"Uhhn." Mondragon splashed water, got his eyes clear and offered her his toothbrush.
Toothbrushes, shoes with buckles, and them trying to kill us! It all took on a dreamlike unreality, her face lamplit in the hanging mirror as Mondragon made room for her. She dipped a toothbrush in soda, scrubbed and spat—''Water drinkable?" she asked prudently, same as one had to know which public tap was which. "Safe," he said; and she turned the tap and washed out her mouth. Mondragon lent her his towel and went off and out the door.
Am I clean? Did I do everything he'd do? Does he think I'm dirty?
She scrubbed a second time with soap, and started to dose herself with a perfumy lotion she found in the bottle on the lavatory, but a prudent thought came to her: Damn, those bullyboys'll get wind of us that way sure.
She scrubbed her hand off, shivering suddenly as if it had become deep winter. Her teeth wanted to chatter. She used the watercloset and hurried out again, fearful of being left. Mondragon had put on a dark shirt: his face stood out pale in the starlight, disappeared and reappeared as he pulled a sweater on. The light winked coldly off the hilt of the rapier as he picked it up and belted it on. The trousers were dark as the rest.
"If you want not to be seen," she said through chatter* ing teeth, "get something over that head of yours."
"I've got it." A shadow fluttered across his hands, became a scarf; he tied it at his nape and it was only his face that stood out. "Your knife and your hook are on that table with your belt."
She gathered her knife-belt up and buckled it on. Looked back and saw him like a stranger in the starlight.
"Lord, you're grim as death." And then wished she hadn't said that. She tugged her sweater down in back and snatched a lump of cheese off last night's plate as Mondragon headed for the door.
Leaving this place. This luxury. This safe haven. This last place she might ever see him if things went wrong down there on that loading dock. The dim light of the hall shafted through the opened door. "Come on," Mondragon said. She came, hurrying, and pocketed the cheese.
And made one dive back in the dark, to the chair where she had thrown her cap and the bathroom floor where she had left her old clothes. She wound them into a bundle under her arm, pulled her cap on and set it firm even while she rushed for the door; and out then into the light with Mondragon beside her. He caught her arm and headed down the steps.
Chapter 5
IT was down the stairs once, and through to the plain room with the map—a group of shadows waited there in the starlight from the tall windows, and Altair hung back against Mondragon's grip on her arm. But he was going forward among them, and she went, his hand on her left arm, her other clenched tight on her bundle of clothes. Her heart beat hard against her ribs and her new shoes hurt her feet.
It was Hale and some of the others. She was not glad of the company. The great tall windows gave her the shivers; she imagined faces peering in the starlit glass (but no one could climb those walls on Port Canal; the balcony on this side of Gallandry was a level below) and she imagined black figures flowing along the bridges, along the balconies, down by the water where they had to go next—
Are you thinking of that Mondragon? These ain't good men, these Gallandrys. Can you trust them? Do you know how they are, do you know they got to push and push and beat a body down if she talks back, do you know they're cowards and maybe none too honest, 'cause thief goes with coward like salt with fish, mama said. Coward's only another word for cheat, take the easiest way, most comfortable way. Mama said.
(Retribution Jones with the pistol in her fine brown hands, oiling it down. And young Altair sitting there with the shivers in the sunlight, because her mother was talking quietly about a landsman who reneged on a deal. They found that man floating in the Snake come Monday, and her mother pursed her lips and said: "Well," when Muggin told the news, a cleaner Muggin in those days. But her mother never said more than that.)
Altair caught her breath and kept the new shoes quiet as she could as Mondragon pulled her along in the wake of the Gallandrys. Through a dark door—
"Mind your step," Hale said; and Mondragon held her arm tightly as she groped for the banister of a stairs.
Down and down, in total dark. She freed her arm, shifted her clothes bundle and clung carefully to the bannister as she went down the steps on new slick soles, blind in the dark with a cluster of Gallandry men about her and them all smelling of foreign stuff and waterfront and something her nose could not identify past the soft familiar canal-smell of the old clothes in her arm and the bath-smells on her skin. There was too much rush. They jostled her. Mondragon crowded her behind, down and down until they picked up a little light two levels down. A nightlight was in its niche; it flared and leapt and set their shadows to jumping in huge perspective on the walls and on the stairs as they came around this last turn. Her knees shook: a half dozen grown men slinking about like this and all of them clinking and rattling with swords and knives—What are you doing here? she heard her mother ask in her mind. She saw Retribution shake her dark head and look at her with stem disapproval. Altair, what in this sorry world are you doing?
I wish I knew, mama.
Forgive me, Angel.
It's this man—
She came down off the last step with her knees like to collapse to shivers under her and her feet all but numb in the pinch of the shoes and the socks—Damn, if I've got to skip fast I can't do 'er. She flexed her toes with a resolute effort, and watched solemnly as the men around her while Hale unbolted another door: the gold light flared in the draft as it opened and cast sinister lights on somber faces. Mondragon in his black scarf and his dark clothes was all hollow-cheeked and hawk-nosed and grim as any hangman. He turned that face her way as the men started through the dark beyond; he caught her arm and pulled her along with him—
—He don't trust 'em. Stay with me, he's saying. Lord, I hope that's what he's saying.
She drew a long breath as she went into the black closeness of a tunnel that smelled of old brick and damp and mold. Someone closed the door at their backs and it was utterly black then.
"Not far." someone said. Mondragon's hand squeezed her arm.
Lord, they could murder us both, they could take us here, this is Gallandry territory, they know this dark, we've come down near the water and it's an easy thing to dump us in and no one the wiser.
Someone up ahead opened a door before any of them could have gotten to it. It just opened, with less dark there than elsewhere, a trick of the eyes and the lap of water louder than the noise they made walking. It was the kind of sound water would make under a building vault, an echoey noise. Gallandry Main Cut, that was where they had come out: she had poled past it all her life.
They came out into that dark watery vault, that got only the ghostly starlight bounced from outside and not much of that. A black huge shape loomed up in front of them in the Cut, an impression of something blacker than the rest of the place and moving to the waves, and this was the barge. Black human figures moved along the narrow stone dock, silhouetted against starlight-on-water outside, going about their business of tending this monster in a deathly hush.