Endgame

by C. J. Cherryh

  And no few called Altair Jones a fool, like the Ancestors who had refused to leave, and been Scoured to the hills and the caves by a space-faring enemy no Merovingian today could describe or remember.

  Might be she was a fool. She clung to her loyalties the way Merovingen clung to its existence, rocked by earthquakes, of which there had been the least tremor this afternoon, a wooden city poised on pilings between the flood and the shaking earth. There were people like Moghi, who said, "Jones, take my word: ain't nothing you can do. Nothing anybody can do. Forget 'im. Man's bound for Det's bottom or Fon's jails, and nothing ye can buy nor bribe can do a thing. I know."

  (And Moghi knew the cost of everything in Merovingen Above and Below.)

  There were those like Tommy, who said, in his gawkish way, "I'd go wi' ye, Altair, ye know I would ... but I think we'd both be kill't."

  And Tommy would—both go and be kill't—because one Thomas Mondragon was in the gut of the Nev Hettek embassy, an improvement on the Justiciary basement, so Jones hoped: the Justiciary swallowed those the light would never see again, and maintained deep in its stony gut a room where secrets got torn out of mortal bodies; after which the ax, so the penitent could go on to Revenantist rebirth, all for defying the Bloody Cardinal. The Justiciary had swallowed Mondragon down, but Nev Hettek had reclaimed him and stowed him away in its (to a canal-rat, so far) impenetrable heart. Safer there than in the Cardinal's hands—so Jones hoped.

  He'd come out unscathed before, she told herself. Anastasi damn-'im Kalugin had had him in his hands a godawful while that she had been sure terrible things were going on: she'd skipped meals in her worry and gone thin and desperate, until out he walked one afternoon all hightown and clean and fine, and not a mark on him—on the outside at least.

  But she knew the ones that didn't show. She knew the nights Mondragon waked sweating and shaking, in a fear he wouldn't show in the waking day, she knew the fears he wouldn't talk about, and these last weeks her own memories haunted her, the night she'd first fished Mondragon from the Det, all white and pale and scared, at first, because he'd come loose from what he knew, and drifted back to Nev Hettek prison in his mind. She didn't want to think about that, but she dreamed about it nowadays. Mondragon hated being held or shut in, and a canaler, who'd never till she met him slept with a roof over her head or on a surface that did not move to the tides and the waves— a canal-rat could understand that panic more than most. And she'd been in a cell once, on Mondragon's account. She knew something about nightmares, and locked doors, and not being able to do a damn thing about what other people wanted from you. Damn them.

  Day and night now she thought about roofs over one's head, and doors locked and windows shuttered, and she grew grimmer and more desperate, with thoughts ranging from breaking and entering to a fire-bottle on the embassy's doorstep; but on the one hand the Nev Hettekkers weren't Megarys, to do anything slipshod; and on the other a fire could trap Mondragon somewhere she couldn't get him out of in time. And that was a terrible way to die.

  She shoved the stew around looking for edible bits—she took good care of herself the same mechanical way she took good care of Mama's revolver, and for the same reason. She turned thoughts of violence over and over in her head, and she kept an ear to harbor gossip, half dreading and half fearing the arrival of a Nev Hettek ship that she was sure would take Mondragon aboard and take him away for good.

  If they moved him out of the embassy and onto the canals for any reason, she had a chance, no matter how slim and desperate: that was to hope for.

  But there was an equal chance then of losing him for good—to Karl Fon, who was of all Mondragon's enemies the one she least understood and the one human alive besides Anastasi that sent Mondragon sweating awake at night.

  Fon had, so she'd heard Rif whisper once, depended on Mondragon for his next thought and his next ambition, in the days when they had been friends—so Rif said. Rif had said Fon was a shell these days, a crazy as sure as the crazies that poled rafts about Dead Harbor skimming for food and victims. This was the sherk-hearted skit that waited to take Merovingen— while old Iosef Kalugin still governed in this creaking, stinking town, and the Bloody Cardinal, Willa Exeter, used her office and the purge of heretics to pick off Mikhail Kalugin's enemies—meaning anybody in the town who favored Mikhail's sister Tatiana, who had the police, or Mikhail's younger brother Anastasi, who had the brains.

