Troubled Waters

by C. J. Cherryh

  Mondragon stood still in the middle of the room, with panic gnawing in his gut.

  He knew, damn, he knew what could keep Jones away, what hurt could keep her out of sight, hidden away.

  Dammit to hell! What does she want?

  Me to come searching for her, that's what she wants.

  Wants me to beg.

  He walked for the door, met the lock and swore, unlocking it, and walked out into the cold, hands in pockets, toward Hanging Bridge.

  Trying to make me worry.

  She wants me to worry until I turn the damn city upside down for her, spend two hundred gold for her, that's what she wants!

  She's a damn kid. She's seventeen. At seventeen you can be a fool.

  I yelled at her. I shouldn't have yelled, oh, damn, I shouldn't have yelled.

  It's money again. We always fight over money. Two hundred sols, I say. It's nothing.

  It's more money than she's ever seen. Ever will see, on the water. And, damn, it's nothing, I say.

  Damn, damn, damn, and if somebody saw Marina Kamat and told her—

  He felt the heat of shame on his face, burning in the wind. Two hundred sols isn't nothing. Kamat isn't nothing. There's no choice. I sell what I have to. She wouldn't. But I can't afford that kind of pride. Can't afford to think about it, you just do it, that's all. Whatever pays the bills.

  It was Boregy money that had hired Moghi's men. Money Boregy had put in his account to pay the rent, to keep up his gambling in a certain gaming house, to buy up a certain few clerks' debts, and buy a certain few souls—

  When Boregy finds out—

  If Boregy has found out, if it's Vega who's got her— He'd say by now. He wouldn't kill her. He wouldn't do that. He'd tell me—tell me how to buy her back. And I would. Anything.

  "Min," he said, softly in the dark, crouching close on waterside by the aged skip, where the oldest woman on the canals lived her life. Mintaka tied up every night by Petrescu: Jones had sold her that right, for Min's own sake. And the old woman, alcoholic and muddled between now and twenty years ago, was Jones' friend for life—the way she had been Retribution's, so Jones said, and never could remember which of them was which. "Min, it's Mondragon. Can I come aboard?"

  "Mondragon?" In the wan, cold light of upstairs windows on Petrescu, he saw the rag-curtain of the hidey part, and a tousled gray head poked out. "Thet Mondragon?"

  "Yey, Min." He stepped into the skip and crouched down in front of the hidey. "You seen Jones?"

  "Ne, ne." Min grunted and heaved more of herself out, hauling her blankets with her. "She ain't wi' your business?"

  "No. Not mine. Not Moghi's. I asked. Min, she's mad at me. I hope that's what it is. I'm hoping she's hiding somewhere, but I'm afraid for her. Please. If you know anything, if you know anybody who might know anything—tell me."

  Min wrapped her blankets about her, a gray, whiskey-smelling lump in the dark. "Mad at ye?"

  "Lover's quarrel, Min."

  "Awwwwww." Min hunched up with interest, blankets under her chins. Min was a romantic. "What ye gone an' done, huh?"

  "Min, I—" Tell Min anything and it was one end of Merovingen to the other by morning. "I yelled at her. I got mad, I yelled, I—"

  "Been messin' wi' m'sera Kamat?"

  O my God . . .

  "Do you know where she is, Min? I know you wouldn't break a promise to her. I know you wouldn't betray her. But it's dangerous for her to be out alone right now. I've got enemies, Min. They could try to get her. I'm scared to death they have, do you understand me? You wouldn't he to me, would you, Min?"

  A shake of Min's untidy head. "Ne, Mondragon." Not m'ser Mondragon. Just Mondragon, canaler-style, which came like a guarantee of truth. "I ain't seen 'er. I thought she was wi' you, or off on some business o' Moghi's— But ye go 'round wi' that m'sera Kamat, she won't take to that, no. Ain't no wonder she'd be mad at ye. So'm' I."

  "I'm begging her, Min. If you know where she is.

  It's for her sake, Min. If she wants anything—I'll do it. Tell her that."

  Min shook her head slowly. "I ain't seen her. That's the truth. Ain't seen her. I dunno where she is."

