You got him worried, Jones.
What've you got, huh? Man scared of the law. Man with nasty friends and nastier enemies.
She shut her eyes and drifted again in a vague, heart-aching nowhere.
Woke in the dark in a tangle of his limbs and hers, with someone banging at the door. "I hear you, I hear you," Mondragon bellowed back coming up on his arms and leaning over her. "Give me time, dammit!" And put a hand in the middle of her by accident. He felt his way to her face and patted it. "Sony. Sorry."
She groped dazedly at his arm. "'S all right. I'm all right."
His hand wandered to her shoulder, than patted her cheek again. Like love. Distractedly. "Damn. Got to get up. Get moving. Come on."
He got out of bed, leaving a draft. It was hard to move. Every muscle she had protested, not major aches, but little ones; and her back and her bruised arm felt afire. She put her feet out and walked a few paces, feeling her way past unfamiliar furniture. There was a dim wick burning in the bath, there was starlight from the tall windows, and Mondragon cracked the hall door open, sending another dim light into the room as he snagged something off the floor outside. He closed it and came to her where she clung dazedly to the back of an armchair. "We've got to dress in the dark," he said, "we don't want to show any more lights in the house than normal. Here. Sweater and pants. Ought to fit. I'm not sure about the shoes. They guessed."
Shoes. Lord! Socks. And clothes clean as never-worn. She held them to her nose and smelled them, and it was new-smell. She had never had new. She smelled the leather-smell of the shoes that was heady as a cobbler's shop. The whole business set her heart to pounding and sent prickles up her back: new clothes, the dark, the stealth that was no game at all; no. She imagined blackrobed skulkers down on the bridges, lurking down by the barge-dock of Gallandry—we're after getting killed and he's worried about new clothes, him and his baths and baths and baths, probably thinks I smell bad as old Muggin. Her mouth tasted awful. She saw him head for the bath, a shadow against the nightlight, and went over to the table to wash her mouth out with the wine while he took care of business there. Water rushed and gurgled. She pulled on the pants and they fit; pulled on her sweater and the socks, and shoved her feet into the shoes. They were snug and they pinched, but they did all right. She stood up and stamped one foot and the other, then went after Mondragon, to that glimmer of light that came out the bathroom door: her shoes showed, when she looked down, shiny-new with a fancy buckle on each, and fine black socks under blue cord knee-britches. Lord, fine as a kept poleboatman's, the whole outfit was.
"Uhhn." Mondragon splashed water, got his eyes clear and offered her his toothbrush.
Toothbrushes, shoes with buckles, and them trying to kill us! It all took on a dreamlike unreality, her face lamplit in the hanging mirror as Mondragon made room for her. She dipped a toothbrush in soda, scrubbed and spat—''Water drinkable?" she asked prudently, same as one had to know which public tap was which. "Safe," he said; and she turned the tap and washed out her mouth. Mondragon lent her his towel and went off and out the door.
Am I clean? Did I do everything he'd do? Does he think I'm dirty?
She scrubbed a second time with soap, and started to dose herself with a perfumy lotion she found in the bottle on the lavatory, but a prudent thought came to her: Damn, those bullyboys'll get wind of us that way sure.
She scrubbed her hand off, shivering suddenly as if it had become deep winter. Her teeth wanted to chatter. She used the watercloset and hurried out again, fearful of being left. Mondragon had put on a dark shirt: his face stood out pale in the starlight, disappeared and reappeared as he pulled a sweater on. The light winked coldly off the hilt of the rapier as he picked it up and belted it on. The trousers were dark as the rest.
"If you want not to be seen," she said through chatter* ing teeth, "get something over that head of yours."
"I've got it." A shadow fluttered across his hands, became a scarf; he tied it at his nape and it was only his face that stood out. "Your knife and your hook are on that table with your belt."
She gathered her knife-belt up and buckled it on. Looked back and saw him like a stranger in the starlight.
"Lord, you're grim as death." And then wished she hadn't said that. She tugged her sweater down in back and snatched a lump of cheese off last night's plate as Mondragon headed for the door.
Leaving this place. This luxury. This safe haven. This last place she might ever see him if things went wrong down there on that loading dock. The dim light of the hall shafted through the opened door. "Come on," Mondragon said. She came, hurrying, and pocketed the cheese.
And made one dive back in the dark, to the chair where she had thrown her cap and the bathroom floor where she had left her old clothes. She wound them into a bundle under her arm, pulled her cap on and set it firm even while she rushed for the door; and out then into the light with Mondragon beside her. He caught her arm and headed down the steps.
Chapter 5
IT was down the stairs once, and through to the plain room with the map—a group of shadows waited there in the starlight from the tall windows, and Altair hung back against Mondragon's grip on her arm. But he was going forward among them, and she went, his hand on her left arm, her other clenched tight on her bundle of clothes. Her heart beat hard against her ribs and her new shoes hurt her feet.
It was Hale and some of the others. She was not glad of the company. The great tall windows gave her the shivers; she imagined faces peering in the starlit glass (but no one could climb those walls on Port Canal; the balcony on this side of Gallandry was a level below) and she imagined black figures flowing along the bridges, along the balconies, down by the water where they had to go next—
Are you thinking of that Mondragon? These ain't good men, these Gallandrys. Can you trust them? Do you know how they are, do you know they got to push and push and beat a body down if she talks back, do you know they're cowards and maybe none too honest, 'cause thief goes with coward like salt with fish, mama said. Coward's only another word for cheat, take the easiest way, most comfortable way. Mama said.
(Retribution Jones with the pistol in her fine brown hands, oiling it down. And young Altair sitting there with the shivers in the sunlight, because her mother was talking quietly about a landsman who reneged on a deal. They found that man floating in the Snake come Monday, and her mother pursed her lips and said: "Well," when Muggin told the news, a cleaner Muggin in those days. But her mother never said more than that.)
Altair caught her breath and kept the new shoes quiet as she could as Mondragon pulled her along in the wake of the Gallandrys. Through a dark door—
"Mind your step," Hale said; and Mondragon held her arm tightly as she groped for the banister of a stairs.
Down and down, in total dark. She freed her arm, shifted her clothes bundle and clung carefully to the bannister as she went down the steps on new slick soles, blind in the dark with a cluster of Gallandry men about her and them all smelling of foreign stuff and waterfront and something her nose could not identify past the soft familiar canal-smell of the old clothes in her arm and the bath-smells on her skin. There was too much rush. They jostled her. Mondragon crowded her behind, down and down until they picked up a little light two levels down. A nightlight was in its niche; it flared and leapt and set their shadows to jumping in huge perspective on the walls and on the stairs as they came around this last turn. Her knees shook: a half dozen grown men slinking about like this and all of them clinking and rattling with swords and knives—What are you doing here? she heard her mother ask in her mind. She saw Retribution shake her dark head and look at her with stem disapproval. Altair, what in this sorry world are you doing?