Troubled Waters

  "Well, I don't deal."

  "Oh." Raj's plan for independence—and the College—collapsed. "I'm s-s-s-sorry to have b-b-bothered you, m'ser. I g-g-guess it wasn't too good a n-n-notion."

  He rose, awkwardly, and started for the door.

  "Boy—"

  Raj turned, a thread of fear running down his spine. Moghi wasn't anybody to trifle with. He wondered if he'd passed the invisible bounds beyond which Moghi allowed no one he dealt with to trespass. Moghi had a way of dealing with trouble, or potential trouble. It ended in the canal, with a rock tied to one ankle. Splash, gone. He wondered if he looked as deathly white as he felt.

  "Don't you go making that offer anywhere else—"

  Raj gulped. He wan't quite sure what the look on Moghi's face meant, but he thought he'd better answer the truth. Or part of it.

  "I w-w-wasn't going to, m'ser," he replied. "You w-w-was the only one. I g-g-got more sense than t-t-to d-d-deal with anybody but you. M'ser. I got to be going, please, m'ser. You likely won't be seeing me again. Ever. That's a promise."

  He meant that. It would be better for everybody at this point if he went back to the swamp and stayed there. Ties cut clean.

  Moghi looked—funny. His eyebrows were up near where his hairline used to be. He looked a little confused (Moghi? Confused?) and oddly troubled, but let him go.

  CHAPTER III

  TROUBLED WATERS

  By C. J. Cherryh

  Jones had gone her way at dawn, about her usual time, and Mondragon had given her a sleepy kiss (he thought) and turned over and burrowed into the pillows, secure in the knowledge Jones was going downstairs under the witness of canalers, and that all the myriad enemies he had were not fool enough to take on the Trade.

  The Sword wanted war, the Sword could get it personal if they touched a canaler, that was the truth. Even Anastasi knew his limits—and so did every thief and pickpocket in Merovingen, that was the miracle of it, that let that skip stay untouched down there in a city in which not a rag or a scrap fell without someone scavenging it.

  And let a man sleep at night with the notion that his door was safe as a governor's guard could make it.

  So he headed for a little more sleep, in soft sheets and feather pillows. On bad nights he remembered nights huddled in a defensible corner of a stone cell shivering his teeth loose. And much worse than that. But not on a peaceful morning, not with the light to tell him where he was: Jones always left him the lamp on; and he always fell asleep with it: he never told Jones why.

  He always got his best sleep in the morning. And he got at least a half hour of it before he heard the squeak of that deliberately set board in the lower hall and the creak of the one in the front room, and shortly after that, the opening of the door that meant one of the boys had gone out.

  Damn. The mind started working. He started wondering about Raj moping around, started worrying about Jones being out of sorts, he started going over the whole damn mess with Anastasi, and that was too much. He was awake. If he lay there any longer he had the whole list of problems in bed with him, and he shoved it all out, put his leg over the side and almost changed his mind when he felt the chill outside.

  But he gathered up the courage and threw the cover off and staggered up to find his balance and his bathrobe.

  Lord. Cold boards.

  He staggered out into the hall and down to the kitchen, waking up a little, shivering and congratulating himself on his moral fortitude: get up, get the whole business uptown settled, maybe free himself up to spend the little time that would keep Jones happy.

  Maybe go out to the Rim with her, the way she asked him to, go out and sit and freeze on a spit of sand, fishing and beachcombing and dealing with canaler-folk doing the same thing in the slow season.

  The prospect made him nervous: canaler-folk at close range and in numbers made him nervous; being out of Anastasi's reach made him nervous, Anastasi being the suspicious bastard he was; and he was, Lord knew, only getting over Merovingen's latest gift. But Jones swore the sea wind was clean and fine, that the canalers were on holiday, that everything would be safe and that there, above all else, no Sword agent could come near him.

  If it cheered Jones up—

  Lord knew she was due her rest too. If that was her idea of it-—

  He fussed about the cranky oil stove, dipped up water in the brass pan and set it on for tea, unwrapped the two-day-old cakes, standing on one foot because the tiles were cold, and wondering where in hell he had left his slippers this time.

