Flood Tide

  Lord! What of Stefan's family?

  What of us?

  Who's going to be next, and where will it stop?

  Justice turned to go, his arm still protectively around Sonja's shoulder, and his eyes met Krishna's. For a brief moment, Krishna seemed about to speak, but he swallowed heavily, bowed his head, and lost himself in the dispersing crowd.

  DONT LOOK BACK

  by Mercedes Lackey

  The footstep outside the door to his room at Hilda's was a familiar one, so Raj didn't start—or reach for his knife—when a voice hailed him. "Hey, Raj—"

  Rigel—"Raj," to most who knew him—Takahashi stretched out his leg and pulled the closed door open with his foot.

  "Justice, I thought you were in Life class." He raised an inquiring eyebrow at his tall, skinny roommate.

  Suitemate, actually. Lord and Ancestors. Still hard to believe that I'm actually in the College, that I'm rooming with Justice . . . on the other hand, maybe I was safer in the swamp, all things considered.

  Justice shrugged his shoulders, barely rippling the gray-black material of his shirt, and put his sketchpad behind the bookcase beside him. "They canceled it. The model was another student, and they made him go to the—"

  Raj swallowed hard. It didn't help his nausea any.

  "Anyway, he got sick, so they told us to go home."

  Raj tried to make a feeble joke. "Are you sure it wasn't 'cause he had to look at you for too long—"

  Justice grimaced at him. "Oh, thanks. Thanks a lot. I like you, too. Here—" the art student tossed a smallish, brown-wrapped package at him. "This is for you. Kamat sent a messenger over with it. Hilda had it up front."

  Raj caught it before it hit the bed; it was awfully heavy for such a small packet, and he knew as soon as he had it in his hands what it was.

  And that he didn't want Justice to know.

  Things were bad enough already. And more than dangerous enough already.

  "Ready for the Testing?" he asked, to forestall any questions—and to distract Justice with another topic.

  "I sure hope so." Justice threw his box of pencils into one of the two chairs in their "sitting room." There could only be one test that would be on both their minds—the Test of Faith. Pass it, and they were both certified as good little Revenantists.

  Fail it, and—Raj didn't want to think about that. Getting tossed out of the College would be the least of his problems.

  The artist stretched, and favored Raj with a wry look. "So. How about you?"

  Raj swung both legs over the side of his iron-frame bed and shrugged. "I'm trying my best. Huh. Kind of funny, you know? Remember when I first thought of tryin' to get in the College? And I asked you how to pass for Revenantist?"

  Justice raised his long eyebrows. "Yeah? What's funny about it?"

  "Just this: if I pass this test of theirs, it'll mean I'm thinking Revenantist. So what's the difference between thinking like one, and being one?"

  Justice wrinkled up his nose. "Too deep for me, friend. Think you've been hanging around the Philosophy crowd too much. Tea and hair-splitting, yuck."

  "Safer than running into Karle Hendricks," Raj replied bitterly. "Maybe they're dull and pretentious, but they aren't after me all the time."

  Justice frowned sympathetically. "Yeah—you managing to avoid him? Is there anything I can do?"

  Raj shook his head when Justice looked like he was going to say more. "Don't worry about it; there's nothing either of us can do about him. And you damn well better study that math. If you can't pass that, what the hell good will passing the Testing do you?"

  Justice sighed, and shrugged again. "Too true, Raj. You know, my idea of hell is being forced to spend eternity doing story-problems." The young artist turned toward his own door, and Rigel toed his shut again with a heartless chuckle.

  Two bedrooms and a sitting room. And even if it isn't Kamat, it's a world away from anything I've ever had before. Yeah, and I'm earning my way.

  He pulled himself back into the middle of his bed, sitting on the handsome wool blanket cross-legged and pondered the silk-wrapped, sealed package that Richard Kamat had sent over by messenger. There was more than enough light from his tiny, airshaft window to read the inscription on the package. By what means it had come to Richard's hands, only the Angel knew.

  Had Richard Kamat guessed the contents, he might not have been so quick to put it in Raj's hands.

  Raj opened the outer paper, then the box it had wrapped, tipping out the package inside. Two hand-spans long, narrow, and heavy; and Raj had hefted too many blades in his time not to know the weight and balance of a knife, however well-wrapped in wooden box, umber silk, and crackling paper this one was.

  Silk cords twisted about the final wrapping in complicated knots; red silk cords in patterns Raj knew, patterns difficult to duplicate. The final knot had been sealed with a wax stamp, imprinted with the Takahashi mon.

  Hazard, those knots said, and Be wary. You only tied a package coming out of Takahashi with those knots when you thought there might be a possibility the package would be opened by unfriendly hands somewhere along the way.

