Vega Boregy didn't usually ramble, but, then again, Boregy didn't usually play host to a cardinal; a Nev Hettek obstetrician; an addicted, oracular heiress; and his first grandchild. Richard stopped listening and started watching. The signs of stress were there on Vega's face: nothing major, but enough that a well-taught student could read.
Angel knew, Boregy and Mondragon had been on the outs for months. Richard knew some of the details from Vega, and a few more from Tom; he didn'.t want to know the rest. But, to date, Vega hadn't been subtle. He'd been emphatic that they had better ways of scenting the Nev Hettek wind now that they knew what Cassie had married. Deal with Anastasi—because Anastasi was the better Kalugin; deal through Chamoun—because he had more to lose than Mondragon.
"... There's more trade coming downriver from Nev Hettek." The magic word refocused Richard's attention. "They've got things I want. Things we want ..."
What sort of things, Vega? Who really asked Doctor Lambert to come to Boregy? How do things stand between you and your brother-in-law, ho? Is this trade, or your daughter? Have you truly sold Tom this time, or just threatened to? Who's scratching your back, Vega?
"There's a place for the Samurai at the end of all this, Richard, but it's got to be done cleanly."
The wind had died down. The only air moving came from the fan, and that breeze passed by Richard. It should have kept the sweat from Boregy's face. Richard was comfortable. He'd graduated. There were still things to learn from Vega Boregy, but they were equals now.
"I think I understand, Vega," Richard replied, using his counterpart's given name for the first time. "You have my personal guarantee that nothing's coming out of the shadows."
"And that nothing will interfere with anything that has to be done?"
Richard hesitated and Vega stared, then Richard let the silence lengthen into drama. "For all our sakes," he said softly, "it would be better that anything that has to be done is done well enough that the Samurai don't have to interfere ..."
Vega Boregy nodded stiffly and reached for a different pile of paper.
The meeting at an end, Richard was escorted back to the main hall. He glanced in the library as they passed it. Deacon Neil was gone, and the cardinal, too, most likely. Whatever was twisting Boregy had religion written as largely upon it as it had Nev Net-tek. Nev Hettek's power in Merovingen was still an open issue, not so the College. Higher and richer families than Boregy had been brought down by a well-directed charge of heresy. Vega's advice was wise, as far as it went, but it would be wiser to cast a calculating eye on Boregy itself.
Then he was outside the house. The air was utterly still and thick as day-old cream. The sky was a dirty gray from one horizon to the other with the sun a burning white smear at the zenith. The plank walks were almost empty, and those few who had to get from one island to another were walking slowly. Shopkeepers and canalers found some comfort in their wide, straw hats, but hats weren't stylish this year in those strata where style was more important than comfort. Richard wiped his forehead on his sleeve and headed home.
In other years—in the years before he'd been Kamat's Househead—he, Marina, his mother, and just about everyone else who could be spared, left town the First of Quinte to spend the summer somewhere— anywhere—else. Last year they'd been in mourning. This year everybody had some excuse for staying. Especially Marina. Richard was going to have to do something about his sister—but when he saw her ahead of him, he decided to do something about Tom Mondragon instead. He sped down the stairs and hailed a boat from the St. John slip.
"East Dike above Delaree," he said to the poler, catching his balance as a wake took the poleboat across the beam.
They both stared daggers at the motorboat and took their positions at opposite ends of the boat. Richard closed his eyes and wondered when they'd decide who had the authority—or the bails—to ban motors off Grand. There just wasn't anything in all Merovingen that needed to move faster than a poleboat could get from one place to another—especially in Sixte or Septe. And no damned excuse at all for churning up the damned lilies. Cut through a vine with a propeller and the next day you had a dozen healthy vines, and the day after that you had another stinking, dying scum choking the House slips. Maybe they weren't winter-hardy, but if they weren't, then they'd all die at once and the air wouldn't be fit for skits . . . "This'un okay?"
Richard squinted into the shadowless sunlight. "It'll do."
