At last, Mondragon rounded on the person he'd come here to meet. He tossed the piece of paper in that direction. The sheet sailed crazily.
The teenager who stood shivering in the shadows lunged for it, caught it, and smoothed it against his ragged breast.
"Ha' come ye do that, hey?" the boy named Denny wanted to know. "We gotta help each other, Thomas. We gotta."
"How'd you come by that piece of paper, Denny? And how come, if you're so smart, you didn't make a copy—you can read and write—instead of doubling everyone's risk by stealing the original? Now you've got to get it back to wherever—"
"To the Det Queen, one of the Chamoun ships." Denny's lower lip was thrust out, his eyes sparkling with hurt. "C'mon, Thomas. I did good, didn't I? Bringin' this t' ye? My mother was Sword o'—"
"Sword of God. Yes, I know. What I don't know is why you're so damned proud of it. Why you think you have to be part of all this, when what it leads to is misery, years in hiding, losing everyone you ever loved and having no one you can ever trust."
The teenager, who was risking life and limb to aid Mondragon, stared at him without a word. The round eyes told Mondragon that the boy knew that Thomas was talking about Thomas' own experience with the Sword of God, but didn't want to believe it. The Sword was romance, adventure, all Denny had left of his dead mother. If the Sword was bad, Mother had been bad.
When the boy's stare didn't waver, Mondragon continued remorselessly: "You didn't answer me. How'd you get this? Why'd you bring it to me? If you're a good Sword trainee, or want to be, you should be helping Magruder, not double-crossing him."
"You're the Sword—the real Sword; we all know that. You're the Sword like Mama thought she was, not like those hightown leeches, not like Chamoun and his fancy embassy connect—"
"Denny, you fool, the Sword's a bunch of terrorists and murderers, revolutionaries bent on bringing their own form of oppression to Merovingen—"
"An' that's worse than Kalugin's oppression?" The boy's defiant interruption was loud, exploding out of his mouth so that Mondragon glanced reflexively over his shoulder and the balcony, in case someone outside should have overheard,
"Denny, how deep are you in this?"
"I've been... gettin' deathangel for the College, best I can. There's not that much around, an' this priest tol' me to." Denny's voice rose with a plaintive edge that was nearly a whine. "You knew 'bout that, Tom. You know 'bout everythin'; we all make sure you knows what you needs..."
"That doesn't explain robbing dispatches out of dip pouches."
"Well, there ain't much deathangel, so I been usin' what I got fer resources, like you tol' me."
"I never told you any such thing."
"Like you showed me, then—I watched you, Thomas, doin' what it takes. I'm Sword, by my mother's word and all. So when I couldn't get no more deathangel from Fishmarket, an' when the price gets so high 'cause the College's buyin' so much and then Rita's friends all want it 'cause Cassie's chewin it like candy—"
"Rita's friends?"
"Rita Nikolaev, you know. The highs and mightys, they's just kids too, even if they're College kids. So Rita's little sister wants some deathangel, and I says, no, I can't git it but fer the priests, but I takes 'em fishin' fer it..."
"That doesn't answer my question, Denny."
"Well y'see, since I'm Sword, I went to Mike Chamoun when I couldn't git none, cause the swamp's fished out an' the canals is full o' that weird weed and the baby deathangel's too small t' bother with—poison's not strong enough or sompin'... Rita's little sister said Mike Chamoun, he'd listen, cause them's so friendly, Rita and Mike, what with the business they're doin' an' all."
"I bet. And you told Chamoun what?"
"That iffen any o' his big boats could troll fer a little deathangel, or happened on any, it'd make everybody's life easier—his wife's, 'specially."
"Denny, you didn't tell him you were Sword, did you?" Mondragon's eyes narrowed as if against a blinding light as he waited for an answer he didn't want to hear.