  All of which meant that this could only be the blade that had gone upriver to Nev Hettek and Granther Takahashi, the clan's iron-spined ruler.

  The knife that had slain Cardinal Ito Boregy. The Takahashi blade, a signed blade with the mon etched proudly on the pommel nut for all to see, pointing straight to Takahashi—and another clan, a Merovingen clan.

  House Kamat. A new Power, and rising, which made their situation more precarious than if they had been established movers-and-shakers.

  Guilt by association implicated House Kamat; and most especially Richard Kamat, who had taken in two long-lost Takahashi boys and was even now about to tie silken cords of tighter binding to Raj, and so to the silk-and-steel House of Takahashi.

  Someone had used a Takahashi blade to sever more than Ito's life. Someone had gone to expensive lengths to bring a signed Takahashi knife downriver to assassinate the Revenantist prelate. Which damning fact was known only to three: Rigel; Richard Kamat, to whom the blade had been entrusted—

  And Cardinal Willa Exeter. Ito Boregy's successor.

  The one who had discovered the body; who had given Richard Kamat the incriminating evidence with instructions to keep it safe. Who was, doubtless, playing some deep game of her own that involved Kamat debts and Takahashi debts and the ultimate calling in of those debts.

  The cardinal wants her own tame Nev Hettekers? he hazarded. Or is it more than that? Like something so complicated I can't see it?

  Raj rested his elbows on his knees and stared wearily at the thing, bright on the dark wool blanket of Kamat weaving.

  I didn't expect an answer so quickly. Maybe I ought to put off opening it. My life's complicated enough as it is.

  But the knots, and the message in them, did not permit any such evasions. Particularly not now, not when Richard Kamat needed any scrap of information, however hazardous, to counter that indebtedness to m'sera Cardinal.

  Slowly, reluctantly, Raj reached for the packet; slowly broke the seal, and gave the cords the proper twist that freed them.

  The silk fell open, failing on the oiled parchment that had been holding the box. Raj pulled the silk away and the knife slipped free of it. The knife, and a tube of closely-written paper. But it was the knife that held the eye; shining, beautiful in its way, like a sleeping snake.

  There was more in the way of an answer than Raj had expected. He'd thought to get a simple note. Instead—instead there were several pages here, all in Granther's hand.

  Raj picked up the letters and began to read.

  Richard Kamat's private study was bright as only the best room in a wealthy man's House could be; walled on two sides with clear, sparkling-clean windows and high enough to catch all the sunlight available. Polished wood, fine leather—an expensive retreat fitting the head of one of the rising stars of Merovingen.

  But an incongruous
ly young man for such an important post.

  " '. . . purchased seven months ago by Desideria Chamoun,' " Richard read, his words dropping into the silence like pebbles into a quiet backwater. " 'Cousin to Michael Chamoun.' " He looked over the top of the letter at Raj, who was seated stiffly on the other side of his desk. "How certain can your grandfather be of this, Rigel? How can he tell one knife from another?"

  Raj still had the blade in his hands, and chose to show him rather than tell him. He unscrewed the pommel nut and slid the hilt off the tang, laying bare the steel beneath. He tilted the thing in his hands so that it caught the light from Richard's windows, and touched a hesitant finger first to the tiny number etched into the metal just beneath the threads for the nut, then to the maker's mark that was cut into the steel below the quillons, where it would be visible. "This's a signed blade, m'ser Richard," he said softly. "Signed means special, and special means numbered. Takahashi has always kept track of what special blades went where. Of course," he added truthfully, "unless we get a blade back into our hands for sharpening or cleaning, we can't know who gets it after the original buyer."

  "How many people know about this?" Richard Kamat's eyes were speculative; darkly brooding.

  "That we keep track?" Raj considered his answer carefully. "Not many, outside of the clan. Not many inside the clan, for that matter, 'cept the ones making the signed blades. I don't think Mother ever knew, or if she did, she'd forgotten it. I doubt Denny was ever told about it; he wasn't really old enough when we left. Granther, me, Cousin Pauli, and whoever is working in the special forges. Maybe a dozen people altogether; that much I'm sure of. I'm pretty sure Granther was counting on me remembering."

  The right corner of Richard's mouth lifted a little. "That remarkable memory of yours at work again, hmm?"

  Raj nodded. "Granther showed me once how the signed blades were registered, when he took me through the forges. He'll remember that, I know he will. So he'll be pretty well certain I do, and probably figured that was why I sent the knife to him."

  "So we at least have a tenuous link right back into the Boregy household; one that our enemies don't know exists. Interesting."

