Silence then. Sullen silence. Her teeth wanted to chatter. She had a notion a fool canal-rat could drop right out of sight in Dundee.
"He give me two hours," she said, "and then I got to have this list back, man, or he starts movin' on the thing, and you don't want to see that, do ye? I know sure and away your m'sera don't want any to-do on this order."
He snatched the paper. And signed it. Fast.
Rain came down in buckets, and if it did one thing, it made two boys harder to see, just a couple of lumps, Raj figured, among the lumps of debris along canalside, up against the massive side of Borg Isle, where Kalugin's yacht rode groaning at her moorings.
"Guard's gone t' cover," Denny said cheerfully, a warm knot of elbows and knees hard against him.
Raj sneezed and smothered it.
"Ties ain't guarded," Denny said.
"No!"
"Wind'd sweep 'er clear about," Denny said.
"Tom's all right," Raj said fiercely, and tried not to shiver. It hurt. A lot of things did, some physical. "He could run for it."
"He went on there!" Raj said. "He did it himself, he'll take care of it." "Then what're we doing here?" Good question. "Waiting," Raj said. "F what?"
"For whatever Tom needs," Raj snapped, and clenched his arms and shut his jaw tight, soaked through and feeling all the aches when the muscles went tight.
"How we goin' to—?"
"Shut up!" Raj said, So Denny shut up.
Fact was, Raj was scanning the dockside himself, and thinking that if worst came to worst it might be time to slip the moorings, —but that big yacht turned askew could take out a bridge or crush half a dozen skips and skiffs moored down at Borg East, and sleeping people could die down there, kids and babies and all.
And that set him to shivering for good and all.
"He might not come out," Denny said. "Kalugin could send 'im right to the Justiciary over there."
—Behind the Signeury, where the Kalugins' enemies went, and they chopped off your head in the basement if you were hightowner like Tom, they didn't hang you like some thief, just chopped you with an axe and threw the pieces in the Harbor....
That was what you got when you got in with hightowners, and you didn't even need to be guilty of anything, you didn't even get a trial, except down in the Signeury basement, and they wrote what they wanted about it and that was that.
All you had to do was get afoul of the Kalugins or the Kalugins' friends, and Boregy was enough—them with their money and their influence.
Money could buy lives in Merovingen. Money bought a doctor—or an assassin; or a judge; and Raj Takahashi sat there thinking about Granther, and about mama and about how if he was with Granther in Nev Hettek Granther could buy his way, (except the Takahashi honor said that wasn't the way, except Granther didn't send him the money Tom needed, Granther sent him the daggers—silk and steel. Silk and steel.)
Think Tom wouldn't have pounced on it faster, if it was gold.
Didn't do a thing for him. Didn't help. Money would.
"S'pose that we could get onto the deck?" Denny asked.
"No," Raj said. ,
"Well, what're we goin't' do?"
"We're not doing anything!" Raj hissed, overwhelmed with frustration. "There's nothing we can do, but wait."
Marina.
Marina with her money. That could.
He still winced, thinking of the bedroom at Petrescu, thinking about Marina—
And knowing, dammit, that Tom didn't love her, knowing that Tom didn't even want her—Tom did it to get money from her, Tom didn't want him to know that, but he had ears and Lord knew Denny had. He hadn't told that part to Granther in his letter. He was ashamed about that, he was mad about that—
But if it was dishonest moneys—
If it was, it had still bought a Takahashi neck, and Tom for honor's sake had risked his neck, and spent everything for a fool in trouble—
And Raj Takahashi had been that fool, that Tom bought out of his mess, by means that Raj didn't even want to think about; and Tom was in that ship because he was in trouble with Kalugin, in ways that he didn't know how to think about, and when he had written to Granther, Granther had sent him a reminder of honor.
He wasn't sure right now it was enough; or maybe a Takahashi, being a fool, had gotten himself in a mess there wasn't an honorable way out of, and you had to hire somebody like Tom, or you had to be somebody like Tom—
(There's always somebody faster. There's always somebody with a move you haven't seen.) (Think about that.) (Think about that—)
"We c'd divert th' guard," Denny said. "I c'd pertend t' fall in—"
Raj bashed Denny with his fist.
