"Not saying what else you did, hanging around outside and attracting attention."

"Well, you weren't doing a real fine job of watching yourself! Else how'd Itrack you, huh?"

He said nothing to that.

"They—ain't yours, are they?"

"No." He drew a great breath and walked over to a nearby chair. He unbuckled his sword and hung it over the chair finial, reached up and unbuttoned his lace-front collar. "They're not. I think I know whose they are. But now a quiet pact's been broken. Maybe to the better." He turned and looked at her again. "Jones. Jones. You didn't need this kind of trouble."

"Well, I got 'er, don't I?" She walked over and flung herself down in one of the spindly chairs, caught the cap before it fell off her head backward, and reset it. "Damn fool near broke my arm. Try to help a man. Try to see he gets through the town all right—"

"—try to see where he's going."

"Well, how'm I to see he gets there if I don't see where he's going?"

"Are you being a fool, Jones?" with that soft gentle voice. "Jones, you area fool."

"Lot of trouble, huh?"

He walked away to the window and stared out toward the canal.

"They out there again?"

"I think they'll be quieter about it."

"Who were they?"

He turned back again. "Jones." In a sad tone. "There's no going anywhere till dark. You want something to eat?"

"I'm not starving."

"Call it favor for favor. I owe you a meal or so. I ordered something, it ought to be here soon." He gestured to a side door. "There's a bath in there, the water's not cold yet, you didn't give it time. Take the aches out."

Heat leaped to her face. She sat there very still, then got up and took off her cap and dusted it across her leg. "Sure. Fine. Take the aches out." She walked across the room and flung her cap into a chair. Unfastened her trousers. "Mondragon, you're going to wash yourself away to nothing. No wonder you're so damn white."

She walked onto white tiles and stood in front of a great brass tub—Brass! Lord and my Ancestors. The whole damn tub. Shining brass.

Smells like a drugshop.

She pulled the sweater off, dropped the pants and stuck a hand into the water. Warm as sunshine. She suddenly remembered the view Mondragon probably had and looked back to kick the door shut.

That for his intentions.

Damn well know what he's up to.

She climbed gingerly over the rim, let herself down into warm water, up to the chin in the perfumed bath.

She had dreamed of things like this, without knowing what to dream of. She had caught the smell of perfume from uptowners and wondered what it was made them smell so clean underneath it.

It was bathing four or five times a day, that was what; it was brass tubs and perfume and soap and water full of oil.

She turned up her right foot and took a brush that floated in the tub and scrubbed the black off the sole, did the same for the other. She took the soap from the tray at the foot and scrubbed her hair and ducked and came up again with perfume in her nose and eyes and sweet-bitter oil in her mouth,

O Lord and Ancestors, the stuff tasted like it smelled.

The light was an oil-light, all gold, with a brass plate to reflect it. There was a water closet across the room and it of brass, with all the accoutrements she had seen in a shop window in hightown.

What's that? she had asked her mother. And Retribution Jones had explained how rich people were. How she had learned this, she did not say. But it was true, and there it was, with its outlet right down to the canals, where it gave old Det what everyone did, rich and poor alike.

She tried the taps on the tub. They were like the public water taps from the fill-up tanks, that cost you a penny a can, only this was private, people ownedthese tanks. She sat a heartbeat or two watching it run, then turned it off and got out of the tub to go inspect the watercloset, this supreme elegance. There was paper, perfumedpaper, to use and throw away, by the Ancestors; rich people wasted everything. She used the thing and it worked. She pulled the chain a second time in pure fascination to see the water go down and the bowl fill.

Lord and my Ancestors. And this not even hightown.

She went back to her bath and sank down again over her head and came up for the sheer pleasure of it. Soaped and ducked again, and lay there a lazy while with her chin underwater.

The door opened. Mondragon came in coatless, and had a wineglass in his lace-cuffed hand. "Dinner's come," he said, and handed it to her as she slid up as far as her armpits.

"Man, you're trying to get me drunk."

"Of course I am." He settled on the curved rim of the brass tub heedless of water on his fine trousers. "I hope you'll oblige. We've got the whole evening."

She sipped the wine. It was not at all sour like Moghi's. It found whole new flavors after a mouthful went down. She took a second sip and looked up at him. "You figure it's easier to drop me in the canal if I'm drunk."

"Jones." He managed to sound offended.

And a bit of panic took her.

Whole evening—till what?

Del Suleiman was out there with her boat tied up to his; and adding up what she owed by the hour. That rate would go up considerably when he wanted to move on and had a boat in tow. Old Mira could pole her boat on her own behind Del, puffing and swearing all the way: they would move right on up to Hightown Bridge where they always tied up. And begin thinking thoughts like—

—like Jones might not come back. Like something could happen to Jones and they would be rich. Honest as they were, it was a thing to think of.

She drank another sip of the wine. "You going to drop me in the canal or hire me?"

"Here's a robe." He held up the glittery garment. "Want me to help you into it?"

"You're real clever, ain't you?"

He stood up and held it up for her. She stood up and climbed out and slipped one arm through, traded hands on the wineglass and stuck the other through. He wrapped it about her from behind, his touch light and at no time anywhere but her waist. She looked down, outright stared in shock at the shining stuff, all black and gold on her body and dragging about her feet, and her brown hand holding it, callused from the pole and the ropes and barrels. It was crazy. Crazy as all the rest of it. She clutched it up in a careful left fist and followed him out the door, trying not to trip and spill the wine on it. Her hair dripped, soaking her shoulders.

Lord, ain't rich folk careful o' nothing? Don't he care?

There was a heaping tray of food on the little table by the door—Lord, there was fruitand there was upriver cheese and there was bread and two pitchers of wine, red and white, and things she could not even identify, like Nev Hettek sausages, only fancy, with dark and light checks and stripes; there was red meat, by the Ancestors, red meat the like of which canalers saw in shop windows uptown and she had never had a taste of in her life.

"Sit down," Mondragon said.

She gathered the silky-stiff fabric around her and settled reverently into one of the fragile-looking chairs in front of this monument. He motioned at her and she let go the robe and snagged a thin slice of meat. It was peppery on the outside and strange on the inside and made as many flavors as the wine she washed it down with.

She tried the sausages each, and the cheeses, and had a real bit of fruit that squished in her mouth with impossible green-stuff flavors—Mondragon composed himself a sandwich, seated opposite, and took his time about it; but she settled on the red meat and the fruit and used her fingers, one slice and a berry, one thin slice and a berry, because other things were rare, but nothing so rare as that.