"Well I had t' tell 'im somethin', Thomas. T' git his attention. Then he says, sure, anything his boats git, I c'n have to give to the College. So I'm on every Chamoun boat, sometimes when they come t' port, sometimes just before they leave, 'cause I take the deathangel they got. And sometimes I take a message over to the boat, from Mike, when I'm goin'. Sword business." Denny's chin jutted. He folded the paper back on its original creases and put it carefully away. "He pays me when I do. I need the money, Thomas. So do you, so don't tell me I'm wrong to take—"
"Get out of my sight, Denny. You're going to drag down everyone else with you. Don't bring me any more messages from Magruder, not ever—not if one of them's my death warrant. Don't tell me what Mike Chamoun thinks. Don't tell me how their money spends like any other. And most especially, don't come around me canalside, not at Moghi's, not anywhere. You want to be Sword of God, you're my enemy—now and forever. Is that clear?"
Mondragon didn't wait for an answer. Denny was just a kid and Mondragon's emotions Were the emotions of a duelist confronted with a deadly enemy. He had to get out of there before he hurt the boy.
Hurting innocents, even dangerous innocents, wasn't something Mondragon could stomach. Not yet. He still had that much self-respect. He was mucking around with the Kamats for money, but that was harmless, he told himself—at least not more venal than was necessary for survival.
And Denny was right. Mondragon could hear the boy's outraged honesty chasing him down the stairs: unanswered questions, uncomprehending hurt at being so bluntly upbraided. Denny was smuggling diplomatic dispatches off a Chamoun vessel, dispatches that were demonstrably key to destabilizing the Kalugin government. And he was smuggling documents back on to those same Chamoun vessels. Smuggling deathangel spine poison wasn't half as bad as being privy to plots against the Kalugin government. But then, the punishment for smuggling controlled substances wasn't a long, slow, and interrogatory death.
Everybody in Merovingen was smuggling something this season: Moghi was smuggling fancy foods and nonhallucinogenic contraband; Chamoun and Magruder were smuggling information; Denny, and even Jones, because Mondragon had asked her, were smuggling deathangel; the Janes were smuggling their religious husbandry and hydrocultures...
And Thomas Mondragon was smuggling himself—in and out of dark and narrow places and some of the wrong beds, this season.
At the foot of the stairs he stopped, meaning to head for Fishmarket. He had his own quota of deathangel to acquire and deliver. And he didn't want to see Jones, not now. Not with this whole mess of Denny's hanging fire: Jones would hear about it, as she always heard about Mondragon's doings from that damn clutch of adulatory kids she fed as if they were kittens.
Either those kids of hers or Jones herself would be the death of him, he'd long known that. But he couldn't shake Jones, and she couldn't shake those kids
Some other canaler would have left it at kittens. Could have left it at kittens. But now, when everybody was winter-poor and the unknowable was going on in the College and Boregy House, Jones had to be involved up to her neck with someone like Denny, who simply wasn't smart enough to survive this mess he'd made.
Well, kittens rolled out of the rag basket onto the cold floor and then they died there, when the mother cat was out hunting for rats to feed them. And the canaler who took in the cats got over it.
Jones would have to get over Denny, who'd marched up to Michael Chamoun and announced that he, Denny, was Sword of God, too. Magruder ate kids like that for breakfast. All Chamoun or Magruder or anyone aboard a Chamoun ship had to do was even wonder if Denny had been breaking into the dip pouches, and there wouldn't be enough left of Denny to give a canaler's burial.
"Damn," said Mondragon out loud, and made for Fishmarket with a determined set to his shoulders. But that wasn't where he wanted to go. He wanted to go to Vega Boregy and ask (impolitely) what Vega was letting the College do to his daughter.
But Mondragon c
ouldn't. He was strung between too many posts to risk losing even one—partial— supporter. And they'd all find out, those with hightown access, what the College was doing with Cassie Boregy, soon enough.
Mondragon had been invited to a College "tea and seminar" that was "fancy dress" and "an evening of utmost important and revelatory significance," according to the engraved invitation Vega's people had sent him.
And the R.S.V.P. had been either Ito, at the College, or Vega, at Boregy House.
By party evening, Mondragon better have scratched up enough cash to buy himself a new suit, or he was going to go in there looking like what he was: a pawn on the run, a bedraggled, exhausted ex-Sword agent hounded to ground by Magruder's agents; the dregs of the man he'd once been, a petty criminal who couldn't even make a living committing crimes.
