Troubled Waters

  JONES WAS MAD—

  so mad at Mondragon that she didn't think much about the footsteps behind her, the footsteps that were coming up faster than those of a casual passerby should.

  And then a hand came down over her mouth and nose and there was some foul-smelling rag in that hand. She couldn't breathe. She started to struggle. She got her nails into the arm around her arms, that single arm pinning hers to her side.

  Jones tried to bite the hand through the cloth, but the cloth was getting bigger and bigger and wrapping her all over and she was losing any sense of where her body was, or even if there was ground under her feet.

  She hardly knew: it when she stopped struggling and slumped against the man dragging her toward a boat made fast against the pilings of the pier. She barely felt it at all when the man hoisted her onto his shoulders. She didn't feel it at all when he let her go and she fell three feet. She didn't even hear the thud as the man followed, or the cough of the boat's engine starting, or the voice with a foreign accent calling, " 'Ware; 'ware. ..."

  C.J. CHERRYH invites you to enter the world of MEROVINGEN NIGHTS!

  ANGEL WITH THE SWORD by C.J. Cherryh

  A Merovingen Nights Novel

  FESTIVAL MOON edited by C.J. Cherryh

  (stories by C.J. Cherryh, Leslie Fish, Robert Lynn Asprin, Nancy Asire, Mercedes Lackey, Janet and Chris Morris, Lynn Abbey)

  FEVER SEASON edited by C.J. Cherryh

  (stories by C.J. Cherryh, Chris Morris, Mercedes Lackey, Leslie Fish, Nancy Asire, Lynn Abbey, Janet Morris)

  TROUBLED WATERS edited by C.J. Cherryh

  (stories by C.J. Cherryh, Mercedes Lackey, Nancy Asire, Janet Morris, Lynn Abbey, Chris Morris, Roberta Rogow, Leslie Fish)

  and look for SMUGGLER'S GOLD—

  coming in October 1988!

  Title

  C.J. Cherryh

  DAW BOOKS, INC.

  DONALD A. WOLLHEIM, PUBLISHER

  1633 Broadway, New York, NY 10019

  TROUBLED WATERS © 1988 by C.J. Cherryh.

  All Rights Reserved.

  Cover art by Tim Hildebrandt.

  Maps by Pat Tobin.

  "Troubled Waters" Copyright © 1988 by C.J. Cherryh.

  "A Tangled Web We Weave" Copyright © 1988 by Mercedes Lackey.

  "By a Woman's Hand" Copyright © 1988 by Nancy Asire.

  "The Prisoner" Copyright © by Janet Morris.

  "Strange Bedfellows" Copyright © 1988 by Lynn Abbey.

  "Saying Yes To Drugs" © 1988 by Chris Morris.

  "Nessus' Shirt" Copyright © by Roberta Rogow.

  "Treading the Maze" Copyright © 1988 by Leslie Fish.

  Letters to Raj Copyright © by Mercedes Lackey.

  "Partners" lyrics by Mercedes Lackey, music by C.J. Cherryh,Copyright © 1987.

  "A Song For Marina" lyrics by Mercedes Lackey, music by C.J. Cherryh, Copyright © 1987.

  All characters and events in this book are fictitious.

  Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.

  "Merovingen Nights", "Merovin", "The Signeury", "The Det", "Moghi's Tavern" are registered trademarks belonging to C.J. Cherryh.

  DAW Book Collectors No. 744

  First Printing, May 1988

  123456789

  PRINTED IN THE U. S. A.

  In the twisting highways and byways of TROUBLED WATERS, you will encounter.

