He stood up, leaned next her ear. "Who's listening?" he asked, faintest of whispers against her hair. "Nobody. Moghi said. "That's truth." He straightened and leaned his hands on the table. Worried. Lord, not a shout, not a word of blame. He laid a gentle hand on her shoulder, then walked a few steps off, stood with his back to her and his arms folded.

She ate at the cold toast, bite after bite. Finally he came back and sat down on the side of the bed, one knee tucked up into his arms.

"I wanted you out of this," he said, all quiet. "Jones, you were right, all the way."

She swallowed hard and a bite forced its way down past a knot in her throat. Her eyes stung. She drank the tea, then got up and went and opened the cabinet where the brandy was, and the glasses. She unstopped the decanter and poured a bit.

She stood there with her back to him to drink a sip. That took the knot out.

Damn him. Damn it all.

Manners, Jones. Man's trying.

She poured the other glass and walked back and gave it to him. He took it and she never looked him quite in the eyes. She just walked away with a pain in her chest that hurt like a knife.

Memory of a pale body hurtling through the dark.

Through the sun into the harbor water, splash scattering like glass beads in the light.

Him standing there all elegant in Gallandry lamplight, russet velvet and lace, sword at his side.

She turned around finally when she heard the bedsprings give. He had put the glass down on the table. Had gotten up to turn down his side of the bed.

He slipped the robe off and got in and drew the covers up over his shoulder and his head, leaving her the light.

She took a mouthful of brandy and swallowed it down till her eyes stung. Not a stir out of him, not a word.

She drank another half glass, then stripped off her sweater and took the remaining sol and put it in her shoe, there by the bed. She unbuttoned the trousers and kicked them elsewhere.

She lit the nightwick at the side of the lamp, then blew out the top light and got into bed on her side.

She edged over after a moment. Edged over again until she came up against him. His muscles stayed tense when she put an arm over him.

She let go a sigh and lay there and hurt, inside and out, till sleep came closer, till maybe at the edge of his own sleep he turned over and put an arm about her. Better, better. She gave a great sigh and shifted. There was a moment of moving about and fitting limbs and limbs and wincing, her with sore arms and him with a sore back, until finally she found herself comfortable and her skull throbbing away in a dull dark daze that went down and down toward nothing at all.

"You went to sleep on me," he said into her ear when she came to, and she mumbled and shifted sore muscles and almost went to sleep again until his hands got her attention,

"Damn," she said, remembering she was not speaking to him. And then remembering she was, confused in the middle of the night. Moghi's. A gold piece in the toe of her shoe and her boat missing and herself with a lover hi the second shore-bound unmoving room in a day. "Damn."

"What's wrong?"

"Wrong?" She thought about it and laughed. The laugh got crazier, at an indelicate time. "What's wrong?" She gasped after breath. Laughed again till it hurt and she ran out of breath with the tears dampening her eyes. "Damn, they're going to kill us."

"Jones?"

"Wrong," was all she could manage, with another hysterical wheeze. Till he got her stopped, and she lay with her ribs and her gut hurting. "Oh, Lord, Lord."

They held onto each other. Like two drowners headed for the bottom. Down into the dark, dark nowhere. "Jones," he murmured. "Jones, are you all right?"

"Don't—don't make me laugh again."

"I'm not. I'm not." His hands traveled over her, absent-like.

Her own moved. A while. She ran out of momentum, and lay still against his arm. "Jones," he said, waking her up. "You awake?"

"Uuuhhn," she said. And thought back to the harbor. To waking on the deck. The room seemed to move a moment. To the lamplit room, the brass tub. Mondragon with the glass in his hand. Wine red as blood. Mondragon with his face in lampshadow, drinking and brooding, full of thoughts. Older. Deeper and darker. Old as sins and lies. She felt a fall at the edge of sleep and blinked into a stranger's face, at Mondragon with the nightlamp turning his hair to lamp-fire. For a moment her heart sped, a rush of panic and waking.

Damn, who is he? Whatis he? What'm I doing in bed with him?

What do I know about him?

"What are you looking at?" he asked.

"Dunno." Her heart still beat, nightmare panic. What're you looking at?"

He brushed the hair back from her ear. Did it twice and it fell back. He gave her no answer. The silence pounded in her chest, painful as grief and fear.

"You're shivering. Jones, are you all right?"

"I'm all right."

He pulled her close, burrowed his head next her ear.

She shivered the worse.

Damn. I never get him and me in the same mood at once.

Image of Mondragon edging across the deck in the morning light. Backward.

He just wants me to get him to his friends. Thinks he has to make love to me. Thinks that's what it costs.

Man with the cat for sale. Come be nice, I give 'er to ye.

What's a man pay for his life?

"You don't have to."

"What?"

"Be nice to me. You don't have to do it if you don't want."

Things stopped in full career. "Did I ever say I didn't?"

"I dunno. Sometimes I think not."

"Jones,—I—"

"On the boat. In the harbor. You backed across the deck like I was poison."

"I didn't."

"You damn well did!" She jerked her head back and stared at him near cross-eyed at close range. "You trying to get me to do things, trying to get me to take you here and there, you don't have to do that."

"Lord, Jones, I triedto get rid of you! What more can I do?" The words fell out and died. He lay there with a kind of confused, distressed look. "I didn't mean that."

A warm feeling spread through her. The knots unknotted in a kind of benign satisfaction.

Got 'im muddled, I do. Lord, he's nicer'n any man I ever knew. Lots nicer'n those foul-mouthed bridge-boys.

Fight for this 'un, I would.

She smiled, lazy-like. Took a curl of his hair and wound it round her finger. Shifted closer and closer again where she could whisper her lowest. "Damn right you tried to shake me. Ain't no good. 'Bout time you started listening, ain't it? Lost my boat for your sake. Soon's I get it back we got some thinking to do."

"I've tried to think." His voice sank down to the faintest whisper. "Jones, I've got to get to uptown. I've got contacts there. Don't ask me what or why."

"I'm asking. You want me to find a way up there I got to know the choices. What are you into? Who are those crazies?"

Silence for a long while.

"Sword of God."

She heard that and her heart thumped once and lurched into a heavier beat. She rolled onto her elbow and leaned over his ear where she could talk in absolute quiet. "Damn, what are you?"

"Let it be."

"Let it be?"

He stared up at her, a long thinking look. He blinked once, twice. "You have an Adventist name. Altair."

"So'd my mother, it never meant we was Sword of God. Dammit, there ain't no such thing in Merovingen."