"Now or never," he whispered to his silver-backed counterpart as he whisked a brush one last time through his hair.
Richard retained a youthful tendency to rush from one place to the next—a habit, his father had always claimed, utterly incompatible with a man in control of his own actions, much less one controlling the actions of others. When he heard the gatehouse bell clattering it took all of his restraint to keep from bounding down the stairs to be in the main hall when Baritz arrived. As it was, Ferdmore was closing the front room doors when the Househead rounded the last landing.
"Has our guest arrived?" Richard asked, schooling himself to speak as calmly as he was descending.
Ferdmore gave a disparaging grimmace at the closed doors. "He's here. Fve poured him some sherry—to loosen him a bit."
There were no secrets in the great residences of Merovingen. The servants knew everything and the best the families could hope for was loyalty and discretion.
"Mother? Patrik? My sister?"
"M'sera Marina's alone with him. The others are still dressing. He's early, you know."
And no class of citizens was more punctilious in its adherence to strict manners than those same servants. They judged the ruling families without charity or mercy. It was poor form that Marina was left alone with an unexamined guest, but it was far worse that the guest had crossed the threshold before the six o'clock bells mentioned in his invitation had pealed.
"You'll go below and tell them dinner is still planned for eight with dessert back in the drawing room at nine."
"Yes, m'ser."
When the hall was cleared, Richard allowed himself one last moment of apprehension, then pulled the double-doors open and faced the Nev Hettek unknown.
"Richard, this is Rod Baritz," Marina announced before the Househead had fully taken in the scene before him.
"Pleased to meet you," Richard responded, automatically stepping forward to pump his guest's hand firmly.
The Nev Hetteker was no more than five years his senior with wispy, nondescript hair slicked down around an equally nondescript, almost porcine, face. In fact Richard noticed little about Rod Baritz except his eyes—and almost dismissed those because they were a watery, red-rimmed gray, as if the man were allergic to something in Merovingen's air. But Rod was smart, a moment or two locked with those gray eyes convinced Richard that Nev Hettek hadn't sent its amateurs to Kamat.
Marina distracted him with a light touch to his elbow. "Sherry?" she inquired.
Angling his body away from the visitor, Richard whispered as he took the glass. "Be careful, Ree."
His sister flashed one of her rare, dazzling smiles. She, too, had paid careful attention to her appearance but where Richard had sought an aura of solid confidence, Marina had captured a worldly sophistication. The effect was both practiced and predatory; Richard regretted that his Househead duties had created an ever-widening gulf between them.
"I'm always careful, Richard."
Between sips of sherry, Richard tried, as he'd seen his father do many times, to draw information out of his guest. The Nev Hetteker, however, would reveal little about himself and nothing at all about his expectations in Merovingen or Kamat.
"Your mother will be joining us, won't she? I really would prefer to talk with m'sera Garin as well." Baritz allowed the merest hint of contempt to seep into his voice.
It was no secret—and certainly not unknown to Rod Baritz—that Andromeda had renounced her family name when her family disinherited her.
Richard felt the back of his neck grow warm with anger. "My mother and uncle will be joining us shortly. You are a bit early, you know," he replied, falling back on servants' judgments.
His counter-insult was lost on Baritz who merely nodded politely as he settled back in his chair, determined to ignore everything else until Kamat's elder generation made its appearance. Richard retreated to the tall windows to pursue the relaxation techniques his father had taught him, but Marina continued the campaign to lure Baritz into revealing conversation.
Her technique was artless—a barrage of unrelated questions—all of which Baritz was able to answer with non-committal grunts and shrugs as he stared at the fireplace. As a brother, Richard wanted to stop his sister's embarrassing display but as Househead he let it continue. Kamat's glass was smooth and reflected a good image of what was happening behind him. The Nev Hetteker's shoulders had tensed and he had finished his sherry in two long swallows.
