"What sort?" Anastasi asked.

"Threats. Not half as attractive as what you pay me. Like protection. He can"t outbid you. I think you should know that."

Anastasi smiled. "You want me to know that."

"I"m quite faithful."

"What about Chamoun? You said you"d bought him."

Mondragon glanced down, thinking that there was coin to use, that in Vega"s eyes Ca.s.sie was expendable. He thought of Jones. And did not want to make any suggestion involving Ca.s.sie. There was very little edge left to this Sword. Very little nowadays. And he reminded himself that he could lose everything by caring for anything. But the edge was gone; that was all. He did not know where or when. "1 don"t know. I don"t like what"s going on. I"m going to talk to Vega. If all else fails I"m going to talk to Chamoun. Maybe one of the cardinal"s sessions. Who knows?"

"You keep in touch with me about that."

"Chamoun was still high when he said it. Eyes dilated. Voice up. 1 don"t know who talked to him, I don"t know when he got this a.s.signment, I don"t know why the cardinal let him out in that condition. Or whether someone else got to him. AH this came up at the last minute. I haven"t had time to trace it."

Anastasi nodded, thinking, and looked at him, so much like Kar.1 Fon in that little mannerism it caught at his gut.

"Do that," Anastasi said.

The skip plowed its way through the chop, logy as a three-day drunk. She took a little water, but very little: Jones kept her bow to the waves and chewed a piece out of her lip every time a gust rocked the boat.

Then the engine sputtered.

She hit the engine-box with her fist. "Dammit, not now!"

FEVER SEASON (REPRISED).

*7.

Second sputter. Same with her heart. If the engine died and she lost way, there was no way to keep from going broadside to the waves, which meant water and more water and the bottom of the harbor.

She throttled up a little, knowing that tank was going to go down fast at that rate, but the sputters smoothed out.

More water over the side.

d.a.m.n.

d.a.m.nfool stunt.

She twisted round, still fighting the tiller"s tendency to go off to starboard, got the bottom of the engine-box open and reached in by feel and started working the hand-pump, moving fuel over from the second tank, a rig thai had cost her a goldbit, and worth it all now, in the dark, in the wind.

There were oars. That was well and fine, but the skip was too wide for one rower. Took two.

Dammit. Mondragon ain"t ever going to know, is he? d.a.m.n grease slick"ll wash out to sea and they ain"t never going to find the boat.

Sputter.

Sputter. Up with the throttle again, hope to h.e.l.l there was no clog in the line. Sometimes it was the filter-screen did it, picked up some d.a.m.n bit of weed. Sometimes it was the d.a.m.n intake. And she was running out of hands.

Put the pin in to hold the tiller steady on, never mind the d.a.m.n water coming in, never mind the fuel drain. She felt after the stick she used and poked at the filter through the access while the engine went on sputtering and water washed over the port side.

Engine was running hot. She felt it. She could not tell whether there had been anything in the intake. Maybe it was just the load.

She pulled the pin out to free the tiller and took it under her arm, fighting the skip to avoid another wash.

You lose my boat, Almir, I ain"t thanking you.

d.a.m.n, mama, I know, I know.

What in h.e.l.l"re you doing out here?

Good question, mama.

6iCJ. Cherrylt Man stung you in your pride and look what ye gone and done, look what d.a.m.nfool thing ye did.

She thought that over awhile. Having bitten her Up till it bled.

Ain"t a bad old engine, mama. He"s still running.

Listen to me, Altair.

Yey, mama. I hear ye. That"s Ramseyhead up there. I think she"s going to hold.

Hear me?

Yey, mama. Your daughter"s a fool. But f ain"t going to lose this boat.

You got to be a fool, Altair, be it for something worthwhile.

Yey, mama. He is. Most-times. -d.a.m.n!

A Rimmon yacht was out and underway, dark and sleek, needing no sails, and low enough to make the bridge at Ramseyhead, which meant low enough to make Fishmjirket and Golden and any bridge between Ramseyhead and Archangel, where boats like that had to do their turn and come about again.

She thought she knew which one that was.

She had seen it ride down a skip once, the night the Signeury had come under attack. Folk said after tempers cooled, well, she"s a big boat, she don"t see too good.

But the master of that black ship didn"t d.a.m.n well care- not a spit and a d.a.m.n did he care.

Mondragon, she thought, clinging to the tiller. Mondragon"s there. With him. I hope.

