Still, I won't fetch her back for him.
He hastily downed the remainder of the whiskey, but instead of the obscuring fog he'd hoped for, it brought an unwelcome clarity to his thoughts; and he knew, despairingly, that he couldn't let the Jaybirds have her.
If only I didn't know, he thought, if I hadn't been one myself for almost three years, I could probably turn him down. If I hadn't seen for myself Jaybush's methodical disassembly of human minds, his consumption of souls as if they were firewood, I could probably spit in Barrow's face this minute and stalk out of here in a grand gesture of rejection. You exiled me from her thirteen years ago —now I exile you from her. How do you like it? Yes, to rub his hitherto celestially superior nose in it . . . to send his smug complacency out the Dogtown gate . . . to let him beg me for her, and be contemptuously dismissed . . .
If only I didn't know!
But when he replayed that last thought and considered the several things it indicated about himself, he had to suppress a shudder, for it had momentarily sickened him simply to be Gregorio Rivas.
Finally he looked up. «You're right,» he said, wishing his voice hadn't hoarsened for the occasion. «It doesn't alter my decision. I'll do it.»
Barrows inclined his head. «Thank you.»
«So when did they get her?»
«Last night, late. She was at a party north of here, at Third and Fig, and somehow she wound up alone out front, and a gang of them started talking to her—I guess you should know their stinking arguments and tricks as well as anyone—and when her lazy and now unemployed bodyguard finally caught up with her, it was just in time to see Urania climbing into the back of a Jaybird wagon as the horses were being whipped up.»
«It took off in what direction?»
«East on Third.»
«One wagon alone?»
«That's what the bodyguard said.»
Rivas sat back and drummed his fingers on the table and his eyes lost their sharp focus as, for the first time in three years, he began planning one more redemption. «You should have come to me right away,» he said, «and not wasted time trying to undermine my job here and sending that clown in here this evening. Still, it's a good sign that it was a single eastbound wagon; that implies the shepherd wanted to recruit at least another one or two people before returning to his caravan camp. They might still be in the area, camped in one of the neglected districts outside the wall.»
«Can you find out tonight?»
Rivas smiled at the naive question. «No way. You don't just ask the nearest Jaybird where one of their wagons went. And even if they are right outside—even if there were a full moon out tonight, instead of this rainy overcast—do you know how many square miles of ruins there are out there?»
«Tomorrow morning, then. Now as Montecruz evidently started to explain to you, all you'll have to do is—»
«—Locate her. Yeah, he did say that, but that's not how it's going to be. I'll do the kidnap and breaking too.»
Barrow's eyes narrowed and his face assumed the stony cast Rivas remembered so well. «No,» he said firmly. «That is simply but of the question.»
Rivas pushed his chair back and stood up. «Frake MeAn lives over Mister Lou's on Sandoval Street. Don't tell him I sent you—it'll only prejudice him against you. And don't waste time,» he added, poking a finger at Barrows. «Some of those recruiting caravans go directly to the Holy City.» He picked up his beer glass and reached for the door latch.
Barrows raised a frail hand. «All right,» he said tiredly, «wait, sit down, you can have it. The whole thing, like you say.»
Rivas opened the door and leaned out. «Mojo!» he called. «Another beer here!» He closed it and resumed his seat. «Then I guess we've got a deal, Barrows.» Unconsciously he ran his fingers through his hair, disarranging it. «Ten thousand fifths of your Currency brandy; a bank draft for five thousand now, and another of the same when and if I can bring Urania back inside the Ellay walls.»
«You misunderstood. Five thousand is the total price.»
«Montecruz went up to ten.»
«Montecruz must have got carried away in his anxiety. I think that's understandable. But there's no—»
«That's something you can take up with him later,» Rivas said. «I'm taking the offer that was made to me.»
«The price I'm offering,» said Barrows angrily, «is still much more than you've ever been paid before.»
The door was pulled open from the outside and Mojo hobbled in, set the fresh beer on the table, took the old glasses and exited.
«Evidently she's worth five to you,» Rivas remarked matter-of-factly, «but not quite ten. Did you catch McAn's address? Over Mister Lou's on—»
Barrows was staring at him with loathing. «This is interesting,» he interrupted in a tight voice. «I had thought that extended use of the Jaybird sacrament always simply eroded the intelligence of the communicant, but I see it can do far worse than that—I see it can destroy the person's empathy, his very humanity, leaving just a . . . sort of shrewd, cunning insect.»
Rivas knew that anger was what Barrows wanted, so he leaned back and laughed. «Not bad, Barrows! I like it, write it down so I can use it in a song sometime.» He leaned forward and let his smile unkink. «And I hope you realize that a 'shrewd, cunning insect,' as you so diplomatically put it, is exactly what you need right now. Yes, I was a Jaybird for nearly three years after that night you drove me off the Barrows estate, and I have taken their devastating sacrament a number of times—as Urania is probably doing at this very moment, quite a thought, hmm?—though I pretty quick figured ways to blunt its effects, make my mind inaccessible to it. But that's why I'm the only guy who's been any kind of successful at prying people out of Jaybush's hands . . . or off his dinner plate, let's say; I'm sure you like that better, you being such a fan of colorful metaphors, right?»
The door was pulled open again, but this time it was the furiously grinning Steve Spink that leaned in. «You gonna get back out here, Greg? People are beginning to leave, and I remember what you said about always filling the place to overflowing.»
Rivas had a quick, involuntary vision of himself as he'd probably be if he lost this job and blew the Barrows redemption deal—a no longer young man fiddling for jiggers on a Dogtown comer, his beard thick and bushy and no longer a daring, carefully trimmed symbol of straddling the line dividing the upper classes from the lower—but he took a leisurely sip of the beer and managed to sound unconcerned when he said, «I'll be back up there in a minute, Steve. They aren't going to forget who I am between now and then.»
«Hope you're sure of that, Greg,» Spink said with a couple of extra teeth showing in his grin. Then he noticed Rivas's companion. «Say, that's the old guy who was—»
«I know, Steve. One more minute.»
The door closed again, muting the crowd sounds, and Rivas turned to Barrows with raised eyebrows. «Well?»
«Okay,» the old man said quietly. «Ten. Five now and five when you bring her back.»
«Done. See me after the show tonight to set up the details.»
Barrows nodded, got to his feet and edged around the table to the door, but paused. «Oh, by the way,» he said uncertainly.
Rivas looked up, clearly impatient.
«Uh, there's something that's been . . .puzzling me for thirteen years. Maybe I shouldn't ask.»
Rivas was afraid he knew what was coming, but he said, «Yes?» casually.
«Why—excuse me, I don't by any means insist on an answer—but on that night I had you driven off, why were you behind those bushes on your hands and knees, throwing up and . . . barking?»