But that left her nothing to do but to think, and think, and, once the shakes and running sweat had gone to wind-chill and shivers, to tuck up in a blanket with the pistol in her hands and let her teeth chatter, thinking she wished some Sword agent would find her. She wanted a target. She wanted whoever'd do Mondragon hurt.
Most of all she wanted the storm to break, the earth to shake, crazy Cassie's Retribution to come before morning, because in the confusion she could go back there shooting and get him out of that damned place. She was down to hoping for the Angel to do something. And Mama had said it right, when you were waiting for the Angel, you weren't thinking any more.
So think, fool, ain't any help in Moghi. Moghi won't touch a thing like this. Ain't any help in 'Stasi Kalugin—is there?
Go to him an' gettin' out ain't real likely. Black yacht parked up on Archangel, he's prob'ly there. . . .
But goin' belowdecks, the way he'd insist, what's he got, but me, and if he could get Mondragon away from the Sword, wouldn't he? He's got most to lose if Mondragon talks. So he can't. An' I'd be a fool t' walk in there.
Call a council, get th' Trade t' move? Block the canals? But is that goin' to do anything but get Mondragon t' Tatiana's hands—that he ain't right now means the Sword is hangin' onto him real hard. He was Sword. An' he knows things they won't want Tatty t' get her hands on. He prob'ly knows things on Magruder he don't want Tatty t' hear. But Tatty— Tatty ain't the woman I'd want t' turn 'im over to.
He'd play the game, damn sure. And he'd be alive. 'Stasi'd be wild to shut 'im up. So'd a raft of others in this town. . . . Tatty's a thought.
But ain't there another? Ain't there some I could beg or bribe?
Yey, c'mon, we got to break into th' Nev Hettek embassy uptown?
Crazies in the swamp wouldn't buy in on that 'un.
PROVING GROUND
by Mercedes Lackey
The baby wailed, and Morgan tucked sweat-damp strands of hair behind her ears, then rocked the infant against her chest in an attempt to soothe her. She might as well have tried to stop the canal below from flowing; she got no more result than when sera had tried to feed the poor mite a bit ago. She felt her own irritation building to an irrational anger, and did her best to control it. "I know you've the upsets, child," she told the youngest member of the Kamat family wearily, "And I know your poor tummy is hurting. But crying only makes you hot as well as upset, can't you suffer in silence?"
All the nursery windows were open in an attempt to catch a hint of breeze: the stench of the canals and the humidity in the still air were punishing enough in and of themselves. The weather alone was enough to make the baby fretful, and set all the House on edge. One prayed for another storm to gather and break, and indeed, hour after hour, huge banks of clouds towered above the city and the air grew even more oppressive, heavy with the portent of storm.
A little shake just then. A tremor. One stopped. And waited. And rocked again.
Add to that the ominous sense of a storm of political upheaval in the offing, and Marina's daily outbursts of hysteria, and you had a recipe for trouble as certain as the sun shone down—even the baby felt it; and add in her pain . . . little wonder she kept up that pitiful keening night and day.
Morgan knew all that; it didn't make the infant's fussing any easier to cope with. Morgan held the baby against her own clammy shoulder, and stared down at the dark canal below the open window. Lace-bedecked curtains beside her moved, but only with the faint movement of air caused by her rocking, not with any real breeze. Thunder rumbled, but far away.
"Lord, child," she said over the wails, "your voice is carrying right down to the kitchen. I've had to chase that cook's helper away twice, and her thinking you were wet or hungry and everyone too busy to see to you. You see what you're doing to my reputation? If you keep this up, soon even m'sera Andromeda will think I'm not caring for you right."
"Not a chance, sera Morgan," said a rich young tenor voice from behind her. "Everyone in the House knows you're with her day and night. I'll take her, if you like; I've got something for her from Dr. Jonathon."
Morgan's heart jumped into her throat at the unexpected sound of a voice at her back, and she stiffened automatically at Raj Takahashi's first words. A fraction of a second later she recognized the voice and forced herself to relax. She was just as jumpy as any of the rest of the House—except, perhaps, Marina Kamat: Marina, the baby's mother, was supremely indifferent to everything but Mondragon's plight and her own physical woes.
