ziggurats and tore their hearts out to satisfy their god.

  Anyway, that’s the kind of thing going through Alvin’s mind as he leaned on the rail on the right side of the boat—the stabberd side, that was, though why boatmen should have different words for right and left made no sense to him. He was just standing there looking out into the fog and seeing no more than any other man, when he noticed something, not with his eyes, but with that inward vision that saw heartfires.

  There was a couple of men out on the water, right out in the middle where they wouldn’t be able to tell up from down. Spinning round and round, they were, and scared. It took only a moment to get the sense of it. Two men on a raft, only they didn’t have drags under the raft and had it loaded front-heavy. Not boatmen, then. Had to be a homemade raft, and when their tiller broke they didn’t know how to get the raft to keep its head straight downriver. At the mercy of the current, that’s what, and no way of knowing what was happening five feet away.

  Though it wasn’t as if the Yazoo Queen was quiet. Still, fog had a way of damping down sounds. And even if they heard the riverboat, would they know what the sound was? To terrified men, it might sound like some kind of monster moving along the river.

  Well, what could Alvin do about it? How could he claim to see what no one else could make out? And the flow of the river was too strong and complicated for him to get control of it, to steer the raft closer.

  Time for some lying. Alvin turned around and shouted. “Did you hear that? Did you see them? Raft out of control on the river! Men on a raft, they were calling for help, spinning around out there!”

  In no time the pilot and captain both were leaning over the rail of the pilot’s deck. “I don’t see a thing!” shouted the pilot.

  “Not now,” said Alvin. “But I saw ’em plain just a second ago, they’re not far.”

  Captain Howard could see the drift of things and he didn’t like it. “I’m not taking the Yazoo Queen any deeper into this fog than she already is! No sir! They’ll fetch up on the bank farther downriver, it’s no business of ours!”

  “Law of the river!” shouted Alvin. “Men in distress!”

  That gave the pilot pause. It was the law. You had to give aid.

  “I don’t see no men in distress!” shouted Captain Howard.

  “So don’t turn the big boat,” said Alvin. “Let me take that little rowboat and I’ll go fetch ’em.”

  Captain didn’t like that either, but the pilot was a decent man and pretty soon Alvin was in the water with his hands on the oars.

  But before he could fair get away, there was Arthur Stuart, leaping over the gap and sprawling into the little boat. “That was about as clumsy a move as I ever saw,” said Alvin.

  “I ain’t gonna miss this,” said Arthur Stuart.

  There was another man at the rail, hailing him. “Don’t be in such a hurry, Mr. Smith!” shouted Jim Bowie. “Two strong men is better than one on a job like this!” And then he, too, was leaping—a fair job of it, too, considering he must be at least ten years older than Alvin and a good twenty years older than Arthur Stuart. But when he landed, there was no sprawl about it, and Alvin wondered what this man’s knack was. He had supposed it was killing, but maybe the killing was just a sideline. The man fair to flew.

  So there they were, each of them at a set of oars while Arthur Stuart sat in the stern and kept his eye peeled.

  “How far are they?” he kept asking.

  “The current might of took them farther out,” said Alvin. “But they’re there.”

  And when Arthur started looking downright skeptical, Alvin fixed him with such a glare that Arthur Stuart finally got it. “I think I see ’em,” he said, giving Alvin’s lie a boost.

  “You ain’t trying to cross this whole river and get us kilt by Reds,” said Jim Bowie.

  “No sir,” said Alvin. “Got no such plan. I saw those boys, plain as day, and I don’t want their death on my conscience.”

  “Well where are they now?”

  Of course Alvin knew, and he was rowing toward them as best he could. Trouble was that Jim Bowie didn’t know where they were, and he was rowing too, only not quite in the same direction as Alvin. And seeing as how both of them had their backs to where the raft was, Alvin couldn’t even pretend to see them. He could only try to row stronger than Bowie in the direction he wanted to go.

  Until Arthur Stuart rolled his eyes and said, “Would you two just stop pretending that anybody believes anybody, and row in the right direction?”

  Bowie laughed. Alvin sighed.

  “You didn’t see nothin’,” said Bowie. “Cause I was watching you looking out into the fog.”

  “Which is why you came along.”

  “Had to find out what you wanted to do with this boat.”

  “I want to rescue two lads on a flatboat that’s spinning out of control on the current.”

  “You mean that’s true?”

  Alvin nodded, and Bowie laughed again. “Well I’m jiggered.”

  “That’s between you and your jig,” said Alvin. “More downstream, please.”

  “So what’s your knack, man?” said Bowie. “Seeing through fog?”

  “Looks like, don’t it?”

  “I think not,” said Bowie. “I think there’s a lot more to you than meets the eye.”

  Arthur Stuart looked Alvin’s massive blacksmith’s body up and down. “Is that possible?”

  “And you’re no slave,” said Bowie.

  There was no laugh when he said that. That was dangerous for any man to know.

  “Am so,” said Arthur Stuart.