  Papa Iosef didn't want a successor with brains: that was why Iosef had Mikhail for an heir. Neither did the old Families who liked Things As They Were want an active successor—neither Tatiana who was in bed (literally) with Nev Hettek; nor Anastasi the Chief Militiar who wasn't—who wanted war with Nev Hettek: the Old Families backed safe, simple Mikhail the Clockmaker, who wouldn't stand a candle's chance of having his own way against his advisers.

  And so long as Mikhail had the votes in Council to succeed, Iosef knew his neck was safe from Tatiana and Anastasi.

  A canal-rat had learned all too much of politics in her young life—learned it because politics and knives went thick and dangerous about Tom Mondragon. And because she'd flat ignored her Mama's advice and cared about a fool of a man and a Nev Hettekker former Sword-of-Godder revolutionary to boot.

  She drank down the whiskey and got up and walked out the door, away from the light and the noise and out into the feverish night air where skips rode at tie like so many black fish, hers among them; and into the sight of the Angel who stood on Hanging Bridge, the Angel who watched over fools, the Angel Retribution who stood with his sword half-sheathed. Some swore the Angel's hand had moved of late, drawing that sword a little more—or putting it away, as happened, Adventist folk said, at every foolish or cowardly deed that set the Retribution and the return of Merovan folk to space that much further off; and at every wicked karmic debt, Revenantist folk said, that bound Merovan souls tighter to the great Wheel of lives and death on Merovin. There had been plenty of both in Merovingen—to which Hanging Bridge bore bitter witness, tonight, two corpses left there for the town's edification and the terror of anyone who might call Bloody Exeter a tyrant or a power-seeking crazy.

  Two young corpses, of Rush and Basargin—not bad boys, only given to pranks, tweaks at dignity, and speaking the truth. Jones shook her head and climbed off the porch onto the Wylies' boat, and walked that on sure bare feet over onto the gunwale of her skip and so down into the slat-bottomed well, all lost in thoughts and remembrances. No cargo tonight, nor any in days previous—it was Mondragon's money she was living on, slipping ghostlike from Kamat's cut to this and that low spot in town where she recognized the regular clientele by name and habit . . . knowing that the Cardinal's slinks or Nev Hettek's could take a notion any day that she was safer for their plans at Det's black bottom; or that having her in their hands might make Mondragon easier to deal with.

  Lord only knew. If they wanted her they could try. She had her knife and her loading hook constantly in her belt. She had her mama's revolver in the drop-bin of her skip. And perhaps she was too slippery and perhaps they feared the Trade, which had shut Merovingen down in time past for an offense against one of its own; or perhaps it was only that Altair Jones was too small a fish to concern them, or even that all canal-rats looked alike in the dark.

  So she slipped the tie of her skip to the Wylies' and unracked the pole and moved out the old way, from before the new engines, the quiet, simple way, just a shove or two away and into the black waters of the Grand, a shove and a push of the pole to bring the blunt bow about, and a little slip downcurrent to bring the skip across the wide dark waters to the up-town lane.

  The bow came toward the north, a single skip gliding along in silence under the shadows of Fishmarket Bridge, past honest family boats at night-ties, lovers tucked down in hideys, children asleep under tarps on the half-decks on this drizzly, thundery night, and the smog of cookfires making halos about the shore lights. Acquaintance with a piling or a boat-stern was damned likely if a body didn't have good nigh
tsight.

  Jones did. The night had been her Mama's time— Retribution Jones, who'd run the dark ways all her too-short life until she died of a fever and not (surprising everyone who knew her) of a smuggler's bullet. The night had been her Mama's time for her Mama's reasons; and it was hers, for her own, until she hardly dared the daylight in this town.

  That she would go up to the embassy, tonight, because the fog offered a chance for slipping about— a fool could guess it. She'd gone before this to search and spy under the embassy's balconies and windows. And that there might be traps—she could guess it. But she meant to try again, and again till she found a way to Mondragon.

