Merovingen - Fever Season Part 13

"Sandwich on the table," Raj said.

There was. It could have been live eel and she would have eaten it. She could not remember when she had eaten. She gulped down beer and hiccupped down huge bites of sandwich, and wiped her eyes and her nose from time to time.

Which was the change in temperatures from outside. Sure.

She went back to Mondragon's room where Raj kept watch.

"Go sleep," she said. "My turn."

"Yey," Raj said, and went.

She pulled the chair over near the bed and just sat and looked at him, that was all, looked at him breathing without a rattle and his coughing just occasional, while a meal was steady on her stomach and friends were watching outside and in.

She had no inclination to move or shut her eyes or do anything but just sit there, to catch every little flicker of his expressions that meant better news than she had expected for a week.

Finally he drew a large breath, coughed and opened his eyes, con fused-like.

"What're you doing here?" he asked.

She could have hit him.

Instead she said, "Well, you ain't been breathing real good."

He blinked and lay there staring into s.p.a.ce a moment. Then he seemed more there than he had been, just a little twitch of his face, a focusing of the eyes. "Is it Friday?"

"Friday, d.a.m.n, it's Tuesday."

"Still Tuesday?"

"No, Tuesday. Tuesday week. Ye been out, Mondragon."

"Oh, my G.o.d." He reached for the edge of the bed, tried to put his foot over. And broke into coughing, which gave 142CJ. Ckenyk her a chance to stop him. Not to push him flat. He was resisting that with a stiff arm.

"Raj!" she yelled.

Raj pelted in at speed, and Mondragon surged to his feet till his legs went out from under him and she pushed him back as Raj got after him from the other side and sat him down. A coughing fit decided it. He fell back into the pillows and Jones threw the blankets over him while Raj got him a cup of water and helped him get the coughing stopped.

He was quiet then. Just lying there on his side, breathing hard. Raj melted out of the room, with remarkable good sense. And Jones sighed and sat down on the bed and folded over him, just held onto him and tangled her fingers in- his dirty hair.

"Jones," he said. "You have to get me uptown."

"Sure, You want t' try for the Moon whiles we're going? Never poled there before."

He shook his head slowly. Caught a large breath. "Jones. Kalugin-"

Worse and worse. Her heart picked up its beat. "Yey? What about Kalugin?"

"Told him-Monday, that's all. Already a day late. Oh, G.o.d, I can't remember-what 1 told him."

"d.a.m.n! why couldn't you have told me?"

Long silence. She answered her own question, inside, and shook her head. " 'cause ye think I'm a d.a.m.n fool," she-said sorrowfully.

"Don't want you in this. Don't want you near it." Cough.

"Get me to Boregy."

"The h.e.l.l!" She sat up. "I'm going to turn you over to those sherks? No chance, no chance."

"They'll take care of me."

That flat knocked the breath out of her. She sat back in outrage. "I ain't got no doubt they will, right to harbor bottom they'll take care of ye! Lord and my Ancestors! Who ye think your friends are, ye d.a.m.n lunatic?"

He lay there on his belly a moment, staring off the edge of the bed. "Jones, this is serious."

FEVER SEASON (REPRISED).

143.

"Thanks. I could'a missed that."

He rolled over. Stared at her with that stubborn, jaw-set look of his. But there was a lot of the desperate about it. "Jones, -"

"Yey?"

"There's this man-" Another coughing fit, and he had to turn. She offered him the water again, and he leaned back into the pillows with tears of pain running down his face. "Jones, all you have to do-" The voice was fading away in strain. "-Just get me downstairs, take me over to the Trade offices, over on the Spur-"

"Yey?"

"That's all you need to do."

"Need to know where you're going. That ain't no address. You want my help, you got to let me figure this."

"Dammit, Jones. You aren't going to get into this. It's already gone sour. I don't even want to use your boat . . ."

"'At's all right. I got no worry. What's the office? I'll just tell 'em you took sick. Fever ain't no news in town."

''These aren't people who take excuses!"

"Fine. You write *em a note, all the same, you tell me where, and I'll get whatever you got to do."

"You can't, dammit, Jones. He won't cooperate for you. He's a scared man-"

"Fine." She grinned her widest and meanest. "We'll all do right fine. You just tell me the whole game."

He was quiet for a long time, staring at something else. Then he reached after her hand and squeezed it, hard. "Jones, you're a fool."

"Mama said. What's the thing I got to do?"

The stairs down from Petrescu loomed like a fall to infinity, for a sick man. Or a raggedy old ca.n.a.l-rat on her way down to her skip at dawn. Mondragon clutched the rail, kept his back turned to the rattle of foot traffic on the walkway, a lone pa.s.ser-by at this hour, and coughed in the chill, limping his way step by slow step down toward the skip waiting blow. Denny had his elbow, Raj walked just in front of him.

144.

C.I Ckerryk Jones waited down below, steadying the skip, pulling the tie-rope tight through the rings as the boys helped his bulky person down into the well and toward the half-deck.

d.a.m.n tall old woman, he thought, trying to slouch. The rags stank, and his head spun as the skip moved. He hunched over, head down, elbows in his lap, trying to get his breath; and finally he slid down and sat in the well where he was out of Jones' walk-path on the deck.