  “No slave would answer back like that, you poor fool,” said Bowie. “You got such a mouth on you, there’s no way you ever had a taste of the lash.”

  “Oh, it’s a good idea for you to come with me on this trip,” said Alvin.

  “Don’t worry,” said Bowie. “I got secrets of my own. I can keep yours.”

  Can—but will you? “Not much of a secret,” said Alvin. “I’ll just have to take him back north and come down later on another steamboat.”

  “Your arms and shoulders tell me you really are a smith,” said Bowie. “But. Ain’t no smith alive can look at a knife in its sheath and say it used to be a file.”

  “I’m good at what I do,” said Alvin.

  “Alvin Smith. You really ought to start traveling under another name.”

  “Why?”

  “You’re the smith what killed a couple of Finders a few years back.”

  “Finders who murdered my wife’s mother.”

  “Oh, no jury would convict you,” said Bowie. “No more than I got convicted for my killing. Looks to me like we got a lot in common.”

  “Less than you might think.”

  “Same Alvin Smith who absconded from his master with a particular item.”

  “A lie,” said Alvin. “And he knows it.”

  “Oh, I’m sure it is. But so the story goes.”

  “You can’t believe these tales.”

  “Oh, I know,” said Bowie. “You aren’t slacking off on your rowing, are you?”

  “I’m not sure I want to overtake that raft while we’re still having this conversation.”

  “I was just telling you, in my own quiet way, that I think I know what you got in that sack of yours. Some powerful knack you got, if the rumors are true.”

  “What do they say, that I can fly?”

  “You can turn iron to gold, they say.”

  “Wouldn’t that be nice,” said Alvin.

  “But you didn’t deny it, did you?”

  “I can’t make iron into anything but horseshoes and hinges.”

  “You did it once, though, didn’t you?”

  “No sir,” said Alvin. “I told you those stories were lies.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “Then you’re calling me a liar, sir,” said Alvin.

  “Oh, you’re not going to take offense, are you? Because I have a way of winning all my duels.”

  Alvin didn’t answer, and Bowie looked long and hard at Arthur Stuart. “Ah,” said Bowie. “That’s the way of it.”

  “What?” said Arthur Stuart.

  “You ain’t askeered of me,” said Bowie, exaggerating his accent.

  “Am so,” said Arthur Stuart.

  “You’re scared of what I know, but you ain’t a-scared of me taking down your ‘master’ in a duel.”

  “Terrified,” said Arthur Stuart.

  It was only a split second, but there were Bowie’s oars a-dangling, and his knife out of its sheath and his body twisted around with his knife right at Alvin’s throat.

  Except that it wasn’t a knife anymore. Just a handle.

  The smile left Bowie’s face pretty slow when he realized that his precious knife-made-from-a-file no longer had any iron in it.

  “What did you do?” he asked.

  “That’s a pretty funny question,” said Alvin, “coming from a man who meant to kill me.”

  “Meant to scare you is all,” said Bowie. “You didn’t have to do that to my knife.”

  “I got no knack for knowing a man’s intentions,” said Alvin. “Now turn around and row.”

  Bowie turned around and took hold of the oars again. “That knife was my luck.”

  “Then I reckon you just run out of it,” said Alvin.

  Arthur Stuart shook his head. “You oughta take more care about who you draw against, Mr. Bowie.”

  “You’re the man we want,” said Bowie. “That’s all I wanted to say. Didn’t have to wreck my knife.”

  “Next time you look to get a man on your team,” said Alvin, “don’t draw a knife on him.”

  “And don’t threaten to tell his secrets,” said Arthur Stuart.

  And now, for the first time, Bowie looked more worried than peeved. “Now, I never said I knew your secrets. I just had some guesses, that’s all.”

  “Well, Arthur Stuart, Mr. Bowie just noticed he’s out here in the middle of the river, in the fog, on a dangerous rescue mission, with a couple of people whose secrets he threatened to tell.”

  “It’s a position to give a man pause,” said Arthur Stuart.

  “I won’t go out of this boat without a struggle,” said Bowie.

  “I don’t plan to hurt you,” said Alvin. “Because we’re not alike, you and me. I killed a man once, in grief and rage, and I’ve regretted it ever since.”

  “Me too,” said Bowie.

  “It’s the proudest moment of your life. You saved the weapon and called it your luck. We’re not alike at all.”

  “I reckon not.”

  “And if I want you dead,” said Alvin, “I don’t have to throw you out of no boat.”

  Bowie nodded. And then took his hands off the oar. His hands began to flutter around his cheeks, around his mouth.

  “Can’t breathe, can you?” said Alvin. “Nobody’s blocking you. Just do it, man. Breathe in, breathe out. You been doing it all your life.”

  It wasn’t like Bowie was choking. He just couldn’t get his body to do his will.

  Alvin didn’t keep it going till the man turned blue or nothing. Just long enough for Bowie to feel real helpless. And then he remembered how to breathe, just like that, and sucked in the air.