"What'd ye do that for? I—"
And grabbed his shoulder and jerked him hard, toward a movement on the ladder.
Somebody coming down.
Tom.
Denny sneezed and smothered it, while Tom descended the stairs, one guard above, the one on the dock coming out of the doorway he was sheltering in. They talked, a few words, Tom flipped his cloak over his shoulder and walked off the other way. Toward Borg East, and the Grand.
"Damn," Denny said in dismay, "man's in a hurry."
"I'll tag 'im,' Raj said; but Denny grabbed onto him.
"There's a guard we got to get by! Ain't your kind of stuff! Go fer Jones!"
Raj gulped rain and air, thought for the length of that breath about older brothers and precedence and how he wanted to be on Tom's case, wanted a chance to do right, pay things back—
But doing right meant letting kid brother risk his neck on the rooftops, risk losing sight of Tom doing it if they didn't hurry.
Doing right meant him slipping off down Borg to the bridge and hoping to the Lord and all the Ancestors that he didn't miss sight of Jones in the dark and the storm, or that she didn't pass too far from the bank to see him.
"Get!" he said, Jones' unintentional echo, and they split, himself down the walk and Denny with him for a brief way that left Tom completely unwatched.
Fools, he kept thinking, fools the way they had set it up, of course Tom was going out Borg East, they should have split from the start, should have posted themselves separately, but he had been so damned afraid of Denny doing some damn fool thing, and they had had to be in reach of Jones, this side of the guard and the ship)—
He made the bridge, pounded across the rain-slick wood and ran, squishing and splashing through the gusts, his sweater twice its length and slopping around him with every step.
A quick drop, Jones had said. It was long past that.
"Back 'er up!" Jones cried, while m'sera fancy Dundee's nightman and a couple of the kitchen help fussed and fidgeted with the Watergate wheel.
Stuck.
Fuss and fidget, two fools consulting with the chief fool.
"You got the damn gear fouled," she yelled, waking echoes in the barrel vault of the slip. "F' Lord's sake, back 'er up a little, your damn wheel's off-center!"
"Quiet!" the nightman said. "You'll wake the house!"
"I'll give you 'wake the house!' " It was too much. Jones flung her pole down in the well, flung up the lid on the number two drop-bin and grabbed her hammer. She jumped for the narrow ledge where the three servants were trying to tear the slotted wheel to flinders, grabbed the handle of the wheel right past one servant's arm and said, "Here! Back 'er up, fool, let me put 'er in line."
While rain was raising the level of the water in the slip and they were ankle-deep where they were standing.
"Get back!" the nightman said, shoving her hand off.
She brought the hammer up. "You back off, man, or I'll whack somethin' else into line. You got me stalled here, you give me trouble—"
"You don't come into this house and make threats!"
"I'll be givin' my report too, fancyboy, and I'll be givin' it to places you won't like if you don't back that damn chain. Pull it!"
"Pull it where?"
"Pull on the damn chain!"
r /> "It's stuck!"
"With your pretty pink hands, ye damn fool! Haul 'er! Yoss! Ye got it!"
The wheel backed, she wobbled the wooden slot wheel with her hand, wobbled the metal cog-wheel, found the play in the metal wheel and whacked it, clang!-clang!-clang! while the nightman yelled about the noise.
"Noise, hell!" Clang-clang.' "There she goes! Pull, now!"
The wheel turned, the chain rattled, the Watergate began to move.
She splashed along the stone rim to the front of the slip and to the other side, and jumped for the stern, bare feet skidding and finding traction. She grabbed up her pole and started shoving before the Watergate was wide. Water sheeted down outside, bad guttering.
Hell with the drenching. The nightman was still shouting at her when she cleared the slip and scraped out into the dark beside the Rock, out on Archangel again and clear.
She moved, no engine yet, didn't dare start it, Dundee would be on Hafiz about the whole mess as it was, and Hafiz would skin her—
But damn! oh, damn! she was way behind.
