Not body-tired. Soul-tired. She knew the way he said it. It made her cold inside, because it was not like Mondragon to say a thing like that, or to look like that.
She was tired, Lord, she was tired, and he couldn't the hell quit on her. Not when it was her who had brought the damn kids to him and her who had let him get in moral debt to them, and damn-'im Mondragon had never told her he was spending to the bottom of his funds, Mondragon was rich, he always told her he had money, he was always throwing it around like there was no tomorrow, and she hadn't known there was an end to it—
Hadn't known Mondragon was such a damnfool as to spend Boregys' money.
Because she had put a debt on him.
And somebody had grabbed her and held her for some kind of cause, and she knew damn well it was Megarys, but she had her notions it was somebody else behind it, and Boregy was the likeliest—Boregy trying to put the scare in Mondragon and trying to get their money back, or another piece of his soul in trade for it—
That was what had jumped into her mind when he had said that, his voice so shaky and so near breaking down—that he was out of things to spend, and it was tired of living that he meant, and that the nights were the worst times to leave him, the dark times when things looked worst to him and nothing had its right shape....
And somehow, against the wall with the wake of the barge battering at her she had a sudden bad feeling about being out here tonight, about the weather, about the trouble they were in and all, and how if something happened to her in this damn mess of Hafiz's it was going to happen to Mondragon, and how every minute Mondragon was out of her sight his enemies could come at him or his own despair could.
So she racked the hook as soon as the chop had died back and she let the paint scrape on the bow, same as if it was herself being rubbed raw, while she skipped back on the halfdeck and threw open the engine cover and started cranking her over.
Chug. Chug.
"Jones!" somebody hissed, and she turned around with her hand on her knife and that knife in her hand in a hurry.
Kid on the bank. Raj on the bank.
"What in hell d'you want?" she asked, and the boy skipped down into her well. "Get off!" He was right down where barrels were that she had no intention of anybody messing with.
But he paid no attention to that. He scrambled nimble as a skit along her well and up onto the half-deck and said, "Jones, Mondragon's slipped us, gone on Kalugin's ship—"
"Ye damned fool!" she hissed, grabbing for a shoulder, but Raj writhed out of her way and she only got sweater.
"I swear, I swear," Raj was babbling, out of breath, "I was with 'im, like you said, only he got mad and sent me off and I was following him, only—only he went straight uptown—straight to that ship—I'm sorry! I'm sorry! What c'd I do?"
She thought about Raj Takahashi's guts on a hook, that was what she thought of; she thought about Mondragon uptown, gone to Kalugin, and she felt sick at her stomach.
"—only," Raj was saying, "I come over Fishmarket and I saw you—" A gasp for air, a feeble attempt to disengage her hand from his sweater. "It hasn't been ten minutes—"
A second weight hit her well, a smaller kid clambered his way aft, rocking the skip: but that was guessable.
Both of 'em.
"Where'd you come from?" she asked Denny.
"I seen my brother," Denny said anxiously and came closer, put out his hand. "I dunno what he done, but you let 'im go, let 'im go, hear?"
Scared as she had ever heard Denny Takahashi.
And she realized she had a knife in one fist and Raj Takahashi's sweater in the other. So she let go, scared herself, and said: "Go to hell. Both of ye." And shoved her knife back in the sheath and felt the scrape of wood and stone. "Damn, get off my skip!"
"Where're you going?" Raj asked. "Jones, where're you going?"
"Where ye think I'm goin'?" She put the engine cover down, shoved Raj out of her way and grabbed up the boat-pole from the rack, half of a mind to shove both passengers in the canal. "Goin' f get 'im back's where I'm goin', before he does some other damn fool thing...."
She had a lump in her throat, she had another one in her chest, where her heart kept doing doubletime, and Raj said, damned obvious, "You can't get him out of there, nobody can get him out of there." -
"I c'n be there," she said. No engine. Too damn noisy.
And Hafiz's damn cargo, that was worth her life if she didn't come through uptown, to Hafiz's anxious hightowner clients.
Damn, damn!