  Troubled Waters by C.J. Cherryh

  A Tangled Web We Weave by Mercedes Lackey

  By A Woman's Hand by Nancy Asire

  The Prisoner by Janet Morris

  Strange Bedfellows by Lynn Abbey

  Saying Yes To Drugs by Chris Morris

  Nessus' Shirt by Roberta Rogow

  Treading The Maze by Leslie Fish

  Epilogue by C.J. Cherryh

  APPENDIX

  Merovingian Pharmacology

  Raj's Letters

  Merovingian Songs

  Index to City Maps

  Merovingian City Maps

  Merovan Sea Floor and Hemispheric Maps

  Maps

  CHAPTER I

  TROUBLED WATERS

  by C. J. Cherryh

  The winter came with spits of snow this year, not a great many flakes, but a chill all the same, down a cold wind; and that foretold bitter nights when there might actually be small sheets of ice in the still spurs of the canals, deep in cuts where no sun ever came. Wealthy Merovingen-above, its gray wooden towers thrust up into the light and the winds above the bridges, its windows subject to chill, drew velvet drapes and felt the change in the air and lit the oil furnaces. Mero-vingen-between, the burghers and tradesmen and scholars, stuffed the cracks in the settling middle tier walls and drank smuggled whiskey in tonics against the snuffles. Merovingen-below, the teeming undercity, under the bridge-shadows, on the sunless canalsides, endured the watery chill and the lean season, when very little of the hightown wealth came down the levels to the waterside, when less trade moved on the water and beside it, and less was the rule in everything—less to eat, less to do, less to hope for, except an early spring.

  It was the gray season, the dead season, the long aching nights when a barefoot canal-rat put on an extra sweater or two, wore pants one pair over the other, if one was rich enough to have two—you put the holiest to the outside, to save the good as much as you could, unless they were too rotten, and then you put them inside, because they were good for warmth, but outside they would tear like old weed.

  Those were the winters Altair Jones had known all her life: all her life she had had just enough between her and the cold, had gone barefoot all her days— who but a lander or a fancy poleboater would go shod on the water, where wet soles could slip on a deck or soaked shoes and wet socks could give you worse than the snuffles? You worked barefoot while the sleet fell, because a poler's shifting feet stayed warm on the wood of the deck, and when you sat still on the rim of your hidey, your pole in rack, yourself hoping for another load to haul up or down the canals, you just tucked your blanket around you, wrapped your feet and your hands in rags, and tucked up and kept pretty warm, all considered, especially if you could find a spot of sun to tie-up in; and the nights, well, you froze a little and got through the winter storms somehow, just keeping warm as you could till morning: on bad nights your teeth chattered and your gut ached from hunger and from shivering, and if the storms came by day the wind would blow your stove out so you had dried fish if you had anything. But being a canaler who had spent every winter of your life on the water, you knew where the still spots were on a windy day and where every spot of sun fell at the best hours, and you lived, till you got too old and some night the cold got too much.

  Winters were for dying in, if you were old and poor, and sometimes even if you were rich, when the snuffles went to the coughs and the coughs went deep: no few times each winter a solemn line of boats made its way down-current to the Harbor, to slide a body to its rest, splash, end of one life and, if the Revenantists were right, beginning of another, cycle begun again. Being a half-hearted Adventist Altair Jones figured otherwise: if you died you were dead, and there might be ghosts, she never claimed not, but she never counted karma except as a tally of favors and grudges owed.

  And she never figured on anything but luck, which had been on her side so long she had to worry.

  An embarrassing lot of luck, ever since she had taken up with a hightown foreigner, one Thomas Mondragon, that all the world thought was some non-contract bastard Boregy, since Boregy had taken him in patronage; and a half-Falkenaer, since he was fair and blond, a real novelty in dark-skinned, dark-haired Merovingen, and that was like a Falkenaer; and certainly rich, since he lived in the middle tiers in a not-too-shabby isle, and came and went uptown in velvet and fi
ne wool and talked like a hightowner.

  But Tom Mondragon came and went in Merovingen-below too, and she had taught him to pole her skip and load cargo and read the weather at least enough to keep him safe from the worst. He was her lover, and he was, so far as she could learn, only hers, which scared her sometimes, he was so fine and so handsome. He asked her to his apartment, they made love in his bed, which was real brass, with white sheets, with quilts and covers against the chill, and damned if she could figure him.