Which makes things the harder for her mother.
M'sera Andromeda has to think for the both of them, and somehow keep Marina from diving headfirst into trouble—which there would be aplenty if Marina brings Tom Mondragon's name to the governor. Or Lord save them, protests lodged with fool Mikhail.
Andromeda Kamat was taking a renewed interest in affairs outside the House between bouts with her deathangel addiction, and in Morgan's estimation, it was just bad luck for that interest to come now. It was a pity she couldn't have recovered months ago, when there was only Marina to worry about. Politics in Merovingen was suddenly a game where the wrong move could mean death; even Morgan knew that. Everything in the city was teetering like a drunk on the edge of a broken bridge. Andromeda was like a high-strung cat, and that nervousness was an added burden for her trusted servant-nurse-companion Morgan.
So Morgan schooled herself with a heavy hand to keep from snapping at young Raj Takahashi as she turned away from the window to face him, her thin shoes squeaking damply on the wooden floor. The boy can't help that he moves quiet. The boy didn't mean to make your heart stop. Be nice to him, Morgan. He's always nice to you; always calls you "sera" and never a nasty word out of him—who's the little m'sera's own papa, by the book if not the fact.
Raj held out a little round, white jar. There was a contrite expression on his thin, almond-eyed face. "Pardon, I didn't mean to startle you."
Morgan felt an instant's resentment, Raj looking far cooler than anyone had a right to on this sultry, yell-filled day, with his long black hair tied back on the nape of his neck, and hardly a trace of sweat on his brow. "Dr. Jonathan sent me over with this. We've tested it on both of us—"
"What do you mean by 'tested it'?" Morgan snapped, cradling the howling baby a little tighter against her shoulder. "What is it that it needed to be 'tested' first?"
"It's something swa—canaler folk've used for bellyache, just not for colicky babies," Raj said apologetically, as if he held himself responsible for more than frightening Morgan. "It's not like it hasn't been used with kids before, just never as young as the little m'sera. We wanted to make sure it wouldn't be too hard for her, or put her off her milk. Dr. Jonathan's cut it plenty, put it in a sugar syrup, said to tell you he thinks there won't be any problems at all. Give her as much as sticks to your finger."
Morgan eyed the boy and the white glass jar dubiously. This young scion of Nev Hettek clan Takahashi was just full of herbal medicines nobody'd ever heard of before . . . but they weren't forbidden tech, Dr. Jonathan was reputed with the College and all, and she had to admit that the medicines all seemed to work. Andromeda hadn't had a bad deathangel flashback for weeks now. "All right," she said, bringing the baby down off her shoulder to cradle her in both arms. "As long as it isn't something nobody's ever used before. What is it?"
"Sugar-syrup and a decoction of something called bindroot. It'll help settle the stomach." Raj stuck his little finger in the jar, and brought it out coated with a thick, golden syrup. "I washed my hands already, sera, took off the first layer of skin. Like I said, it's used straight for belly-ache, you chew it. We thought it might ease her stomach."
There was certainly no problem with getting the baby to open her mouth: she was roaring at the top of her tiny lungs, her face, normally a soft pink, now an angry red, her open mouth taking up fully half of it. Raj stuck his finger into her mouth and let the baby have a taste before she had any idea there was something in there.
&nb
sp; There was a moment more of ear-piercing wailing, before the child reacted to the foreign presence of Raj's finger in her mouth. Then there was a grunt of surprise—
Then a whimper, but it sounded experimental rather than unhappy. Small mouth worked busily and the little m'sera's face faded to tear-flushed perfection. Tears still stood on her cheek. She kept making dubious faces, doubtless reacting to the sweet taste of the syrup.
The boy laughed, softly, and put the jar down. "No more waking m'sera Andromeda out of a sound sleep for you, little fish," he admonished the mite playfully. "Sera Morgan, I know you've been trying to quiet her half the afternoon—I'll be glad to take her for a bit until she falls asleep. Which probably won't be long; medicine ought to take hold in just a bit. I bet she's tired herself out to nothing with all that crying."