  He got out a cup and a spoon and opened the tea canister.

  The letter inside gave him a chill. Sword? was his first thought.

  But he fished the papers out of the tea and spread them on the counter and blinked them into focus in the dim light, lit a candle once he had recognized the penmanship, and skimmed it, madder and madder as he got into the bit about "writing Poems and making like they came from You" . . .

  But the mad evaporated when he got to you won't have to worry about what I'm going to get you into next, not any more . . .

  When I'm gone . . .

  Please keep Denny out of trouble . . .

  Dear Altair Jones:, the note said.

  I am Sorry more than I can say for Causing you such a great Deal of Trouble. I can only say that I'll Never Be in your Way again. Don't get mad at Tom—it wasn't any of it his Fault and he never had anything to do with the Lady. Please take care of Denny when I'm Gone.

  —Raj.

  "Bad news?" Moghi asked.

  "Where is he?" Jones asked, shouted. "Moghi, where'd he go?"

  "I dunno, Jones. He come in here tryin' to sell me drugs— You know how I don't take to that. I run him off. He left the note with Jep."

  "What's he mean, gone, f'Lordssake? What's he talking about? —Drugs? What in hell does he think he's doing, Moghi?"

  "I dunno, I ain't opened your mail."

  Drugs. Money. "When I'm gone ..."

  Sword of God. No, some damn connection of Denny's, somebody's put the lean on Denny, or on him, but it ain't a guarantee it ain't Sword, either—

  "Damn Mm!"

  She headed for the door. She was out it, headed across the bare icy planks toward her skip, when she recollected: he never had nothing to do with the Lady. . . .

  What lady?

  Marina took her morning tea, sitting in the large chair in front of the fire, wrapped in her dressing gown, her feet in warm slippers. "Thank you," she said to the servant who set down the service, and she saw, with heart skipping a beat, that there was a folded letter with it, on His paper.

  She snatched it up, opened it without recourse to the silver letter-opener on her desk or a notice to the porcelain mug of tea the servant set on a napkin on the fragile table beside her.

  Most Gratious and Beautiful lady Marina Kamat—

  Without even intending to, I have Tricked you in a Cruel and Unforgiveable way. I, who you thought was only the Hand that delivered Another's message to you, am actually the True Writer of those messages . . .

  Marina reached after the tea and missed. The mug went over, fell, spilled and shattered on the stones.

  "M'sera?" the servant exclaimed, dashing back into the room. "M'sera? What's happened, m'sera?"

  CHAPTER IV

  A TANGLED WEB WE WEAVE

  by Mercedes Lackey

  The marsh and the wind swallowed up sound, and the weeds closed them almost in a little room, which was just as well. Raver howled with laughter, his eyes vanishing in his wrinkles; Raj prayed at the moment that lightning would hit him and reduce him to a cinder. It would hurt a lot less than what he was feeling now. He tucked his cold, wet feet up under him, huddled under his coat, and wished he was on the Moon. Or dead. Or something.

  "Shet ep, ye old bastid—" May scolded sharply, her face crinkling up in anger as she pushed a stray bit of gray hair under her knit cap; Raj had brought her that the last time he'd come. "Hev some pity an th' boy. Maybe it's baby-love, but it hurts all th
' same—an' a young 'un ain't never hurt that bad before." She turned to Raj, huddled on one corner of the raft. "Raj-lad, don' ye let 'im get t' ye. I ain't sayin' ye did right t' leave—but I ain't sayin' ye did wrong neither."

  Raj made a helpless gesture. To these two, his protectors and friends, he could tell everything—and he had. It had lessened some of the burden, at least until Raver had started laughing at him. "I—May, after the mess I got him in, I can't face Tom, and I can't keep being a burden on him, either."

  "I thought you was workin' fer Gallandrys. Real work, I mean, not make-work."

  "I was."

  "That don't sound much like bein' a burden t' me."

  "I—" he hadn't thought of it quite that way. Sure, he and Denny had been living on Mondragon's bounty lately, but they'd been keeping watch over him while he was sick. And helping get him out of the tangle that illness had put him in. And it had been his savings and Jones' that had bought part of the medicine that had kept Tom alive. He'd bankrupted himself for Tom's sake, and hadn't grudged it. He'd lost several more weeks' salary too, staying with Tom to watch him and watch out for him, and hadn't grudged that either. Maybe he had been pulling his own weight.

