Her stomach wrenched over.

  "Little matter of a fire," Moghi said. "Little matter of a barge done took out Mars Bridge and sunk in the Port, that's all. Was you there?"

  "You know we were. I want my boat, Moghi. I want everything you know might be stirring uptown."

  "Dammit, they arrested the Gallandrys and somebody broke into Boregy and Malvino while the fire was going on. Killed three people in Boregy and one in Malvino. My porch. My porch. Now this can get expensive, Jones."

  "Took me a while to think what to do. Man can take care of himself, Moghi, man ain't no fool. Neither am I."

  "Going to be expensive."

  "I figured."

  "You got a down-payment here." The sol made another turn in his thick fingers. "And, Jones, I'm a sentimental man. I'd really hate for you to make a mistake."

  "Hey, if I'm wrong you tell me and we'll talk about it."

  "If you're wrong," Moghi said, "just one way you'll find it out. You ain't running brandy barrels now, Jones. You ain't my employee anymore, you're talking a whole different kind of business. You're talking big fees. Gang business. You're in it, now, Jones, Me, I just sell beer and rent rooms. People make me trouble they don't come back here." He leaned back and slipped the coin into his pocket. "I hear a lot of things. I might find that boat of yours."

  "Let gran Fahd be. Something happens to her, somebody'd remember I was on her boat. Somebody might pay attention to things she said."

  "That was real sloppy, that"

  "Best of bad choices. I told you, didn't I?"

  "Jones, if you hadn't I'd have been real upset."

  "I knew that too."

  Moghi nodded slowly, chins doubling. "Like I said, a down payment. You go enjoy that room."

  "In private."

  Moghi grinned, a showing of teeth. "Private. Seeing it's you."

  It was up the stairs again, tired, Lord, and with a limp in her step and an ache in her ribs and her shoulders and her arm and between her eyes.

  Fool. Damnfool.

  What else could I do? Moghi'd kill him.

  Don't want him anymore. But Moghi'd kill him. One damn more enemy he doesn't need.

  Boregy being hit—somebody knew. And Moghi—he always knows more than he says, maybe he already knew I picked up somebody out there t'other night, he's already been asking round, knows about strangers after him, O Lord and my ancestors, what am I going to do?

  Where's my boat? Dammit, where's my boat? Nobody's seen Del, nobody seen him or my boat—

  The door to the Room opened as she came up into the hall. Mondragon stood at the top of the steps, all worried-looking.

  Just stood there in his bathrobe, not saying a word.

  Knows better, he does.

  Her heart hurt. She avoided his eyes as she topped the steps and walked past him into the door he held open, went and sat down at the table where the cold breakfast waited.

  He closed the door and pulled it till the latch clicked. She ate cold toast and never looked up as he walked over and sat down on the side of the bed, arms on knees.

  Damn, it's friends of his got arrested and killed. I got to tell him about the Gallandrys and Boregy and all. Me. I made another damn mess down there and how do I tell somebody that kind of news, and him mad at me?

  The toast made a cold lump in her throat- She washed it down with lukewarm tea. "I heard," she said, and looked his way, "the law took a bunch of people at Gallandry. Somebody else broke into Boregy and killed some people. Malvino too. Heard it from Moghi."

  The muscles knotted up in his jaw. He breathed a little faster. That was all. "Moghi owns this place."

  "Moghi owns this place." She took another sip of cold tea and slopped it; her hands shook. "I hunted that whole damn canalside trying to find my boat. Moghi's people are going to look. He knows about the barge. About us and Gallandry. About folk throwing you off the bridge. Knows you're uptowner and somebody with money wants you bad. Says there's been questions asked about a blond man. Strangers asking. I got Moghi to say he'd let us have this room; Moghi's—got Jots of people. Lot of others are afraid of him."

  "Trust him?"

  "We got no choice." Her voice was all hoarse. She took up the toast again and dropped it in listless disgust. "I got you here. Dammit, I knew it was going crazy last night, knew I had to get to somewhere, damn lucky it wasn't Boregy."

