Smuggler's Gold

  Oh, Nikky, what do I do now?

  Had the deathangel lingered in her brain, she would have heard an answer. As it was, she felt only his absence and the absence of anything joyous or meaningful. The embroidered bellpull dangled within reach... Kidd would come; Kidd would understand. She could tell him everything. It was too late for the deathangel, but there were other drugs

  Her fingers crumpled the embroidery. She was sober now—seedy, but sober as she had not been in memory's mornings when she found the carafe on her nightstand. Without the deathangel to taint her perceptions, the dreams—even the ones where she and Nikolay had lost themselves in erotic pleasures—were grotesque. Her hand fell to her side.

  What do I do now—and caught herself before her husband's name formed in her thoughts. What do I do now?

  The Signeury bells began the noontime peal, and despite her preoccupation with Nikolay—or perhaps because of it—she was shamefully aware that she was still in her nightgown. This was a merchant's city, a worker's city, unlike Nev Hettek where the ranking families lived well apart from the sources of their wealth. She'd grown up surrounded by art, novels, music and unspeakable boredom.

  Nikolay had freed her from Nev Hettek. He'd make her part of House Kamat. Now he was dead. Without him, she had no place or purpose here, just as she'd never had any place or purpose in Nev Hettek. She went to the window. It was bolted, but glass was easily broken... She made a fist and imagined herself falling.

  And imagined herself in the canal, and the scandal that would be her legacy to Nikolay's House. Kamat had never been tainted with scandal—not until now. Her fist opened and she pressed her fingers against her lips. Appearances were important on Merovin, and for the first time since Nikolay's death, Andromeda considered her appearance.

  She stepped back from the window and made herself look in the mirror. What she saw was not enough to give her a new lease on life, but it did convince her that she had become an embarrassment to herself and her family: a mad, addicted wraith wearing a flimsy nightgown in the sunlight.

  Once her mind found a focus, even the trivial focus of selecting a sweater from her wardrobe, the yawning emptiness receded a bit. It threatened to return when she looked at garment after garment and saw in each piece its history with him. Irony intervened: she had sought Nikolay in deathangel dreams, only to find him in her closet. And to be uncomfortable with the discovery; perhaps it was time to summon her tailor. Or, better yet, to visit her neglected atelier where the design and construction of hightown fashion had been her personal business.

  No, no—the atelier was too great a physical and emotional challenge. It was too far away, and asked too much. Today, without the fantasy aid of deathangel dreams, she would get herself dressed. Today, that would be enough; she would not end her life in a nightgown.

  She was staring at a pale green sweater, remembering the other times she had worn it, when the door to her bedroom suite closed quietly.

  "M'sera?" Morgan inquired with an unmistakable note of concern in her voice. "M'sera, where are you?"

  Hastily shoving the sweater back on its shelf and grabbing a heavy dressing robe instead, Andromeda faced her servant. "I'm here. Right here where you left me, the madwoman in the spire."

  Morgan rolled her lip inward. "I've brought your lunch—"

  Andromeda interrupted with a bitter laugh. "Tell the truth, Morgan. I haven't eaten anything solid in what... six days, a week? And I wasn't eating before that. You came to check up on me, and you feared the worst when you didn't see me lying in my bed."

  Anyone else would have drawn from the bitter venom in^Andromeda's voice—or from the gray pallor of her complexion. But not Alpha Morgan. "I brought your lunch," she averred with flat finality. "It's -on the table. Doctor Jonathan said you'd be up and about today. Come, have a little of your prawn salad, and the chowder's still piping hot. You'll feel more like your old self when you've had something tasty to eat." She took Andromeda's hand and led her to a sunbathed table.

  Doctor Jonathan and the kitchen staff knew how to tempt her. These were among her favorite foods, carefully and attractively prepared with a sprig of dwarf cherry blossoms rising from an antique vase and the silver polished until the Kamat crest flashed in the light. Andromeda's mouth watered, but her stomach wasn't sure.

  "You did me no favors, Morgan, letting them bring me back like this," she whispered, taking up the fork. "I'll never be my old self again. Nothing will ever be remotely the same again." She stabbed a prawn but did not bring it to her mouth.

