Fever Season

  "We'll look for him, m'sera," he said awkwardly.

  "Not the blacklegs!" she hissed.

  So she knew enough to know that whatever Jordie had done that night, it hadn't been legal. And even if it had, there was no love and less trust between the workers and the enforcers of Merovingen.

  "No, not the blacklegs,'' he assured her. "My own men. Kamat men. We'll find out what happened."

  He didn't offer her the false hope that they'd find Jordie and he was grateful that she didn't seem to look for it. He asked when she or the children had eaten last and was not surprised when she didn't answer. Canalside they had a phrase for people, events or days like this: Instant Karma, they called it. The upper classes generally preferred the more discreet lifetide. Jordie Slade's wife had crossed his destiny and there wasn't any use in fighting it.

  "Gather enough for tonight. You'll stay at Kamat until this is over." He did not add that where karma was involved, nothing was ever over.

  The young woman seemed to sense that her own karmic stream had sluiced into a different channel. With whispered instructions to the children, she gathered her life with Jordie Slade into three sturdy baskets. They followed Richard down to the Calliste slip where he hailed a poleboat.

  "Where're we going, Mama?" the youngest, a girl-child of about three, asked.

  "We're going where it will be safer."

  "Does Daddy know?" the elder, also a girl-child one or two years older, asked in faintly distrustful tones.

  "Daddy would want us to be safe."

  Richard felt an unexpected twinge of admiration that she had reassured them without lying. "You'll be safer in Kamat... I, I don't know your name, m'sera."

  "Eleanora."

  Andromeda Kamat, dowager of the house, had been persuaded to spend the foul-aired autumn at one of Kamat's indigo estates some one-hundred-and-seventy kilometers down the coast. She'd left more than a month ago and taken with her the remnants of the Adami—twenty-odd dispirited former aristocrats who had dwelt cheek-by-jowl with his family since Hosni Kamat's purchase of their island.

  At the time Richard had rejoiced, seeing two of his nagging problems resolved: his fragile mother had been removed from Sword influence or observation and the Adami would finally have the chance to reverse their collective karma or disappear completely from Merovin geneologies. Now he had another reason: his mother would not return until the end of the week, and by then he'd have the remnants of the Slade family settled.

  The Adami had vacated a half-dozen cavernous apartments and it would be easier to install Eleanora and her children in one of them while his mother was away. Richard might have inherited the Kamat business, but Andromeda still ruled the house. His mother would have asked questions he was not ready to answer; questions his sister would never think to ask.

  "I would earn my way," Eleanora said, hesitating at the threshold, daunted by the ornate door with its wrought-iron straps and grill-work.

  Richard repressed a sigh. "We can speak of that later… when all this is settled. But first I'll see you and the children fed and rested."

  He pulled the bell-rope then opened the doors himself. In the absence of the Adami, Kamat was understaffed. Andromeda had charged her daughter with the hiring—thinking it would take her mind off the Nikolaev disaster. It hadn't. Andromeda would return to find they still needed new servants—from chars and porters up through butlers and cooks. Richard could easily say that Eleanora—if she could cook or sew—was a god-send, except that karma seldom involved itself in domestic service.

  "Wait here," he instructed, indicating the scrollback chairs lining one wall of the vestibule. "My sister will know which apartments are ready. I'll be back after I speak with her and take you down to the kitchen."

  Looking very young and completely lost, Eleanora nodded silently then took a firm grip on each of her children before perching at the very edge of the least comfortable-looking chair. Richard understood the futility of suggesting she relax, and hurried up the stairway to the drawing room where Marina was most apt to spend her afternoons.

  He saw the pile of crumpled paper and heard her muttering as he slipped, unannounced of course, into the room. Three piebald kittens were noisily scattering the paper beyond even Marina's usual carelessness; a fourth was trying to climb a dark blond plait. Marina did not seem to notice any of that or her brother from the depths of the day bed in which she reclined.

  "Having fun, Ree?" Richard asked innocently.