  He stood up, leaned next her ear. "Who's listening?" he asked, faintest of whispers against her hair. "Nobody. Moghi said. "That's truth." He straightened and leaned his hands on the table. Worried. Lord, not a shout, not a word of blame. He laid a gentle hand on her shoulder, then walked a few steps off, stood with his back to her and his arms folded.

  She ate at the cold toast, bite after bite. Finally he came back and sat down on the side of the bed, one knee tucked up into his arms.

  "I wanted you out of this," he said, all quiet. "Jones, you were right, all the way."

  She swallowed hard and a bite forced its way down past a knot in her throat. Her eyes stung. She drank the tea, then got up and went and opened the cabinet where the brandy was, and the glasses. She unstopped the decanter and poured a bit.

  She stood there with her back to him to drink a sip. That took the knot out.

  Damn him. Damn it all.

  Manners, Jones. Man's trying.

  She poured the other glass and walked back and gave it to him. He took it and she never looked him quite in the eyes. She just walked away with a pain in her chest that hurt like a knife.

  Memory of a pale body hurtling through the dark.

  Through the sun into the harbor water, splash scattering like glass beads in the light.

  Him standing there all elegant in Gallandry lamplight, russet velvet and lace, sword at his side.

  She turned around finally when she heard the bedsprings give. He had put the glass down on the table. Had gotten up to turn down his side of the bed.

  He slipped the robe off and got in and drew the covers up over his shoulder and his head, leaving her the light.

  She took a mouthful of brandy and swallowed it down till her eyes stung. Not a stir out of him, not a word.

  She drank another half glass, then stripped off her sweater and took the remaining sol and put it in her shoe, there by the bed. She unbuttoned the trousers and kicked them elsewhere.

  She lit the nightwick at the side of the lamp, then blew out the top light and got into bed on her side.

  She edged over after a moment. Edged over again until she came up against him. His muscles stayed tense when she put an arm over him.

  She let go a sigh and lay there and hurt, inside and out, till sleep came closer, till maybe at the edge of his own sleep he turned over and put an arm about her. Better, better. She gave a great sigh and shifted. There was a moment of moving about and fitting limbs and limbs and wincing, her with sore arms and him with a sore back, until finally she found herself comfortable and her skull throbbing away in a dull dark daze that went down and down toward nothing at all.

  "You went to sleep on me," he said into her ear when she came to, and she mumbled and shifted sore muscles and almost went to sleep again until his hands got her attention,

  "Damn," she said, remembering she was not speaking to him. And then remembering she was, confused in the middle of the night. Moghi's. A gold piece in the toe of her shoe and her boat missing and herself with a lover hi the second shore-bound unmoving room in a day. "Damn."

  "What's wrong?"

  "Wrong?" She thought about it and laughed. The laugh got crazier, at an indelicate time. "What's wrong?" She gasped after breath. Laughed again till it hurt and she ran out of breath with the tears dampening her eyes. "Damn, they're going to kill us."

  "Jones?"

  "Wrong," was all she could manage, with another hysterical wheeze. Till he got her stopped, and she lay with her ribs and her gut hurting. "Oh, Lord, Lord."

  They held onto each other. Like two drowners headed for the bottom. Down into the dark, dark nowhere. "Jones," he murmured. "Jones, are you all right?"

  "Don't—don't make me laugh again."

  "I'm not. I'm not." His hands traveled over her, absent-like.

  Her own moved. A while. She ran out of momentum, and lay still against his arm. "Jones," he said, waking her up. "You awake?"

  "Uuuhhn," she said. And thought back to the harbor. To waking on the deck. The room seemed to move a moment. To the lamplit room, the brass tub. Mondragon with the glass in his hand. Wine red as blood. Mondragon with his face in lampshadow, drinking and brooding, full of thoughts. Older. Deeper and darker. Old as sins and lies. She felt a fall at the edge of sleep and blinked into a stranger's face, at Mondragon with the nightlamp turning his hair to lamp-fire. For a moment her heart sped, a rush of panic and waking.

  Damn, who is he? What is he? What'm I doing in bed with him?

  What do I know about him?

  "What are you looking at?" he asked.

  "Dunno." Her heart still beat, nightmare panic. What're you looking at?"