  He was not, Lord forgive him, Falkenaer or Boregy, either half or in part. Everybody on the canals knew who Thomas Mondragon was: he was Jones' man, and everybody looked after him without him quite knowing it, because he was all right, he had proved that right enough. But only a handful of people in Merovingen knew what Thomas Mondragon was, the secret being that he was Nev Hetteker, from up-Det, that he had escaped from the prison up there; and that he had been in that prison because he was Sword of God, and Sword of God was outlawed everywhere. Most specially he had been in that prison because Karl Fon, who was governor of Nev Hettek, was Sword of God too, and Karl Fon wanted to keep that secret. So he sent his friend Tom Mondragon to prison. And Mondragon got away and came south, but the Sword, on the orders of his friend, followed him to shut him up for good.

  Nobody wanted trouble like that. So who took Tom Mondragon in? Altair Jones, a canal-rat. And who finally protected him? Anastasi Kalugin, the governor's youngest, pure and holy Revenantist, who had uses for a man with nothing to lose but a canal-rat he happened, Lord knew why, to be lovers with.

  And Anastasi damn-'im Kalugin was one who knew; and Anastasi's pet rat ser Vega the banker Boregy was another; and maybe a couple in Boregy House, because the old Boregy had had secret dealings up in Nev Hettek; and folk in Gallandry House knew, because they had had the same. And maybe Anastasi's papa the governor knew: if you ran things you knew a lot of dark stuff that ordinary workaday folk never asked about.

  She knew, of course, and so did the two Nev Hetteker boys, whose mamma had been Sword, Raj and that bridge-brat Denny, that Mondragon had taken in, Lord help them—they knew; and so did the Sword agents who had tracked Mondragon here, and who worried her plenty on dark nights—

  Damn, politics was crazy. It kept Mondragon rich, but it was crazy and it was dangerous, and sometimes, even out on the canals that were life and breath to her, she added up all the odds against it lasting the way it was and had attacks of pure panic.

  She was rich, wool socks, Lord, and all the food she could eat, and when the storms came she could be up to Mondragon's apartment—she was so rich she was outright embarrassed on the canals, and she got careless with her stuff, so damn careless she chucked a whole bundle of candles off her skip onto old Mintaka's, and a bundle of yarn too, when old Min was snoring off a drunk; (and she tried like hell to think of ways to get the Khouri-Liveys to take a couple of blankets, they were poor, their skip had had to have repairs before they headed into winter, and they had a new baby. But they were Revenantist to the deep and the bottom of them: they would not take the karma of a debt on them and on their baby; if they froze, they froze, but they would owe no one in their next lives. And they were canaler, which meant proud, and meant they took care of themselves and took charity from nobody, damn anyone who asked.)

  Sometimes she thought that having money was the heart of all her unease.

  Sometimes, lying in bed at night and looking at Mondragon sleeping by her by lamplight, so fine and so fair and so damn secretive about his business and his troubles—she knew for certain why she took to adding things up over and over again, and why she worried, because nothing like this could be and nothing like him could last, not in the dark of Merovingen-below, where she lived. He had come with the spring and lasted through the summer and the fall, and now was winter, when changes came: in her heart of hearts she knew that nothing that fine ever stayed.

  Only the wind and the current and the seasons, and the rule of them was change.

  She was Retribution's daughter, Retribution Jones, who had made a name for herself on the canals before fever got her, and before Altair had the skip to herself. Altair pictured Retribution sitting on the blunt bow of the skip, just so, as they went under bridge shadow, Retribution looking a lot like herself, with the same river-runner's cap, a little less disreputable in those years, shoved back on black hair; a woman with the same rangy build, baggy sweater, black breeches, bare shins and bare feet—her mama sat there on an empty whiskey barrel there by the bow, and shoved her cap back and shook her head.

  The new paint job on the skip, mama would approve.

  The bullet holes that made it necessary, mama would understand that too. Mama had run the dark ways all her life.

  But Retribution Jones, in the dying sunlight on the Grand Canal, on gray choppy water with the skip heaving about and the wind making the poling hard, fixed her daughter with an imaginary dark eye and said: Well, ye done it, ain't ye?

  Yey, mama, I done all right these months, too.

  Where ye spending tonight, huh, Altair?

  Ain't none o' your business, mama. Shove of the pole. A blast of wind came cruel and hard against her side, chilling right through her clothes.

  Ain't none o' my business, yey, ain't none o' my business. Ye got yourself so fancy ye c'n paint the old skip black and hire out for a poleboat. To Boregy, like.

