So he kept his mouth shut, and let the Kamat cousins steer him through the maze of dancing, religion, and etiquette lessons, let Marina guide him through what it meant to be a House scion, let Tom Mondragon try to show him how to keep himself alive with that Takahashi steel—
And let Marina outfit him. In leather, silk, and wool and the finest linen, clothing like he hadn't worn since Nev Hettek, the kind where the cost of one sweater would outfit a canaler for years.
The silk of a sleeve slid caressingly along his arm as he adjusted the positioning of the black-lacquered sword-rest by a fraction of an inch. The stand itself was adequate—the best Richard could do on short notice. The cabinet maker had been given a more exact design, and instructions to paint the stand with no less than twenty coats of lacquer. That kind of work took time, and Raj was content to wait for it.
The black-lacquered table it stood on, though, was perfect. Rescued from the Kamat attics, its clean, pure lines could have come from the hand of a Takahashi craftsman. Perhaps it had—Andromeda had brought some furnishings with her from Nev Hettek, and the Takahashis signed only their steel.
Raj had looked long and hard for something to hang on the wall behind the katana. In the end, he'd found a painting—a marshbird very like a crane, standing in a clump of reeds, all silhouetted against a scarlet sunset, in a spare, spartan style. It wasn't a scroll, but it was the closest he could come. Odd that it happened to be a work from the hand of that Gregori artist. . . .
Raj looked again at the scabbarded katana, and shivered. The second sword of Takahashi, that he'd last seen on its own rest just below the first sword. It brought with it levels of meaning as intricate and interleaved as the folded and refolded steel that made up the katana's blade.
* * *
' 'The sword of Takahashi is the soul of Takahashi,'' Granther said, with Rigel kneeling attentively beside him.
"This sword—" Rigel turned wide eyes on his grandfather, "—is as old as Takahashi?" He could not imagine it; the tally of years made him dizzy to contemplate.
"Not this sword, " Granther sighed. "Although this one, and its brother below it, are relics of Earth. In uncertain times, it is sometimes wise to send a second soul out with the heir to seek a new home, so that Takahashi will continue. This is the fourth blade that—''
Beside him, Denny wriggled and yawned audibly.
"Father, this is boring me to tears," Angela complained. '' I can hardly imagine the boys—''
' 'Exactly,'' Granther had snapped. '' You can hardly imagine anything. Exercising your mind is evidently beyond you.'' He rose to his feet, his face gone cold with anger, and pointed to the door behind her. "Go, get out of here, and take your impertinence with you!''
* * *
That was what Granther had meant, sending the sword. That things were deteriorating in Nev Hettek. That he feared for the clan, and was taking steps to ensure its survival.
That he, Rigel, was now the recognized heir.
Takahashi honor.
Richard Kamat couldn't know these things, but he had evidently understood that the coming of the katana meant far, far more than mere courtesy to a new ally, a new trade-partner, or even the Family that had assumed guardianship of his grandsons.
* * *
"You realize—we've had to change our original plans about you, " Richard said—reluctantly, as if he regretted having to tell this to Raj. "We were going to sponsor you into the College in anticipation that you would eventually replace Doctor Jonathon. He's getting old, he's been hinting for some time that we should start thinking about finding him an 'assistant. ' But now—''
Richard shrugged, helplessly.
"I'm sorry Rigel, but it's really out of the question. It simply isn't done, having a son of a Family serving another Family, even in so honored a position as Family physician. Oh, I see no reason why you can't study medicine, go right ahead, and we'll go through with our sponsorship and support, but—''
Rigel nodded. ''I understand, m 'ser, "he'd said quietly. ' 'That's just the way it is.''
* * *
Takahashi honor. Takahashi responsibilities.
There was no running away from this. And he had learned, finally, the folly of running. Even Tom didn't run from problems—because he had taken on responsibilities. So there would be no "Doctor Raj" living canalside, helping the canalers and the poorest of the canalsiders.
