She turned the bow again and poled along the dark, shallow edge up to the south side of Moghi's porch, snagged a piling rope with the barrel hook, wrapped the portside tie around it and scrambled up the ladder in the light and the unnatural quiet from inside.
She stopped dead in her tracks then, numb at the sight of bodies all over the well-lit floor, slumped at tables, in chairs, as if catastrophe had been sudden and violent,
"Moghi!" She wavered there in the impulse to run, to bolt back to the safety of her own boat and take herself where a canaler belonged.
But Mondragon—but him, asleep upstairs—
She took her knife and her hook in either hand and walked in, looking this way and that, finding nothing astir. She walked the length of the room, through puddles of spilled drinks. There was a lingering acrid smell, a haziness in the air. The smell made her head ache.
Through the back curtain, into the hall, and through that narrow doorway where the stairs were. Another body. More bodies. One moved.
"Ali!" She got to one unsteady knee and shook at him. "Ali! What happened? Where's Moghi? What's—"
"Uhhnn," Ali said, and raised a hand to point upstairs. It fell again. He made another effort. There was blood on his mouth. "Moghi—out back—" He was trying to get up. Altair left him and scrambled up the stairs.
The door of the Room was open. She ran to it, ran inside, where the nightlight still burned and the bedclothes lay ripped half from the bed. She ran to the other side of the bed, and there was nothing lying there but Mondragon's sword.
She flung the bedclothes this way and that. Not a trace of blood, nowhere any blood. Or of Mondragon's clothes, except the knit cap. Thathung there. No boots. So he had been dressed when the trouble came. He had not been taken asleep. But he had been dragged across that bed— someonehad.
She grabbed up the sword in her hook-hand and went back around the end of the bed to discover her own shoes still lying where she had left them. She squatted there and shook out the one with her knife hand.
The gold piece thudded out onto the floor, lay mere shining in the lamplight.
So they—They—had not bothered to rob, either. Had not searched the place at all. It was nothing in the world they cared about but Mondragon himself—so they were not ordinary thieves, not hired help; and him gone without a trace of a struggle but the bedclothes ripped and the sword lying and the air filled with that acrid stench.
She pocketed the goldpiece, sheathed the useless knife and hook and pelted barefoot across the hall to check the bath, in one last vain thought of finding him.
Nothing. Her head pounded, her eyes watered and her nose ran—she swiped her sweater-sleeve across the latter, hearing a commotion below, men's voices and muffled oaths.
They were alive down there. Whatever noxious stuff had gotten loose in the building, someone was alive, and someone was down there walking around.
If it was not the Sword of God themselves, come back to kill them all.
O Lord, ain't nobody heard that bell? Don't even Ventani care, upstairs of us? Governor's police won't come, they won't about come down here, 'cepting they might want their hands on Mondragon—
—and now there's me, up here in the upstairs with no way down but them stairs—
There were clear voices and muzzy ones, all male; then:
"Jones!"
Moghi's distinct bellow, however strained and cracked. She clenched her fist on Mondragon's sword and headed stairward.
Moghi was down in the hall, propped on a bench against the hanging clutter of clothes and towels on the wall. Ali was there, with a half dozen of the bullylads and a single youth whose lavender-and-black silk shirt and outraged manner said Ventani all over him. Upstairs had come to call—the Ventani landlords sent to know what was amiss down in their basement and why the bell had rung. From the room beyond came thumps and weak oaths. A chair scraped and crashed. The pretty boy from Upstairs Ventani looked anxiously up at her and said something to Moghi: then he hurried out, avoiding witnesses, even if it was no more than a canaler headed downstairs with an uptowner's sword in her hand. Ventani got itself clear. It wouldbe clear, if and when the law came calling. Ventani would see to that.
"He there?" Moghi asked, a ghost of his ordinary voice. The handful of men hovered around him, all of them with dour, ugly looks " He there, Jones?"
She clutched the sword in her left fist and stopped on the bottom steps, outnumbered and outweighed and with no more place to run than canaler justice gave her. Not raise a sword against Moghi, nor take a hook to him. That was a way to die, right off or in a few days, slow and painfully.
"No," she said. "He ain't there." And stamped the last two steps down to stand square in Moghi's little court. 4'Dammit, Moghi—how'd they get him?*'
"Smoke," Moghi said, "this damn smoke—" He waved a pasty-hued hand. Sweat stood on his face. He looked like a man about to be sick. "They came in, all hoods and masks—Wesh got to the bell and they flung one of them Chat stars—Wesh's 'bout dead out there—" Moghi coughed, the spasm rocking his whole body. "Ain't seen Tommy or Jep. Damn them. Damn 'em anyhow!"
"I got to get help—*'
"Ain't no help going to come—Ain't no blacklegs going to mix in this."
"Well see about that." She started past, for the door, but that door got blocked. Two men moved into it. She turned around and looked Moghi's way. "I got to find 'im!"
"Wait," Moghi said. "Jones. Come back here."
She came. With that tone of voice, with Moghi's men in the way, she had no choice. She stood in front of Moghi and Moghi's mouth made a thin pale line in his sweating face.
"You going after him," Moghi said. "You know what you're after?"
"I got names. Boregy. Malvino. They c'n get help somewheres." She squatted down on her heels, the sword across her knees, so that Moghi did not have to look up. "They got gold to buy trouble for them bastards, they can get him back."
"They ain't no gang," Moghi said, his voice all hoarse. "I seen 'em walk in—bold as boils, them and them black masks—never spoke a word, just this smoking pot rolled through the door and these black devils came through, just walked through, with customers dropping to the floor and that damn smoke—They flung a star at Wesh. Old Lewy cussed 'em and I thought he was gone, but they walked on through like they knew where they was going—They damn well knew, Jones."
"Well, I never told 'em!"
"They walk in here like they own it all, like they know where they's going—They ain't no gang, Jones, they ain't nothing like that."
"I got t'other half of what I give you." She fished desperately in her pocket and came up with the gold piece. "Moghi, I pay ye, I make it good as I can, I go away."
Moghi hesitated, staring at the gold round—just staring at it and not taking it, as if Moghi had ever hesitated at money in his life. Then he clamped his jaw tight, reached out a waxy hand and took it between two fingers to carry it back and hold it up. "You 'member what I said, the time you come in here looking to haul barrels, Jones? You 'member what I told you about that, how I give you them two silvers and put you up against that bullyboy of Hafiz's? You 'member what I said? If you got the load back you was hired and if you got to harbor-bottom I had me an excuse."
"I come back, Moghi."
"I want these black fellows' guts on a hook, Jones. I ain't expecting to see you again. But I'm turning you loose. Ain't no lot of hooded bullies come into myplace and take none of my guests. I'll have their guts for breakfast, ain't no way they get away with that. Now you tell me, Jones—" He reached out and carefully gathered the neck of her sweater in his fist and pulled her close, up in his whiskey-laden breath. The sword was still in her lap; she dared not touch it, more than to keep it from falling. "Jones, you tell me true—everything. Or I gut ye. And you tell me ever'thing and I give you the same bet I give you five years ago—I give you anything you need. This ain't a money-thing. This is killing. You understand me, 'Jones? Who is he? What's these black fellers? Why'd they bust up my bar and poison my customers?"