  Shut up, mama.

  Retribution's eyes were lazy and her mouth smiled, just ever so little, and she said: Altair, ye're a fool, but he's damn pretty. Damn if he ain't.

  She grinned, and shoved hard with the pole, sending the skip gliding across the deep part of the Grand's bottom, there by Fishmarket Bridge.

  Nice t' have ye back, mama. Damn if I ain't missed ye.

  Retribution shoved the cap back, the same as she wore, and scratched her head.

  I ain't been nowhere. Ye just ain't been listening. But then, a man'll do that, won't 'e? Been talkin't' him, ain't got no time for your mama anymore.

  You got advice, mama? Or you just here to keep company?

  Hey, I give you my advice, Altair. I told ye: ye keep t' yourself and ye keep the boat under your own hand. And ye don't go makin' a fool o' yourself after any damn man, ain't worth the risk.

  Ye're jealous, mama. Ye're outright jealous.

  Ye're an ingrate brat. Mind your tongue. The skip danced around the Foundry corner. "Ware, hey," Jones sang out, loud and clear, and passed a slower skip, cargo laden. The corner cut the wind off. It felt like warmth by contrast.

  See that boat? Retribution asked. That's that damn Sally Pick, there, loaded up heavy as she can push. Ye carrying anything?

  I carry plenty, mama.

  Hell if ye do. Ye take this man's money. Ain't no way t' be, Altair. Ye mark me, ye earn your way in this world. There ain't no karma, but there's sure as hell debt, and I always kept ye clear of it. I didn't ask t' get a kid. But I done it right, I give ye ever'thing free and clear. I taught ye good sense, and ye got no business takin' nothing from no damn man, Altair. I didn't bring ye up that way. Hear?

  I hear ye, mama.

  I hear.

  Whole town's crazy, mama. Fire in the sky, one night out over harbor, some damn great racket, and drunks going up and down after, raving that the sharrh is coming down in fire and thunder—

  The sharrh being the ones who had claimed the whole damn world back from human folk, and come down on the Ancestors with fire and scoured the whole world of tech and machines, till finally they went away again, no one knew where.

  That was what Adventists remembered: that they had had the stars and lost them, and some day human ships would come back victorious and take them all to freedom from the hell that was Merovin; or something spiritual was going to come: Adventists argued about that, and humans on Merovin were going to rise up and start the Retribution themselves, after which the humans who had given them up for hopeless would come back and reclaim them.

  That, Adventists said, was the meaning of th
e Angel who held his sword half-drawn on Hanging Bridge: that the closer that day got, that sword would move out of its sheath. But Revenantists said that the Angel's waiting was for the perfection of humankind on Merovin, even the Nev Hettekers, and some Revenantists said that good folk got reborn off Merovin, off among the stars; and others said they just got born richer, on Merovin, because nobody could leave until the Angel rose, until the Angel drew his sword and the Ghost Fleet came dripping and mossy from the bottom of Dead Harbor and launched itself into the sky, taking the righteous to the stars.

  Hell if, when that fire had cut loose, people hadn't run to the Angel to see if it was still there, and if that sword was still sheathed. And finding it was, well, the priests were still arguing; people were scared, but canaler folk were saying now it was an explosion of some kind, that folk out to the harbor and on Rimmon Isle had smelled the burning, and that if it was sharrh they were damned odd sharrh.

  Now people were talking about sharrists—who were another kind of religion, who talked about a testing, that the alien sharrh were good, fine folk who knew all the wisdom of the universe, and that as soon as human beings got enough like the sharrh, the sharrh were going to come back and welcome them like brothers.

  Like hell, mama said, raking her hair back and setting her cap square.

  Like hell, f sure, mama, but ain't never been no shortage of fools in this world.

  Revenantist Merovingen tolerated a lot of religions, solid, sensible Adventists, New Worlders like the Falkenaers, even the Janes (as long as they stayed quiet). Sharrists, now, sharrists were another matter: sharrists were damnfools and crazies, and if they were playing with fire anywhere near wooden Merovingen, there was the gallows on Hanging Bridge for them and the whole of Merovingen above and below ready to supply the rope.