  The kittens and Marina all jumped with surprise. The kittens slipped and fell in their attempts to find hiding places; Marina took a sheet of paper from her writing board and stuffed it between the cushions beside her.

  "I don't know how mother manages," Marina said rather more quickly than was necessary. "There must be honest people in this city looking for work—but I can't find them. And if I'd known that I'd never have promised to hold a reception for her when she returned. She never seemed this overwhelmed. Well, she had the Adami, of course, but she had to write everything herself. A buffet for sixty people— what's sixty people?—and I've been writing invitations, menus and shopping lists all day. And I'm nowhere near finished ..."

  Richard ignored the details. He heard only the rapid rise and fall of her voice and her determination that he not notice the scrap she'd hidden away. So Marina had her little adventures going again. At any other time, Richard would have looked less charitably on his sister's penchant for schoolgirl romances and intrigues, but she had been shaken by the Nikolaev affair and he was glad to see her interested in anything again. He scooped up one of the kittens and sat at the foot of the day bed.

  "There's been a problem with one of the workers. I've brought his family here to Kamat."

  Marina's eyes brightened. She fancied herself more kindred to the workers than to the privileged elite of Merovingen society. She affected worn clothing which Eleanora Slade would likely have given to the rag-collector but, to her credit, Marina did keep herself informed about the ups and downs of the workers' lives. A House-gift of silver commemorated each birth, marriage and death without fail.

  "Which one? Bolger? His wife was doing poorly ..."

  "No, Jordie Slade's gone missing and—call it a hunch, or karma—I don't feel good about it. I went to check on him after lunch and, well, I thought it would be just as well to bring them here. There's his wife, Eleanora, and two children—I forgot to ask their names."

  His sister chewed on the tip of her pen. "She isn't a cook, is she? Angel knows we need a cook."

  "I didn't think to ask that either—I mean, it's not certain she's staying very long. There could be any number of good reasons why Jordie's gone."

  "But you don't think so, do you, Dickon?"

  Richard pushed his hair back from his forehead and shrugged noncommittally. Like almost every other member of his class, he'd been exposed to orthodox Revenantist teaching during his impressionable years; like almost every one else, the surface of his life seemed relatively undisturbed by religion or philosophy. But Revenantism flowed deep and he was dwelling on karma today more than he had in the previous ten years combined. Not even his father's untimely death had seemed so laden with destiny.

  Marina shoved the writing board to the carpet and swiveled the length of the day bed to take her brother's hand between her own. "Lifetide?"

  Richard met her eyes and saw the excitement, verging on envy, in them. Marina lived for lifetide, yearned for a manifestation of uncontrollable destiny in what she considered an unrelentingly boring life and mourned the fact that, even considering Nikolaev, lifetide had never caught her in its undertow. He squeezed her hand then released it with a little smile.

  "I doubt it," he assured her gently, convincing himself at the same time and breaking the spell karma had woven over him since lunchtime. "More likely something I ate at dinner last night. You're absolutely right: we've got to get a cook before Mother comes home."

  He stood up and walked back to the door. "In the meantime, I'
ll be setting up m'sera Slade and her children in Ferdmore's old rooms—just so you'll know they're occupied again."

  * * *

  Marina Kamat sat back on her ankles, a huge smile bursting across her face the moment her brother had shut the door -again. She worried about him as he worried about her. Worried about the maturity which had overwhelmed him after their father had died. Worried about the grim determination that had marked his comings and goings since he'd rescued her. She wanted the elder brother she remembered back again—the brother who knew how to laugh and joke.

  Besides, she had felt guilty this last week, keeping her own good fortune and excitement bottled up inside for fear that Richard would get hysterically cautious. Lifetide would loosen him up a bit—bring back a bit of his old spontaneity— especially if it involved a woman. If Dickon had finally fallen in love—for the first time, she reminded herself—he'd understand that the much-folded piece of paper she'd tucked between the cushions was truly the answer to all her dreams and prayers.