Oh, d.a.m.n, going up to the Signeury tonight. Going up near Boregy. And the Justiciary, and wherever.

Maybe he"s home by now, instead. Safe in bed. Wondering where in h.e.l.l I am.

Can"t go no faster, Mondragon. I ain"t going to get t" Moghi"s much before dawn.

"Easier," Anastasi had said, "if certain people come aboard . . . rather than having you out knocking on doors."

Certain people meant Vega Boregy. And Cardinal Ito Tremaine Boregy. And Chast.i.ty Rajwade, cloaked and muf- FEVER SEASON (REPRISED).

69.fled and carrying a sword she very possibly could use. Mondragon flinched at the latter presence: it was one more person to whom his cover became transparent.

"My cousin," Vega Boregy said of Mondragon.

But Rajwade, a long-faced, sober woman with enough jewelry on her collar to have bought a hundred lives, quirked a brow and said: "Of course. How nice-" in a way that said she believed none of it. There was something predatory in her, something that said blackmail was nothing and what she wanted was all-important.

At the moment she had her hand on Vega"s, on his hip, and looked at Mondragon at the same time as if she were wondering what his price was and what it bought. While Mondragon wondered, knowing that Vega had sheltered in Rajwade before a Sword attack killed his cousins and put him as acting head of Boregy, whether Chast.i.ty Rajwade had been the shelter and what the Rajwade mortgage that Boregy had handed to Anastasi really meant, in terms of who was going to end up head of house in Rajwade.

But that was not the question at hand. That was not something he was privy to, and he reckoned that his uneasy peace with Boregy would be better served by silence. "M"sera," he said at that introduction, with all courtesy. He was all right for the moment. He had drunk enough to numb him and soothe his throat, not enough to fog him, no matter the lack of sleep: stark terror could keep a man awake.

Jones was back at Moghi"s by now, surely. Or at tie-up under Petrescu, wondering where in h.e.l.l he was. But he could not help that. He gathered his wits, such as he had left, and added up the questions he had for Vega and for the Cardinal, regarding one Michael Chamoun.

"That"s got "em," Jones said. She saw the last of the barrels off at Moghi"s landing, and staggered in for hot tea. It was all she could do. There was just no more strength in her, not without the tea, not without the bit of bread and fish and eggs that Jep set in front of her.

70.C.J. Ckerryk "d.a.m.n late," Moghi commented, coming out of his office to stare at her, hands on hips, a huge man.

But he got real quiet when Jones looked up at him and scowled.

He knew what the weather had been.

"You got full count on them barrels," she said after a moment. "You owe me, Moghi."

"Bed"s upstairs." The Room, Moghi meant. Safest bed in Merovingen, and no callers. "No charge. Boys take care of your skip."

"Ney, got to find Del. Seen "im?"

"No. Ain"t."

"Unnnh," she said, and polished off the eggs and tea with a few gulps.

It was a d.a.m.ned iong push over to Petrescu. She made it. But Del and Min were already gone, and if Mondragoh had come home last night he had gone out again. Not unusual. She tied up and curled up in the hidey with mama"s pistol under the rags at the back end, because in Mondragon"s vicinity a body never knew.

It was going to be one of the steamy days after the cold of the night before. That was the way of autumns in Merovingen. And she was grateful for the warmth.

A PLAGUE ON YOUR HOUSES.

Mercedes Lackey

A piece of plaster bounced off Raj"s nose, accompanied by a series of rhythmic thuds from overhead. By that sure token he knew, despite the utter darkness of his "bedroom" that it was around oh-six-hundred and dawn was just beginning.

He reached over his head and knocked twice on the wall. He was answered by a m.u.f.fled curse, and the pounding of Denny"s answer. He grinned to himself, and began groping after his clothing, Thudathudathudathuda-pause-(Raj braced himself)- thud. A series of plaster flakes rained down. A professional dance-troupe had the studio above their "apartment" from dawn to about ten hundred. From ten hundred to eighteen hundred it was given over to cla.s.ses-noisier, but less inclined to great leaps that brought the ceiling down. From eighteen hundred to around third watch- n.o.body on Fife talked about what went on then, and n.o.body watched to see who went in and out. Raj knew, though; at least what they looked like-thanks to Denny"s irrepressible curiosity, they"d both done some balcony-climbing and window-peering one night. A dozen or so hard-faced men and women had been there; and it wasn"t dancing they were doing. It was some kind of hand-to-hand combat, and all of 71.72.Mercedes Lackey them were very, very good. Who they were, why they were practicing in secret, that was still a mystery. Raj smelled "fanatic" on them, of whatever ilk, and kept well clear of them.

