Troubled Waters Read online

  Chamoun had been badly compromised, and when the kid had come to Magruder finally with the truth, it was nearly too late. The trail of treachery and double dealing had led, not unexpectedly, straight to Tom Mondragon, ex-Sword, professional traitor, leech on the neck of Vega Boregy, and involved in Boregy's own high-level machinations up to his eyeballs.

  Boregy and Mondragon were supporting Anastasi Kalugin in a bid for Poppa Iosef s powerbase. Chamoun, who'd married Boregy's daughter, Cassie, was supposed to be the Sword's agent in Boregy House— Magruder's agent. But Mondragon and Boregy had tried to use Chamoun to create a second channel to the Sword in Nev Hettek, cutting Magruder out and turning the Sword against him.

  And if that weren't enough, unbeknownst to Mondragon and Vega Boregy, the Revenantist College had put out a kill order on young Chamoun. Magruder knew because he was sleeping with Iosef Kalugin's daughter, and that daughter, Tatiana, had heard it from her father.

  It was such a damned mess that Magruder would have to kill Chamoun himself, if this ploy didn't work. It beat waiting for somebody else to make a bad job of it, and maybe interrogate Chamoun in the bargain. It beat having to wonder who was using whom in this snakepit. It beat every plan Magruder could think of, with the single exception of using this Jones girl to get a handle on Thomas Mondragon.

  And it was a longshot. Thomas Mondragon had reached that point in a man's life where almost nothing could touch him: Mondragon didn't give a damn what happened to him. Magruder was betting that, deep down in the aristocratic soul of the New Hetteker named Mondragon, there was still a bit of him that would care what happened to an innocent girl suffering in his stead. If Mondragon cared enough about Altair Jones, maybe Jones and Chamoun and Mondragon himself wouldn't have to die by the Sword's hand. By Magruder's hand.

  Maybe.

  Megary was the best place to try to turn a maybe into a certainty. Jones was wide awake by the time he put in there, her eyes huge over her gag, her shivering limbs struggling with her bonds.

  It had been a long time since Magruder had wagered so much on a flimsy bit of guerrilla theater. He didn't like doing it now. But sometimes matters of life and death could come down to the quality of a single human soul, and this was one of those times. If this girl could be shown the right things, asked the right questions, and forced to the right actions, then she'd save three lives—one of them her own.

  But Magruder couldn't even tell Jones that. He had to run her through his hastily-constructed maze and see if she learned to push the right buttons. It wasn't a cheery prospect. And it was going to take time; at least a week. Time Magruder didn't really have, if Boregy and Mondragon were playing factional games inside the Sword of God.

  Hoping to hell that Altair Jones knew more than she should, and would tell him what she did know, Magruder tied up his boat, hoisted the writhing burden onto his shoulder, and struggled up the quayside toward Megary. She knew where she was, now. She was yelling as loud as she could, around her gag.

  It was muffled but he knew what she was trying to say. He just couldn't listen. Magruder hated abusing innocents. He couldn't get it out of his head that this girl was one, no matter that she'd been keeping company with Mondragon. For her sake as well as her lover's, he had to hope he was wrong.

  The fate she thought was in store for her as she fought helplessly on his shoulder—that of being sold as a slave—beat the hell out of what Magruder would have to do to her if she turned out to be useless in any way but as an object lesson.

  You ought to be able to fight your wars between combatants, but that wasn't the way this war was going. Fon wanted control of Merovingen, and Anastasi Kalugin wanted Nev Hettek. Even if Magruder had to whack this girl, the traitorous Mondragon, and Magruder's own agent, Mike Chamoun, it was a lesser loss of life than if crazy Anastasi got his wish and put Merovingen footsoldiers in the field against Nev Hettek.

  Magruder had to keep telling himself that, because he was making war on innocents, women and children and fools. All three of which, Altair Jones was as she struggled to bite him through her gag, or to wriggle off his shoulder, or to slip her bonds when he handed her over to the slavers who answered his knock.

  She got a good look at him as he said to them, "Don't do nothin' to 'er, yet. She's mine. 'Fore we sell her, I got questions t' ask 'er. Hold 'er till I get back."

