"I don't see. I don't understand. I don't want to see. Let me out of here and I won't say a thing."
"Do you intend to go searching for him?"
"I ain't saying what I'll do."
"What can you do?"
"I got my knife."
"Your knife! Do you know what the Sword of God is?"
"I know as much as any honest canaler knows, which is that I don't want nothing to do with 'em. But I ain't going to quit. You sleep good, m'ser, you sleep real good, and just let me go do what I got to do and I ain't going to repeat to no other soul what you told me."
"Girl, you're a fool."
"I am. I been one for days. But I ain't going to leave him to 'em."
"You know he's from Nev Hettek."
"I never knew that proper, but that was high on my guesses."
"The governor of Nev Hettek is a man named Karl Fon. Do you know Fon is in the Sword?"
Her heart lurched a few painful thumps harder than it had been."I heard that rumor."
"The Mondragons were ordinary Adventists, like most of Nev Hettek. An old, well-placed household. Thomas— the youngest son—was drawn into the Sword. Does that shock you?"
"He told me he was, once. He said he quit them."
"What more did he say?"
She shook her head.
"That's important, you see. Why he quit them. And how far he was in on their councils. He was Fon's close friend: he was in very high councils in Nev Hettek, above even his father's access to those levels. Perhaps Mondragon learned more than he wanted to know. But whatever involvement he had with them—terminated. The whole family was killed. Except Thomas Mondragon. He was put up on trial as a sharrist saboteur."
"He ain't!"
"That was the standard accusation—for any enemy of the governor. He was sentenced to death. His execution was set three times and three times postponed. Then he escaped, escaped the governor's own residence, so the rumor came down the river. With everything he knows. Do you see why our own governor might urge him to get out of Merovingen? He's trouble. He's truth on two feet. He knows things our governor doesn't—officially—ever want to know about Nev Hettek's internal workings. The word is war, girl. War against wicked Nev Hettek and its apostate governor—if certain forces in the Signeury can get public confirmation of the things Thomas Mondragon knows. They'd want him too. The sharrists assuredly want him: he knows intimate details about Sword of God operations and tactics against them. The police here would question him if they dared know the answers officially. The Sword absolutely wants him back: they're agents of Karl Fon. And if the Priest of the College finds out what they've got within their reach, and they get their hands on him, the Revenantists will want to extract a public confes sion from him before they hang him. While our governor— the governor just wants him out of town before Nev Hettek becomes convinced Merovingen has the wherewithal to stir up a war. He's old and he has the succession to worry about and this is the kind of thing that could create—great difficulty with the heirs. Shifts in power. The Sword has been here for years; and that fact is known in very high places. So are the sharrists active here—but that's not a thing you'd better breathe even to yourself, young woman."
"Was it sharrists that got him? This pathat—patha—"
"All the terrorists borrow from each other. Sword uses pathati. So do the sharrists and the Janes. That tells you nothing. It was likeliest the Sword. But I don't rule the other out. I don't rule it out even if they declared what they were. The factions lie. It's their great weapon. They blame their actions on each other. And Mondragon knows what all those lies are. He's been inside their most intimate councils."
"But—But you got these men—" She passed a gesture round them, at the armed guards. "Man, they killed your cousin, they broke into your house, ain't you anxious to do nothing—"
"Don't you see past the moment? Boregy can't act. We could start that war. We could touch it all off—and your friend Mondragon will still end up with his head in a noose—at best. No matter which faction gets hold of him. And some are worse. I'd rather not have any of my house standing with him in the Justiciary."
"Well, I ain't got nobody, I ain't got nothing in my way. You damn well let me out of here, you let me go, I'll find them sons of damnation, I'll have their damn guts out—" It was yell or cry. She shoved the chair back but the man behind her stopped it with a grip on the back of it. "Damn you all."
"Girl. What's your name again?"
"Jones. It's Jones, damn your heart to hell. You ain't no use, you ain't nothing, you can damn well let me go, it don't cost you nothing."
"But it could cost me a great deal, sera. It could cost us everything." He stood up, stood looking down at her trapped there against the table, reached down and lifted her chin with his hand.
Spit at him. Lord, they'd gut me. Here and now.
"But you don't think in those terms, do you? You don't understand a thing I'm saying."
4'What's it to me?"
"What's a war more or less? Maybe nothing to you. Maybe it makes no difference to you. I assure you it does to me. How much time have they had?"
"Maybe—maybe an hour, hour and a half—" Her chin trembled in his hand. He let her go. She clenched her fists and ground her cap to shapelessness in her hands. "Why?"
"I can't tell you where he is. I can make two guesses. One is the riverboat out there in the harbor: it brought him here and it might well take him out again. They might have taken him straight aboard. It's also possible they didn't—since that ship is the first place any opposition might look, and opposition is more than a possibility, once this news spreads. I'd place my bet they haven't gone at once and they won't use so conspicuous a boat. Something less evident, a fishing-boat, a coaster. There are sea-gates all along the Old Dike. That's the quarter I'd bet on. They'll have to find their boat, get their prisoner to it—"
"Then they can't've moved 'im out yet! Ye don't move nothing by them gates at ebb. Ye got four deces difference in them Tidewater canals, high tide to low—"
"There's another reason, however unpleasant to contemplate. They'll have questions to ask. We're not talking about the gangs, understand. We're talking about an organization that penetrates into the Signeury, one that knows he's been here long enough to expose certain of them if he chose to do it. Certain people might be very interested in discovering all his contacts here. Their safety is at stake and Karl Fon's orders may well take second place to their own concerns. They'll want a place and a time to question him on their own behalf, a place close to the harbor, a place where neighbors don't call the police."
"That's the whole damn Tidewater!"
"So I understand." Boregy made a motion to his men. "She'll be leaving."
Altair shoved the chair back, and this time it moved. She levered herself up and got her knees locked.
"I'm sending you, you understand. That's the help I can provide. I personally advise you take what you know and what I've told you and say nothing and do nothing. But I doubt you'll regard that. Do you want food? Money?"
She shook her head. "I got to go, is all." Lord, he's got me tagged, he's told me too much, I'll drop into a canal some night real soon, by his intention. I got to make the door, is all, that's all I can do, I can't think about food, can't stomach nothing, can't sleep while they got their hands on him—
Prison. O God. And what else?
"M'sera." She heard Boregy. Distantly. Talking to some woman. "Jones." That was her. She turned around at the dizzy edge of the stairs, caught her balance and stared at him staring at her.