Angel with the Sword

The pole hit something yielding, deep down against the bottom. Something dragged at it below the vile water, gripped it, began to climb up it.

From the moment Altair Jones hauls Mondragon into her barge she becomes entangled in a sinister and deadly power game. Fine-boned and fair, Mondragon is fanatically secretive about himself. He looks like a high-born from the fabulous upper levels of the city; certainly he cannot survive alone in the putrid underworld inhabited by the canal folk. Against all her instincts, Altair determines to conceal him from the religious fanatics and assassins who assail him. But unless she can learn the truth about Mondragon there is nothing that even her extraordinary cunning, nor her ferocious love, can do to protect him.