"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.