Troubled Waters

by C. J. Cherryh

  "No," she said. What if he couldn't—or wouldn't pay?

  "What's the matter, can't write? You dictate it and I'll write it for—"

  "I can write. And read." Defiantly her head came up. She licked her bloody lip. "But I ain't writin' nothin' for you, Pace, so's you get Thomas in deep in what—" She stopped, tried to still her questions, then blazed: "What's to say you won't get money outta him an' keep it, and still let Megary sell me?"

  "I came back like I said, didn't I?"

  "You didn't bring me nothin'."

  "Bring you ... ? Oh, food. I can get it, I think." He stood up and headed for the door.

  "Wai—" She bit off the word, but he turned, still holding the packet. She didn't want him to go. He was her only link to the outside. "I'd write a note to Moghi," she managed.

  The man calling himself Pace came back and hunkered down before her. He said very softly, "Moghi? These politicos ought to take their own medicine, Jones. Don't you think Mondragon'll try to help you? I would, if you were mine. Do whatever it'd take." He was untying the knot on the packet, getting out paper and a charcoal wrapped in cloth.

  "You don't understand ..." It sounded miserable. She wanted to explain about the Sword agents, the trouble Mondragon was in, the way that trouble was isolating him from everything and everybody. But she couldn't get out a word of it, not when she was sitting in this stinking cell and here was somebody trying to help get her out of it.

  "Then explain it to me," he said softly, holding out the white square of paper now, already smudged from his dirty hand.

  In the end, she wrote the note to Moghi, making Pace promise to leave it with him for "Whoever wants to know . . ."

  And Pace was real happy, he said. But he didn't look happy. It was like he was worried the note wasn't going to do any good.

  After he left, the food he promised came, though, and she ate it all like it was the key to salvation—very slowly, savoring every bite of bread and every sip of cider, trying to close her nose against the stench of her body and her cell and the rot that nobody, not even Pace, cared enough to clean up.

  Tatiana Kalugin's bed was the only place Magruder could get the stench of Jones' cell off him, though he religiously showered and scrubbed himself raw every time he came back from Megary to the Embassy through the servants' entrance.

  Tonight, not even Tatiana's beauty or her magnificent suite on the Rock was enough to do it. When he left here, he was going to deliver the Jones girl's message.

  "What is it, Chance?" said Tatiana, all honey and musk and skin like suede in his arms.

  A chill pierced him with her words. He was slipping. It was one thing to be distracted, another to show it. Tatiana Kalugin was arguably the smartest of the ruling family, his only ally among them, and the most dangerous of his enemies because of all the aforementioned. If she even thought he was holding back with her, hiding more than professional power players always must hide, he'd lose everything here. End up in one of the Signeury interrogation modules, so much more agonizing and sophisticated than the Megary'cell where he was keeping young Jones.

  Magruder was no coward, but he was claustrophobic, and he was in the middle of a protracted interrogation himself, which made him less willing even than usual to consider the consequences to himself if he should fail here. So he said, "I keep worrying about what old Ito's planning for Mike Chamoun. A kill order from the College, that your daddy's agreed to, isn't anything to take too lightly—"

  "I told you, Chance, I'll take care of it. I know you consider yourself the boy's protector. You've got to realize that I consider myself yours, in matters Merovingian." She ruffled his silver-streaked hair. "You've got to trust me, though it's foreign to your nature."

  "Yeah, and you me." He swung off her, put both feet on the floor. He had to play this right, or it would be the beginning of the end of this relationship, the most important tactical one he'd cultivated here. He had to make his distress seem plausible, since he couldn't hide it. He had to make sure that the protective instincts she spoke of were roused in his defense, or else she'd figure out he was playing her false. And that would be the end of Chance Magruder.

  "We'll manage," she said. "For these stakes, we must." She came up on one elbow and he glanced at her beautiful, mature body half out from under the sheets. "Once I've tamed Anastasi's warlike instincts, you and I are going to forge a relationship with Nev Hettek that will be worth all it's cost so far."