He paid for the ride and stepped up onto the docks along the cityside of East Dike. The poleboat heeled around to join the skips and such waiting for a load on the incoming tide. Richard lost himself in a lethargic crowd, waited a few extra moments, then opened an unmarked door. Kamat's storerooms were a good distance away but East Dike, despite its blasted rock foundation, was as porous as any other Island. Richard made his way to familiar bales and barrels, and from there into dustier passages where no one came uninvited.
From the beginning he and Mondragon had agreed that it would be best if he were never seen near the back room of the Red Turban where the Samurai did their hiring. Fortunately, this had been easy to arrange, and Tom possessed a nondescript key that admitted him both to these corridors and to a small, shuttered room abutting the Turban. He usually showed up every day or so, whether the Samurai were hiring or not. Tom didn't have the only key to the bolthole, and Richard never left messages for him anyplace else.
They had met there by accident before, but always at night when Mondragon was apt to be more active.
Richard opened the door carelessly and thereby saved his life. Tom had been polishing his sword and had the point leveled steadily at Richard's throat before the latter had wit to react.
"Expecting someone else?" Richard stammered, but he didn't dare move.
Tom had the good manners to appear embarrassed. He laid the sword on a table beside its scabbard and left it there. "Not expecting anyone, least of all you."
The room, warm and stuffy in the depths of winter, was like a sauna. Tom had discarded his shirt and confined his singularly golden hair in a striped shibba scarf. He might well have been a different man, only the winter-sea eyes said he wasn't, and Richard never could look straight into Mondragon's eyes. There were pale scars on Tom's shoulders and his arms. Richard had endured his fencing lessons; he'd passed his final exam and drawn blood from his teacher. He even had a hard, white line across his right shoulder where he'd gotten careless showing off with Pradesh St. John. Richard thought he knew dueling or brawling scars when he saw them—and he wasn't seeing them.
"Me neither. I was going to leave you a message. I've been to see Boregy."
"And?"
Tom casually threw his leg over the edge of the table and leaned on it. He made no move toward the shirt dangling from the back of the room's one chair.
"I didn't like what I saw . . . what I felt. I thought you should know."
Answering Richard's silent prayers, Tom reached for his shirt. He used it as a towel, then threw it over one shoulder. "I'm old news to him," he muttered, but his eyes said he was still interested.
Richard accepted the inevitable and the empty chair. He began with Deacon Neil, both what he said and what his presence implied about Cardinal Ito Tremaine Boregy. Then he related his meeting with Boregy almost word for word. Understandably he skimmed over his encounter with the doctor, but that was where Tom returned with his questions.
"What did you say her name was?"
"Lambert, Danielle, I think. She didn't say, but that was the name inside her satchel."
"Describe her."
Richard shrugged. What he remembered best was least translatable. "Ordinary, I guess. Older than me— middle late thirties, but I'm lousy guessing their ages. Dark eyes, hair—just a hint of gray. She knew her business, that much I'll say for her."
"Would you say she knew more than her business?"
"Ancestors, how would I know, Tom? I was with her all of a half-hour, at the outside. She gave me as good an exam as old Doctor Jon
athan ever did, but she's at Boregy because she's a woman's doctor, or is that what you meant?"
Tom's eyes went flat, a sign that Richard knew from experience wasn't good. "Just her?"
There was an abrupt comment on the tip of Richard's tongue, but he swallowed it. Mondragon was a dangerous man, not an annoying one; his questions had a purpose. "She didn't say, but I gathered from the deacon that she wasn't alone. She'd come downriver with some others—men, I guess—he said something about mechanics. To tell the truth, I was mostly fighting my stomach, not listening."
Mondragon's eyes went to his sword and, knowing Tom even a little, that couldn't have been an accident. "Friends of yours?" Richard asked, meaning the opposite.
"Might be. How's Cassie . . . Chamoun?"
"Didn't see either of them. Neil said the baby's healthy. Boregy loves his daughter, he'd trade with Nev Hettek to get her off deathangel."
