"Sorry." The fellow spread his hands in apology. "As you might suspect, I'm rather nervous talking freely like this. Ah, no ... I don't mean that I'm nervous talking in front of you. Gods, Alfonso! We've known each other too long for me to fear you have a loose tongue."
"And I don't." Rhajmurti met the startling blue eyes of his fellow priest. "But you'd best choose your audience with care, Trevor . . . exceeding care."
Trevor waved a hand. "You think I'm stupid?" he asked. "I know who I can talk to and who I don't dare approach."
"All right." Rhajmurti walked to his sideboard and poured two glasses of wine. He extended one to his guest and sipped from his own. "It's not that I haven't thought the same things as you, and I don't think I'm the only one here in the College who's entertained similar notions." He met Trevor's eyes. "I'm not blind. I've had a chance to see who goes in and out of Cardinal Ito's rooms these days."
"Rama bless!" Trevor began to pace, his wine forgotten in his hands. "What's become of us, Alfonso? Where did we lose sight of our calling? We're priests, dammit ... not petty bureaucrats jockeying around for a higher place in the line to kiss someone's ..." He stopped, threw his head back, and contemplated the ceiling. "We've forgotten what we're here for, some of us. And those of us who haven't are getting lost in the shuffle."
"I know, I know," Rhajmurti said, leaning back against the sideboard. "I feel the same way. But I'm only a teacher, Trevor, and I—"
"You're a priest first." Trevor's eyes blazed as they caught the light from the window. "A priest who dedicated his life to the service of the Lord and the holy gods."
"Yes, that's true. But I don't have the same power you hold. You've always astounded them, haven't you, Trevor? The brilliant mind ... the one they held— and still hold—such high hopes for. Even if I did complain about the abuses of those in high places, few would listen to me."
"Every voice added to mine gives my own words power.'' Trevor walked to the open window and gestured with his free hand at the canal below. "Take those godforsaken plants. We think they were seeded by the Janes, but we can't prove it. They can be used to create cheap fuel and benefit the poor. Ha!" His laugh was brittle. "All they've done is polarize Mero-vingen into two warring camps. And where do we clergy come in? Are we giving scriptural advice to either side?"
"Not many of us," Rhajmurti said.
"You're damned right, not many of us. And now, certain cardinals are talking about issuing an Edict, dammit, outlawing the plants. And have they chosen this course of action to benefit the people? Not a chance. It's because certain Houses—and I don't need to mention names—are opposed to the plants because they cut into their profits, and their profits mean gifts to the College. Shiva take them! We're being sold out to the highest bidder!"
Rhajmurti lifted a hand and glanced toward the closed door, bidding his guest lower his voice. Everything Trevor had said was true. Ito Boregy fed deathangel to Cassie Boregy, her baby survived, and the debate as to the veracity of her Past Memories raged unabated. Mikhail Kalugin was one of the more illustrious followers of every word that dropped from m'sera Boregy's lips. The entire College waited with ill-disguised alarm to see what she would say regarding the plants. Whatever her pronouncement, it would set one side at the other in a debate that raged beneath the calm surface of the College.
And the cardinals? Even teaching fathers like himself had found themselves caught up in the tightening spiral of events. One could not live in the College without being touched by what transpired in the apartments of the highest of the high.
"So," Rhajmurti said. "I agree. We've lost sight of our calling. We've let ourselves be led down pathways we would not have chosen."
"Some of us," Trevor inserted, lifting an eyebrow.
"Ah, there's good and evil in all men—"
"Which our karma should alleviate after living so many lives."
"What do you want?" Rhajmurti asked. "What do you want us to do? To say?"
Trevor sighed heavily and took a long sip of his wine. He lowered his cup. "I know what must be said, if we're to regain our purpose, but I don't know how to say it."
"Or to whom, or when."
"Yes."
"How many priests have you talked to as freely as you're talking to me?"
"At least twenty," Trevor replied, "chosen with extreme care, as you stated was the correct course of action."
"And their reactions?"