  "Find her and tell her. Will you do that, Min? Will you pass the word to the Trade? Something's happened to Jones. She's in trouble. Just tell me she's safe, and I'll settle whatever's between us later. Anyone finds her—just so they can tell me she's all right, I'll give them whatever they ask."

  "Ney. Jones's Trade."

  There was outrage in the old woman's voice. Reproof. Mondragon ducked his head, and said: "Yey, Min. But I love her."

  A knobby, warm hand reached out and clumsily patted his cheek. "If I was younger I'd give 'er a fight f' ye, boy. I would. Ye go. I'll ask Del an' Mira and that Tommy. They'll ask too. We'll look."

  "Thanks, Min." He knew better than to give her whiskey. Nothing would get done. He knew better than money, too. So he hugged the old woman, smelly blankets and all, and got himself off her skip and out of her way, home, upstairs, because there was the chance Jones would come back, there was the chance the boys could find out something—

  He was beginning to panic. He had nothing left in trade—except the delicate matter of Marina Kamat, which might afford more money than Marina Kamat was willing to part with: there was the money. Boregy might pay for information he could get . . .

  Or there was Jones' life and health, which might be at stake—which might mean the affair with Marina Kamat was the only coin he had to trade in, with Boregy, with Anastasi—

  With his other enemies, who were capable of anything.

  THE PRISONER

  by Janet Morris

  When Jones had tired of throwing herself against the door of her cell, she'd wept in frustration, curled up on the moldy straw bedding. There was a bucket in here for a toilet, and that was all. Nobody came when she called.

  Once food came through a slot in the bottom of the door—stew and bread. She didn't eat it. They didn't take it away when the slot opened again. Somebody's gruff voice said she didn't get anything else until she'd eaten that.

  She dumped it in her slop bucket, as if anybody cared.

  The empty tray was taken, and eventually more food came. This time she ate it, because daylight was coming through the slit near the ceiling of her cell.

  That daylight went, eventually, and came again, food with it, and went again, before anyone said another word to her. She had far too long to regret and to fume. Mondragon had done this to her—she never should have fished him out of the water that time.

  She'd done it to herself, her mother would have said. And that made her angry. Fooling around with Merovingen-above, that was what had gotten her here. She wasn't going to make anyone a good slave, didn't they know that? Whoever they were, couldn't they figure that out?

  She yelled at the slit, the next time food came, that she'd kill anyone who came near her. No one answered.

  Someone had searched her; what she'd had for weapons, and all she'd had of value, was gone. She sat a long time, and her anger bled away that day.

  The following night was one wherein all the horrors of slavery that her imagination could find were tortures as real as the straw on which she sat or the tiny red bugs she'd found crawling on her when morning light last came through the slot.

  That night, no food came with sunset. Good, she thought. I'll starve myself. Nobody will want me. They won't be able to sell me. I'll starve myself to death. But her stomach growled and she was getting very thirsty. And no one had ever come to clean her bucket, which was filled with her first meal here and her waste products. It smelled so bad in her cell she could hardly breathe.

  She began to worry that they'd forgotten about her. She'd die here, and nobody would ever know. She went to her door and pounded on it. She yelled herself hoarse. She took her slop bucket and threw it at the door.

  Then the smell was really horrible, and the foul mess was all over everything, and spreading in slow rivulets toward her straw pallet
.

  Why hadn't she realized that the floor of her cell wasn't level? Pretty soon, there wasn't going to be a dry spot in here. She sat up all that night, in unnatural fear that a rivulet of rotten stew and human waste was going to touch her.

  By morning she was exhausted, shivering, huddled in a corner with all her straw piled up under her and her feet pulled in against her buttocks, staring blankly at the door which hadn't opened for so long.

  Then when it did open—all the way!—she didn't believe her eyes.

  Magruder imagined he knew everything his prisoner was feeling: the way the light streaming through the open doorway at his back dazzled her eyes; the way the decent food he'd brought smelled to her; the way fear and anger and eagerness and relief bounced around inside her head like a pack of penned hunting dogs trying to get out to run.