Smuggling wasn't the best way to make a living, or the surest. The surest, for Mondragon, was always women. Right now, that meant Marina Kamat or Altair Jones. And he couldn't risk Jones, not with Magruder's dogs so close on his heels that Denny— Denny—was an unwitting agent of Magruder's provocations.
He didn't know how honest he could be with Marina, or with her brother Richard, but he knew he needed to get some money—and fast. If the party that Vega and old Uncle Ito were throwing was really full of "revelatory significance," Mondragon wanted to have enough money in his pocket to get out of Merovingen—get out clean—before things got so bad here that you could stand in fear of Judicary action not only for the secrets of your current lives, but for the sins of your past ones.
For Mondragon knew that much about what Cassie Boregy—and the College—were using the deathangel for: to facilitate regressions into purported past lives. And in Cassie's case, if rumor could be trusted, to read the future as well.
"Almost ready, Cassie?" came her father's voice through her bedroom's closed door. "We can't afford to be late. Ito needs to walk you through the hall, he says, before you... go into your meditation."
"It's all right, Daddy. You can say 'before you eat the deathangel.' That's the truth of it, isn't it? Before I bare my soul and all of ours to the College and its assembled guests?"
Her voice sounded nervous to her own ears, though she'd meant it to sound defiant, controlled, the voice of an intrepid voyager who laughed at danger and sacrificed without hesitation for the good of Boregy House, Revenantism, and Merovingen.
"Cassie," came her father's voice again, followed by a rattling sound as he tried her locked door. He didn't demand that she unlock it and let him in, though. He sighed audibly and said in a cajoling tone, "Please hurry, daughter. We're all waiting for you. If there's anything I can do to help..."
The unfinished sentence dangled, hopeful and restrained, the only proof that there was anyone else in the world beyond her locked door and her blue and gold bedroom and the mirror before which she stood, fussing with her hair.
"Nothing, thanks. Unless you can find Michael and send him up here, I might be a little late." She kept her voice steady, but the demand in it was clear. Her husband was upsetting her and she wanted her father to see to it.
There'd been a time when, if she'd behaved this way, Vega would have called houseboys to break in the door and swatted her backside personally, to make sure she understood the demands of being a daughter to Boregy House.
No one dared demand anything of her anymore.
"I'll send someone over to the Nev Hettek Embassy and to the docks to see if we can turn him up, dear. But you hurry if you can. I promise you we'll have your husband at the College waiting for you, if we can't locate him sooner. But you mustn't be too tardy for your... debut."
Everyone, including her dear father, Vega, was polite to her now.
At first she didn't answer. Let him wait. She'd waited plenty in her life. She heard him shift from foot to foot, then clear his throat.
Finally she said, "Daddy, go downstairs. I can't get ready with you standing out there distracting me. And I'm not coming down until I'm ready. If Michael returns, send him up."
She heard her father mutter something unintelligible, then his footsteps descending the stairs.
She was no longer simply Vega Boregy's daughter and the collateral for a political merger with Nev Hettek. She was a power in her own right.
And powers in their own right led very lonely lives, she was finding out. Now that her father was gone, she thought she'd wanted him to stay—to tell her to come to her senses, to break down the door, to shake her and yell at her and treat her like the child she still was.
Or had been, until she'd been blessed or cursed with knowledge of Merovin's past and of its future. She wasn't sure she cared to have such knowledge and such power, right now as the moment drew near when she'd display her talent to all of those who counted in Merovingen: the Kalugins, the Nikolaevs, the Kamats, the others from the great Houses.
She wasn't sure she wanted to know their future. She wasn't sure she wanted to know even as much as she knew now, without the help of deathangel or Uncle Ito's clever guidance.
Right now, all Cassie really wanted to know was what the baby she was carrying had been in its last incarnation. The baby was hiding its previous lives from her.
She cupped the nearly imperceptible bulge at her belly, then smoothed her thickened waist. In the mirror, as she squinted at her reflection, she fancied she could see the baby in her womb, a white and tiny form about the size of a man's thumb, attached to her by a glowing cord....