  But that was no problem. Magruder wanted her to see his face. To remember that face, the single hope she had of not being sold off as a slave, the only thing between her and what Merovingians considered a fate worse than death. To make sure she did remember his face, he leaned down close to her, took her chin in his hand, and forced her to meet his eyes. He said, "Don' give 'em no trouble, hear? I can't be here every minute. I'll be back and we'll talk, is all. Don't you be afraid."

  In the torchlight of Megary's high doorway, there could be no doubt that she saw his face, and that those wide eyes of hers would remember it. Which, of course, was why Magruder had gone to Moghi's in disguise: Chance Magruder, Nev Hettek's ambassador, was well known. Jones might have seen him, or might see him later if she survived; the man Jones saw, stubbled and dye-dark with wad-filled cheeks and a putty nose, wasn't anyone she'd ever seen before.

  But she'd see him again, and again, before her time at Megary was done.

  CHAPTER IX

  STRANGE BEDFELLOWS

  by Lynn Abbey

  A cold, sleety wind followed Ashe into the shadows beneath Kamat Bridge. His fingertips left ice patterns on the bronze doorknocker and he tucked his hands beneath his armpits while he waited for the door to swing open. Another day when the sky was the same color as the Det and both were aching cold. Time was coming to accept what Kamat offered: a uniform, a two-room flat and meals in a common kitchen. Independence exchanged for security; it seemed a good idea when winter coated Merovingen with a dull, gray rime.

  He swung the knocker again, and added a curse for good measure. It was six bells and high time for the mid-door of the house to be open. He'd had nothing for breakfast and the churning in his gut made the ache in his fingers worse. Still, he'd hammered a third time before Eleanora Slade opened the door.

  "Took you long enough," he complained as she pushed the heavy door shut behind him.

  "We're short again today. Three sick that we know of, and another four that haven't showed up yet."

  Ashe grunted and stamped his feet to get the blood moving again. He shook the beads of melting ice from his jacket and hung it on a peg beside the others in the vestibule.

  "Quiet night?" he asked as a canaler might ask about the winds or the tide.

  Eleanora said nothing. The woman didn't gossip with the other servants and employees, though she was the point of a good deal of their whispered conversations. They all knew she wasn't like them, for all that there was a Kamat ensign worked onto her starched white collar. She poured the tea in the private study, then sat and drank it with Richard Kamat who was the master of all this. She did nothing improper—Angel knew there were enough eyes alert for any sign of that—but she wasn't like the rest of them, and Ashe wondered, as she walked away from him, why he had even bothered to ask.

  "Anything special I should know?" he called after her in a less conspiratorial tone.

  "They've come to put new beams in the larder below the kitchen, so the back middle stairs are blocked," she replied before continuing on her way.

  Ashe made a mental note of that and calculated his reroutings. Merovingen's island houses were little worlds unto themselves. Riddled with stairways and corridors, Kamat House—like every other House in the city—made a mockery of geometry. Family lives and businesses were twisted and crushed together until no map could do them justice and the mark of a good retainer, like Ashe, was his ability to know at least three ways to get to any room or cul-de-sac on the island.

  With a fleeting, self-satisfied smile, Ashe went up the stairs to the main hall of Kamat House where a box partly filled with envelopes waited for his attention. The mai
l would be delivered even if he hadn't shown up for work, but everyone from Richard Kamat on down knew that he would deliver it faster and more efficiently than anyone else. He sorted the mail in his fingers, adjusting his course as each envelope slipped into place.

  Lower house mail came first—mostly bills and trade broadsheets—then the mid-house mail: a scrawled letter for Cousin 'Lexsandra from one of her classmates, an invitation for Cousin Gregory from one of his college societies; and finally the interesting mail for the family itself. Ashe shot his cuffs beneath his sweater before rapping on Andromeda Kamat's door.

  "Mail for you, m'sera."

  There was a hesitation, and a faint scuttling sound as if the dowager of the high house weren't quite ready to receive her servants. Ashe brushed a hand across his forehead to be certain it did not shine with perspiration and shifted his weight silently from one foot to the other. "Come in, Ashe."

