Richard came back to his original decision. "Merovingen's my home," he said flatly. "I won't be driven out by anyone. If Kamat leaves, we leave in our own time, of our own choosing."
Pradesh released Richard's arm as the intangible chasm between them widened. "You still want to win their game with their rules."
Richard shook his head. He was beyond games and rules. His reasons for staying in the city were as simple as he claimed they were. He reached for his friend's hand. "I'm not breaking with you, Prad; I'm just not ready to abandon everything my House has stood for. The situation's not hopeless. It could even turn to our advantage. ..."
But there was no persuading Pradesh St. John, nor any of the others whose disillusionment with all Merovingen stood for had been complete long before Mikhail Kalugin blundered into an assassin's trap. Richard let his arm drop.
"Tell any of your clients and tenants who stay behind that Kamat's staying too, and that they're welcome to join us. Weil preserve your island—in case you decide to come back."
"Burn it for all we care, Dickon. Burn it to the waterline."
Richard flinched to hear anyone seriously invoke Merovingen's ultimate curse. Pradesh had his rage to sustain him in exile, but what of the rest of his house, and the other houses joining the exodus? Some island families had never set foot on the estates to which they now retreated. Richard spent part of each year visiting Kamat's far-flung estates and stancias. He'd even lived a shepherd's life for a whole year under his uncle Bosnou's watchful eye. Merovingen could become much, much worse before it would be worse than the truly insular life of rural Merovin after the sharrh.
Although rural life had just changed tremendously with the introduction of wireless transceivers built by Juarez Wex from schematics smuggled out of the College library. Some nights the sky above Merovingen was quite congested with invisible messages. Juarez's transceivers had ended a six-hundred-year isolation.
"It won't come to that," Richard said with forced cheerfulness. "I'll keep you informed with the wireless. We won't burn bridges, or anything else, unless we have to. . . ."
Pradesh shuddered. For a moment Richard thought he'd found the means to stiffen the St. John spine and keep them on their island. Then Pradesh let his breath out slowly and the moment passed.
"Keep in touch, by all means, Dickon, but don't worry about the Isle."
Richard told himself that Praddy's condescending tone was fueled by a trace of shame or regret that the St. Johns were abandoning Merovingen quickly, completely, and without even a token of resistance. But, at best, it was only a trace.
Richard had understood the usefulness of the wireless transceivers from the moment he'd seen them demonstrated in the St. John cellars several months earlier, at the height of Willa Cardinal Exeter's orthodoxy campaign. He'd paid for the construction of six of them, the last of which had departed Merovingen with Bosnou after the wedding. The wireless was a good idea, an overdue resurrection from before the Scouring. It promised to bind Merovin's isolated pockets of humanity together as they had not been in six hundred years. Richard Kamat saw the promise of a better future in the devices, but Pradesh and others, it seemed, saw them as a way to escape from the present.
"I'll do what I can, Prad," Richard said finally. "May the tradewinds fill your sails and carry you south to port before Murfy knows you're on the sea—"
Pradesh responded with a different timeworn platitude and cranked the big latch handle to open the door. "There's still time, Dickon—if you change your mind. Kamat's always welcome. You're always welcome."
"Thanks." Richard's voice was hollow. Emotional weariness had joined forces with physical exhaustion. All he wanted to do was lock the door and drag himself up to the top of the stairs where his bed was waiting for him. He wasn't going back to the kitchen for breakfast and he wasn't going to leave Merovingen on the next tide: the two decisions balanced in his mind with equal importance.
Richard shoved the wide iron bolt through its brackets, sealing Kamat's formal entrance to all but the most determined intruder. He stood at the bottom of the stairs, reminding himself that more than ninety steps were between him and his bed, and wondered if, perhaps, the leather sofa in the library wouldn't be just as comfortable.
"M'ser! M'ser—come quick!"