Still—Doctor Jonathon, a kindly man, had been letting him be something of an assistant, so long as it was within the House. And he'd been listening, carefully, to what Raj had poured out to him about swamp-cures. That information—slowly, carefully, and with no clues as to the source—was something Doctor Jonathon had taken to leaking back into the College. It wasn't heretical, since it certainly wasn't tech—and Raj had seen evidence that it was coming back down to canalside, as the herb-hunters were pointed to new plants, and the results were coming into the drug-shops. So he'd done that much good—
And there was something else. He'd been watching these hightowners, and from the inside vantage point. No one thought any the worse of the Househeads for having hobbies—some of them pretty odd. Old Man Fife cultivated entertainers. Dao Raza studied Merovingen insect life. Pradesh St. John played the flute. Fieval Masud made lace, for Ancestors' sake! So long as it didn't obsess you, the way Mikhail Kalugin's clockwork toys did, a hobby was actually considered genteel.
There was no reason why the head of the Merovingen branch of Clan Takahashi couldn't indulge himself in a hobby of medicine. And if he chose to treat the impoverished canalers and canalsiders, well, the medical establishment would be relieved that he wasn't taking away potentially paying patients, and his peers would consider it no more than mildly eccentric. He could work it out with the priests by explaining that he was discharging karmic debt. As for having the time to do this, he'd been watching Richard, and yes, he was busy, but he did have some leisure time. It was possible.
And the opportunity to so indulge himself—the training to be able to do so—would have come without any strings attached other than those of duty to his clan. Not Janist, not Kamat. There were other ramifications—of potential benefit to both Takahashi and Mondragon. He could earn loyalty and gratitude for Nev Hetteker Takahashi down along canalside that no amount of money would buy. He could earn friends for his Family, and ears for Thomas Mondragon. He'd even worked it all out when he'd thought it was going to be just him, consulting with Del Suleiman.
"I'm kind of lost here," he had been saying to his patients, or his patients' parents. They knew by his accent that he wasn't canalside born, though what they made of him, he couldn't guess. "I don't know canalside. I need friends in the Trade, friends who'd tell me when somebody's setting up to cheat me or hurt me. Not spies, Lord and Ancestors, no! Just friends— who'll give me a ride now and again, give me warning if there's a bullyboy on my tail, and tell me the common gossip everybody knows, but nobody else-would tell me. That's help, honest help, worth more than silver, worth more than enough to clear any karmic debt."
Those who'd insisted on paying him with goods instead of that asked-for help he'd had leave the stuff in front of Wolfling's hole. It kept disappearing, so he assumed Wolfling was getting most of it. He doubted anyone else was; Nayab had become mysteriously free from crime of late. . . .
He sighed, and got to his feet. It was hard, trying to think out all the ramifications of something. He was so used to living one day at a time, not thinking beyond the needs of the season. Now—
Now it was time for dancing lessons.
Andromeda Casserer Garin, m'sera Kamat of Kamat, paused in the stuffy, darkened corridor, pressed her right hand to her aching temple, and supported herself against the corridor wall with her left. The perfume in the single lamp along this stretch of hallway could not mask the faint odor of mildew, nor the fishy origin of the oil it burned. Her stomach knotted.
It had not been a good day.
She'd been in the workroom late this morning, supervisin
g the replication (in four different color schemes) of one of her sweater designs, and completing another new beaded design herself. There had not been enough garnet beads to finish the design she'd plotted, even though she was positive she'd made certain that there had been before she charted it. Her headache had started within an hour of rising, and she had experienced an odd sensation of floating awareness, as if she was not entirely in control of her body. The beads themselves kept slipping away from her fingers, and her fingers had trembled so uncontrollably that she'd stabbed herself more times than she'd cared to count. Her fingertips felt like ill-used pincushions. She'd been too nauseous to eat lunch, and Alpha Morgan had scolded her. Then Marina had taken exception to something she'd said, and had a blazing and spectacular row with her right in the middle of the workroom, right in front of the women workers. Morgan had leaped to the defense of her lady, and sent Marina off to her room in a flood of tears.