  He entered silently, as a House servant should, and kept his eyes focused discreetly—rigidly—on the patterned carpet between the door and the small redwood table where m'sera Kamat kept her pens and paper. But he missed no detail of the room. Ashe saw how m'sera's breakfast was untouched and cold; how her daughter, Marina, sat all cramped and anxious on the chaise; how m'sera held a scrap of cheap paper against her thigh.

  The writing was folded to the inside of the paper— not that it mattered. Ashe could not read script, but he remembered well enough, and he remembered delivering that scrap to the young m'sera three mornings ago. The night porter remembered that a scruffy youth had delivered the scrap to the house, and the under-house chambermaid guessed it was the same youth who had dined with the young m'sera during the dowager's recent absence.

  Ashe laid the vellum on the table and left as discreetly as he'd entered. There was a story here to dissect and reconstruct over tea in the underhouse kitchen. He walked a bit faster and took the stairs to m'ser Richard Kamat's rooms two at a time. Richard heard him coming; the door was open when Ashe reached the landing at the top of the octagonal tower. Ashe's face was faintly red as he handed the envelopes to the house's master, but Richard—discreetly—took no notice of it and Ashe escaped much as he had arrived.

  Richard listened to the rhythm of the servant's retreating steps for a moment. It was a tight, two-faced realm that he commanded within Kamat's walls. The more loyal a retainer was, the more that retainer was addicted to gossip about the family in the lower rooms. Something faintly scandalous echoed from Ashe's heels, something that he, as Househead, should probably be aware of. Ruffling his mail Richard wished, and not for the first time, that he was half so good at smelling out scandal within the other Houses as his servants were within his own home.

  He opened the letters in the order he had received them—which was to say, in no order at all. It was karma, then, that the most important communication was the last. Richard read it twice then let it fall to the desk where the red wax imprint of the Boregy crest shone like blood in the winter light, and the graceful signature of Vega Boregy smiled insolently up at him.

  "Well, Murfy take all," he muttered, knowing that no one could hear him, "if that's not the limit of arrogance."

  It was a short letter, informal in style and grammar, as if Vega were sharing an inconsequential thought with a friend. And therein lay the arrogance, for Boregy was no friend of Kamat, though it was not an enemy, either . . . yet. Boregy brokered political power along with its bank notes, but it had never before taken any notice at all of Kamat. Boregy wasn't even Kamat's principal bank; Hosni Kamat, the house's founder, had decreed that no banker should ever have more than twenty percent of their assets.

  Richard had come to power in Kamat nearly fifteen years ahead of schedule and he'd had less than a year to accustom himself to the ways of power. He had not contemplated revising any of his grandfather's policies in the near future—but he was contemplating now and praying—to Murfy, if no one else was listening—that Kamat's collective karma lay solidly on the plus side of the ledger.

  Have given the matter some thought, Vega Boregy had written. The mercantile houses should have their own security force. Our bank would back a prospectus offering should it come from a major depositor. Are you preparing such a prospectus? Keep me informed.

  Richard had learned to swim one morning when he was four years old. The memory was very clear in his mind, and it was his only crystalline memory of his grandfather. Hosni had taken him downstairs to the huge vats where the wool was rinsed, then the old man had thrown him in. Richard could still conjure up that water's taste. He was smiling unconsciously, and looking very much like the portrait of Hosni Kamat that hung in the dining room, when he reached for his pen and ink.

  Iosef Kalugin had rewritten the rules of Merovingen when he let his children brawl their way toward power. Perhaps he thought his conservative, Revenantist city would sit idle, as timid about political change as it was about encroaching technologies. And perhaps it was, but Kamat knew what its founder had known: there was a time for caution, and there was a time for risk.

  Dear Vega, Richard began without hesitation. I had, in fact, been considering which bourse would underwrite my prospectus for the Samurai. Your timely offer has spared me the choice. I am today directing my agents to commence transfer of Kamat assets—

  Richard heard footfalls on the stairway. He blotted the ink and slid another sheet over the top of it before he heard a knock. There were some things one did not let the servants find out before one had informed the family.