With proper politeness, Richard got the decanter and refilled his guest's glass. Baritz ignored him as he ignored Manna, and Richard began to believe that Kamat would triumph over this latest Nev Hettek intrigue.
"I'm sorry to have kept you waiting," Andromeda announced as she swept into the room with a silent Patrik in her wake.
Baritz was out of his chair and bowing awkwardly from the waist. Andromeda dismissed the gesture with a brittle laugh.
"Rise, Nev Hettek. Didn't anyone ever tell you not to imitate customs which make you uncomfortable?"
In one sentence she had thrown Baritz farther off-stride than her children had managed between them. Their guest fumbled through his jacket, producing an envelope which he laid in Andromeda's hand as if it were coated with poison.
"Another letter from your father, m'sera."
She broke the seal, glanced at the script then passed the paper to Richard. "What do you really want, m'ser?" she demanded.
Richard scanned the letter. If Nemesis Garin's first missive had been a request to his wayward, rejected daughter, this was clearly a demand. Cooperate, the old man had written several times. The sword is long and you have nothing with which to bargain.
"You are known to have connections throughout the lower city; you employ their aged and infirm to do your piece-work. Nev Hettek has a sizable underclass as well. I'm here to appraise your success in dealing with these people."
Marina, who now stood where Baritz could not see her face, wrinkled her nose in distaste but the rest of her family remained tensely polite.
"We are always glad to help our trading partners," Richard confirmed, extending his hand in friendship. "I'll take you around myself."
"That won't—"
"Richard!" Marina protested. "Don't give in to him! You know what he wants to do—"
But Andromeda had gotten to her outspoken daughter by then and dug her carefully manicured fingernails into the flesh inside the young woman's wrist. Marina's eyes widened more with outrage than with pain, but she kept quiet.
"We won't be giving away secrets," Richard assured her, trying to make light of the whole exchange. "First-bath never leaves the House, anyway. You don't need to see the ateliers, do you, Rod?"
A sly, knowing grin bent the Nev Hetteker's face. "No," he averred, shaking his head slightly for emphasis.
The first round, then, might be considered a draw—as might all the others that followed through another glass of sherry and an excellent, if all but unnoticed, dinner. Tutored by Andromeda and led by Richard, Kamat defined its perimeters.
Nev Hettek ties were not without use, Richard resolved as the main course dishes were cleared from the table. Get Marina clear of this Mondragon. And the next time Kamat needed a favor upriver—well, whatever else was said about Nev Hettek, no one ever said their collective memory was bad.
Indeed, the affair seemed headed for a more favorable resolution than Richard would have believed possible only a few hours before. The Househead and those around him began to relax. Except for Marina.
His sister couldn't accept the wisdom of remaining within the family perimeter. It was enough to make Richard briefly curse his father's memory; the patriarch had spared nothing in his own education but he had smiled indulgently when Marina drifted away from the rigors of learning and management toward romance. Nikolay himself had begun to regret his lack of wisdom before his death; Richard found he had inherited Marina's recklessness along with every other Kamat responsibility.
"Why don't you get out of the house
for a while," he suggested quietly to her as the small group began its migration toward the drawing room and dessert. "There's no point to staying here and aggravating yourself." He tried to ignore the hard, angry and disappointed set of her face.
"Who'll you sell up the river when I'm gone? Lord, Richard—don't you care? Is Kamat and First-bath so damned important?"
Her words pricked deep; his anger flared behind his defenses. "Now that you mention it: Yes, they are. Listen, Ree, I don't like this m'ser Baritz anymore than you do. He wouldn't know wool from linen and if he's official, he's sure not from the Nev Hettek board of trade. But let me tell you, your dear Mondragon was Nev Hettek and Sword of God to the bone before he quit them: his family was massacred and they say his hands aren't clean of it—"
Her mouth fell open. "It's lies, all lies. I looked at Mondragon and I know what I saw."