  He brushed the hair back from her ear. Did it twice and it fell back. He gave her no answer. The silence pounded in her chest, painful as grief and fear.

  "You're shivering. Jones, are you all right?"

  "I'm all right."

  He pulled her close, burrowed his head next her ear.

  She shivered the worse.

  Damn. I never get him and me in the same mood at once.

  Image of Mondragon edging across the deck in the morning light. Backward.

  He just wants me to get him to his friends. Thinks he has to make love to me. Thinks that's what it costs.

  Man with the cat for sale. Come be nice, I give 'er to ye.

  What's a man pay for his life?

  "You don't have to."

  "What?"

  "Be nice to me. You don't have to do it if you don't want."

  Things stopped in full career. "Did I ever say I didn't?"

  "I dunno. Sometimes I think not."

  "Jones,—I—"

  "On the boat. In the harbor. You backed across the deck like I was poison."

  "I didn't."

  "You damn well did!" She jerked her head back and stared at him near cross-eyed at close range. "You trying to get me to do things, trying to get me to take you here and there, you don't have to do that."

  "Lord, Jones, I tried to get rid of you! What more can I do?" The words fell out and died. He lay there with a kind of confused, distressed look. "I didn't mean that."

  A warm feeling spread through her. The knots unknotted in a kind of benign satisfaction.

  Got 'im muddled, I do. Lord, he's nicer'n any man I ever knew. Lots nicer'n those foul-mouthed bridge-boys.

  Fight for this 'un, I would.

  She smiled, lazy-like. Took a curl of his hair and wound it round her finger. Shifted closer and closer again where she could whisper her lowest. "Damn right you tried to shake me. Ain't no good. 'Bout time you started listening, ain't it? Lost my boat for your sake. Soon's I get it back we got some thinking to do."

  "I've tried to think." His voice sank down to the faintest whisper. "Jones, I've got to get to uptown. I've got contacts there. Don't ask me what or why."

  "I'm asking. You want me to find a way up there I got to know the choices. What are you into? Who are those crazies?"

  Silence for a long while.

  "Sword of God."

  She heard that and her heart thumped once and lurched into a heavier beat. She rolled onto her elbow and leaned over his ear where she could talk in absolute quiet. "Damn, what are you?"

  "Let it be."

  "Let it be?"

  He stared up at her, a long thinking look. He blinked once, twice. "You have an Adventist name. Altair."

  "So'd my mother, it never meant we was Sword of God. Dammit, there ain't no such thing in Merovingen."

  "There is now."

  "You're crazy!"

  "It's the truth."

  She rolled onto her back and stared at the ceiling, at the nightlamp casting shadow-play off the timbers and the dust.

  Sword of God. Militant crazies bent on exterminating impurities, bent on exterminating the sharrh themselves if they could get their hands on any. They helped the Retribution along with assassination, Lord knew what else.

  Angel out on the bridge, you standing there so long, you got nothing to do with those lunatics. Your sword ain't that sword.

  "I told you," Mondragon whispered into her ear, "you didn't want to know."

  She turned her head, stared at him at closest range in the lamplight. "Where'd you get messed up with them,?"

  He gave no answer.

  "Well, they ain't so much," she said then, to get the chill out of her throat, "they ain't so much. If I was going to murder someone I'd be sure of 'im before I threw 'im off any bridge."

  "If they were Sword." He moved his hand distractingly onto her stomach. "Say I walked down the wrong alley."

  "Well, why—why for Lord's sake did they take your clothes?"

  "Because if I lived it'd teach me a lesson, and if I didn't I couldn't be traced. Except by those that would know."

  "Why?"

  There was long silence. "Say I ignored a warning."

  "They weren't Sword of God, then what were they?"

  "The warning came behind a mask. Say the Sword's not the only trouble in town."

  "Who?"

  "I've said enough."

  "You haven't. You haven't started. What've you got to do with them, that they want you that bad?"

  He traced the side of her face with the back of his finger. "Don't ask any more, Jones."

  She froze, outright froze.

  "No." He gripped her shoulder hard. "No, Jones. Don't look at me like that."

  "What are you, f' God's sake? A Jane? Sharrist?"