  He imagined he knew because Magruder had been imprisoned himself. Captured. Incarcerated. Interrogated. Tortured physically as well as mentally. Having been through the process, he considered himself an expert on the reactions of a subject in this sort of situation.

  As for the interrogator's role ... he knew that, one too. You don't rise as high in the hierarchy of revolution as Magruder had without learning how to get the information you need from the unwilling. Sometimes you could even get it from the unknowing.

  But always, when faced with the countenance of the prisoner, Magruder was startled by the sameness of those faces. Male or female, young or old, a prisoner was a prisoner and they all looked alike. The glassy eyes, the defiant mouths, the pinched wan faces of the terrorized never differed. And their responses fell within a predictable range.

  The young woman called Altair Jones was predictably startled, predictably confused, and predictably hostile. She was also predictably relieved that she hadn't been forgotten.

  And she was frightened: a huge shadow was coming toward her with a fragrant tray of food and unknowable motives. She was weak and disoriented and ready for exactly the kind of chit-chat she wouldn't be expecting.

  Magruder put the tray of food down between them, ignoring the shit and chunks of blue-green meat and the maggots crawling on them. He sat cross-legged in the mess she'd made as if it didn't exist. He picked up one of two plates on the tray and pushed the remainder toward her.

  She didn't move to take it.

  He took a bit of fresh hot bread and said, as he chewed, "Sorry it took me so long to get to you. These slavers ain't playin' along. Once they saw you, they forgot the deal we made. I just need to ask you some questions. You answer 'em, I think I can get you back out of here." He reached for the tray, took one of two mugs of hot mulled cider, and sipped it.

  The huge-eyed girl before him just watched. Her fists were balled in her lap. Her mouth was thinning with the effort it took not to grab the food.

  "C'mon," said Magruder in his best Merovingen-below patois, "eat up, m'sera. Amends, an' all."

  "Amends!" It came out of her explosively, then she clamped her mouth shut once more. A fist came up and with it she knuckled her eyes, eyes burning bright with tears of struggle and fury.

  But her silence was broken, and with it her resolve to silence. Magruder showed no sign of triumph, he simply chewed and sipped, returning her glare with as soft a look of compassion as he could manage.

  Eventually, he said again, "C'mon, m'sera, I went to lots of trouble, gettin' this in here. I can't help you if you won't let me."

  "Help me? You did this to me, crud!" Invective followed, and a flash of her hand to the tray, where she grabbed the hot bread and threw it at him.

  He caught it casually, to let her know he could, and to let her know something else: he put the bread back on the tray and said, looking at it, "This is about your friend Mondragon. It's him got you here, not me. Up to your hips in his business, you ought to have expected somethin' like this—"

  "Liar! You dunno nothin' about me and Mon—" She nearly launched herself at him. Instead, she bit her lip and he half expected to see blood flow.

  "Mondragon's been usin' you a long time, everybody knows that. You don't see him tryin' to batter his way in here to break your butt out, do you? Come on, eat this. Like I said, I'm sorry this got started. I just needed to talk to you. I didn't expect these Megary fools to get so set on turnin' a profit."

  "I'm not eatin'," she said. She pushed the tray toward him. "Not gonna be fat and pretty for 'em."

  "Talk to me, and maybe that won't happen. Tell me what Mondragon and Boregy're doin' and—"

  Then she did launch herself at him, and he let her come, grabbing her wrists and fending off all of her bites and most of her kicks and blows. She needed to let her rage break through, and he knew how it felt to be helpless.

  She struggled against him until she was out of breath, and then she gave a strangled sob and slumped down bonelessly.

  The food he'd brought was now fouled with the slop on the floor, and he said, "I wish you hadn't done that. I can't get you no more food now. I'll bring you something tomorrow night," and let her go.

  She rubbed her eyes. She was sitting in the middle of the mess she'd made. She picked at the ruins of the first decent meal she'd had a chance to eat for days, and she seemed suddenly like a kid on the beach looking for something she'd lost in the sand.

  That was the moment when Chance Magruder realized that this interrogation was going to be tougher than he'd expected—on both of them.