"Ye can pole," she snarled at Raj, who lingered with Denny trying to pull on him. "Dammit, ye can pole, an' if you foul me I'll drown ye both. Move!"
It was without the sword, without the cloak, without the small knife he kept in his boot, and in the company of two strong men—that Mondragon came down the steps and down the electric-lighted companionway and, ducking his head, into Anastasi Kalugin's private quarters.
"Well," Anastasi said, in his soft, slow way, and Mondragon took him in, smallish, thirtyish man in a dressing-gown, but you forgot whether he was tall or short, you forgot everything when you looked Anastasi in the face: pale skin, black hair, black, close-clipped beard, so, so immaculate no matter what the hour; and looking him in the eyes made you think of a killer, because he was; and he was the governor's youngest son, and he was Boregy's ally; and he was the one who held the highest call on Mondragon's often-mortgaged soul.
"You failed me," Mondragon said for openers, which was a foolish thing, maybe, but it was also true, and it was the only attack he had, when Boregy had a kill-order out on him and very likely it had come from here, from Anastasi himself. He could hear Boregy saying: Mondragon's become a liability....
And Anastasi saying: Take care of him.
"Failed you?" Anastasi's dark brow arched, and Mondragon felt the presence of the guards behind him, knowing there was a weapon back there, sure that there was; and knowing that he could deal with it, if there were a percentage in it, which there wasn't. Nothing had a percentage any longer, except Anastasi's continued patronage.
"I told you," Mondragon said, "my price is Jones' safety. She hasn't been safe. The Sword got past you. And I spent your money."
The pole found no bottom, and Jones whirled and grabbed the back of Raj's sweater a second time, grabbed him and sat him down hard on the half-deck.
He kept the pole, had it in both hands, give the fool that much.
"I—" was all he said, about two or three times, because when old Det went shy of bottom, you could go right in.
"Damned if I got time to fish you out," she muttered, and, seeing the skip across the broad part of the Grand, ran the pole in again and shoved. "Hin, dammit."
"I got it," Denny said, but Raj elbowed him out of the way of grabbing the boat-hook and Raj got up and kept going, breathing like a beached fish.
"Ware, ware," she said, "sit down." Denny sat, crouched in the well behind the barrels.
"What I do," she said, between breaths of her own, "is I let both you two off at Porfirio and you go on up to Borg and skit right on up close as you can to that thing. And I'm goin' on up the Spur Loop to Dundee, and back by way of Archangel to Borg, right past that ship to tie-up at Borg East and wait, so you'll see me if I pass—and if either of ye even thinks the name of Dundee after tonight I'll skin you alive, hear?"
"I hear you," Raj said.
"Denny?" That being the one to watch.
"Yey."
"You watch for 'im, you watch that boat close, and you leech on and you don't let 'im go if you see 'im. But if there's trouble—you know where I am, you know how to find me, one of you—and I'm stayin' just long enough to drop my load."
"We got it," Raj said, panting.
"Rack 'er," she said, and the boy not understanding plain instructions: "Rack 'er, dammit! Get ready!"
She grabbed the hook out of his hands, shoved it at Denny one-handed and kicked at Raj to clear him out of her cross-deck path.
"Git!" she hissed. Ra
j skipped for the well and ducked the sweep of her pole; she grounded it and cursed, missing a skip at tie-up by a scant pole-length as she came in and skimmed along Porfirio East. "Git!"
They left, Denny first and Raj second, with a force that rocked the skip.
She shoved with the pole, leaned for all she was worth and cleared an oncoming piling and a couple of night-bound skips by less than that pole-length, skimmed right past the stern close enough to touch it, heart pounding, sweat pouring down her sides as she poled back along Porfirio's side.
She had to get the job done with, had to, that was all: no safety for her or for Mondragon if she failed it, but, oh, Lord, leaving him to Kalugin, leaving him to two fool boys who'd let him go off there in the first place—
She glided under the shadow of Porfirio Low Bridge, poling for all she was worth till she was clear of the boys. Then she drifted a bit at Gantry South, flung up the engine cover, pumped up the tank and got her going.
