"There is now."

"You're crazy!"

"It's the truth."

She rolled onto her back and stared at the ceiling, at the nightlamp casting shadow-play off the timbers and the dust.

Sword of God. Militant crazies bent on exterminating impurities, bent on exterminating the sharrh themselves if they could get their hands on any. They helped the Retribution along with assassination, Lord knew what else.

Angel out on the bridge, you standing there so long, you got nothing to do with those lunatics. Your sword ain't that sword.

"I told you," Mondragon whispered into her ear, "you didn't want to know."

She turned her head, stared at him at closest range in the lamplight. "Where'd you get messed up with them,?"

He gave no answer.

"Well, they ain't so much," she said then, to get the chill out of her throat, "they ain't so much. If I was going to murder someone I'd be sure of 'im before I threw 'im off any bridge."

"If they were Sword." He moved his hand distractingly onto her stomach. "Say I walked down the wrong alley."

"Well, why—why for Lord's sake did they take your clothes?"

"Because if I lived it'd teach me a lesson, and if I didn't I couldn't be traced. Except by those that would know."

"Why?"

There was long silence. "Say I ignored a warning."

"They weren't Sword of God, then what were they?"

"The warning came behind a mask. Say the Sword's not the only trouble in town."

"Who?"

"I've said enough."

"You haven't. You haven't started. What've you got to do with them, that they want you that bad?"

He traced the side of her face with the back of his finger. "Don't ask any more, Jones."

She froze, outright froze.

"No." He gripped her shoulder hard. "No, Jones. Don't look at me like that."

"What are you, f' God's sake? A Jane? Sharrist?"

He was quiet a moment. His fingers relaxed belatedly, tightened again, not as hard. "I was Sword. Once." His mouth made a hard line and his eyes glittered, darted. "I quit."

"Are you from Nev Hettek?"

"Do I talk like it?"

"I dunno. I never knew a Nev Hettekker. But you ain't no Falkenaer and you ain't Chat and you ain't Merovingian."

"You don't need to know. You understand why i don't want you around me. The Sword just might take you up, take you to some quiet nook—you understand me? They don't like publicity. Not even in the north. They arehere, there's money behind them. The law knows it."

4'And don't stop 'em?"

"They won't stop them. I ignored a warning. I stayed. That was a friendly group that threw me off that bridge."

"Friendly."

"Not like it was murder. Just a second warning. Because I'm here. Now Gallandry's been arrested. Do you follow me?"

"No." She shook her head desperately. "You mean— the law? The law's—"

44—got pressure on it. The Signeury's trying to put a fear into Gallandry. The Sword hit Boregy; Malvino. They weren't sure I was on that barge. They were hunting. Now people are dead. Jones, it was the police that threw me off that bridge."

"Lord."

"The governor doesn't want any noise. Doesn't want me here, in Merovingen. The governor's afraid of the Sword; afraid of the College; afraid of his own police and who's been bought, and he's afraid of the money that can hire assassins. Most of all he's afraid of what Nev Hettek might do and he's afraid of riots. A sick man with heirs at each other's throats—He can't afford to have foreign trouble."

She drew a great breath and lay there staring at the ceiling, at the shadows the lamp made. The Sword of God: Adventist crazies. Militants. Assassins.

Mondragon wielding the boathook with skill that became greater and greater—

Mondragon with the rapier at his side, there on Gallandry's stairs—

He settled slowly beside her, wound his fingers into her fingers. Lay there quiet too.

Fool, she heard her mother saying, Dammit, now, Al-tair, this is too far. Sword of God. Murders. So a lot of muck floats down old Det. Never surprised at anything that turns up in this town. But you don't need to go poking your hand into it, do you?"

She turned and put her lips against Mondragon's ear.

"Mondragon. What are you doing here? What are you after?"

Silence for a long time. He shifted up then and put his arm on the other side of her so that he cut off the light. His breath stirred her hair. "Don't use mat name. I never should have told you. I was crazy out there."

"I was too." She turned her head and mouth brushed mouth, sleepily, far from the kind of craziness that had been out there. Old warmth. Sun on skin, on water. He let his head down on her shoulder, his hand straying down her

side.

"Too damn tired, Jones, too damn tired."

"What'll I do?" she murmured. Her own mind fuzzed round the edges, half-gone. "What'll I do?" It was part nightmare, part dream. A sheet of fire washed across her mind, the canalsides and the blank faces of buildings jolted and moved, firelit and casting back orange from old brick and dusty windows; Merovingen-above towered overhead, bridge-webbed, wooden and vulnerable.

The golden Angel stood on his bridge and his firelit hair turned to gold wire, to sunlight, to Mondragon's pale blond. The hand that gripped the hilt was alive, was Mondragon's hand, down to the fine bones and the way the veins stood out, despite that it was gold. It clenched and the sword moved outward by fractions.

Sword of God.

She could not see the face. If she had seen the face it would have blasted her sense.

Don't do it yet, she asked the Angel; and fought back against the dream. She set Mondragon there beside her on that bridge so that she could know that face was not his face. She made it night again, and the river quiet. The Angel stood there shining and not-shining, because no one else in the city could have seen him that way: he was always alive, only he lived slower, and it was taking him all of a human lifetime to take a single breath. Only his thoughts ran quick, quick as lightning strokes; and if they saw the sword move the city would have lived a hundred years around them

Don't do it yet. It was a wicked thought for an Adven tist. It was her business to wish the Retribution closer: Sword of God wanted it with fanatic zeal—but ordinary, common little Adventists hoped for it someday, secretly wanted it in someone else's lifetime, close, maybe, because the world was not that good; but not too close, because she had plans, and if Merovingen changed, where would she be and where would she go and what would become of her?

I thought so too, her mother said, sitting on the bridge, there in the dark—cap atilt, arms clasped about her knees. And with a look at Mondragon: Who's he? He's right pretty. I like the look of him. But you got to know, Altair, he don't belong.

The bridge-rail was empty then. Just the river and the dark. The dark grew worse, and things moved in it.

Something was hammering.

"Jones," it said.

"Jones."

The world shifted. She felt cold air, flailed with her hand and caught herself on a sore shoulder. Someone was knocking at the door, a gentle tapping, and Mondragon was getting out of bed.

She followed—winced as her feet hit the floor, waved a cautioning hand at Mondragon as he grabbed his robe off the floor with one hand and came up with the rapier in the other. "Minute," she said aloud. She grabbed her sweater off the floor and pulled that on, located her pants, a puddle of shadow over by the cabinet, and pulled those on, grabbed the boathook out of her belt where it lay on the floor. Mondragon had gotten the robe on by the time she padded over to the door. "Who is it?"