Richard turned slowly. "I left m'ser Greg in charge," he muttered. "Can't he handle whatever it is?" His thoughts were running behind his mouth. The houseboy, whom Richard hardly recognized, hadn't come up to the mid-level of his own volition. Someone had sent him; probably Ashe or one of the other senior retainers, and Greg, undoubtedly, had already demonstrated that he couldn't handle it.
"Please, m'ser . . ." The boy writhed anxiously. "I waited 'til you were done talking with m'ser St. John. You've got to come quick now, please."
Belatedly Richard realized the houseboy had gotten himself hung-up between his orders and his reluctance to interrupt his Househead's private conversation. "All right, I'm coming—"
The boy darted away like a shot arrow.
"Hold on, there. Wherever we're going, I'm not running until I know more about it!"
The boy's rope-soled shoes skidded to a halt on the polished wood floors of the upper house. "It's bad, m'ser. We got to hurry—"
Richard took the boy's sleeve. "Walk beside me and tell me everything you know." The conversation with Pradesh was locked behind a door in Richard's memory before the boy said his next word.
"There's been fighting up on the North Flat. The farm steward says he wants to leave his children here and take household folks up to the Flat in their stead."
Richard could imagine the rest: Greg had no instructions regarding the farmland and its residents; in the crush of events Richard himself had forgotten them. But, sure as the Det flowed south to the sea, Greg would have assumed a lack of specific instructions meant those people, and the valuable land around them, were unimportant. The narrow-minded young man had probably refused to let the steward's children into the house, and he almost certainly had refused to send house folk up to the Flat.
Wrapping his hand around the newel posts, Richard propelled himself down the stairway to the kitchen where the situation was every bit as sour as he feared. Greg's face was knotted with fury, his cheeks were an angry red, and his voice cracked as he tried to enforce his will by screaming at the frightened farm steward and disapproving house retainers.
"There's no room on the island for a lot of dirt farmers! We've got our own problems to worry about. Let them worry about themselves for a change!"
The steward, a bald man with a weathered face who looked to be somewhere on the far side of fifty, was clearly cowed by Greg's explosion. He crumpled his cap from one hand to the other and moved his lips without opening his mouth. But there was a second man with the steward, a younger man who'd carried his pitchfork all the way from the fields to Kamat's kitchen and looked like he might consider using it.
Richard interceded from the stairway. "Stand down, Greg!" There was no time to spare for his cousin's easily-bruised ego. "Any man who lives under a Kamat roof is as much a part of Kamat as you are! Their problems are our problems, and we'll do everything in our power to resolve them." He gave Greg a look that stung like the buckle of a father's belt.
The flush spread over Greg's face from his neck to his hairline. His emotions were easily read as they flowed from shock to humiliation and outrage. For a heartbeat the kitchen was quiet enough to hear the Det lapping at the pilings beneath the floorboards.
"Help them!?" Greg's hands folded into fists and rose slowly in front of him. "Help them!? Angel's blood, cousin, we can't help ourselves! There's fire, death, and destruction across our bridges and you want us to worry about farmers? They're on land! They can hitch up to a goddamned cart and get away from here, while we're stuck on this shaky little island waiting for our deaths to find us!"
"Gregor Kamat—that's enough!" Richard sensed the situation beginning to slip away from him. "If you can't stand as an exampl
e, go upstairs to your quarters—"
"I'm not going upstairs. I'm not going to be thrown out of my bed again. I want to get out of here, Richard! I want to get out of this house, out of Merovingen altogether!"
Throughout its history the city had been prone to earthquakes: one more thing the living could blame on the long-dead starfarers who'd brought humanity to Merovin—and botched the survey. There were the major ones that set the whole Det River sloshing and carving new channels—usually to Merovingen's detriment. There were the middling ones that happened maybe once in a lifetime and rearranged the city's architecture. And there were the minor ones which hit like a bad storm, one without wind, rain, or clouds.