Then from third watch to dawn Rat"s old acting troupe had the run of the place, which meant less ceiling-thumping but a lot of shouting. ("Jati deary, do you think you might pay less attention to Kristo"s legs and a little more to your lines"? All right children, one more time, from the lop.") Raj had learned to sleep through it all, though noise generally made him very nervous. It was friendly shouting, for all the mock-hysterics.

Being directly below the studio was one reason why this place, technically a three-room apartment, was cheap enough for two kids to afford. Now Raj hurried to pull on his pants and shirt in the black of his cubbyhole bedroom, wanting to be out of it before the other reason evidenced itself. Because the other reason was due to start up any minute now--- Right on time, a hideous clanking and banging shook the far wall, as Raj pulled open his door, and crossed the "living room," the worn boards soft and warm under his bare feet. He stood blinking for a moment in the light from their lamp; after pitchy dark it was painfully bright even turned down to almost nothing. He reached over and turned the wick-key, and the odor of fish-oil a.s.saulted his nose until it flared up; then he unlocked the outer door and slipped down the hall to the bathroom shared by most of the apartments on this level. That incredible ruckus was Fife Small Boat Repair. It started about now, and kept up till second watch, and sometimes later. There was another apartment between them and the repair shop, but it didn"t provide much in the way of sound-baffling. Fortunately (for him) the tenant of that place was deaf.

Denny still hadn"t turned out by the time Raj got back, so he pulled open the door to the other "bedroom" (just big enough for a wall-hung bunk and a couple of hooks for clothes, and identical to Raj"s) and hauled him out by the foot. There was a brief, laughing tussle (which Raj, by virtue A PlAGUE ON YOUR HOUSES71 of his age and size, won) and Denny betook himself off to gel clean.

There weren"t any windows in their home, so there was always the oil-lamp burning up on the wall. It was a curious blend of cast-off and makeshift; the bra.s.s base had once been good, and still could be polished to a soft golden gleam, but the chimney had been constructed out of an old bottle with the bottom cut out. That lamp came with the place. So had the wood-stove-another makeshift made of the metal base of an old chair and a metal barrel with stovepipe and door welded on. It sat in a half-barrel of sand for safety"s sake, and gave them a bit of heat and a place to cook. The "main" room was a little bigger than both the "bedrooms" put together; alt of it bare wooden-floored and sooty-walled, but warm and without drafts, and too many floors below the roof to get leaks when it rained. On the wall opposite the oil-lamp and next to the stove was a tiny fired-clay sink-scarcely big enough to wash a cup in, much less them; but it had a safe water-tap that was fed from the tanks on the roof. Everything else was theirs, and compared to the little Raj had owned in the swamp or what Denny had had in the air-shaft, it was paradisiacal. They now boasted a couple of cushions to sit on, a vermin-proof cupboard for food, and a second cupboard for storage (it currently held two tin plates, two mugs, two spoons, a skillet and a battered saucepan, and a.s.sorted odds and ends). They also owned their bedding and three changes of clothing, each, and a precious box of a dozen or so battered, dirty, (mostly) coverless books. The last were Raj"s property; some bought at second-hand stores, most gifts from" Rat, a few from Denny. He knew the ones Denny gave him had been stolen; he suspected the same of Rat"s-but a book was a book, and he wasn"t going to argue about the source.

All that hadn"t come out of nowhere. Word had gone quietly upriver with a Gallandry barge that Raj and Denny still lived-and a special verbal message had gone to Elder Takahashi from Raj as to why they weren"t coming home again. Back down again just as quietly had come a bit of real coin-not so much as to call attention to the recipient, but 74.Mercedes Lackey enough to set them up comfortably. With the coin had come another verbal message to Raj from his grandfather. "You salvage our Honor/" was all it had said-and Raj nearly cried. Granther had clearly felt that Angela had impugned the Family by her activities wilh the Sword of G.o.d-he had said as much when he sent them into exile. There was honor, and there was Takahashi Honor, which had been something special even before Ship days. All Nev Hettek knew how dearly the Takahashi clan held their Honor.