Damned noisy. If Hafiz knew she was running that engine on this job, he'd more than skin her, that was the truth, or Hafiz's boys would, more to the point, rough as Moghi's and twice as mean.
Not saying what Dundee would—the hightown folk who'd paid for this load by some means maybe gold and maybe just favors. Lord and Hafiz and the Dundee knew—and a canal-rat didn't ask.
No asking what was in the barrels, either. Not the usual stuff. Whiskey was what the bill said, she knew that. And it wasn't.
Beyond that you just took your precautions.
Brandy swirled into the glass at Mondragon's elbow, and the servant withdrew. Mondragon picked up the glass and drank, careless of poison—careless of the silk scarf with which the servant on his left was binding his wrist to the heavy chair arm—"Mild precaution," Anastasi called it, and Mondragon had consented quietly, acknowledged the hospitality of the drink with a lift of his brandy glass.
"So what happened?" was Anastasi's quietly patient question—but Anastasi was always quiet, and Mondragon sipped the brandy, steadied his nerves and said, once the servants and the guards had retreated from the cabin and left them in privacy:
"Magruder grabbed Jones, put it to me that it'd happen again if I didn't double on you. So I'm here."
"On whose behalf?"
"Mine. Hers. You told me she'd be safe. What happened?"
He succeeded at least in making Anastasi think a moment; but not in making Anastasi give a damn— nothing could do that, except what bore on Anastasi's own immediate wants, and Anastasi's own longrange plans, and he was no longer sure if they remotely included an ex-Sword agent.
"Obviously we slipped," Anastasi said. "But then —we can't be everywhere. Perhaps you'd care to have us bring this Jones in. Then we could guarantee her safety. Or perhaps you'd care to be more active against your own enemies. We've never forbidden you."
A chill touched him, the thought of assassinating Magruder—killing Karl Fon's Trade Deputy—that would make Anastasi's life easier; and Anastasi could ask that, and equally well have them arrested, then, and handed over to the Justiciary, the solely culpable party, with every motive in the world.
Anastasi might ask that. Anastasi might simply do that, and lay the bloody knife at his doorstep.
Or implicate Jones along with him—as might well happen in any case of his arrest. There was nothing Anastasi might not do—if it served Anastasi's ambition, or cleaned up loose ends.
"I did something else," Mondragon said. "I agreed. That's why I'm here."
"We know about Magruder. We know about Chamoun. There's very little you can tell us—except what you did with the money."
"Used it," Mondragon said.
"Searching for a boy." Anastasi turned the glass between his hands. "Not your usual taste, is it?"
"A Kamat client," Mondragon said, as composedly as he could. "Have you found that thread?"
Anastasi's brow lifted, a question.
"I won't suppose," Mondragon said, "you've missed the fact that m'sera Kamat pays my rent."
"And that you've hired out to her brother. Yes. Of course. A financial arrangement. An informational arrangement. You've betrayed Magruder and Chamoun to Boregy, Kamat to Boregy—do I guess, Boregy and Magruder to Kamat?"
"To certain extents. Boregy knows how much I betray him."
"Boregy wants to kill you. Do you know?"
"I'm not surprised," he said, quite, quite steadily.
"I'm not sure that's in your interest. But that's why I pursued the Kamat business, that's why I'm willing to double for the Sword, and that's why I'm willing to double again: that's why I came here."
Again the lift of the brow. "With what coin?"
"A warning about Boregy."
Anastasi smiled a predator's smile. "Asking what?" "Absolution."
"Without warning Vega Boregy? How shall I do that?"
That was the sticky part.
"No answer?" Anastasi asked.
"I've no doubt," Mondragon said, "Vega suspects your suspicion. He's in too much, too deeply, he knows your contacts—I don't think there's any likelihood he suspects you might know, or will know, and he's preparing against that—through his other contacts. Magruder. Chamoun. —Ito. —Kamat hates him.
One hook after the other—all his pieces.
"Does this lead to the boy? And the money?"