In point of fact, Merovingen was nowhere near as fragile as its jumble of spires and bridges implied. Revenantist aversions notwithstanding, natives had learned a thing or two about keeping their city standing through flood, mud, hurricane, and the occasional earthquake. They'd had, after all, seven centuries for tinkering and experimentation. If Dorjan Isle had lost its family wing last night, then House Dorjan had only itself to blame: the previous night's quake had been neither major nor middling and far less destructive than a Turning gale.
A gale, however, heralded its coming. Seething clouds could be seen coming over the horizon and when it was gone it was over. Quakes came without warning. They might come alone, or in a series: ascending or descending. They were a betrayal of both logic and instinct: the ground was not solid, not strong, not safe. They were the clergy's favorite metaphor for the impermanence of mortal endeavor and the power of karma. And most people took both the sermons and the quakes—at least the minor ones—in thoughtless stride.
Richard had had the same reaction as Greg and everyone else last night when the ominous, yet familiar, heaving began beneath his feet. Was this the truly major one? Was this the karmic dividend to tear the Det valley apart—to dwarf assassination, fire, and all humanity with its power? He'd grabbed onto the railings and feared for his life. He'd held his breath without realizing it, until his world was spinning and heaving both. And then he'd filled his lungs with air, braced his feet, and called for a report of damages.
If the Lord had seen fit to spare him, his city, and his world, Richard Kamat wasn't going to waste precious time wondering why.
Of course, he'd been awake when the ground quaked—outside the house with a railing beside him and torches all around him—not dreaming in a dark bedroom, walls away from the next living soul. When the circumstances were right, when a man was already pushed to the limit, a storm or quake could unleash all the doubt and nightmare he'd hidden away since the moment of his birth.
Looking across the kitchen, Richard realized that his cousin Greg was just such an unfortunate man and there was nothing he could do for him except make matters worse.
"Go up to the library, then, or go outside and sit on a bench for a while. But go!"
"You're wrong, Richard. You're wrong to keep everyone here while there's still time to get away. Merovingen's doomed—don't you understand that? You're dooming everyone with your damned Revenantist karma. St. John's going! Dorjan! Eber! Zorya burned down last night! What's wrong with you, Richard? Does everybody else have to die first?"
Greg bulled his way past the farmers. His bootheels echoed against the floorboards until he reached the dock door which slammed behind him. Then Richard had the undivided attention of everyone in the kitchen. He'd have preferred to explain their neighbors' impending departure in his own way and at his own time—if he was going to explain or acknowledge it at all—but Greg had just forced his hand and judging by the expressions scattered around the room, a sizable number of Kamat folk were ready to abandon the house and the city.
The farmers had precipitated a crisis among the house folk that threatened to sweep Kamat and its worries aside. Richard stared at them with their rigid, stubborn-child expressions and distinctive homespun clothes. He wished to Murfy, the Angel, and the Lord himself that they'd simply go away and let him tend to more important affairs.
But they didn't budge.
"They're coming out of Merovingen-proper like rats from the flood," the steward said flatly. "We stood on the walls and held them off 'til the sun was up. —Course, me and Willy left right after that, so there's no telling what's happened since. But if it's half as bad as these folk say it is in town, there's no way we'll hold the barns or the crops for harvest. Swampies and canal-rats—,"he meant the two-footed kind, "—be like to trample anything they can't kill or eat right off."
Richard thought of the boats in the Kamat gut, and the Ventani market on the island's northeast exposure. Riots led to looting, looting to hoarding. While he was still a child, Richard had seen that spiral threaten when floods rose at the wrong time and the view from the Rock was broken dikes and fields drowning in brack water. In those times the Lion of Kalugin had earned his keep: confiscating House warehouses, farms, and markets until the next harvest, if necessary, to keep the peace.
That wouldn't happen this time. The Houses were isolated from their warehouses and markets. The farms on the Flat were sitting pretty and full of food behind their easily climbed dikes. Merovingen could run out of food long before Karl Fon or anyone else managed to set up a blockade.