"She's tired me out, if nothing else," Morgan admitted, letting the boy take his putative daughter from her arms. He held her against his shoulder, bouncing gently on the balls of his feet, patting the tiny back gently and just so until of a sudden the bubble got up. It was an ease and expertise in baby-handling the child's not in the least putative mother couldn't be bothered to learn. Raj was one of the few—the only male—Morgan would permit to handle the baby.
He loves that child as if she really was his own, Morgan thought, with an unexpected surge of sympathy for the boy. And not a sign of resentment that she truly isn't his. He'd be as good a married husband and father as Nicky Kamat was, and fool Marina can't see it for that scoundrel Mondragon, and him in the Cardinal's basement, if he isn't dead. Morgan tightened her lips a little, as the boy—no, young man, he was eighteen and maturing by the day—cooed nonsense into the baby's ear with every evidence of delight. Well, the contract-marriage is up in a few months and she's going to lose this nice lad to that Bolado girl, a blind woman could see that—and then I expect we'll hear more wailing from her than from any colicky baby. What is it with that child that she never wants anything until she can't have it?
"I think she's asleep, sera Morgan," Raj whispered. Since the baby's eyes were closed, and she was snoring ever so slightly, that seemed a reasonable deduction. Morgan nodded and let Raj carry her to the cradle, an elaborate froth of lace and fine linen, canopied, be-ribboned and be-ruffled. He set the pink and white mite down as gently as Morgan would have; she stirred a little, stuck her thumb in her mouth, and kept on dreaming.
"What is that stuff again, boy?" Morgan asked, determined not to show she was impressed.
"Bindroot, and Dr. Jonathan says not to use it too often, just when she starts like this and won't stop." Raj handed her the jar, as she pursed her lips. "I wish it was winter; we could get her to suck ice instead. Though Dr. Jonathan does say he'd rather use this."
"No doubt he would." She snorted. "Man isn't happy if the remedy doesn't come from a bottle. You can tell that old fraud that I've been tending babies as long as he's been killing patients, and I know what to do with them." She dismissed the doctor's opinion with a perfunctory shrug, returning her volley in the never-ending war between herself and the Kamat family physician.
The lad just smiled. "I know that, an' you know that, sera," he said, "but a doctor's got to feel like he's the one in charge—or at least that's what they keep telling me up at the College."
His eyes clouded a little when he mentioned the College, and Morgan knew very well the cause of that. The College itself—the whole of Merovingen Above and Below—was not safe from the inquisitions led by its Cardinal Exeter: math and the sciences were no longer the only sensitive areas of study; even medicine and art were suspect. Treat the wrong patient, paint the wrong picture, and you might well find yourself facing the Cardinal's hand-picked board of questioners, suspected of heresy.
No few of the priests at the College had found themselves in that very position. No few had vanished, never to be seen again, off (supposedly) on a sabbatical that Morgan suspected was permanent, at Det's black bottom.
And Raj Takahashi, former Nev Hettekker, must surely be under the Cardinal's eye, for all that he had passed his catechism like any good Revenantist. The times were dangerous, and if the boy had managed to grow any sense at all, he was aware and wary of the danger of new things and strange medicines. For Kamat's sake. For all of them.
Morgan shivered from a chill that had nothing whatsoever to do with the temperature of the air. M'sera Andromeda, the whole Kamat house was Nev Hettek-ker, if one scratched deep, if anyone cared to remember that fact, and m'ser Richard had made one midnight and terrible visit to the College. A Kamat servant could as easily be under the eye of the Cardinal, as a pawn to use against the rising influence of House Kamat . . . safer to target the servant than the master, but the fate of the servant could easily become that of the master.
"Sera, I don't want to alarm you, but who was that woman in the hallway?" the boy asked, breaking into her musings. "The one in the apron, with the scar across her eye?"
Morgan caught a glimpse and sighed. Another visit from the kitchens. Julia, this time. "One of the kitchen staff," she replied. "Why?"
"Has she any business up here?" The boy's brows creased. "I don't want to sound like I'm prying, but— if she's kitchen help, why was she upstairs? Do you trust her? Could she be a spy, maybe trying to overhear something?"