  "Nothing's ever the same as it was," Morgan replied with a pragmatism that owed nothing to any religion. "That's no reason to starve or drug yourself to a stupor."

  "But I've nothing to live for. Nothing—"

  "Your children—

  "Are grown and don't need me."

  "The household—"

  "Has done very well without me."

  "The business, your designs. Everyone misses your designs. I've heard them say so myself, and not just Kamat people."

  Andromeda thought of the stacks of clothing in her wardrobe. She could remember whether Nikolay had liked each garment, but not whether she had designed it or not. "Marina has a flair for that, not I." The prawn fell onto the greens and was not retrieved. "There's nothing, Morgan, nothing at all. Maybe there wasn't very much to begin with. A marketable daughter sent downriver to seal an alliance for alum... and I didn't even do that right. I gave myself to Kamat, but they never needed me, any more than the Garin or the Casserer did."

  "Nikolay needed you," Morgan blurted out before common sense could censor her tongue.

  The fork followed the prawn and silent tears were massing to follow the fork. "I'd be better off deathangel drunk and locked away in a spire! See what a mistake you made."

  "I need you, m'sera, all of us who are not Kamat but live here need you. The others are afraid to admit how much they need you, but I'm not. Where would I go without you—back to Nev Hettek after all these years? You had many good years with your husband, m'sera, and now you owe for them."

  A trace of a smile grew on Andromeda's face. "You sound like a Revenantist, Alpha Morgan. Next you'll tell me about karma and reincarnation."

  Privately, Morgan conceded she'd talk about anything to fan that spark of vitality, so she made a show of her embarrassment. "Ain't no Revenant. I'm not coming back here, I'm not. No point to goin' through Merovin twice," she explained with great exaggeration. "If I'm owin', then I'm payin', too. Right now."

  Andromeda's smile faded. The joke could not be sustained, and touched too close to the truth in any case. "If it were only that simple," the dowager said, picking up her fork again with a sigh. "I keep hoping for a sign... something that will tell me what Nikky would want me to do with my life... now that he's gone. That was the start of it—looking for a sign, that is—that led me to the deathangel in the first place. Now I don't even know what to wear."

  Doctor Jonathan had warned them of the indeciveness and depression that was certain to follow Andromeda's cure; certain to follow because it was the underlying cause of the addiction in the first place. Make decisions for her, he'd advised Alpha Morgan who, having known her as a child, would be most able to deal with her childishness.

  "Wear something comfortable," the older woman instructed. "And warm. Fresh air is what you need and you'll be going for a ride through the city later this afternoon—"

  The flaccid muscles of Andromeda's face hardened. "No," she replied without explanation—for what was childishness but a mixture of stubbornness, rebellion and a denial of enlightened self-interest?

  "Doctor's orders: fresh air, rest, good food—"

  "I'm going upstairs to the atelier," Andi announced, though the decision was more of a surprise to her than it had been to Morgan. "I shall make my own clothes; new clothes. You-said yourself that I should."

  Morgan frowned; it had been a long time since she'd dealt with a child. She'd forgotten how they had an instinctive way of
fastening on to the one thing that should not have been said. "That would not be wise, m'sera," she said reluctantly.

  "I need something to do," Andromeda replied, not illogically. "Sitting in the back of a poleboat holding my parasol is not going to help me half so much as doing something."

  Subtlety was useless; Morgan drew a deep breath and plunged to the core of the problem. "There would be a dreadful scene with Marina, m'sera. She has taken this all very hard. She thinks... She believes .". ." Morgan ran out of air and resolve. "This thing with Kidd," she said softly, "it was very poorly done, m'sera."

  "What thing with Kidd?"

  Morgan could not raise her eyes. "The deathangel," she whispered to her feet. "Getting the deathangel from..."

  "Speak up! I can't understand a word you're saying."

  "Mondragon, m'sera! Getting the deathangel from Mondragon, then sending Marina to his bed in payment!" Shame burned in Morgan's cheeks that the child she had raised could have done such a thing.