Going home, was Denny's conclusion. Mondragon came out of Kalugin's yacht, Mondragon headed down Borg East, headed the canalside way, first tier, by Porfirio, and Denny was mortally glad to pick him up, skinning not over the roof of Borg, which was a tall 'un with copper sheeting and hard to keep your footing on when it was raining this hard—instead he had cut all the way around Borg-canalside, around by Porfirio, fast as his legs could take him, which was considerable, Denny reckoned.
And Denny was ever so glad to come around that corner and see Mondragon cross Porfirio Low, a shadowy, rain-obscured man in a cloak.
He was so glad he stopped running and just followed, then, at a distance.
Till he got to Borg corner and Porfirio himself, and looked down the way past Porfirio, and realized there was more than one man in a rain-cloak ahead of him.
And the one ahead not seeing the one behind: the one ahead not, in the rush of wind and rain and water and full gutter-spouts dumping their loads into the Det, so much as able to hear the one behind him—
Jones sweated, cursing with every shove of the pole— old Det was helping, for once, she was going with the Greve Fork current and Det, full of rain, was helping shove the empty skip along nearly as fast as her engine could have done, but she was carrying a couple of barrel-weights of water in her well that she wished she could be rid of, and no time for the hand-pump, no time for anything but to shove and strain—opposite the Spur, now, where the militia had its headquarters, where there were blacklegs swarming thick (Anastasi's men, not Tatiana's) and where a skip moving under its engines just made too much unwelcome attention for her liking—
But she was coming up on the Justiciary ahead, was just passing under Gunnery Bridge, that linked the Spur to the Rock, when she heard Jones! from somewhere above the sound of the water and the rain— went into quiet just a moment in Gunnery's shadow and shelter, thinking Raj! and wondering if it was her ears doing tricks or whether she ought to ground the pole hard and try to come about, fast—
About which time she had her bow coming out the other side of Gunnery and this gawky dangle of limbs dropped down off the arch of the bridge, hanging there yelling Jones! at the top of his lungs.
She stepped hard aft, bottomed the pole with all her might and leaned, tipped the skip bow clear up and over, not enough to get him—the fool kid dropped, splash! straight as a rock, and went under.
"Dammit!" she yelled, minded to leave him, minded to be on down Archangel like a bullet, except the fool knew where Mondragon was, except the fool was going to drown in the dark—Archangel was fast, pushing her on around.
So like a fool she let the pole off the bottom and jabbed it right for the splash-spot and near took the kid's head off as he came up flailing and fighting and grabbing for anything in his reach.
Which was the pole, so she got him, she bent over, leaned her butt into it and hauled, holding on for very life during the series of shocks as the kid climbed the pole and while the kid acted like a sea-anchor and slung the skip broadside to the current.
Lot of room in Archangel, thank the Lord and the Ancestors.
But the boy was fighting hard for that transfer of hand from pole to skip-rim, and about to lose it. She hauled, hard, gave him the lift he needed, and an elbow aboard, both elbows came aboard, while the skip swung on about in the current and she hunkered down on the halfdeck and got a fistful of sweater and the back of an arm, the back of a pair of trousers, and anything else that writhed over her boat-rim on its way to the well.
Drowned skit looked better.
"He's gone Borg East," Raj gasped, still half over her rim, "walking. Like home. Denny's on 'im, but he—"
She headed for the engine, then, flung up the cover and got her started, right under the Justiciary wall, while the skip spun and turned in the current and Raj Takahashi fought to get his legs aboard.
He made it, about the time the engine took, slithered into her well limp as fish guts and just lay there trying to throw up.
Damn-'im Kalugin's ship was at Borg-side, no matter. Kalugin was awake, no question, and if he connected the skip making racket up the canal to the one that had gone past Cantry earlier, that was something for him to wonder about.
But they Were moving now, current and engine and all, so fast it curled a white vee of wake side to side of Archangel, and sloshed the bank and the walkways far and wide, right up against the dark stone of the Justiciary and the College and all.
