"Well?"
"He's got trouble. I got to say its name?"
"You know its name?"
"They got 'im. they broke in where he was sleeping and they took 'im—I don't know where. You got to help. He said you was friends. He said—he had to get here. Now he can't. They got him."
"Who are you?"
"Jones, ser, Altair Jones. You c'n ask anyone" No, fool. This man don't talk to the likes of us, this man don't ask his own questions.
'Cept now.
"It must be the girl from Gallandry," a man muttered.
"So he did get off that barge," the Boregy said.
"He got off," Altair said. "We jumped, him and me."
"Did you take him to your friends?"
"Only thing I could do—" O Lord, no, that ain't what he means, O Lord, see his eyes, he's thinking about his basement right now. "Damn, I ain't turned him over to them, no, I didn't!"
The Boregy went on staring. Her knees went to jelly.
It's the basement, it's the basement sure. O Lord, save a fool! What do I say, do I tell him we was lovers, do I say anything at all until he wants to talk to me?
"Where is he now?" the Boregy asked.
"I dunno, I dunno where he is, I come to you to ask where they'd go."
"To me?"
"He give me your name. You got to go to the governor, get the law, get the hightown go find him—They didn't kill him, there wasn't any blood, it ain't killing him they want—not yet. You got to do something."
The Boregy stared and stared. Finally he moved his hand. "Chair," he said; and one of the men ran to the side of the hall where a chair was. Boregy turned the one already there, a great wooden chair at the table-end; and sat down, staring up at her. "Sit down," he said when the chair arrived, a spindly gilt thing with white and brown cloth. The man set it down across the angle of the table-corner. "Sit," Boregy said.
"My pants is dirty." It came out all strangled. Heat rushed to her face.
"Sit down anyway."
She sat.
"Wine." He made another gesture aside. "Where was this? What happened?"
"I put him up to Moghi's. This tavern, down on Ventani-bottom. 'Neath Fishmarket Stair. I went for my boat, friend had 'er, I come back and some damn—Somebody broke in there—" Her teeth started to chatter and her eyes to water, and she drew a great breath and fought bom tendencies down. She spread her hands to cover the interval. Her palms were blistered, calluses and all. "They flung this smoke stuff. Knocked out the whole d—whole tavern. They got him that way."
"Pathati."
She blinked stupidly.
"Pathati. Gas. It's a sharrist weapon."
''Sharrist.'' The whole world tumbled in and reason fell after it. "O Lord, what's sharrh to do with it?"
Boregy did not answer. A man brought the wine up, red wine in a bottle all of cut glass; and stem-glasses the same. The man set it down and poured, gave Boregy one glass and set the other beside her on the big table. She picked it up and her hand shook. She used both to get it steady, and drank a sip.
"The law," Boregy said, "is not an option in this matter."
She blinked at him, helpless.
"The police will not be interested," Boregy said.
"They flung him off the bridge."
"What?"
"The law flung him off Fishmarket Bridge. I pulled him out." Her teeth wanted to chatter again. There was an ache in her gut, in her bones, in her skull behind the eyes. "I figured maybe—maybe you got friends could put the shove on the law on the other side, that's why I come here, I mean, someone's bribed 'em against him, a bribe from the other side'll work for him. Won't it?"
"You don't appreciate the difficulty.
"I don't." The words muddled up, made no sense. It sounded like no. She held the glass in both hands to keep it from shaking. She made a shift of her eyes about the room, where a half dozen men stood waiting on a Boregy and a canalrat to drink their wine. She made that look a gesture. "You got them, don't you?" Landsmen that they were, they looked dangerous. They looked more dangerous than the law ever looked. "If you know where they went—Lord, we got to do something, they got him, they could be doing anything—"
"They might well." Boregy turned his glass on the tabletop, fingers long and white and slender. He shot a glance up at her. "You have to understand the inconvenience. Your coming here is an embarrassment, one we can ill afford. You weren't in a position to understand that, perhaps. But if the police did, as you say, throw him off the bridge, that does indicate the governor's official posi tion, doesn't it? Or someone's opinion—very high and influential. It's virtually the same."
"Lord, them blacklegs'll sell for a penny!"
"Not in this case. No. Nor for coin. It takes a different currency. Neither of us has it. Your coming here is inconvenient, to say the least."
"You're his friends!"
"We were his family's friends." The glass made another revolution and Boregy never looked down to see what his hands did. "That family no longer exists. Presently he's a hazard. Consider Gallandry's fortunes, if you doubt it. Mondragon's a contagion."
She set the wine down, shoved the chair back and started to get up, hat in hand. A man stepped up and shoved her down and shoved the chair forward.
"Damn you!" Her yell echoed round the hall. A heavy hand descended onto her shoulder and men moved uneasily where they stood. Her knife occurred to her. Draw and she was dead. She understood that. She glared at Boregy, and Boregy waved his man off. The weight left her shoulder.
"Your loyalty does you credit," he said. "You've done as much for him as a girl could. I don't say I don't appreciate that quality—you don't have to be afraid of us. I could use a resourceful employee. What are you—a poleboater? You'd be in Boregy service, have a place for the rest of your life, a very well-paid place."
"I'm a skip freighter," she muttered. "And I'll come back later if ye want me, and I won't say I was here if you want, but I got to go, I got to find him if you won't say where they'd've took him—You could tell me that! You could give me that much!"
Boregy stared at her with that black gaze of his and never blinked. "Why are you so interested?"
"'Cause he ain't got no damn help from you!"
"Drink your wine."
"I ain't drinking any wine, Let me out of here!"
"Jones, your name is. Do you have a first name?"
"Altair." Lord, now her mouth was going to go weak, her chin was going to tremble like a baby's. O Lord, I could kill this man. I could kill him, and then they'd kill me, if they ain't going to do it already—
"I'm Vega Boregy." He folded his white hands in front of him on the table. "So we have something in common. You'll understand when I say our influence is limited in this. I have a cousin and two of my men dead yesterday. The Sword has reached into this halclass="underline" that's why Gallandry was arrested and we were not—the governor has that for evidence that we are victims and not perpetrators. We dare not speak for Gallandry. Are you understanding me? As Adventists, we cannot afford a tie to the Mondragons, except a historical one. Your friend is an irritance, a dangerous inconvenience."
"He trusted you!"
"That he might have, had he come quietly. But someone betrayed him. Someone he trusted, surely. Fear, you understand. They set the law on his track and that led his enemies to him—by extension, to all his possible allies. Don't imagine that the Sword doesn't extend even into the militia. Or that sharrist influence might not extend to Merovingen. Do you see what you've involved yourself in?"