"The boy went missing. I had the funds—I used"— certain contacts, certain expensive contacts. It was possible, quite possible, it was Boregy or it was the Sword, and the boy—the boy involved my access to Kamat. Which was essential."
"Was it Boregy's action?"
Mondragon felt a trickle of sweat start, a little tickling, and heard the boom of thunder outside, the creak of the yacht against its buffers. "Even the boy doesn't know." A lie. But a good lie was almost all truth—except in the uncheckable points. "He was being stalked. He ran. We found him—Jones and I—found him in the swamp. Likeliest—likeliest, given it was the swamp, it was the Sword. Boregy's agents aren't that adept. Whatever it was—it was my invitation to Kamat. I've become trusted there—-which is what I intended."
"What you intended. Where did you take the initiative?"
"When I knew my life was in danger. When I knew I knew too much in Boregy. When I knew I had to jump elsewhere, and I wasn't sure I could make it worth your while. Now I can. Now I know names, faces, dates, details: Kamat's—and Boregy's. Now you have your excuse to keep me alive."
"And what would that be?"
"That I've credit inside Kamat. That I've become too valuable. That you'd take it very hard—if an accident befell me—or mine."
Anastasi stared at him long and hard, with never a change in expression. "You're quite clever," Anastasi said. "Quite clever. But maybe there's nothing Kamat can offer me."
"You've lost Boregy," Mondragon said, conscious, too conscious, of the silk band that would hamper him entirely too much, and of Jones as much hostage as she had been in Magruder's hands—more, because Anastasi was her protection, the only side that offered that, when the others offered only threats. "If Boregy, then be careful of Nikolaev. And that's very major. But Kamat's organization has countering possibilities; and Kamat's interests are Kamat, and trade, and surviving—in Boregy's displeasure."
Anastasi leaned back in his chair. Smiled at him, not pleasantly. "How do you prove that? And how many times have you doubled, now, dear Thomas? And how do you prove that?"
"I can't," Mondragon said. "But I don't need to."
"And how is that?"
"Because you have the resources. Because the Sword won't guarantee Jones' safety. Boregy won't, certainly, and Kamat can't. And nothing else matters. Nothing else."
"Maybe that makes you dangerous."
"No. It makes me ultimately reliable. As long as you know where she is—you'll know whether I'm lying. It's just that simple."
"And will I know whether you've sold me out?"
"You already know."
"This kind of hostage is best kept under key."
<
br /> Mondragon shook his head. The ship groaned against the buffers, rocked to the assault of wind. "No," he said quietly, rationally, "because she won't live that way. Because that's her condition. And mine."
"You think you're that valuable."
"Everyone who deals with me thinks I'm for sale. I am. And you can be sure you've got the high bid. That's more than you can say about your personal staff. Isn't it?"
The Lord was plainly against such undertakings and proved it, with a torrent from the skies and a torrent from bad guttering on the Watergate side of high and mighty Dundee, that had poured down into her well, so she was ankle-deep in water, sweating and swearing and heaving barrels up by hand, because fancy Dundee didn't have a loading ramp, the servants just carried everything up the stone water-stairs.
And there was just one of him, and he went up the stairs and he disappeared and he came back down the stairs after another barrel, and he checked the numbers off against the bill.
He was damned mad when he came down and found her stacking barrels off on the steps.
"Don't you be getting in a hurry. This gate doesn't open till I have a count."
"I ain't hidin' any in my pockets!" Jones hissed at him, and thumped another one down on top of the load. "I'm dumpin' them, on your step or in the slip, I ain't got no preference, and you sign this damn sheet an' open that damn gate, or I'll go up them stairs myself an' ask the Dundee herself."
"It's fourth watch, you damned fool, keep your voice down!"
"Sign it! You got your damn count!"
"I want the numbers."
"Dammit to hell, here, here, I'll lift 'em, you check off the damn numbers."
"I'm not sure you'll be satisfactory."
"I ain't sure you ain't trying to hold me up. And Hafiz don't like that, either. And you better be damn sure it'll get back, if that paper don't get signed right now, and that gate don't come open damn fast."