  She glided up under Golden Bridge, up into the Isles of the rich and the powerful. She was sweating by then from fear as well as the work, and she took a good grip on the pole as she shoved the skip around the corner to glide into more dangerous waters, a territory where fancyboats were moored behind secure locked water-gates and watched by guards through lacy garde-ports, cat-whale faces, and sherks and the imagined countenances of sharrh.

  It was the upper windows she looked to—sat and waited a moment or two as if she would tie up; and then moved on for another view, prowling around and around the hightown Isle which rented the Nev Het-tekkers space near the seats of power in Merovingen.

  Damn them. Damn Karl Fon.

  Damn a fool, Mama always said. Mama showed up again, sitting on the bow of the ship—weighing not a thing, of course; Mama braced a bare foot against the edge and tipped back the river-runner's cap that even in her time had seen better days. Mama said, Didn't I tell ye, Altair?

  "Yey, Mama," Jones said patiently. "Couldn't you be some help for a change?"

  Mama said, Comes of takin' in strangers. Comes of believin' any smooth-talkin' man.

  "Shut up, Mama," Jones whispered, on her next out-breath, and shoved with the pole. She didn't want Mama to go, not really, Mama being only there when things got loneliest—a figment, Mondragon would say. Which meant Mama wasn't truly there, only her memory was.

  But Mama had the old pistol tonight, cleaning it and oiling it the way Mama had used to do before a run. Mama looked askance at her and said, the way she had done more than once, Ye be sure t' count your shots, Altair. Ye never fire the last.

  Jones shivered. Stone walls and water and wind made a chill to the air even with the sweat running on her sides. Fever season again. Tangle-lilies in the city's veins in one long delirium of night and quaking earth.

  There was one window, one, if you run round the end of the Isle and past that dark, iron-gated cut that offered tie-ups to the embassy's sleek fancyboats—and the blind shoring-up of downside's tilting pilings. If you hung just in that spot you could see into that shadow and once and twice she'd seen light there after hours. Could be a guard-post. Or it could be a man who didn't sleep without bad dreams.

  She had brought a pocketful of pebbles from off Ventani Isle, the only solid rock but the Rock and Rimmon. She lapped a tie about a lesser piling, got out and soft-footed it along the walkway lowermost until she could wriggle into that water-filled slit with a trick she'd learned from a bridge-brat of a Takahashi, and with shoulders and feet braced, worked her way up and up in that narrow niche until she could see that shuttered, light-seamed window only a story above and a boat-length deeper into the slit.

  She got a pared bit of greenroot from her pocket, she put that pebble on the bent-back tongue, and she let fly at that window, thinking, Yey, Mama, here's your daughter. If it ain't his window, I'm in deep water.

  The pebble hit the shutter. She braced there a heartbreaking long moment and finally slithered downward in dejection.

  But the light went out behind the shutter. She froze. The shutter came open, and she hung there between the sky and the water, thinking, Whoever's there—is doin' what he'd do.

  —But so'd any of the Sword as live in there.

  She didn't want to move, hoping to look like a shadow. But her legs began to tremble and her arms to shake from holding herself braced, her back was afire with pain, and she thought, He ain't standin' in that window, ain't no way he'd make hisself a target. He's waitin", ain't he?

  She cleared her throat, said in a thin, scared, short-of-breath squeak, "Mondragon? 'S 'at you?"

  She saw a dim gleam of white shirt and blond head in that window. Came a whispered: "Jones? Jones, dammit, get out of here!"

  She hung there shaking with strain and looking up toward that dark that showed her too little, but enough to hope on.

  "Mondragon ye a'right? Can ye squeeze out some'ow?"

  "No! I can't. You think they're stupid? Get out of here, dammit, don't—" He stopped speaking a beat or two, sounding breathless, and what eyes couldn't see, heart pictured—the desperation, the relief to hear from her. "Don't be a damned fool! You can't help me!"

  "I c'n get my gun up there—"

  "Get out! Get out of here, for God's sake! Someone's coming!"

  Shutters closed. She eeled down, getting splinters in her back, and soaked herself to the knees in Det water trying to get around the corner. She made it as far as her skip before the shutter banged open and lights flared above. Someone shouted, "You!" and white light stabbed down the slit and hit the water behind her.