  She sat there in the mess for too long before she crawled back to her straw, crossed her arms over her breasts, and raised glittering eyes. "I ain't tellin' you nothin'. You did this to me. Why?"

  "I answer your question, you answer one o' mine," he bargained. She inclined her head minutely. He took it as assent, saying, "Deal, then," and answered hers: "Money," he lied. "Somebody paid me . . . maybe the College, maybe some Kalugin agents, I dunno. Somebody wants to know what you know about Mondragon's connection with the high houses. I needed the money." He let his eyes drop.

  She flared, "Money? You did this for . . . Crazies that hired you didn't tell you I'd had scrapes with Megary before? That Mondragon's had . . . dealings with these Megary bastards—" She bit her lip again and this time the blood came, drawn by strong white teeth. "I'll never get out of here. There's no use me talkin' to you." She turned her head away and her shoulders were shaking.

  He stood up. "Y' owe me one honest answer, remember." This wasn't the time to push her further. He'd pushed her quite far enough. Now he just had to worry her. "I'll be back," he promised too loudly, as if he weren't sure he could promise it at all. Then, with what he hoped would ring true as false bravado, he added, "Anybody bothers you, you tell 'em I said I'd be back to talk to you again."

  And he left her stunned there, slumped against the wall, looking after him dully, too shocked even to demand to know the name of her protector.

  The man didn't come back the next day. She screamed through the slit when it opened to take the tray she'd shoved over there that, "It's a mess in here and somebody better come clean it up!"

  But nobody did, and she dreamed about roaches and rats when she slept. When she woke, she had to stamp her feet to make the roaches and rats disappear. She wanted the man to come back and then she didn't when she could finally hear him outside her cell, arguing with somebody.

  The two men out there went at it—the voice of the man who'd brought her the good food, and somebody else. She couldn't catch sentences, only words. By the time she'd swallowed her pride enough to crawl over to the door where she could hear, no longer caring what he'd think if he caught her with her ear to the door, the men weren't yelling at each other any longer.

  She heard footsteps, though, as both of them went away. And she spent that whole day wondering what the snippets of conversation she had heard might mean. She knew they'd been arguing about her. She was sure she'd heard something about a slave ship, and the voice of the man with food saying "She's mine till I say otherwise. You been paid."

  But she wasn't sure.


  She huddled in her corner for what seemed like forever, and then there were footsteps again. This time she was certain it was just the regular guard with another foul meal, but it was him!

  He wasn't as big as she remembered him, but he was just as dirty. He had pale eyes, and she hadn't noticed that before either. They were looking at her mournfully. And he didn't have any mulled cider or fresh bread with him. He was empty-handed.

  He sat down in the slop-and-maggot mess as if it weren't there and said to her, "You owe me one straight answer, m'sera Jones."

  She shrugged one shoulder. He hadn't brought her any food. She felt betrayed. She tried not to look at him, but she couldn't. She'd wanted him to come back. Now that he was here, she wanted him to leave.

  "Just tell me if you think Mondragon cares enough about you that I could go to him for money to get you back out of here."

  So that was it! "Slime sucker! You think Mondragon can ransom me? You did this for cash? Thomas ain't got no money! None of us does!"

  "But the Boregys do . . ."

  "Boregy's ain't about to help him get me . . ." She stopped, bit her lip. Since it was where she'd bitten it before, she winced when the sharp edge of her tooth opened the old wound. "What's your name, scum? Y' kin tell me that."

  "Pace," he said, and rushed on as if somebody'd opened a dike in him somewhere: "Look, Jones, don't you see this is politics? Bigger than you, bigger than me? We're just pawns, is all. Who'd know the Boregys wouldn't pay for you? Not me. I just did the snatch. Followin' my orders. Somebody wants Mondragon to be a good boy, like he ain't been. Want me to talk to him? Maybe he can help you, and you just don't know it? Maybe it's worth a try." He reached into his shirt and came out with a leather-wrapped packet. "Write him a note? Here's all you need. Tell him you're alive, and t' pay the bearer. That's all you gotta do."