And now Granther had said with those few words that he felt Raj had redeemed what Angela had besmirched.

That-that had been worth more to Raj than all the money that had come with it.

Raj hoped that the rest of what he was doing was worthy of that Honor-although he was fairly well certain in his own mind that it would be. Honor required that debts be paid, and he owed a mighty debl to Mondragon. So hidden under the books was his secret, beneath a false bottom in the box. Pen, ink, and paper; and the current "chapter" of Mama"s doings, back in the Sword days. When he had five or six pages, they went off to Tom Mondragon, usually via Jones. He was up to when he"d turned ten now; how much of what he remembered was useful he had no idea, but surely there was something in all that stuff that Mondragon could turn to a purpose. Something to even up the scales of debt between them- Raj boiled up some tea and got breakfast out-bread and cold fish, bought on the way home last night. Denny bounced back in the door, fighting his way into his sweater.

No one would ever have guessed, to see them side by side, that they were brothers. Raj strongly showed his j.a.panese ancestry, taking after his mother. Angela. Straight black hair, sunbrowned skin fading now into ivory, and almond-shaped eyes in a thin, angular face made him look both older and younger than his sixteen years. Had he been back with the clan, n.o.body would have had any trouble identifying which Nev Hettek family he belonged to, for Angela had been a softened, feminized image of Elder Takahashi as a boy. Whereas Denny, round-faced and round-eyed, with an olive A PLAGUE ON YOUR HOUSES75.

complexion and brown hair, looked like a getting-to-be-handsome version of the Merovingen "type"-and not a minute older than his true age of thirteen.

"Need t" get clothes washed t"night," Denny said, gingerly reaching for his mug of hot tea, "or t"morrow."

"Spares clean?" Raj asked around a mouthful of bread, inwardly marveling at the fate that had brought him full circle to the point where he and Denny actually had spare clothing. Of course things had been a great deal better back at Nev Hettek-but no point in harkening over that. To go back home would put the entire Takahashi clan in danger, and with the worst kind of enemy-Sword of G.o.d. In BO way was Raj ever going to do that.

"Yeah. I"m wearing "em, dummy."

"So"m 1. Tomorrow, then. That"s my day off; "sides, I gotta see Tom tonight." Washing clothes meant getting the bathroom after everybody else had gone to work; clearing it with the landlord and paying the extra three pennies for a tub full of hot water besides what they were allowed as tenants. There was an incentive to Raj to volunteer for laundry-duty. M Denny was still kid enough to tend to avoid unnecessary baths, but Raj used laundry-day as an excuse to soak in hot, soppy, soapy water when the clothing was done; soaking until all the heat was gone from it before rinsing the clean clothing (and himself) out in cold. After five years alternately freezing and broiling in the mud of the swamp, a hot bath was a luxury that came very close to being a religious experience for Raj. Hence, Raj usually did the laundry.

" "Kay. I"ll clean the d.a.m.n stove."

"And the lamp."

"Slaver. And the lamp. Whatcha seem1 Mondragon "bout?"

"Dunno. Got a note from him at work yesterday. Just asked me to meet him at Moghi"s, "cause he was calling in favors and had something for me to do."

"Hey, c"n I come "long"?" Denny never missed the opportunity to go to Moghi"s or Hoh"s if he could manage it. Unlike Raj, he loved crowds and noise.

7*Mercedes Lackey Raj thought. "Don"t see why not, he didn"t say "alone," and he usually does if that"s the way he wants it. Why?"

"Gotta keep ye safe from Jones, don"t I?"

Raj blushed hotly. He"d had a brief crush on Jones; very brief. It hadn"t lasted past her dumping him headfirst in the ca.n.a.l. He hadn"t known she and Mondragon were pairmg it at the time. Denny stilt wasn"t letting him live it down.

He hoped profoundly that Denny never found out about Marina-he"d rather die than have Denny rib him about her. He much preferred to worship her quietly, from afar-without having half the urchins Denny ran with knowing about it. He still didn"t know too much about his idol-the only reason he even knew her name was because he"d overheard one of her companions using it.

Oh, Marina- Enough of daydreaming. "Get a move on, we"re going to be late," he replied, while Denny chuckled evilly.

There had been plenty of gossip among the other clerks today, and because of some of it, Raj made a detour on the way home-to Kamat.