Then the headache had begun in earnest.
It had gotten worse, not better, with every remedy Morgan offered. It sat just behind her eyes, pounding in time with her pulse, and bright light seemed to increase the pain. Finally she'd just dismissed them all for the day, Morgan included, and began threading her way to her room through the darkest of the private corridors.
She told them that she wanted to take a nap. What she really wanted, with all her heart, was Nikky. He would have known how to deal with a pregnant and hysterical daughter; he would have known how to handle Richard's insistence that he needed the heartless Thomas Mondragon to command his Samurai.
He would have known how to protect his wife from the vagaries of her own children.
And one of those vagaries had cost her the deathangel dreams that brought him back to her.
Light flickered up ahead as a door opened and closed again, and she winced away from it. "Who is it?" she snapped in irritation; this corridor was only supposed to be used by Family.
"Your pardon, m'sera." The voice out of the vague gray shadows was either a low alto or a high tenor; musical, but not gender-specific, nor familiar. "I'm afraid I took the wrong turning somewhere."
Echoing footsteps, light and balanced, heralded the approach of the other, and a face swam into view in the dim, watery light.
Almond eyes, high cheekbones, long, straight black hair. A familiar face—
—though not here.
The face of a ghost, for Andromeda knew that her schoolmate Angela Takahashi was dead. Once a member of the Sword of God, she had been murdered by the Sword of God, Karl Fon's adherents. Like her aunt Dolor.
Horror frosted her heart, and thin sweat dampened her brow and arms; her mouth dried with fear, and she stepped back an involuntary pace, backing into the wall.
Alarm filled those oblique, black eyes, and Angela reached forward as if to touch her. Andromeda stifled a scream, and shrank back further from the touch of the dead.
Angela could not be here, should not be here. Not dead. Not looking the bare seventeen she had been when Andromeda had last seen her. She was dead, as dead as last year's flowers, as dead as Dolor, as dead as—
Nikky.
The hall spun, whirled away, became another time, another place.
The guests were not looking at the laden feast-tables, nor at Andromeda and her family behind them—they were staring, surprise turning to shock, at something just behind her—
"Your pardon, m'sera," Raj said humbly, "I'm afraid I took a wrong turning somewhere."
His night sight had always been good; he had no difficulty seeing who it was that accosted him. M'sera Andromeda—and she didn't look well. Her skin was grayish, and a vein throbbed in her temple. And her eyes seemed to be all pupil. Prudence said that he should go back through that door and leave her alone. Concern and the healing instinct said that she was in no shape to be left alone. He moved quickly to her side, footsteps sounding hollow in the uncarpeted corridor, intending to ask if he could be of any service to her, since he'd inadvertently intruded on her privacy.
But she began trembling the moment he came into view, stared at him as if he was a sharrh, and crowded back against the corridor wall—and when he held out his hand to steady her, she shrieked, spasmed, and fell to the floor.
Prudence dictated that he find help; Doctor Jona-thon, or Richard Karri at. And by the time I find it-He was oh his knees beside her in an eyeblink, then cradling her in his arms to protect her from injuring herself with the convulsions she was suffering. He held her head against his shoulder, and pinioned her wrists in one long hand. She was so frail, it took next to nothing to restrain her.
"Nikky!" she cried, shrilly. "Nikky, no! Not again! Dear God, not again!" She writhed in his arms, trying to free her hands, trying to reach for something. "Angela, you were my friend—help me save my Nikky!"
Dilated eyes, racing pulse, clammy skin. Sweat beading the brow, and hallucinations. By that throbbing vein in the temple, probably a blinding headache. Symptoms tumbled together in his mind and formed an answer.
Deathangel dreams. Either induced, or flashback; it didn't much matter which. And in a patient as obviously weakened as this one was, if someone didn't do something, now—she was in very real danger of never coming out again.