Richard bit back the retort that stuck to the tip of his tongue but his rage was not so easily resisted. "Find your friends, Marina. Get Carrolly or whomever and pay a call at Nikolaev—but stay out of Merovingen Below and, until you see things a bit more clearly, stay the hell out of family business."
"With pleasure, big brother," she hissed back at him. There was a smile on her face that could have come direct from Baritz. It made Richard nervous but before he could reassure himself Ferdmore interrupted him.
"It's the armagnac, m'ser. The bottle we drew off this afternoon's gone cloudy and the rest're behind the grate and the lock's gone rusty—"
In other elite residences, Richard knew, the servants not only knew their place but kept the house running smoothly without constant intervention. At Kamat, however, where many of the servants were the grandchildren of the former masters, the natural order of things was apt to get turned around.
"You just be careful," Richard warned his sister before giving his complete attention to untangling the problems with the brandy. Marina smiled again and disappeared out the door.
Nothing could pursuade Ferdmore to find a mallet and break the winecellar lock himself. It was not his place, the youthful servant insisted, to go breaking the master's property. Quick mental arithmetic convinced Richard that he'd waste less time descending to the winecellar himself than in arguing with a recalcitrant butler. He took a certain satisfaction, though, in borrowing a meat-mallet from the Adami-descended cook and all but destroying it on the rusted lock.
"Now, decant it and take it to the drawing room," he ordered Ferdmore, "while I go upstairs and clean my jacket."
Richard bounded up the private stairs and brushed his jacket with all the vigor his frustration could muster; First-bath, the Angel be praised, was as tough as it was expensive. The cloth looked none the worse for its beating as he grabbed the newel-post and took the main stairs like an adolescent.
"Richard, where have you been? We've looked for you everywhere," Andromeda called from the en-tranceway still some distance beneath him.
Leaning over the bannister, he saw concern in his mother's face. "Why aren't you in the drawing room with our guest?" he demanded in return and watched as the concern became full-blown anxiety.
"There is no guest," his uncle interjected as he emerged from the shadows, surprising Richard more than his mother did. "Your sister's made off with him."
Kamat was no end of surprises today. As if blackmail-minded visitors from Nev Hettek weren't enough, Marina was sending up a storm of rebellion and his meek uncle was becoming not merely assertive but downright challenging.
"Is this true, mother?"
"It seems to be. That is, they're both gone and Ferdmore says they left together."
Bless his pointed little head, Richard thought as, gripping the bannister for balance, he arched his back and escaped from his elders' questioning stares. The Adami tongues were already clacking, no doubt. With his eyes closed he resolved that if he got through the ongoing crisis, he'd retire the Adami to another island and get Kamat some ordinary servants.
"Well, Richard," his uncle's somewhat nasal voice interrupted, "what are you going to do about it? It's bad enough we're giving dinners and having guests while we're still in mourning for my brother."
"You didn't have any objections this morning," the Househead reminded him as he descended the last flight of stairs.
"That was this morning."
Richard resisted an impulse to gape at Patrik's flushed and sweating face. His uncle simply wasn't used to getting angry. He glanced at Andromeda and saw that his mother's eyes were narrowed and her thoughts also momentarily distracted from the immediate problems. It was easy to overlook Nikolay's younger brother. Nikolay, himself, had done it most of his life; his wife and son were certainly guilty of the same blindness. Patrik had sired, and brought back to Kamat, three acknowledged, unlegitimatized children. The eldest was not yet twenty and had always seemed as stolid and unimaginative as his father—but ambition had taken root in less likely soils. ;
"Marina took it hard that we were going to cooperate with Baritz," Richard said to his mother, relegating Patrik's aberrance to the same category as Ferdmore's subtle insolence.
"But she's gone off with him. What can she possibly hope to accomplish?"
Richard felt his palms go cold and his legs go strange as if there were some unfathomable discontinuity between the floor and his gut. He knew himself to be nearly sober, steady on his feet and possessed of his reason—it was the rest of the world, or more specifically the pillars of his family, that seemed to have slipped a few gears.