Good thinking, boy. Not so naive, then, as he was when he came to us. "She isn't precisely 'kitchen help.' She's a legacy, do you know what that means?" When Raj shook his head, she elaborated. "When Kamat bought this Isle from the Family that owned it, the Adami, that was, they still had a few—attachments. Less than kin, but more than servants—well, that may not be entirely true, doubtless there's a lot of unacknowledged Adami blood in them. Kamat adopted them along with the Isle. The servants have all been worrying about the little one, especially with her crying the way she has been, but the legacy staff fusses more than any ten of the servants. M'sera says to let them come up. They're a nuisance, but that's all. M'ser Richard's had them all checked and vouched for."
"Well," Raj said, looking relieved, "then I'd better be going. Things are kind of unsettled over at the College, still. No classes, so Justus an' me are using the time to study like anything. We figure we'd better—he needs all the help he can get with his math, and I'm still pretty lost when it comes to philosophy and history. Knowing what someone does and why he does it are two different things, I guess."
He grinned, ruefully, and Morgan smiled back against her will. It was hard not to give your liking to this boy; he tried so very hard to be liked.
"You need a House poleboat?" Morgan asked, as he stepped softly to the door of the nursery, catlike, to avoid waking the baby. "You might have to wait for one this time of day. M'ser Richard is down at the warehouse, and young m'sera swears she's going visiting." Pray God it isn't to the Boregy house. We have enough troubles without Marina getting involved with that back-stabbing lot, and them related to the Old Cardinal.
None of them would lift a hand for Thomas Mondragon. See him hanged—yes.
Raj shook his head. "Thank you, sera, but no. Sera Bolado's boat brought me over and she's waiting for me below."
Morgan's lips formed into a tight smile of wry satisfaction. Sure enough, that fool Marina is losing this boy, if he isn't lost already. "Then I'll bid you good afternoon, and go see to sera Andromeda."
"Give her my respect," Raj replied, "And tell her, please, that I hope her health is growing to match her beauty." It was a hightowner compliment, but in his mouth somehow the words didn't seem formula. The boy for all the lowtown cant that slipped in and out of his speech took his House obligations seriously; the m'sera truly seemed to mean more to him than his own, long-dead mother.
"I'll tell her." The corridor was stifling, and Morgan could hardly wait to be out of it. She nodded, and they parted at the next intersection of hallways, the boy heading down to the water-stair, herself to find the baby's doubtless hiding maidservant.
Raj Takahashi paused at the foot of the water-stair and loo
ked around expectantly. "So," said a voice out of the shadowed cut beside, a voice as warm as the daylight on the broad canal and full of ironic amusement. "Did you beard the dragonelle in her lair and see the little m'sera?"
Raj jumped, then laughed, as Kat Bolado poled her family's boat out of the cut and into the canal and snugged it expertly up against the walkway. "Sera Morgan likes me, I think," he told the dark-eyed, curly-haired young woman. He stepped carefully into her boat while she steadied it with her pole against the sluggish current.
Kat shuddered theatrically and shoved away from the bank as he settled himself on the seat in front of her. "I'd rather have a skit snuggle up to me," she said emphatically. "How's the baby?"
"Colicky and crying." Raj noticed that she didn't say "your" baby. Kat bristled with resentment and jealousy every time she so much as heard Marina Kamat's name, and she would not even give lip service to the polite fiction that Raj was the baby's real and contract father.
"Which accounts for the screams I heard up above," Kat surmised, shoving hard with her pole and shooting them deftly into the flow of traffic with a minimum splash. "What'd ye do, smother her?"
Raj laughed again, since it was obvious she didn't mean what she'd said; and squinted against the dazzle of sun on moving water. It was just marginally cooler on the canal than on the lowest walkway, but considerably better than inside the House. "No, Dr. Jona-thon and I came up with something to keep her quiet. That's why I was here; he figured if I delivered it, sera Morgan would likely use it without a fuss."
"What was it? Whiskey? A gag?" One of the canalers with a slightly slower craft signaled that Kat should cut in front of him; she acknowledged the gift with a wave of her hand, called out, "Yoss, Rahman," and took instant advantage of his generosity. As they pulled into the widening space between him and the next boat, Raj saw why he was so slow; his bow was fouled with a trailing bouquet of tangle-lilies.