Tom said nothing for a moment. "Yey, anything. You're on the right course, Richard, if you're keeping a safe distance between Boregy and Kamat. If Vega thinks he's had trouble up to now, he could be in for a few shocks."
He hooked the scabbard to his belt and slid the sword home. A sealed envelope remained on the table.
"I think it's about time for me to make myself scarce. You won't be able to find me for a while, Richard. A few days, maybe a week."
Richard had intended to suggest the same thing, based on what he'd found at Boregy. But the envelope gave the lie to Kamat's influence. Whatever Mondragon was going to do, he'd decided before Richard had opened the door. Tom didn't bother to deny it.
"Just in case. Call it my last will and testament if something happens." He pushed it toward Richard.
"The boat?" Richard asked, and feeling foolish for
it.
Mondragon's lips twisted into a half-smile. "Can't figure that, can you?" He shook out his shirt and tugged it over his head. "You're a smart man, Richard Kamat, but you can't see around corners for your soul."
From any other man that would have been a fighting insult, but from Mondragon it was only the truth. "I know my trade. Most times, that's enough. I keep my promises and, thanks to you, I've learned not to make very many."
The smile broadened. "That's why I didn't ask you not to open the envelope the moment after I leave. Can't have too much karma piling up."
Richard shrugged. "I won't open it until I think I have to." He'd been planning to do just what Tom described, but now—and without any explicit promises or trust—he wouldn't.
Tom didn't talk about Nev Hettek or what had brought him downriver to Merovingen. The thin scars didn't tell Richard anything he hadn't already guessed. Most times Tom seemed infinitely older, wearied and hardened by his secrets. Richard had laughed the first time Marina referred to her erstwhile lover as sensitive and vulnerable. How could a man who didn't trust his own shadow be either? But he was. Not trusting, not caring, not taking friendship when it was freely offered took more out of Thomas Mondragon than Karl Fon and all his prisons.
"Write to me care of Anastasi after you get there," Richard tried to make light of the gloom that had settled around them.
"I'm not leaving, Richard." There was no humor in Tom's voice. "And you're not leaving without that envelope."
Richard shoved the paper in his satchel and headed for the door.
The sky was the same color as the canals by the time Richard got outside, and both of them were gunmetal gray. A steady wind was blowing from the west. There were two-foot waves slapping against the rock breakwater and none of the boats double-tied at the docks took notice of a displaced hightowner looking for a ride home.
The storm Richard had scented in the morning was in spitting distance of the city. Any man with a mite of sense would have gone back into the warehouse and counted barrels until it blew over. Richard had the sense, and ignored it, hoping instead that Tom, who still didn't know leeward from windward in a storm, would stay put.
By the time he reached the deserted promenade behind Gossan the sky was black and the wind was gust-ing a full gale. The tide was nearly in and waves, were hitting the dike with enough force that Richard was soaked with salt before the heavens cracked open. He grabbed the rail and let the cool rain splash against his face.
He didn't dare linger. Given a choice, lightning usually chose one of the many metal-clad spikes rising from the city's roofs, but lightning, like everything else on Merovin, was known to be perverse and a single man standing on the wet, windswept promenade had been a target before. Richard bent into the wind and hurried toward Nahar and home.
Ashe saw him coming and handed him a towel as soon as he came through the door.
"Will you wish to shower, m'ser?" Kamat's doormaster inquired.
"I have been showering since Gossan," Richard replied. The storm had refreshed him. He shook like a dog, not caring where the water landed, and toweled his hair until it stood on end.
"Gossan, m'ser?" Ashe got another towel and mopped the water before it could spot the wax. "Do we have trade on Gossan?"
Gossan's Family was Gossan's landlord, nothing more, and Adventist to boot. No elite Revenantist Family could match its house servants for snobbery. Richard sighed. He handed the sopping towel to Ashe and resumed his proper dignity. "I'll be in my office if anyone needs me."