  "Come in."

  He'd expected a servant—Ashe or one of the others, perhaps even Eleanora Slade—but it was his mother who came through the door, with Marina a nervous shadow in Andromeda's wake. Briefly, angrily, Richard wondered if Boregy would have had the audacity, along with the arrogance, to contact Andromeda directly.

  Andromeda pulled one of the leather wing chairs closer to her son. "Dickon, I think we have a problem . . ."

  Richard let his breath out slowly, made a show of clearing his desk to give them his full attention. He hid all traces of the Boregy matter. Whatever was troubling his mother and Marina, it wasn't business—not if they were calling him Dickon. Yet it couldn't be trivial, either, or they would have waited until later in the day.

  "So tell me and I'll see what I can do about it." "Ree has gotten herself into a situation—" Marina looked away as her mother unraveled all the details of her involvement—one couldn't call it an affair—with the rootless orphan she knew only as Raj. It was all so ludicrous. A hightown woman, like herself, stumbling blindly into love because of a doggerel poem. And it was dangerous as well.

  "You see, Dickon," Andromeda explained. "She thought the notes were from Thomas Mondragon."

  Despite himself, Richard jerked his head up and stared at Marina in disbelief. She started to cry and the older brother in him wanted to rush to her chair to tell her everything would be all right. He didn't.

  "Thomas Mondragon," he repeated. "Have you taken leave of your senses completely, Marina? The damned Sword of God nearly got you killed at Nikolaev; they're smuggling our cargoes; and you're exchanging love poems with one of their agents!"

  Andromeda leaned forward, recapturing his attention. "Now, Dickon, it's not as bad as all that. We've every reason to believe that young Mondragon is on the outs with the Sword—"

  "Then he's drawn them here after him. It's all the same difference."

  "Well, be that as it may, Dickon, yelling at Marina won't change what's been done. She thought the notes were from young Mondragon and she thought the boy was his messenger. She made certain . . .ah, promises because of that—"

  "Oh, Lord—what promises?"

  Marina shifted uncomfortably in her chair. "He's a bright boy, Dickon."

  "I know he's smart enough," Richard interrupted angrily, thinking she meant Tom Mondragon. "It's you I'm worried about."

  "Not Mondragon," Andromeda corrected as her daughter's lips quivered. "The boy, the messenger, the one she promised Colle
ge sponsorship to medicine . . . so he could continue delivering the messages." Marina cringed as her motives were revealed, but Andromeda rushed on. "The boy himself saw the dishonor of it, but, being only a boy, he's handled it poorly and run away to the swamps rather than face his shame."

  With that, and as Marina hid her own face, Andromeda Kamat laid Raj's scrawled note—and his earlier poems—on the desk before her son. Dutifully, Richard read them, then laid them aside.

  "Well," he said after a dramatic, almost melodramatic, pause. "What am I supposed to do now, Mother?"

  Andromeda trembled with the exasperation of dealing with her grown children. This was hardly the time or situation for Richard to display the first signs of sarcasm. "I expect you to understand what this means," she said with grim earnestness. "A boy to whom Kamat has made promises has taken himself off to the swamps where he will, in all likelihood, meet an untimely end. An untimely end, do you hear that?"

  Richard did; and he knew that he had no options. Still, he was riled past mere annoyance, and something would have to suffer his displeasure. "What? Should I fear public opprobrium because an orphan dies in the swamps? Will the cardinal care? They're probably all Adventists, anyway, Mother. Linked up with Mondragon. They don't believe in karma any more than you do—"

  "Richard!"

  His mother's voice went shrill. Her face flushed scarlet and Richard found his anger evaporating quickly. Nikolay Kamat's death had scarred and crippled Andromeda. She was frail where she had once been elegantly slender; hysterical when she had been vivacious. Richard had sent her out of the city for her health while the weather was stagnant and just recently suggested she come back.

  There were a dozen or more comments swirling in Richard's head, each more scathing than the last. He swallowed them all. Karma or no karma, he was not prepared to have his mother's relapse on his conscience.