Another long sigh. "Much the same as yours. They agree with what I've said, and they don't argue that something must be done to clean up the College, but they don't know what to do,"
"Nor do you," Rhajmurti reminded gently.
Trevor nodded. "I wish Ihad the guts to call a Convening. I wish I could stand before every single cardinal and tell them what I've told you."
"But you like looking at the topside of the canal rather than bottom."
"That's truth." Anguish showed in Trevor's eyes. "What do you counsel, Alfonso? You're wise."
"Wise? As are all men at some brief periods of their lives." Rhajmurti shook his head. "I can tell you what you shouldn't do. Don't let your cause run away with you. Talk only with those you can trust. If and when you've talked to enough of us that you feel fairly comfortable with the numbers, call us together, not the priests you know for your enemies. Maybe among the entire lot of us, we can come up with some ideas."
"Lord! That could take forever!"
"Merovingen wasn't built overnight."
Trevor growled something into his glass.
"You want reform," Rhajmurti said, "and I don't deny that reform is needed. But I understand enough of the way the world works to know that what you don't want is to destroy the good along with the bad. Take it slower, Trevor. What we've fallen to hasn't happened overnight, either. A quick cure might kill the patient."
"You're full of sagacity, aren't you?"
"You asked."
"I did, I did." Trevor smiled slightly. "It will probably please you no end to know that your opinion is shared by all the brothers and sisters I've talked to so far. Not a one of them has urged me to move faster.''
Rhajmurti walked to his friend's side. "Don't take it so hard," he said, setting a hand on Trevor's shoulder. "Everything has to start somewhere. At the risk of another aphorism, the largest river starts out as a small stream."
Trevor's smile widened. "You must know a million of those old sayings. How do you keep track of them?"
"That's a secret." Rhajmurti let his hand fall. "Be careful, Trevor. You're playing a very dangerous game, and there are more than a few of the powers in the College who would take great pleasure in calling your hand."
Justice Lee stopped in the hallway, a heavy portfolio of his latest sketches under one arm, and his other arm clutching a basket filled with rolled canvases.
"Dammit, Sunny! Make up your mind," he growled, glancing down at the large gold cat weaving in and out between his feet. "Keep moving, or get out of my way." "I'll get him."
Justice grinned widely as Raj Tai bent down and scooped up Sunny, then flattened himself against the wall so Justice could pass.
Sweat rolled down Justice's face, down the back of his neck; the underarms of his shirt were soaked. Only a few more trips to make, he thought, the Lord be thanked for that. Moving had to be one of the most obnoxious pastimes he could think of.
There was no way he could have accumulated all that . . . stuff, for better lack of a word. His room was surely too small to hold it. Granted, he had stowed much of what he owned under his bed, on top of anything that had a top, and filled his standing closet to the stage that its door nearly burst off its hinges. He thought of Raj with a certain degree of wistful envy: medical students kept all their supplies at the College, textbooks, and notebooks being the only things they brought home with them. Now an artist, on the other hand—
"Do you want me to bring that stack of books behind the door?" Raj asked.
Justice glanced over his shoulder and nodded, then turned
his attention back to his goal, a door just down the hall from his old room.
His old room. He shifted the portfolio and sidled in through the open doorway. He never thought he would leave the room he had rented from Hilda for so long, but a change in his fortunes had made that move possible.
Since meeting Sonja Keisel, and being accepted by her hightown friends, he had been able to sell many small works of art he knew would have otherwise gone unnoticed. Rank had its privileges, most of them financial. Adding what he made from the sale of small commissions and other simple works to the allowance his aunt gave him, Justice felt flush for the first time in his life.
And then there was Raj. Raj, whose own life had taken an astonishing turn lately. Raj ... no, Rigel Takahashi, scion of the House of Takahashi in Nev Hettek, recognized by House Kamat as representative of a trade agreement between the two Houses and the two cities. Sponsored to the College by House Kamat to study medicine, Raj had lived in the family mansion, had worn new clothes provided by his sponsors, and had—by all the Ancestors—even started taking dancing lessons, all of which were calculated to prepare the young man for life in hightown society.