  "An' who's gonna take care a' them sick canaler kids if ye'er hidin' out here?"

  That was one thing he hadn't thought of. Not likely Del would take them to some strange Janist—Raj was karmic risk enough.

  "Don' ye go slammin' no doors behind ye," May admonished him gently. "Now, gettin' outa sight till that Hightowner space-brain kin ferget yer face, that's no bad notion. But stayin' here? No, Raj-lad; ye don' belong out here. Jest stay long enuf t' get yer head straight—then ye go back, an' take yer licks from that Tom feller. Ye learnt before, ye can't run from trouble."

  May was right. That was exactly what he'd been trying to do—he'd been trying to run from all his troubles, and rationalizing the running.

  "Yes, m'sera," Raj said humbly, feeling lower than a mud-pup's tail.

  She shoved his shoulder; but not in an unkindly fashion. "Get along wi' ye! M'sera! Huh!" She snickered, then turned businesslike. "Where ye gonna park yer hidey?"

  "I figured edge of Ralf's old territory, right by the path in, over by that big hummock with the patch of thatch-rush growing out of it."

  "Good enuf. Get on with it. We'll keep an eye t' ye."

  Raver waited until Raj was off down the trail and into the reeds; out of sight and hearing. Then he slipped off the raft onto one of the secret paths of firm ground that wound all through the swamp. He generally moored both his raft and May's up against one of these strips of solid earth—they weren't really visible since most of them were usually covered in water about ten to twelve centimeters deep.

  "Where ye goin'?" May asked sharply.

  "Gonna see t' our guest," Raver replied. She shut up at that; shut up and just watched him with caution. Raver had changed in the past couple of weeks.

  Yes indeed, he had. Or rather, begun acting more like the person he really was.

  He balanced his way along the narrow, water-covered trails, so used to following them he did it unconsciously, so used to the cold water he never noticed his numb feet. Raver—no, Raven—had been changing.

  For the first time in years he was himself—Raven Singh; misplaced Janist agent.

  Fool Janist agent. He hadn't been prepared for the reality of Merovingen-below. He'd been mugged on his first night in Merovingen, and dumped in Dead Harbor after; he had wandered amnesiac for months among the other crazies in the swamp. That had been ten—no, twelve years ago. It had taken a long time for Raven to return; years, and a lot of swamp-water and self-medication with hallucinogenics to shake loose the memories.

  And when he had, then he'd cursed the fate that left him so stripped of all possessions and contacts as to have to stay here. He'd picked up with May about two years before Raj had come to them; she'd had the gift for healing he lacked, though he had the knowledge. Together they'd formed the only source for medicine the swampies knew, and he'd done his best to follow the healing path among the crazed and the impoverished losers who lived here. And hoped Jane would make his path clear or get him the hell out of there.

  Then had come the night the sharrh had appeared over Dead Harbor.

  He grinned mirthlessly. Sharrh, my rosy rear.

  Fireworks was what it had been, he'd seen fireworks before, in a small way, at celebrations upriver. Fireworks it was, oh, yes, set off by a Sword agent to put the fear of whatever in the Revenantist citizens of Merovingen. He knew; he'd seen it all, with the agitator silhouetted pretty as you please against the pyrotechnics and the fire he'd touched off in his boat.

  Oh yes, and he'd gotten his little tail well-scorched, had Ruin al-Banna; he'd been dying when Raven had fished him out, burned all over and being dragged down by the sea-anchor he'd gotten tangled with. It would have made a pretty wager, whether shock or drowning would have gotten him first.

  Neither did. Raven and May had; they'd patched him up (probably better than his own people would have), kept him dosed against fever, and hidden him away on one of the firmer reed-islands, under a hidey made to look like a reed-hummock, a hidey like May and Raven and Raj kept over their rafts. Raven had fed him more than just healing herbs; after all these years he knew everything the swamp had to offer in the way of psychogenics. Raven had him babbling his little heart out within the week. Then Raven had begun another project—the careful conversion of a former Sword of God terrorist into a Hand of Jane. It was, after all, mostly a change in orientation, not in purpose.