  She pulled the jury-tie, jumped in and let the Det current carry her ahead while she ran the pole out, while the light scanned the black water behind her and ran out and across the canal.

  She thought, I made it worse for 'im, I only made it worse. He won't be there t'morrow night. An' I could've had a chance. . . .

  View of the wall, little else. The guard who had his wrist jammed up toward his shoulderblades didn't try to break the arm if he breathed carefully, and Mondragon took two and three breaths, now he was sure Jones was clear. New cut on the mouth. Dislocated shoulder if the guard pushed it further. He stood there with his other arm and his cheek against the wall, the guard's feet between his, and listened to what he could hear in the hallway, which was Sword officers shouting orders to check the perimeters and a team to get a boat out there.

  There wasn't a thing he could do but wait, now. He could take out the guards in this room. He might get as far as halfway out of this place before he ran into a locked door or a chained gate—he knew the floor plan, he'd gotten that for Anastasi, and he knew the way out. But he knew what was between him and escape, too, and maybe he'd lost his edge, or maybe he wasn't a fool, and maybe he knew that there was nowhere to go out there—

  Not to Kamat any longer. He was a liability.

  Anastasi, maybe. He still held out that hope. But the Sword would go for Jones, then. He had Chanee's promise and he believed it. He could get to Anastasi or he could get to Jones before they caught him—and Anastasi had the wherewithal and the motive to protect him, but Jones hadn't, and he couldn't; and he wouldn't bring the trouble to her.

  If he died—then maybe she wouldn't be important enough to track down.

  Or maybe they'd think he'd told her things he never had.

  He heard Chance's voice saying, "Let him go."

  The pressure on his arm let up, the arm fell numb at his side, and he shoved himself away from the wall with the other hand, set his back to it and leaned there looking innocent as he could.

  Chance said, man who'd grown gray since he'd known him—"Jones, was it?"

  He said, "Fishmonger. Saying they didn't answer downst—"

  The guard lifted his arm. Chance stopped it. "No. He knows. He does know. —Tom, what do you want? You want to see her?" He shook his head.

  Chance said: "Do you think we can't?"

  He said, "I know you can. That's why I'm talking to you."

  "Not as well as you know how."

  "You want me to go on talking, you keep your hands off her."

  "That's not the way it works. We know that's not the way it works."

  He didn't say anything more. Not until Chance told the guards to go away. Then he said, "If you want me alive, Chance. That is the way it works.
What do you want? Ask me."

  "Tell me," Chance said, "something you haven't said."

  "Honor among thieves?" "Favors owed. Deal?"

  He thought a moment. There were so many things. There were favors owed, to every side. He said, desperately, "Ask me a question."

  "What broke you from Karl?"

  Dangerous territory. He leaned against the wall, looked at the ceiling. "Karl wanted somebody he could control. Didn't trust me." A look straight at Chance, a half-sarcastic: "You don't trust him?"

  "Does anybody trust anybody?"

  "Think about it, Chance, think who's dead and who's alive."

  Long silence. Mondragon's heart beat a frantic rhythm into his veins. Finally Chance said,

  "Yeah. I do think about that. What else do you know?"

  Time to bargain for more time. For the things that would kill him. "You want to know who really took out Stani?"

  "Who?" "Karl."

  Long silence, then. Popular wing leader, Stani. Chance gave not a flicker. "Yeah?" Chance said then. "Keep going."

  There were ways fancyboats couldn't take, there were ways a skip poler had to be damn good to use, lean with the pole, step to the rim, and if the well wasn't carrying cargo, the bow'd lift and set down again around a turn a lander'd swear wasn't possible.

  And by those last night she'd come to West and down by the sea-gate and Old Foundry, where there were hideouts aplenty—maybe not unknown to the Sword, but searching those would take the sherks time, time during which she'd taken her pistol out of the drop-bin, lifted the tiller-bar, started the engine and gone roaring out the Dike gate to the deep shadow of the docks, a watery dark forest of pilings— follow her there? Only if the Sword wanted a stove boat and a drink of Det water.