* * *
Calliste Old Bridge was ahead, and Mondragon thought of going up, there, to second-tier, the way he had thought about it back on Borg, and then decided, out of the morose condition of his soul, to keep to the shadows and the nether tier—where at least were simpler rules and simpler motives and where the banks were lined with skips and poleboats at rest, canaler-folk, Jones' folk—whose problems were enviously immediate and direct. He remembered nights with Jones, he remembered one night spectacularly well—what it felt like, the cramped quarters, the smell of old clothes and old boards and oil and the water, cramped quarters and cold feet, and Jones' skin next to his, which had somehow corrupted all his judgment and made him fool enough to risk her—
—to have her, which was altogether selfish and reprehensible, but Jones was like a force of nature, like the flooded Det itself, that just swept over his good sense and his objections and made him envy the people in those skips tonight—made him wish he had been born to that and not where he was, and that his enemies would let him do what Jones wanted and take to the water and live the way Jones wanted. No troubles. Just the problems of getting a few coins to keep going, enough food to fill out what the Det put on the hooks, and enough fuel to cook it; enough blankets to make the hidey warm, two sweaters and two pair of pants for days like' this, when you worked wet and you wanted to sleep dry.
That was what he wanted. God, he wanted it.
Not—what Kalugin offered.
He stopped on the little Calliste bridge, just stopped a moment, leaning his elbows on the railing and looking out at the nightlights reflecting across the-broad Grand, stood there above the swirl of Det-water under the wooden arch, looking at nothing, looking at everything, just breathing the smell of the city and letting the wind and the rain take the stink of Anastasi's presence off him.
Jones says the waterside stinks. She doesn't know what corruption smells like.
" 'Ware!" a kid's voice shouted, close, and muscles jumped, dropped him into a deep crouch and had his hand going for his sword as a cloaked figure rushed him, up the arch of the bridge, sword glittering.
He came up on guard, met the attack, flung his cloak out of the way, attacked and parried, pushing the cloaked man back and back, —mad, blind mad, and with an opponent who used plain steel. Attack and parry and attack, a scratch on his opponent, a second scratch, a third, and the man backing and backing.
But the kid was screaming murder, there was something else, someone else
—
Diversion cost him a scratch of his own, blade slipping past the quillon and the half-guard, and he came back in quarte, back again and back again with a triple disengage and a plain feint to terce, then attack, straight in past the too-extreme reaction, hardly a shock as the point went in and the shocked opponent ran up on him, still trying to defend himself when Mondragon spun and freed his blade and kicked his opponent off the bank into the raging Grand.
—facing a second swordsman and a third, holding Denny Takahashi with a gun to his head.
"Drop the sword," the assassin said, and Denny wriggled and yelped in pain. "Drop it."
Mondragon let his arm fall.
"Drop it."
As the kid struggled and came close to getting his brains blown out. Mondragon slumped in an attitude of defeat, jerked the cloak-tie at his throat, yelled, "Boy!" and flung the sword with all the strength in his arm as he hit the ground and rolled. A shot echoed off the walls, he parted company with the cloak, hung onto it and whipped it sidelong into the men's faces as he came up on his feet and kept going.
A blade came past it, scored his leg, and Denny was still yelling a warning as he carried his attack body-to-body with the first man he could get to, got a grip on him and sent him into the Det with an effort that tore his gut.
He was face to face with two sights then: Denny Takahashi flailing away at a man bringing his gun up dead-sighted at him; and a skip coming out of nowhere, boiling up the water toward him.
He dropped, the gun went off, the assassin hit a Calliste shop-front with a terrible impact and the boat scraped the bank with a splintering sound.
With, he saw as he rolled to his feet again, a terrified Raj Takahashi sitting in the well of that damaged skip holding a pole in both hands.
"Come on!" Jones yelled, and Thomas Mondragon, fool and catspaw for too many powerful, grabbed Denny by the arm and jumped for the skip as it grated past.
As Jones angled the tiller and sent the skip out into the Grand.
He fell, landed on his rump on the slats of the well with Denny panting in his arms, with Raj still sitting there in shock and the pole slanted over the side.