"Dammit!" It was a whisper, but his voice cracked doing it. "I told you uptown!"
"You want to get there alive?" she hissed back. "We've come in a circle! We're back behind where we started, dammitall! You think it's some damn joke?"
"Shut it down, you want gran to hear? Come on."
"Where are we going?"
"We're going to get you under cover whiles I get my boat. You got any more coin?"
"Some." It was a reasonable voice. Scantly. "For what?"
"How much?"
"I don't damn well know. Maybe a dem in change. I gave you—"
"I just wanted to know." She hooked his arm and slid her fingers down to his hand. "Come on."
"Where are we going?"
"Round here." One of Merovingen-below's rare walkways opened behind the stonework that supported the stair timbers, a dark cut between two buildings that became one building up above. "Leads over to Moghi's. Back way.
You know this place. You ought to. This is where they dumped you off the bridge. Now we can go in here or we can go over the bridge; or we can sort of slip round the Ventani on the other side and I can find you a hole that ain't occupied while I go hunt my boat. But Moghi's is dry and I can deal with him. Which d'you want?"
He had stopped. He had her hand or she had his and he was gentle about it, but she remembered that strength of his.
Lord, Mondragon, you got a twisty mind and I wish I knew which way it was turning.
"Sun's coming up," she said, " 'bout now. See that sky over there? That ain't fire. Now we can just walk after my boat together if you want. But I got the feeling you'd like to stay out of sight. And you ain't particularly scared of this place, for all it done to you—not when you told me to tie up over there at Hanging Bridge, you didn't."
"I didn't tell you to tie up there. Let me off, I said."
"Well, it's lucky for you I followed you, ain't it?"
He jerked his hand loose and motioned her ahead.
"'S truth," she said; and walked on into the alley. She slipped her hook loose and carried it, the wood crosspiece firm in her fist. In case. She heard Mondragon's steps behind her, grit on stone in this maze that crooked round to Moghi's backside.
The door to the shed there was always unlocked. And strangely nothing got stolen, not so much as a stray bit of wood when the rains washed the boards loose. She pulled the rickety door open and walked in, heard Mondragon still behind her. "Close that."
"It's dark enough as it is."
"You show a light here Moghi'll slit our throats. Close the damn door."
It closed. She found a rope along the wall and pulled it, so that elsewhere in Moghi's rambling little den a bell rang.
"Is this it?"
"Will be. I just rang. They'll come. Don't get so nervous."
"Dammit, I don't take to being kidnapped from one end of town to the other."
"Just go coasting up to Boregy, huh?"
"That's what I thought you'd do, I kept thinking you had some back way in mind; the old woman's boat was the best thing we could have used—no one would look twice at it. Jones is smart, I told myself, I go along with it. Then, no, we weren't going uptown; but you were going to find that boat of yours and we'd get uptown on our own. Dammit, you didn't have to get into that jam-up on the canal if it was going to take all night. Now we've got an old woman telling the tale up and down the city, we've got one more of your damn ideas here, and no boat; and if you think you're playing some damn petty childish trick to hang yourself round my neck, you're playing a damn dangerous game."
There was a hook in her hand. She held that hand still; and drew in a breath and another one and a third before she had her throat under control. "I'd damn well hit you," she said. "I wish I could. Sure, I did it to get back at you. I been doing the work, ye damned lay around, I been waked out of sleep and scorched and flung in the canal and run half dead, and I poled you up and down this damned city till my gut hurts—" Her throat closed up. She tried for air and shoved hard with the heel of her hand when he tried to lay hands on her. "I'll find my boat, dammit, I'll take you to hell, but don't you go telling me how to do it!"
"Jones—"
"You keep your damn hands off me!"
She hit his arm. Hard. The door rattled and opened, and lantern-light glared into their faces. She turned and held up a hand to shade her eyes. "It's Jones," she said.
"Who you got? Who you got?"
"Name's Carlesson."
"Falkenaer?"
"Not him. Hey, I know him, Jep. You c'n let us in. I need that upstairs room. Private stuff."
There was silence. Then a chuckle. "Well. The ice done thawed."
"Shut it down, Jep, and let me talk to Moghi."
"You come right on in." The lantern shifted, held higher. "Ser, you come along and don't mistake us, we're a quiet house."
"They'll kill you," Altair translated. There were men outside by now, blocking the alley; the door beyond Jep was locked. If it had been trouble, the trouble would have gone into a little boat and out to harbor, slip-splash. End of it. But there was no rough talk in Moghi's house. Moghi insisted. And Moghi never tried to take a weapon away from anyone: another rule. Man wants ter carry an arsenal, Moghi would say, that's his business; we don't never argue with a customer.
Slip-splash.
She stepped up to the sill and passed Jep, walked through the cluttered storeroom to the inside door and waited for Jep and Mondragon. Jep bolted up. And the watcher through the peephole inside (Altair always suspected) came and unlocked the inside door.
"'Morning, Ali."
"Morning." Curly-headed Ali blinked in the lanternlight and looked to be in pain, his broad brown face all screwed up. "House just going to sleep with all this ruckus. You got no decency?"
"I want the quiet room, Ali."
"You got the cash?"
"I got it. Now you tell Moghi when he wakes up I'm going to be in and out the front way. And I want my friend here left alone. I'll talk to Moghi about it."
Ali's dark eyes shifted and shifted again in the lantern-light. "Room, huh? Come on. We got one."
Slip-splash. Moghi had another saying about debts.
Or business associates who caused trouble.
The Room Upstairs (there might in fact, Altair thought, be more than one Room) was a tidy place with a lamp— Jep lit it with a certain elegant flair of wrist, from a match in his callused fingers. And a wide bed and a hard chair and a table with a little vase of Chattalen jade flowers (the vase was cheap). No window. One wall was brick, the other three were lathing and plaster.
"Bath's across the hall," Ali said. "Heater's got fuel, water's fine for washing, come from a tank atop: boy empties it, and the can. Drinking water in the jug there. You're paying for a first class room here, we don't stint on nothing." Ali walked over to a tall cabinet. "We got bathrobes, got towels, got genuine brandy here, clean glasses, extra blankets. Boy'll set a breakfast by the door in about an hour. We don't disturb our clients. They don't got to leave the room if they don't want to."
"That's real fine," Altair said.
"You got a little scorch on your face, Jones."
She almost reached; stopped herself. "Sunburn. Been out fishing."
"You want them clothes cleaned up?"
"He will. I got to go out again."
"You can wait," Mondragon said. "Get some food in you."
She did not look at him. "I tell you what," she said to Ali, "you tell Moghi when he wakes up I want to talk to him."
"You going to be having breakfast?"
"I'll have breakfast. I'll be back."
"Jones," Mondragon said.
She left by the open door and never looked back at him.