  Once I help you ace your brother and succeed your father as sole despot here, you mean, he thought but couldn't say. "If we lose Mike Chamoun—and we can, with him out doing census work in the lower tiers, vulnerable to Ito's henchmen—then it's back to square one."

  "Would it really be that bad? If a Sword of God attack during Festival Eve didn't destroy our budding diplomatic relations, how could the loss of one river-boat captain?"

  "You've got to take this more seriously, Tatiana. He's a Nev Hetteker; I'm his ambassador. We know threats have been made against his life and a hit sanctioned by Merovingen's highest officials. If it happens, it's your government executing one of my citizens, without trial or due process of any sort. This while he's hip-deep in a shipping merger and a marriage to one of your most noble houses to facilitate the paperwork . . . you bet it's worse. It contravenes all the progress we've supposedly made here. If you're saying you're really not certain you can protect Michael, I'm going to suggest to him and his bride that they come live in my embassy compound until the threat's over. It's either that or face Ito and your father and tell them we know what they've got in mind." .She came up behind him and her hands started kneading his shoulders. "Ssh, Chance, let me handle this. I promise you, no one's going to execute your Chamoun boy. Or, if they do, they'll have my justice to reckon with. Which wouldn't be a bad trade-off, you know? To be rid of Ito ..."

  He knew she was smiling that smile colder than a duelist's. He didn't try to see her face. He hung his head and shook it, simultaneously leaning back into her expert massage. "I want Chamoun safe. We'll get Ito another day, another way—or Ito will get Ito. That's usually the way with these fundamentalist types. Promise me you won't close your eyes to this just so that you can take a cardinal's scalp in the aftermath."

  She sighed a deep, unpremeditated sigh. "Yes, all right. You drive a hard bargain, Chance Magruder. Now come back here and prove to me you're worth it."

  He wasn't going to have any trouble doing that.

  When he'd proved that fact to both their satisfactions, he left for the Embassy.

  By the time he'd changed there and slipped out the servant's entrance in his disguise, it was pitchblack, the dead of night.

  Nobody was out tonight but smugglers, Anastasi's police, and drunken sharrh hunters. Or so it seemed, until, as Magruder swung up onto Ventani pier, a rapier's tip was waiting for him there.

  He had a choice. He could step back, dive into the canal, away from the sword. But he knew the sword and the man behind it. The only thing he didn't know was whether the man knew him, or Mondragon was just so spooked by Jones' disappearance that he was out looking for somebody to blame.

  Magruder should have known better. Mondragon was Sword-trained. A putty nose and some berry-juice dye weren't going to fool him for long.

  "Magruder! You bastard, where is she?"

  Magruder spread his hands away from his sides casually. "A note from her—in my inside pocket. You want to take it yourself, you ought to put that blade down. There's no return address, and you'll never find her on your own. Not when I hid her."

  The sword came down, just enough for Mondragon to feel up Magruder for the letter. "It's for Moghi," Mondragon said uncertainly.

  "She didn't want to implicate you even that much—or she thinks you don't care enough about her, or couldn't help her if you did—she said that much."

  "She wouldn't tell you anything."

  "She didn't tell me much. But she told me enough. And you're telling me the rest. I'll release her, Mondragon, no
sweat. You just shut down that second channel to Nev Hettek and quit trying to put my head in a noose."

  "I can't do that," Mondragon said, lifting his eyes from Jones' terse, ungrammatical note. "There's other people pulling strings here."

  "Anastasi Kalugin, Vega Boregy, right?"

  Mondragon only blinked.

  "Ito Boregy and old man Kalugin as well?"

  "Not that I know."

  "Well, then your girl's dead."

  "So are you."

  "You'll have to wait on that, don't you think?" Magruder said easily. "Until you see if you and I can make some kind of secondary deal?" Mondragon's swordtip wasn't back at his throat. Yet.

  "Like?" said the wraith in the night, hardly more than a pale shadow in the darkness.

  "Like you do a little dance for me. Protect Mike Chamoun, keep him out of the middle of this—"

  "How am I supposed to do that?"