Even down to the rather handsome allowance granted by the Kamats.
Raj had told Justice the whole story of who he really was and where he came from, admitting he was heir to one of the powerful Houses in the north. He had seemed embarrassed as he had spoken, his eyes pleading with Justice for understanding; he in no way wanted Justice to treat him differently than he had in the past, when he was, for all practical purposes, just another poor lad eking out a living with the rest of Merovingen-below.
Of course, there was much Raj had left out of the story—why he had moved out of House Kamat, for example—but Justice had not pushed, astounded enough by his friend's story.
So, the combination of Justice's own money, Raj's new-found funds, and their liking for each other had prompted them to discuss rooming together. Fortune had smiled on them, for one of Hilda's roomers had graduated and moved out of his rooms. Rooms, plural. The fellow had not been a hightowner, but his parents were successful merchants and all through his schooling they had given him enough money to rent the suite Justice and Raj were moving into.
Suite. Justice shook his head, paused for a moment in the room he had entered, and looked around. Prime property, this: two large rooms, each bigger than the room he had lived in for years, entered from a small outer room that came complete with two chairs and a table. He grinned and walked to the room that opened off to the left and set his portfolio against the wall. A bed, a standing closet, a desk, a chair ... all much the same as what he had left, but with so much more space than he was used to.
He groaned. More room hinted of future stuff to come.
"Justice?"
"In here," he called, setting his basket down on the desk. Lord and Ancestors, there was even space against the wall for a small bookcase!
Sunny trotted into the room, and sniffed perfunctorily at the bed. Then, leaping to dead center, he curled up to watch everything going on around him with total feline disinterest.
"Where d'you want them?" Raj asked, standing in the doorway with an armload of books.
"Obviously not on the bed," Justice replied. "It's already occupied."
Raj laughed and set the books on the floor, in the very place Justice had staked out as a home for his possible bookcase.
"I wish I were you right now," Justice said, glancing around the room which was already beginning to fill up. "You didn't have to move half the stuff I've got."
"Courage. You've only got about two more trips." "I can't believe this is really happening to me. I've only dreamed about having this much space."
"It is a large suite," Raj agreed, "and well away from the noise of.the common room. I think I'm going to like it here."
"Ha! That's a laugh! One of the rooms in House Kamat would equal the space of these three."
"Maybe so, but it's ours now." Raj waved a hand toward the sitting room. His dark eyes began to twinkle. "And it's large enough we can have company. Maybe even Sonja Keisel."
Justice felt his face go hot and he turned away, hoping Raj had not seen.
"You're still going to help me with my fencing, aren't you?" Raj asked.
"You'll outstrip me soon enough, what with the teachers House Kamat provides. All I know is the basic handling of a sword, not the finer points of fencing."
"So to speak." Raj turned in a full circle, eyeing the room. "You're going to have more room here than you ever did in your old place."
"That's for sure." Justice drew a deep breath. "Let's get the rest of the stuff, Raj, before all my good intentions vanish."
"Then how about a beer?"
"Lord and Ancestors! That sounds so good, I'll try to pack two trips into one just to get out of here." He mopped at his forehead. "Damn! I wish we had windows."
"That, my friend," Raj said with a wink, sweat beading his own face, "is something Hilda's doesn't offer. We'll just have to wait, you and I. Someday, we'll both have our chance at windows."
The time between semesters at the College alternated between having nothing to do, and frantic preparation for the coming classes and students. Rhajmurti stood at the edge of the stairs leading down .to the entry hall of the College, watching the traffic.
He nodded to several cardinals who passed him on their way upstairs, then caught sight of a familiar face: Father Alexiev, the priest who had warned him about the abuse of deathangel.
"Lord Rama's blessing," Alexiev said, joining Rhajmurti at the railing. The stocky priest hunched his shoulders, and ran a hand through his hair. "Did you hear about Ivan?" he asked, his voice so low that Rhajmurti barely heard him.
"Which Ivan? The College is full of them."
"Mhaharaju."
Rhajmurti lifted an eyebrow. One of the hightown students, a good lad, faithful to his studies, but a bit on the wild side. "No, I haven't. What about him?"