  She retrieved the paper and smoothed it carefully against her thigh. It was cheap paper, already going brittle. The ink was cheap as well, and had spread through the cracks in the paper, further weakening it. Scarcely the vellum and india that the poetry deserved. It was understandable; Tom had enemies all over Merovin. He was undoubtedly hiding at this very moment—but he'd risked everything to tell her that he had seen her that night at Moghi's, that he did remember her and that he'd felt the lifetide between them, too.

  She'd have to put the paper in her jewelry box for safekeeping—next to the other, similar sheet already stored there—but not until she'd gotten every word memorized. It was embarrassing that it had taken so long to commit the sonnet to her heart, but her imagination kept getting ahead of her. Her thoughts wrapped themselves more easily around handsome, mysterious Thomas Mondragon himself than they did around the obscure metaphors he'd used to describe her hair.

  The first poem had taken her utterly by surprise. Worse, she'd almost discarded it unread thinking it was yet another useless inquiry for a domestic position now that it seemed the worst half of Merovingen-below knew Kamat was hiring. It was karma that had kept the message in her pocket until she was alone, in bed, in the privacy of her own room. She'd prayed that there'd be a second message, and promised herself she'd catch the messenger.

  It hadn't been easy. The youth had plainly been terrified. White and shaking, he'd refused to give her his name when she'd offered him a silverbit in thanks. He'd absolutely refused to enter the house, but he had promised to come back today to carry her reply back to her beloved.

  Marina rescued her writing-board from the kittens and read her latest attempts with a frown. Some people simply lacked the poetic flair—and she was one of them. She'd actually considered copying something from one of the books in her mother's rooms—Nev Hettek, oddly enough, had produced more than its share of romantics. But Tom was a Nev Hetteker and Marina's heart burned with the thought that he might recognize her borrowings and scorn her as unworthy.

  So Marina's message was a mere seven lines of neatly written prose—unsigned as his had been. Indeed, she'd considered his precarious position and never mentioned his name at all—even to his messenger or in her diary. Mondragon's secrets were safe with her. She sealed it with ordinary wax and did not mark it with her ring. Then, suddenly aware that the messenger would arrive shortly, she raced to her room to dress.

  Tom would undoubtedly want to know how she looked, especially if he could not see her himself.

  She plunged deep into her wardrobe—past the canaler trousers and the worker smocks—to her real clothes: Kamat clothes in rich colors trimmed with jewels, lace and silver. It was afternoon—the most dramatic garments would be inappropriate; and it was a meeting by proxy—nothing too relaxed or intimate-seeming. The Mondragons had been powerful in Nev Hettek; their children surely knew the same etiquette Andromeda had instilled in her daughter.

  In point of fact, Marina would have been grateful for her mother's advice at that moment. Andromeda shared her daughter's romanticism and would have known exactly how to cast the proper mood. As it was, with primping time running short, Marina settled for comfort and simplicity. She was still arranging a strand of moon-gray pearls in the vestibule mirror when she heard a tentative rapping.

  "You're just on time," she greeted the youth, locking her fingers around his wrist and pulling him in beside her. "I was afraid you wouldn't come."

  "No, M… Ma… m'sera Kamat."

  "You should call me Marina. I feel like we're old friends already. And I'd like to know your name. If that's not too… dangerous." She could feel his pulse racing beneath her fingertips and suspected that it was, indeed, dangerous.

  "Raj, m's… Marina."

  "Come upstairs, then, Raj. I have a message for you, and some tea if you have the time to sit and talk."

  He followed her meekly, stealing furtive glances at the tapestries and hesitating an instant before setting his foot on the stairway carpet. Marina paused until he was beside her then put an arm around the narrow shoulders, hoping to reassure him that he was welcome. It wouldn't do to have him so nervous he wouldn't remember enough to answer Tom's questions.

  She got the vellum from the mantel and put it in his sweaty hands. "I'll give you this now—so there's no chance either of us will forget it."