"Yoss," was Jones' cheerful comment. "Hey-ha.s.s, ne."

They owed old Mintaka for this one. If they lived through it.

His fault, dammit. He had dragged Jones into it. He had dragged the boys in after. And they had to hope a whole bottle of Jones' whiskey had old Min so happy she would not get her story straight; all she had to do was take the bottle of whiskey and take one of Mondragon's pots over to the tinsmith over by Knowles, and wait around till it was fixed; for which favor Jones was so grateful she wanted to trade Min a good three blankets for Min's spare clothes and one of Min's knit hats.

Powder on the hair then. A lot of padding. Furniture polish on the skin. Keep the head down. Slouch.

He had suffered worse damage to his pride. But he had never felt more the fool. Keeping his head down took no urging at all, as Jones poled steadily along the ca.n.a.l, meeting traffic, hailing folk she knew.

"Somethin" took wrong wi' Min?" someone yelled across.

"Ney, she's fine," Jones yelled back cheerfully. "Drunk as any sailor!"

Jones set great store by the truth, in her dealings with the Trade.

Toward noon, and Jones walked up the stone steps of the Justiciary itself-barefoot as any ca.n.a.ler, right into the hall of justice: up the steps, turn right, down the hall ... not the main steps, be sure. The only steps any ca.n.a.ler ever wanted to use, the ones that led off toward Licensing and Trade.

And the office of one Constancy Rosenblum, who had FEVER SEASON (REPRJSED).

145.

gambling debts. "Tell 'im it's his Monday appointment," she said to the secretary. "He'll remember."

The secretary sniffed and left his desk, not without a backward glance to see if Jones was going to s.n.a.t.c.h something, Jones reckoned.

The secretary came back sober and thin-nosed with disapproval. "M'ser will see you."

"Thank ye." Jones lifted her battered hat and re-set it. And did a little bow as she walked on into the fancy wooden-walled office.

The man inside, an ordinary office-sort, looked up in stark alarm.

"You m'ser Constancy Rosenblum?" Jones asked. "I'm the Monday business."

"Who in h.e.l.l are you?"

"Friend." Jones walked up to the desk as Rosenblum got up. "You got them papers ready?"

"1 don't know anything about-"

She slipped the hook from belt to hand. "He said you'd be nervous. You want to turn 'em to him, you and me got to take a little walk, all right, just to Borg and Ka.s.s. Broad daylight. Ain't no harm going to come to you. I got this-" She pulled out a lock of blond hair from her pocket. "Right?"

Constancy Rosenblum's eyes followed all the little movements while his hands stayed poised on his desk like he was going to shove off straight for the window behind him.

But he looked a small bit relieved when he saw the lock of hair, looked at it, and her, and the hook, and at her again. "The note-"

"Ain't no trouble. My friend's got it. You got the papers?"

"Yes." Rosenblum moved suddenly, reaching for the drawer. Jones brought the hook down by his fingers. "Careful." She gave him a big smile. And drew the knife with the other hand. "You and 1 don't want to startle each other."

"I wouldn't think of it." Carefully, very carefully, Rosenblum opened the drawer, lifted a set of papers out. And backed up. "You know your chances of getting out of here with these."

"That's why you're carrying 'em, ain't it? Come on, broad 146.

CJ. Cherryh daylight, right in public, ye're safe as in services, ain't ye? An' you don't got the chance t' s.n.a.t.c.h my friend, like if he walked in here, do ye? 'Cause your note's out there."

"Shut up." Rosenblum s.h.i.+fted his eyes nervously toward the door.

"Right." Wide grin. "You got to walk along with me." She hung the hook back at her belt, slipped the knife into sheath, and flipped it out again. "h.e.l.l, I'm fast with this thing, ain't I? Have to be sometimes. I c'n throw it fast, too."

Rosenblum nodded. She motioned to the door. And let him walk her to the outer office.

"Appointment," he said to his secretary.

Out the other door then, down the hall, man in silk and corduroy and leather shoes; a ca.n.a.ler in knee-britches and bare feet, friendly as could be, down to the landing and up the steps to the bridge over to Borg.

The skip was waiting here, Raj and Denny minding things and an old woman dozing in the well.

Rosenblum balked. "I don't see him," he said.

"C'mon." She drew the knife and encouraged him with a p.r.i.c.k in the ribs. "Just like I said. You got the right papers, you ain't got a problem in the world."

"The deal-"

"No problem. Hey."

As Mondragon lifted his face and smiled cheerfully at Rosenblum, who balked again.

"Lord."

"Papers," Mondragon said.

"My note," Rosenblum said.

Mondragon held up a slip of paper, that fluttered perilously in his fingers, with the water not far away. "We trade. You're worried about these people. Let me tell you-cheating mine is worse. The papers had better be real."

"They're real," Rosenblum choked. He dragged them from his pocket. Leaned and made the simultaneous trade.

"Ware!" Raj gasped of a sudden, and the whole skip jerked, Rosenblum staggered back and forth on the rim as men came running down from Borg's walk.

FEVER SEASON (REPRISED).