  "Tom Mondragon?" It was patently unbelievable. "Where would Tom Mondragon get deathangel?" Ah, but where had Kidd gotten the deathangel he so regularly provided? She hadn't wanted to know, so she'd never asked. And he had known how to find Tom Mondragon who was as illicit and dangerous as deathangel.

  Perhaps it wasn't patently unbelievable. Perhaps it was all too believable.

  The wind went out of Andromeda's sails with a long sigh. "Mondragon..." She needed both hands to get the water goblet safely to her lips. A cascade of images paraded inevitably through her mind. Images that were strong enough to overshadow Nikolay's death. Deathangel, angel of death, angel with a sword, sword of God, Tom Mondragon, Nev Hettek, Mondragon, Karl Fon, Mondragon, Aunt Dolor, Mondragon, Marina...

  "I must talk to her." She rose unsteadily to her feet. "Now. I'll go to the atelier—"

  "No, m'sera, you mustn't."

  "I will not be told what I can or cannot do."

  Her first step was a stagger, but the second was stronger, and Morgan was filled with the sudden knowledge that m'sera Kamat was quite capable of climbing the seventy steps to the atelier and having a confrontation with her daughter. Anything would be better than that. Anything.

  "But you should dress, m'sera. There's a package on your writing table. A gift from Marina. Wouldn't it be wise to wear her gift when you see her?"

  It would, of course, be extremely unwise—Morgan knew full well what the gift was—and, if she'd misjudged, there'd be no repairing the damage. Morgan offered up a silent prayer to the personal, unnamed god of all servants that she would not have misjudged and a second prayer that Richard would return home on the evening tide.

  Andromeda snapped the string and ripped through the tissue paper. She yanked the gift from the wreckage of its package and shook it open. A piece of paper fluttered unnoticed to the floor.

  It was an evening sweater; a first-bath sweater knit from gossamer merin wool, then padded and crusted with bead embroidery. It was a masterpiece... and it was a nightmare. Gold, silver, jet and garnet had been stitched into the shimmering likeness of a mature deathangel fish. Its dark blood eye was filled with evil and held Andromeda in thrall.

  Guilt for what had been done; shame that she had been the one to do it became the halves of Andromeda's heartbeat. She did not faint because she would not allow herself to escape Marina's punishment.

  "I must see her," Andi repeated tonelessly, though there could be no forgiving.

  Morgan pried Andromeda's fingers open, allowing the sweater to fall. She'd loosed the whirlwind; there was no going back and no stopping halfway through. She put the note in her mistress' hand. It did not matter that Andromeda was still paralyzed by the gift, there were only two words written on the note.

  I'm pregnant

  The myriad implications burst forth like the ancient Pallas Athena emerging from the skull of her father, Zeus. Heartfelt anguish became physical pain and Andromeda began a slow collapse to the floor.

  Morgan had no trouble catching her and shoving her to an armchair. Her eyes were on the service bellpull before Andromeda's weight was gone from her arms.

  "No," Andromeda pleaded. "Don't, please. No one else. Just leave me alone." Morgan shook her head, but she did not move toward the bellpull. "It's all my fault."

  She expected loyal Morgan to disagree. She expected the arms she held to relax and comfort her, but they remained rigid and unforgiving. Mechanically, Andromeda unlocked the muscles in her fingers and set herself free. She was not stupid. She knew the condemnation in the older woman's eyes sprang from a misunderstanding over deathangel; she knew that condemnation was very different from the self-condemnation in her own heart. And she was not mad. The cardinals' cure had scrubbed every trace of deathangel toxin from her body and soul.

  The serene clarity she felt, then, as her world crumbled around her was quite real, quite sane. It was, perhaps, more mythic and inevitable than rational, but that only enhanced its sense of truth. There was only one pathway out of this darkness, a sword-bridge of light across the abyss—and it must be walked alone.

  "Does Mondragon know?" she asked calmly.

  "No, no one except you and Marina know."

  Andromeda nodded. There was no contradiction or inaccuracy in Morgan's words. Servants did not occur in myths; they were not real players in the unfolding drama.

  "I know what I must do."