But there was no such sight in the mirror. In the mirror was only the pregnant darling of Boregy House, dressed in a smock of pale blue velvet trimmed with gold: Cassiopeia Boregy Chamoun, the woman on whose slender shoulders the merger with Chamoun Shipping had been built.
The woman on whose slender shoulders all Daddy's hopes rested, she amended and made a face at her image, which mocked her in return. She'd taken to thinking of Vega as Daddy, as she'd taken to thinking of Ito as Uncle Ito, now that she was a mother to be.
Now that she was more than that: now that she was a power in her own right, a woman endowed with the gift of prophecy and the wisdom of previous lives—the precious gift of Boregy House to the Revenantist College and the future of all Merovingen, as Ito continually reminded her when the drug haze grew too thick to see through and the way back to her body grew hazy as well.
Now that she was all she'd ever dreamed, she wished she wasn't. Before the regressions, before Uncle Ito and Daddy had believed in Cassie's powers and Cas-sie's wisdom and the import of Cassie's previous lives, she'd been freer. Now, whatever she thought and whatever she said was imbued with symbolism that only the College could decipher. Whatever warnings she gave of the future were studied by Working Groups and declared part of the Mystery of the College.
When she had a bad dream or an attack of indigestion, the cardinals scurried over the bridge to Boregy House to closet in Daddy's office and worry, to stand around her bed with their hands in their sleeves while scribes took notes.
She had no privacy. She had no peace. But she had power, and when she hadn't, it had seemed worth any price.
The price right now was increasingly high, so it appeared. Her marriage, her husband... everything but her baby seemed to depend on her performance tonight.
Performance: that was what it was, though nobody but Cassie would admit to that. She would take the deathangel and pontificate for the gathered masses of hightown power: read their futures, tell them of their pasts.
It was what Ito wanted, what Daddy needed. But it wasn't what Michael wanted. Her husband was being driven from her by the College as if they'd planned it. Michael looked at her askance and shook his head. He talked to her of propriety and of honesty and of her power being a great responsibility.
And Michael had made it clear that he thought she shouldn't let the College use her for their own ends.
When she'd said, this evening, "So you can use me to yours?", he'd stalked out without a word, slamming the door behind him so viciously that a piece of ormolu fel
l to the carpet in his wake.
She'd been frightened by that: by the slam of the door that had dislodged a piece of inanimate decoration. She'd gone over and picked it up. It had been one of the cupids that held the ormolu bunting.
The fall of the naked cupid, with his fat belly and his little wings, had shaken her. It was an omen, she was certain. She must find a way to make it a good omen, not a bad one.
She'd placed it on the dressing table and examined it. One wing was cracked, where it had fallen. The trumpet it had held to its lips was shattered: the trumpet's bell was still on the door; the stump was sharp and ragged.
Of all the decorations in her bedroom, Cassie had loved the cupids best. Since childhood, they'd been her favorites. She rummaged in her jewel box, found a gold chain, and tied the chain around the cupid's neck, then put the chain around her own.
The cupid dangled between her breasts, broken and divested of the bell of its horn.
This suited the mood she was in, and the image that her father and the College were making of her. And it would speak clearly to Michael of things she couldn't bring herself to say.
When he came back, he would see that their love was like the cupid: shaken, damaged, misplaced, and yet something she'd go to any lengths to salvage. Michael Chamoun was her perfect mate. Michael had guided her to her previous lives by virtue of his own.
In a previous life, Michael had been a great warrior against the sharrh. No lesser man could be considered as her companion, not when she was the long-prophesied seeress of Merovingen's salvation, whose life was dedicated to preparing Merovin for the day when the sharrh would come again.
Before that, of course, the horrible truths of her visions would be made real in Merovingen: there would be flame and revolution. The riffraff from the canals would rise up against their betters.
By then, the great Houses must be ready. This was her message to them tonight, the message that Ito and her father had so carefully orchestrated.
Before she left here, she must make peace with Michael, though. She couldn't let her mind float off on the wings of deathangel while she was worried about her husband.