And if he left her alone to get help—she was in very real danger of hurting, or even killing herself. Only yesterday some hightown fool caught in deathangel flashback had thrown himself off Hanging Bridge and drowned.
There was only one choice; try and talk her through it. He'd done it more than once, with Raver. If he could just get her attention fixed on him—
"Andromeda—" Now was not the time for "m'sera Kamat"; she wouldn't respond to that. He slipped her farther down so that she was lying against his upright knee and slapped her cheek, lightly. "Andromeda, say something. Tell me you hear me." He slapped her other cheek. "Tell me! Talk to me!"
Her eyes wandered, seeing things he couldn't; tears poured down her ashen cheeks.
"Andromeda! Talk to me!" He shook her, and dredged up her few, hysterical words, looking for a clue to get into her dream. "Andromeda, if you don't talk to me, Nikky will be very angry with you!"
Her eyes focused on him for a moment. "A-Angela?" she faltered, her face twisted, her mouth a slash of pain. "Angela, you have to help me! They're your friends— they're killing Nikky—"
God and Ancestors—she thought he was his mother. That must have been what threw her into this in the first place! Nikky—that must be Nikolay Kamat, Richard's father. He'd wondered about the portrait in the study, so like Richard, but plainly older; Richard had identified it, then said something about his father dying from an accidental fall.
God—could she have seen something no one else did? Is that why—never mind. I'll get her out of this first, then worry about Kamat secrets.
There were only two ways of dealing with deathangel dreams—direct the dream, or break it—
And somehow Raj knew that if he directed the dream from the nightmare she was in into something pleasant, she'd never leave it again.
"Nikky is dead, Andromeda," he said savagely. "He's been dead more than a year. You know he's dead. And you can't change the past. You think you can, but the past you create is a lie. And Nikky doesn't like lies, Andromeda."
Her eyes widened, and she whimpered in the back of her throat. He continued on, as stern and unyielding as the Angel, his morning's religion lesson giving him another weapon to break her out of her hallucination. "He's very angry with you, Andromeda. You're muddying his karma, trying to hold onto him like this. He sent me to tell you that if you really loved him, you'd let him go!"
She cried out in denial, freed her hands from his, and tried to push him away. At the end of the corridor another door opened and closed, and there was the sound of a footstep—two. Raj didn't dare look up—he had Andromeda's attention now, and if he broke eye contact with her, he'd lose it.
"No," she moaned, as a gasp from the direction of the door reached him, and he heard running footsteps. "No,
Nikky would never say that! Nikky wouldn't—"
"He would, and he did. You're hurting him, Andromeda, you're holding him back."
Marina's voice, sharp and shrill. "What are you doing with my—''
"Shut up, Marina," he hissed, regaining Andromeda's wandering attention by shaking her again. "Get the doctor!"
She at least had enough sense not to argue with him. Running feet retreated, and the door slammed open and shut again. Andromeda beat at his face and chest with hard, bony fists; her blows were wild, but she got him a good one in the nose and just under the left eye. Raj tried not to wince; ghosts feel no pain.
"I don't believe it!" she was crying. "I don't believe you! Nikky would never believe such—"
"Nikky is Revenantist. Do you want to be responsible for dragging him down?" The religion lesson gave him another barb to use on her, and forced to be cruel by desperation, he dug it in. "Do you want to be the one that forces his rebirth as some nameless bridge-brat? If you die, if you lose yourself in deathangel dreams, Andromeda, that's what will happen, and it will be all your fault."
"NO!" She shoved him away, hard enough that he lost his hold on her, and he lost his balance as well. He hit his head on the wall with a sickening crack, and saw stars-He struggled against darkness, still not able to see but fighting off the dazzle, and more footsteps pounded up the corridor. As his eyes cleared he was shoved summarily out of the way by Doctor Jonathon, and a wiry woman he recognized as Andromeda's maid. A hand grabbing his elbow helped him to stand; when he turned to render thanks, he found himself staring into Marina Kamat's profoundly unhappy, dark-circled eyes.