  This, without a doubt, was what Jane had intended when She'd caused him to be stranded out here. Blessed be. Ruin—now renamed Wolfling after the appropriate ceremony of rebirth—would serve Jane far better than he, Raven, would ever have been able to. He himself had been a simple self-taught animal breeder before he'd seen Her Light. Ruin had been an assassin born and an agitator from the start. And sometimes before you could heal, you had to—surgically remove. That was a truism for governments as well as individuals. Wolfling would be a damned useful scalpel in the Hand of Jane if he could be turned.

  But before he could be judged truly converted and turned over to the agents in town (and now, thanks to Raj, Raven knew who one of them was, at least—a singer-thief named Rif), there were a few things Wolfling would be doing for Raven. . . .

  Raven approached the islet cautiously through the mist, making no sound in the water; he'd left Wolfling trancing-out on the heavy dose of bethany-root he'd fed to him.

  His caution was needless; Wolfling was deaf and blind to everything around him. Except Raven's voice.

  * * *

  Ruin was having another vision. This one was, like the others, beginning with a face; a woman's face. She started out young, then flickered from girl to woman to crone and back again. It was Althea Jane Morgoth, of course. She had come to instruct him again. Ruin felt both exalted and humbled; and excited, with the kind of near-sexual excitement he'd felt .before only when completing an assignment for the Sword. But he wasn't supposed to be thinking of that. He was supposed to be making himself worthy to be a Hand of Jane.

  "Wolfling—" said Jane, her hollow, echoing voice riveting his attention upon her. "You have built up a terrible tower of debts to be repaid before you are judged worthy. Are you ready to begin that repayment?"

  "Yes—" replied Ruin thinly, bowing his head as her eyes became too bright to look upon. Those eyes— they seemed to see right into the core of him.

  "So mote it be."

  There was a sound like a great wind, and Ruin was alone in the dark.

  Or was he? No—no, there was someone coming. Or forming, rather, out of the dark and the mist. Another woman.

  For a moment he thought it might be another avatar of Jane, then with a chill of real fear he recognized her. Angela Takahashi—once Sword herself, and dead at the hands of the Sword these five years gone. He knew she was dead; he'd been there when her lover, Mahmud Lee (as high up in the S
word ranks as Chance Magruder), had given the order to terminate.

  For although she had been the only Sword information-drop in Merovingen, she'd also been loose-tongued and incredibly stupid; the kind of woman good only for one thing. She'd known about the planned Nev Hettek coup; she'd have talked, especially if her ex-lover hadn't pulled her back home. Lee had made sure she would never get the opportunity.

  She didn't look too stupid now—

  Ruin al-Banna, a voice said inside his head; I see you—

  He blocked his ears, but it did no good. The ghostly voice cut right through him; the almond eyes did the same. She was stark-naked, well-formed ivory flesh floating in a cloud of smoke and fog and midnight-black hair, obliquely slanted black eyes cold as the grave—she aroused no desire with her weird nudity; he'd never wanted a woman less.

  Ruin al-Banna, would you be rid of my curse upon you?

  "I never did anything to you!"

  My curse is upon all who still serve the Sword. My curse shall follow you wherever you go—Her eyes grew until they filled his entire field of vision, black, and like looking into hell. He felt ghostly hands running down his arms, leaving chill trails behind them. When you sleep, I shall be there—waiting. When you wake, I shall follow; in all your comings, your goings, I shall be one step behind you, making you careless, making you nervous, until one day you will make a mistake— and then my fingers will close about you— » "Wait!" he yelled, panicked now, fear that he had never felt in dealing with the living and the soon-to-be-dead shutting around his heart and squeezing it like a hand. "I'll do anything you want!"

  The eyes receded, and again she floated before him in her cloud of smoke and hair and magic. Then guard my sons.

  That caught him off-guard. "Huh?" he replied stupidly, unable to fathom the puzzle.

  My sons live, Ruin al-Banna. Guard them. Keep them from harm. Keep the Sword from their throats. Only then my curse will leave you.