  Getting desperate, Tommy, from the sound of your voice. Best not to let the opposition know what you're thinking. Or are you just plain past where you can do any thinking? "I don't know, Tommy. How'd you tangle Chamoun up in this in the first place?"

  "Couldn't be helped. Look, Magruder, there must be a way."

  Good boy. There's always a way, Tommy. "Then you find one. Shut down the second channel—no more using Chamoun to run your suicidal parallel operations. You want to kill yourself, that's fine with me. As far as I'm concerned, you should have been dead when I first found you. But don't take my assets down with you. Make your Boregy and Kalugin contacts think Nev Hettek shut you down, or that I'm too solid to be hurt by this sort of thing, or whatever you like."

  "It won't work." Now Mondragon's sword did come up.

  It wavered an inch before Magruder's face. He knew better than to focus on the weapon. He focused on the eyes of the man behind it. He said to Mondragon, "It better work. I took your girlfriend. I can take your other friends. Anytime. All the innocents you've got mired in your affairs like it doesn't matter who gets hurt—they'll all suffer. You've got to realize, Tommy, nobody gives a damn about your carcass anymore, because it's clear you don't. But that doesn't mean we can't reach you. Anywhere. Any way we want. Whenever we want." Now put that weapon away.

  It worked. The sword came down, found its scabbard. Just as Mondragon was sheathing it, some big mother of a yacht went by, and in its running lights, reflected over the water, Mondragon looked like the angel on Hanging Bridge come to life, with his sword half-sheathed.

  Then the boat was gone, the light was gone, and the sword was at Mondragon's side.

  "Someday, Magruder, I'm going to even up with you."

  "Maybe in another life," Magruder grinned. "If you turn Revenantist so you can have one. In this life, you ain't been winning real regular. Now, write a nice note to your girlfriend, and we'll turn her loose, oh . . . tomorrow night, sometime."

  "I can't show any results by then—"

  "You think I don't know that?" Magruder took a step forward, away from the edge of the pier. Mondragon retreated before him. "You owe me, Tommy. You always will, from now on. You're going to be a good boy and a good Sword informant. From now on, if you have to pretend to use Chamoun, you use him to get messages to me. And don't try to leave Merovingen. Or get the girl out. Next time I take her, you're going to wish you got her back in pieces this time."

  "She's not . . ."

  "Hurt? Not physically, not really. I'm even willing to let her think that her hero coughed up cash to rescue her. That's what I'll tell her. It's what she wants to hear."

  "A magnanimous gesture. It doesn't suit you, Magruder."

  "I don't make gestures. You're getting rusty. I close traps. She doesn't know I took her—she doesn't know who did, or why. If you're smart, you won't tell her any more than that you got the note, and paid somebody named 'Pace' what it cost. If you're not smart, what's left of your life is going to unravel before your eyes. Now, write something for her."

  Mondragon said nothing more, just backed up until he was under one of the oil lamps hung on the pilings of Ventani pier, and wrote his note.

  When he'd finished, he handed the packet to Magruder and stomped away, toward Moghi's.

  Magruder waited until the ex-Sword agent was swallowed by the shadows of the tiers before he left for Megary, where the prisoner waited.

  When the man called Pace came again, Jones felt as if she'd been waiting forever. She was resentful that he'd stayed away so long, and gladder to see him than she'd ever admit.

  For his part, he didn't sit down across from her this time. He tossed her the packet on which she'd written.

  Her fingers were stiff with the cold and the damp; it was nearly dawn, from the way the left upper corner of her cell was lightening. Pace had brought a lamp.

  When she'd opened the packet, she found she had to go over to the lamp he held in order to read it.

  She'd never been so close to the dark, dirty man. She was so aware of his proximity that it interfered with her reading. She mouthed Mondragon's words slowly, and then said them aloud, " 'I've made a deal. You're free. Meet me at Moghi's as soon as you can. Th.M.' "

  "See there," said the man called Pace, "your boyfriend cares more about you than you thought."

  "How did you— I mean ..." Jones wanted to hug the big man, stopped herself, took three quick steps back. He was her captor. Her jailer. She should hate him. But he was also her rescuer. She jammed her hands together, tangling her fingers. "That's it, then? I can go? How do I get—"

  "I'll take you," he said softly, and she'd never been more grateful or more relieved.