The storm continued to rage. Richard felt Kamat sway from the wind and the pounding of the waves. His storm-fed exhilaration was as out of place as Ashe's snobbery. Any storm like this could become a disaster. In addition to earthquakes and floods, Merovingen was blessed with a hurricane every few seasons, and when they came they came like this. This one had come from the west, a land storm, meaning large-scale destruction was less likely, but even a land storm was disaster for someone.
He sprinted up the last two flights. The top of almost every island in Merovingen was reserved in some way for its dominant family; Kamat was no exception. Beneath the lightning rods and ringed by a "widow's walk," the Kamat's tallest spire contained Richard's private apartment and an octagonal office with a view that was second to none in the city. When Richard entered it, however, it was as gloomy as any interior suite with its shutters tightly latched and the oil lamps buried up to their hips in sand.
Darkness was no problem for the young Househead. He knew where everything was—or thought he did. His bark of surprise, pain, and anger was lost in a thunderclap. Then, rubbing his shin and hobbling, he found the hand sparker and brought light to the mystery.
Everything had been shoved toward the walls to make room at the center. The unopened crate was more than a meter long and almost half as high with strapping irons at the corners and seams. It must have taken two or three men the better part of the day to get it up from the canal. By accident or design they'd left a pry bar behind. Like a child on 10 Prime morning, Richard forgot everything else and set to work.
He made as much noise as the storm. Whoever had sent whatever it was—despite the customs tags and addressing label there was no clear indication of the crate's origin—had meant it to arrive intact. The outer box was lined with straw. When Richard pawed through the straw, he found another crate as secure as the first. The office was too filled with antiques and other objects of value for utterly indiscriminate destruction. Richard was forced to slow down, and was glad he did.
The second box was lined with woven raw silk that would itself fetch a handsome price for salvage. Within the silk was a third box of fine-grain hardwood from the rain forests of Temaii. Richard lifted it reverently and carried it to his desk. The hardwood was finished with a triple lock, but the latch was loose. Richard held his breath as he lifted the lid.
Raw silk had protected the case, silk brocade of the highest quality cradled the sword within. It was a samurai sword; Richard recognized the design from the plates in the BOY'S BOOK OF HONOR that had inspired the name of his security force. Not illogically, he assumed it was a gesture of support from someone in Merovingen. He assumed, as well, that it was a reprod
uction from such a drawing. A costly reproduction, but it had been six hundred years since the Scouring, and, Ancestors knew, how little had survived that holocaust. Still, Richard couldn't bring himself to lift the scabbard or remove the blade, and so it took him a while longer to notice the scroll deep in the folds of the silk.
He broke the seal and began to read. After a few moments he sat down. The storm passed its peak. The winds died and the peals of thunder were replaced by the steady rhythm of rain against the shutters. When he finished, the scroll fell unnoticed to his lap. Richard Kamat stared into the silk with awe and disbelief.
The katana wasn't a reproduction, and the man who had sent it knew nothing of Richard's Samurai. Stunned by what he had learned, Richard navigated slowly past the discarded crates and yanked the servant-bell. The cord was still wrapped around his fingers when Ashe's voice came faintly through the horn.
"Find . . . Find Raj Tai and bring him here." His voice echoed, then the room was silent.
There were dozens of places where Raj could legitimately be. There wasn't any good reason to assume that he was on the island. The young man was on scholarship at the College now, off and on overnighting at Kamat and he applied himself to his studies with a diligence that both amused and impressed his sponsors. It could be hours before Kamat's men found him.
Richard had dragged the discarded crates and the straw down to the landing beneath his office. He measured and folded the raw silk. Knowing now where it came from, salvage was out of the question. He'd pass it to Marina who would design something suitable to make from it. He closed the hardwood case, then he sat in his chair, listening to the rain and waiting. A high door had been revealed and opened, but he could not go through until he'd met with Raj . . . with Rigel.
Time passed. They summoned him to dinner, and he had them send the meal up. He could imagine the rumors that swirled when he refused to let the maid set the tray on a table but took it from her on the landing.