  "For me?"

  His voice cracked and Marina despaired of setting him at ease. "For our friend," she hesitated herself, not daring to speak Tom's name. "Our friend, the poet."

  Raj muttered something but put the vellum carefully in his belt pouch. He was only a messenger, Marina reminded herself. A student, she guessed, since the last time she'd seen him he'd been carrying an armload of worn textbooks. He'd probably never been inside one of the Merovingen's island Houses before in his life.

  "How are your classes at the College?" she asked, handing him a glass of fragrant tea. "Seasonal exams are coming up, aren't they? I always dreaded them myself."

  She pointed him toward a chair. "Uh… I'm not really a student, m'sera," Raj admitted.

  Marina set her own glass on a lacquer trivet and gave the lad a closer examination. "I thought we agreed you'd call me Marina." She was beginning to doubt that Raj was, in fact, Tom's messenger.

  "Yes, m's.… Marina. I guess I should be going, really."

  "I guess it's hard to get into the College if you're poor and Adventist both, isn't it?"

  Andromeda Kamat would have blushed with shame for the rude presumption of her daughter's question, but Marina was serenely satisfied. Raj looked like the Angel of Merovingen had called his name. All Marina's doubts vanished.

  "I'm no Adventist," he sputtered.

  "Of course you are, there's no need to pretend. I told you: we're like old friends. I wouldn't expect… our friend… to trust anyone else. And we're Adventist here ourselves. Or my mother is, in a way. She left Nev Hettek to marry my father, but she stayed Adventist in her heart. The cardinals even asked some questions when my brother and I came of age. —So, you see, I do understand."

  Raj finally sat all the way back in his chair. He was still breathing a bit heavily, but Marina thought she'd finally gotten through to him.

  "Your mother, the m'sera Kamat, is from Nev Hettek?"

  Clearly, Raj knew very little about the realities of House life. Not, of course, that a canalsider should know that much but it seemed strange that Tom would have left his messenger so totally uninformed. Surely there was a limit to the benefits of ignorance so Marina undertook to outline the systems of dynastic alliances that bound most of Merovingen's mercantile Houses to similar clans in other cities as far away as the Chattalen and the Falken Islands.

  "When all is said and done," she concluded, "trade is more important than religion and politics combined."

  The youth was speechless with disbelief and Marina, who by reciting her father's dinner-table proverbs had exhausted her own understanding of Merovan realities, quickly shift
ed the subject. "The cardinals might run the College, but the Houses endow it. With the right patron—and the proper manners, of course—a student can believe whatever he wants."

  "And the money," Raj added. Bitterness touched his voice and drew him away from his nervousness. "Money comes first, doesn't it? You don't get a patron or the manners if you don't have the money."

  Marina grew defensive. She had always believed that Kamat did its part for the common good of Merovingen, and then some. But Marina had little experience with those who weren't already under Kamat's umbrella.

  "Each term we get petitions from the workers and from people who live here on Kamat. We have three students now—not counting my cousins." The youth remained unimpressed by Kamat's unaccessible bounty. "What did you want to study at the College?"

  "Medicine."

  Nothing safe like music or literature. The cardinals were fussy about some things where the possibility of heretical progress existed. Still, what finer gesture could she lay before Thomas Mondragon than to see his confidant safe inside the College? Her personal income wouldn't be enough—not unless she wished to share Raj's poverty—but Richard could surely be persuaded to extend the family largesse.

  "It would certainly make it easier for you to come here and visit me if Kamat were your patron at the College, wouldn't it?" Marina asked lightly—and watched as distrust settled across the youth's face. Too late she remembered all Richard's lectures about presuming friendship or equality where none could ever truly exist.

  "I'm sorry, Raj. It sounds like I'm toying with you—or offering a bribe. I didn't mean that. But I don't think it's right that you can't study medicine. I mean, if you're good enough to get in on your own, then you should have a chance. The Houses aren't going to turn their sons and daughters into doctors ..."