  Out of Megary. Out of Megary into the gray fog of a wet dawn. You couldn't see farther than the tip of your outstretched hand, but Jones would always remember walking through the holding pens of Megary, and up, and out.

  The sea wind on her face. The smell of salt and canal, not rot and feces. The launch that Pace had brought, bigger and faster than the runabout he'd had last time.

  There was a funny look to his face, even in the fog. He said, "You're better at this than I am. Why don't you pilot this thing back to Moghi's?"

  She was glad to do that, anxious to be away, afraid until Megary was swallowed by the fog that somehow the slavers would come chasing after them, even though Pace seemed sure everything had been arranged.

  " 'Ware," she cried when a hull loomed close. Her voice was shaky, thick, choked with emotion she didn't want Pace to hear. " 'Ware!' "

  Water raced under the launch; the fog wouldn't burn off for hours, not in the winter cold. She shivered as she steered. The cold and the wet and the water and the danger were freedom, and she loved it. Half-obscured by the weather, the man called Pace sat in the bow, hunched over. She wanted to say something to him, she really did.

  But what did you say? He'd done her no favor. He'd blackmailed Mondragon. Maybe it wasn't his fault, like he said. Maybe he was just like her, just caught up in things. So if she wasn't angry at him, then that just showed that being free was such a gift it made up for everything else.

  It had to.

  When they reached Ventani pier, he said, "Out." That was all. He didn't even move from the bow. She pulled in close. Grabbed a piling, found a ladder rung.

  Even while she was climbing out, somebody dropped into the boat from the pier above.

  Pace must have been expecting it, for he didn't move from the bow.

  The new man in the boat took the helm, and Jones barely had her feet on the ladder's rungs before the launch was pulling away below her.

  She watched it disappear into the fog, feeling somehow that she should have said good-bye. Then she shook her head and climbed. She headed down the pier for Moghi's. When she found Thomas Mondragon, he was going to have a lot of explaining to do.

  CHAPTER XI

  TROUBLED WATERS

  by C. J. Cherryh

  Up the board steps to Moghi's . . . toward the skewed rectangle of light that showed there. . . .

  "Jones!" a male
voice said. "Jones!"

  She turned, saw young Jimmy Singh clambering up from his skip. Singh pointed, toward the waterside.

  "Ye got a man looking f ye—"

  She looked, saw her own skip at tie-up. Saw the man in black standing in it, looking her way. Dark cap, blond hair escaping under it. Damnfool.

  She crossed the boards and landed barefoot in the bow, with a force that made the skip bob and heave and that shot fire through her feet. And stood there with her own shadow blotting out most of him and his face pale and scared in the light from Moghi's lantern.

  Damn 'im!

  "Let's go home," Mondragon said. "All right?"

  "Yey," she said. And stalked over the clutter—clutter! in her well—and snatched up the boathook from the rack. He had the pole. She shoved the boathook at him. "Gimme th' pole!"

  "Yey," he said quietly, and traded, and went up to the bow. "I'd better tell Moghi you're all right. I promised I would."

  "Do 'er," she said harshly; and stood there leaning on the pole while Mondragon climbed up onto the porch and went inside.

  The pole felt good in her hands. The wind smelled clean—the city wind smelled clean—after the stink of the cell. She kept seeing the walls. She kept hearing the silence and the echoes, when there was the sound of the water to hear.

  He came out again. Moghi's shadow filled the doorway. Others were behind him, canalers, she reckoned.

  "Ye all right, Jones?" Moghi asked.

  "I'll talk," she said, "t'morrow. 'M takin' my man home. All right, Moghi?"

  "Yey," Moghi said in a curiously quiet voice. Or everything seemed quiet. She waited while Mondragon got aboard again, and pulled the bow-tie free.

  Then she put the pole in, and backed, and Mondragon took up the boathook and shoved with it off the porch. They swung around into Grand current, and she snapped: "Hey, hin!"