  He was quiet a moment. His fingers relaxed belatedly, tightened again, not as hard. "I was Sword. Once." His mouth made a hard line and his eyes glittered, darted. "I quit."

  "Are you from Nev Hettek?"

  "Do I talk like it?"

  "I dunno. I never knew a Nev Hettekker. But you ain't no Falkenaer and you ain't Chat and you ain't Merovingian."

  "You don't need to know. You understand why i don't want you around me. The Sword just might take you up, take you to some quiet nook—you understand me? They don't like publicity. Not even in the north. They are here, there's money behind them. The law knows it."

  4'And don't stop 'em?"

  "They won't stop them. I ignored a warning. I stayed. That was a friendly group that threw me off that bridge."

  "Friendly."

  "Not like it was murder. Just a second warning. Because I'm here. Now Gallandry's been arrested. Do you follow me?"

  "No." She shook her head desperately. "You mean— the law? The law's—"

  44—got pressure on it. The Signeury's trying to put a fear into Gallandry. The Sword hit Boregy; Malvino. They weren't sure I was on that barge. They were hunting. Now people are dead. Jones, it was the police that threw me off that bridge."

  "Lord."

  "The governor doesn't want any noise. Doesn't want me here, in Merovingen. The governor's afraid of the Sword; afraid of the College; afraid of his own police and who's been bought, and he's afraid of the money that can hire assassins. Most of all he's afraid of what Nev Hettek might do and he's afraid of riots. A sick man with heirs at each other's throats—He can't afford to have foreign trouble."

  She drew a great breath and lay there staring at the ceiling, at the shadows the lamp made. The Sword of God: Adventist crazies. Militants. Assassins.

  Mondragon wielding the boathook with skill that became greater and greater—

  Mondragon with the rapier at his side, there on Gallandry's stairs—

  He settled slowly beside her, wound his fingers into her fingers. Lay there quiet too.

  Fool, she heard her mother saying, Dammit, now, Al-tair, this is too far. Sword of God. Murders. So a lot of muck floats down old Det. Never surprised at anything that turns up in this town. But you don't need to go poking your hand into it, do you?"

  She turned and put her lips against Mondragon's ear.

  "Mondragon. What are you doing here? What are you after?"

  Silence for a long time. He shifted up then and put his arm on the other side of her so that he cut off the light. His breath stirred her hair. "Don't use mat name. I never should have told you. I was crazy out there."

  "I was too." She turned her head and mouth brushed mouth, sleepily, far from the kind of craziness that had been out there. Old warmth. Sun on skin, on water. He let his head down on her shoulder, his hand straying down her

  side.

  "Too damn tired, Jones, too damn tired."

  "What'll I do?" she murmured. Her own mind fuzzed round the edges, half-gone. "What'll I do?" It was part nightmare, part dream. A sheet of fire washed across her mind, the canalsides and the blank faces of buildings jolted and moved, firelit and casting back orange from old brick and dusty windows; Merovingen-above towered overhead, bridge-webbed, wooden and vulnerable.

  The golden Angel stood on his bridge and his firelit hair turned to gold wire, to sunlight, to Mondragon's pale blond. The hand that gripped the hilt was alive, was Mondragon's hand, down to the fine bones and the way the veins stood out, despite that it was gold. It clenched and the sword moved outward by fractions.

  Sword of God.

  She could not see the face. If she had seen the face it would have blasted her sense.

  Don't do it yet, she asked the Angel; and fought back against the dream. She set Mondragon there beside her on that bridge so that she could know that face was not his face. She made it night again, and the river quiet. The Angel stood there shining and not-shining, because no one else in the city could have seen him that way: he was always alive, only he lived slower, and it was taking him all of a human lifetime to take a single breath. Only his thoughts ran quick, quick as lightning strokes; and if they saw the sword move the city would have lived a hundred years around them

  Don't do it yet. It was a wicked thought for an Adven tist. It was her business to wish the Retribution closer: Sword of God wanted it with fanatic zeal—but ordinary, common little Adventists hoped for it someday, secretly wanted it in someone else's lifetime, close, maybe, because the world was not that good; but not too close, because she had plans, and if Merovingen changed, where would she be and where would she go and what would become of her?

 

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