Should Kamat leave its wooden fortress to defend its food supply? The farms on the Flat could feed the Isles, They couldn't shelter people on scarce cropland. Should they confiscate the Ventani market? Should they pull the steward and the other farm families to Kamat Isle and leave the farm to looters? Or send reinforcements to the farm from the Isle? The problems and their solutions were equally obscure. The only thing that was clear was that Richard Kamat was Kamat; and all the decisions—and all their consequences—belonged to him.
The Househead's heart was pounding faster than it had during the quake, and he wanted nothing more than to escape to the free air outside the kitchen as Greg had done. He wasn't old enough, or wise enough, to hold the lives of some four hundred people in his hands. They should know better than to stare at him the way they were staring, expecting him to have the answers. Or to take the blame for his ignorance.
That sniveling thought was no sooner growing in Richard's mind than he saw the downcast eyes and twitching lips on the faces of Ashe and Ralf, who might well have come to the same conclusion. Even Eleanora Slade, who shared his bed and privacy and who'd slipped down the back stairs without anyone already in the kitchen noticing, averted her eyes when her househead looked at her. Then a contradicting thought erupted: Richard liked being the head of his house and suddenly found his doubts an insufficient reason to surrender that position.
And as humanity was always disposed towards doing what it liked doing, doubt ceased to grow in Richard's mind.
Richard had karma—crystal clear karma, Pradesh said—and maybe he was thinking like a Merovingian, clinging to it in a faith that his web of accumulated debts would take him safely and swiftly to a decision no reason could find, transcend the adrenalin panic in his body and the stagnant doubts in his mind. Like the generations-native in front of him, he opened himself to receive whatever bolt of inspiration karma would fling his way.
Gunshots: the hiccups of small arms' fire and the deeper cough of a cannon. There were cannon emplacements above the New Harbor and more up on the Rock, but the repeated cannon coughs had a closer source: the Spur, where Anastasi's blackleg militia had its armory, and the Justiciary where Tatia-na's blackleg civil force had taken shelter and fired back.
Guided by karma, Richard's thought turned from whatever skirmish might be boiling on the Spur to the panic those sounds must be causing wherever Families were piling their valuables onto boats. And the panic among those who were being left behind. God knew, most people were being left behind. Adventist God and Revenantist karma—
"it can be done," Richard said as the plan unfolded in the light of karma owed. Debts everywhere. It was the essence of Merovingen. Interdependency. "There are more than enough upright men and women left to
keep Merovingen upright. All it wants is bringing them together and giving them common purpose—" He was unaware that he spoke aloud, and unaware for an instant he'd captured the imagination of the upright men and women around him. 'Til he saw their faces.
"But how?" one of them asked. Richard's exhaustion vanished along with his doubts. He had answers, and he gave them freely.
ONCE WAS ENOUGH (REPRISED)
by Lynn Abbey
Throughout the remainder of the morning messengers trooped in and out of the Kamat kitchen. Some wore Kamat livery and tried to deliver Richard's hastily-written vellum letters to those Househeads who remained accessible to receive them. Some wore the livery of other nearby Houses and carried documents of transfer and pewter seals in their letter pouches. Many were lesser clients and tenants cut adrift from their house contracts. Barricades on the bridges between the central islands of the South Bank quarter were taken down and replaced by cross-canal blockades along their perimeter. A deputation of fifty men and women armed, by and large, with the tools of their erstwhile trades made their way to the North Flat farms to reestablish a useful sort of order. There were signs that the Ventani had come to the same conclusion as Kamat—at least a purposeful militia in Ventani colors had been spotted going up the Greve toward their farmland. This last could not be confirmed: Ventani was not answering any of its doors and Richard's messengers reported the whole West End was buttoned up more tightly than Kamat's South Bank quarter.
Paul Kamat, awakened from a six-hour sleep, went up to the farm to act as Richard's hands, eyes, and ears. More importantly, he took the St. John wireless transceiver with him to establish communications between the North Flat and the house.