"Dead." Alexiev's bushy eyebrows came together in a frown. "Deathangel."
"Gods." Rhajmurti bowed his head momentarily, offering a prayer that Ivan Mhaharaju would be reincarnated with more brains in his next life. "When?"
"Last night."
"Vishnu protect! At one of those godsforsaken parties?"
"No. This time he took the stuff in the privacy of his own room. One of his friends found him this morning, stiff and cold." Alexiev warmed to his theme. "He must have had a bad time of it, Alfonso. He'd clawed at his face, and scribbled gibberish on the walls with the blood."
Rhajmurti grimaced, his mind busy sorting out all of the young Mhaharaju's friends. He had never seen much of Ivan, as the young man had chosen accounting as his major—
"Damn!" Rhajmurti smothered his oath, but Alexiev was not listening. Accounting. Krishna Malenkov. He remembered seeing the two of them come out of a class they took together.
"You say he was alone when he took the stuff?" Rhajmurti asked, putting on his best innocent face.
"That's what I heard." Alexiev shrugged. "There were a number of parties going on that evening, but from all we can tell, he didn't attend any of them. The last time his friends saw him, he told them he was going home because he had a headache."
"Who were the friends?"
"The usual group he ran around with. Jorge Whitman, Titus Pruvinski, Krishna Malenkov. ..."
Rhajmurti shut his eyes. Gods. Krishna again. Did that young fool have nothing better to do with his brain than fry it? And after Rhajmurti had punished him for drug dealing—or attempted drug dealing—by having him wash dishes in Hilda's kitchen for ten days, Krishna should have known better than to come close to drugs.
Obviously not.
And what of Justice? Rhajmurti rubbed his forehead. He had faith that Justice would not become involved in the drug traffic going on at hightown parties. Justice was too damned smart for that. Besides, Sonja Keisel had made it plain she would not put up with drug-taking in any form whatsoever, and Rhajmurti
felt certain Justice would not jeopardize his blooming relationship with Sonja over a bit of deathangel.
Still, with Krishna more than likely involved again, it might be a good idea to look in on Justice.
Despite it being moving day, when even a teaching father might be asked to carry a thing or two.
Raj sat across from Justice in Hilda's common room, his mug of beer forgotten in his hands. He glanced at Justice, but the lanky artist sat slouched in his chair, his head leaned back, a look of utter exhaustion.on his face. Moving day was over at last: the two of them were now in possession of one of the best set of rooms Hilda's possessed.
It was fortunate they got along so well, because Raj foresaw times in the future when their relationship might become strained. Though Justice strove manfully to hide it, Raj knew his friend was unsettled at learning who Raj Tai really was. He had done everything he could to make Justice realize that a change in name and fortune had not altered the person who was Raj and, he hoped it never would.
It was not his revealed identity but rather what went on between himself, Jones, and Mondragon that might strain the relationship. He had never told Justice any more than he had to about his business. Justice already knew Jones; he had spoken with her often enough to allay her native distrust, and had won her grudging respect in the nighttime ride to Petrescu with those damnable papers. As for Mondragon, Raj had never mentioned Tom's last name, simply referring to him as "Tom." The commonality of the name could hide his identity; also, Mondragon was a Nev Hettek name and, versed as he was in his knowledge of hightown Merovingen, Justice might not recognize it.
Denny, however, was Denny. Raj shrugged, thinking of his brother. By Raj's choice, Denny had not made the move to Kamat, staying instead with Mondragon on Petrescu. Maybe, someday in the future, Denny would mature enough to abandon his bridge-brat, roof-runner ways. Then, and only then, could Raj support Denny's entry into House Kamat.
Raj glanced at Justice again and took a long sip of his beer. The last thing he wanted to do was to involve Justice in anything dangerous, or to put Justice in the position he had faced the night he had made the secret delivery of papers to Petrescu. But Raj knew as well as he was sitting in Hilda's common room that he could only protect Justice so far. Thank the Lord Justice had a level head on him and was no slouch when it came to a fight.