He, at any rate, had no difficulty imagining why Marina would have taken off with Baritz, his only insurmountable problem was guessing where she had gone and what dangerous scheme she had concocted.
"I'm going after her," he announced.
The odd feeling in his legs receded, transferred, perhaps, to the two others beside who both began to look as if they'd seen a ghost—Nikolay's ghost, or Hosni's. Richard hesitated a moment, in case either found their voice, then retreated, two steps at a time, up the stairs.
It could hve been ghosts. He could almost imagine his grandfather smiling down on him—though he knew the old man only by family legends and a fierce portrait in the front room. Hosni, the stories said, had established Kamat's primacy with his fists as well as his brain. He'd approve of the patched canaler's sweater and cap and the soft-soled shoes Richard hauled out of his clothes chest. He'd have wrinkled his nose when his canal-costumed grandson lowered the sleek punt—but Richard wasn't Hosni-reborn.
The young man had hoped—expected, really—to find Celotta at her cautious tie-up but the canal-woman was nowhere to be seen. Richard hauled up the heavy grating himself, eased the punt under its teeth, then carefully lowered it again. With the punt riding steady beneath him, he braced the pole against the damp, black pilings and got a feel for the water beneath him.
Tide had turned, running toward high and just one night after flood—not the best time for an uptowner to be on the water without a motor, but he felt equal to the challenge. Indeed, all the tensions and frustrations of the entire day unwound from his shoulders as the pole locked and the punt skimmed against the current toward the Grand. He'd circle Ventani when he reached that bend but his best hope, he figured, lay harbor-side in Nikolaev among whose reckless offspring Marina was apt to find accomplices.
Revelers shouted and sang on the bridges above him. Some, mistaking the punt for a poleboat, shouted down to hire him. He affected not to hear and heard, instead, the streams of abuse his kind dealt out to the lower city. The punt bounced hard over the wavelets of the rising tide as Richard's inner turmoil took physical form.
Ventani, like every other isle, glittered and echoed from its banner-festooned residence to the lower levels where the tavern Marina had mentioned belched its own raucous entertainments onto the walkways. It didn't sound like a place to welcome strangers and, acting on an instinct that said Marina at her most impulsive would still balk at entering a lively working-class tavern, Richard continued down the Grand.
There was a tricky chop on the water here reminding him that he was out of practice these days. He hugged the wharfline along Ramseyhead, then drenched himself in sweat and spray weaving through the bridge pilings to Rimmon Isle. The salt stung his enthusiasm; he'd be hard pressed to bring his sister and the Nev Hetteker back to Kamat if he did find them.
Relations between Nikolaev and Kamat were longstanding but strictly commercial. The largest of the Kamat dyeworks extended from the Nikolaev buildings into the harbor where turbines were lowered into the water to take advantage of the greater strength of the tide here. Nikolaev demanded three gold sols a month for Kamat's privileges on its property. Richard had seen to the delivery himself when he was younger but, like his father before him, had never felt the urge to socialize with his landlord. Marina had felt differently.
The Nikolaev slips were filled with at least a half-dozen fancyboats. Richard eased up to the outmost of the craft and called for a tie-rope. No one hailed back so he nosed the punt back to the harbor, headed around the shallow side of Rimmon for the dye works. The servants were probably in some lower hall having their own Festival celebration and, anyway, it would likely be easier to enter Nikolaev through the dyeworks gate than its main boatslip.
Richard poled through another tangle of pilings and made his tie-up at the dyeworks dock which, owing to the Festival, were deserted despite the incoming tide. He hauled hard on the bell rope and waited while the strains of a string quartet filtered down from the upper levels of nearby Bogar. The waiting did nothing for his temper; he passed the lengthening moments contemplating ever more extensive changes in the Kamat way of doing things. His family had always paid an honest wage and stood by its workers; it expected no less from them in return.