  "Don't go to Marina, m'sera. Leave her alone. Let Richard handle this when he gets back tonight—"

  Andromeda blinked. It had not occurred to her to include her son in this. He entered her mind's stage as a stranger, an unknown force who could not be allowed to act. "Tonight?" she repeated.

  "He's expected on the incoming tide."

  She had sunk so deep in deathangel madness that she no longer had an innate knowledge of moon and ocean. She could not let her mind go blank and feel the movement of the water against Kamat's foundations, so she did not know how much time she had— only that she would have to move quickly if she was not to drag everything into the abyss.

  "Where are you going?" Morgan demanded as Andromeda strode resolutely out of the sitting room.

  Clarity produces simplicity. "I'm getting dressed, and them I'm going out to meet with Thomas Mondragon."

  Alpha Morgan was dumbfounded. "You can't," she stammered, following her mistress into the wardrobe where, without any trace of her former indecisiveness, Andromeda was assembling a serviceable stack of garments. "This is utter foolishness, m'sera. You've been ill. Even if it were a good idea, you don't have the strength to go to Mondragon—and it isn't a good idea."

  Clothes chosen, Andromeda swept her servant aside. She shed her nightgown in the center of her bedroom. "I'm going, Morgan. I will speak to Mondragon. You can't stop me, so you might as well help me."

  "This is madness, m'sera. A moment ago you could hardly stand— "

  "I'm going, Morgan." She buttoned her trousers, then went to her vanity table where she selected one atomizer from many and gave it a tentative squeeze a few inches in front of her nose. It fit her mood and she began systematically spraying her pulse-points. "You can't stop me."

  Morgan swallowed the truth in that. "But, m'sera, you don't even know where he is."

  The atomizer was silent as Andromeda considered that. "Kidd is gone, isn't he?" She didn't wait for confirmation. "Marina knows..."

  "M'sera, don't ask Marina."

  "Then you ask."

  "Me?"

  Andromeda slammed the atomizer against the vanity. "Morgan, someone in this House knows where he is—if you don't, in fact, know yourself. Both Marina and Richard have been dealing with him. Now, don't argue with me, just do as you're told."

  For forty-five of her sixty years, Alpha Morgan had been doing just that, and she was too old to change. She grumbled and offered a few more feeble arguments, but in the end, she left the suite and found the information her mistress wanted. They met again in the hallway above Kamat's boat slip.

  Andro
meda had applied her cosmetics carefully. Her complexion was pleasantly blushed; her eyes had lost their bruised and sunken appearance. The muted colors of her sweater and collar led the eye away from the protruding bones of her face and neck. The uninformed might .well believe she was healthy, but not Morgan.

  "Please reconsider, m'sera. At least, content yourself with a note and trust me to deliver it—"

  Andromeda shook her head. "This is something I must do myself. Trust me, instead. If all goes well, I shall have undone all that I have done; and if it goes badly—well, at least I shall have tried to undo it." She took Morgan's face between her hands and kissed the old woman lightly on the forehead. "Now,, tell me where I shall find him."

  * * *

  Andromeda did not recognize the boatman who helped her into the family craft—and he did not seem to recognize her. He nodded when she told him their destination, then devoted his attention to getting out of the slip and into the stream of traffic moving toward the Grand Canal.

  The sunlight was as refreshing as Doctor Jonathan might have hoped it would be. Andromeda closed her eyes and rested her head against the cushions, letting the warmth soak into her skin. It hadn't been that long since she had been outside; the cure had taken only a week, but it had been months since she'd faced the world without the intoxication of deathangel brandy.

  She had been scrubbed clean by the cardinals' cure from the inside out. Everything was new, yet familiar at the same time. Each sound and smell called its name from her memory, and seemed very precious. She was content to savor everything as it flowed past and gave no thought to what she would do when she reached her destination.

  A part of her saw the upcoming conversation with Thomas Mondragon as the karmic conclusion of her life; that having been given the opportunity to set things right, there would be nothing left for her to do. Yet she was not thinking of death in any literal way when the boatman hooked a dilapidated spar and brought the boat to rest in deeply shadowed slip off East Dike.