  Raj held his peace for a moment, while Richard Kamat silently continued to read the letter that had been addressed to him. Until Kamat's brow creased for a moment, and the dark eyes flicked up at Raj—

  "Granther told me what he was going to tell you, m'ser," Raj said with a lift of his chin. "About Denny, I mean."

  The humor returned to Kamat's expression, and a bit of rueful, embarrassed approval. "What did he tell you?"

  It had hurt, those words. At first. The old Raj would have dismissed them out of hand, and run off to sulk.

  The new Raj maybe had a little more sense. It wasn't betrayal—it was sound thinking. Sound thinking kept Clans alive. Granther had to think about the welfare of the whole Clan. And—maybe he was sparing Raj; still protecting him. Second rank could go be a doctor. Second rank wouldn't be a target for assassins.

  Provided those assassins didn't know for certain that he was Angela Takahashi's boy. The one with the "remarkable memory."

  Second rank can get away with the minimum one year contract needed to keep Kamats honor intact.

  "That Denny's his first choice for Takahashi heir, if he can shape up. That I'm not—uh—sneaky enough to be a good House Head." The words Granther had actually used were "ruthless, tough and unprincipled," but Raj did not deem it politic to use those words to another House Head.

  "You will serve better to advise your brother, and keep him from overstepping the bonds of Honor," the letter had continued. "It was so that Aldebaran Takahashi served my father. It has often been so in our family, one to act as Head—but the other to act as Heart and Conscience."

  "He was a bit blunter with me," Richard Kamat said, putting the letter down and smoothing the page with one hand. " 'Denny has the brains and the mind-set, but not the sense,' " he read aloud. " 'Young m'ser Kamat, I do not entrust this task lightly to you, and I would not if I dared bring the boy home. But I do not; he would be a danger to all of us here, and not even realize it. You have said openly to me that you would gladly have even stronger ties between our Houses than those of obligation and the one-year contract marriage of your sister and young Rigel. So, I say to you now—if this is truly your wish, I tell you that you are training the heir to Takahashi—and that is Deneb. But every House Head has more than one plan, and I have more than one heir. Deneb is my first choice; but if he fails, it would be better for all of us to let the streets have him back again. I advise you to entrust his education in reason and caution to Thomas Mondragon. The man is a survivor, and surviving takes excellent sense, the same good sense Deneb lacks so woefully.' "

  Silence again, as Raj pondered the implications of everything that had been said to him so far.

  Richard's treating me like an equal. Like I deserve to have all the information.

  He licked his lips and looked Richard Kamat right in the eyes. "Granther's right," he said reluctantly. "About everything. Including about Denny."

  That had hurt as much as all the rest. But the past few months had taught him a bit about his reckless little brother—

  —and convinced him that without some kind of intercession, be it the hand of Thomas Mondragon or the hand of fate, Denny was going to get himself into some kind of trouble that no one would be able to get him out of.

  "Lord knows I love Denny," Raj continued ruefully, "but he could make some serious problems for everybody. And Tom's about the right person to beat some brains into his head—Tom's got his respect, and he'll likely listen to him. And Tom'll knock him up against the wall if he doesn't listen—"

  Like he's knocked me up against the wall for not listening.

  "What about the rest?" Kamat asked quietly. "Don't you—resent being dealt out of your position?"

  Raj shook his head emphatically. There had been a moment of resentment, yes, but it had been so quickly followed by relief that now he had no regrets at all. "I—I don't do that kind of thing well," he replied. "I mean—trying to figure policies, juggle people—what I feel about them keeps getting in the way."

  "Given that you're contracting to Marina, I can't say I'm unhappy to hear you say something like that. Right now I think she needs a friend more than anything else in the world." Richard massaged his temple as if his head hurt.

  It probably did, given that Marina had entertained everyone at dinner last night with an hysterical outburst over the dessert.

  At least she waited until dessert. Last week she had a fit before the second course.

  "She's all right this morning, m'ser," Raj said as confidently as he could. "She sent me a note, apologizing for the way she acted last night."

  After I sent her a flower this morning. At least once in a while I'll get a notion about what will make her feel a little happier, cheer her up. Poor Marina.

  "It'll be better once the ceremony's over," he told Richard earnestly. And then felt a lurch in his stomach, himself.

  Lord and Ancestors. Me and Marina, married, even if it's only in name. When what I want—now—

  What he wanted would not satisfy anything or anyone but himself.

  What he wanted was time—time for himself, and Kat Bolado. The "Girl in the Boat."

  He knew who she was now. Denny had arranged a meeting.

  Lord. Kat. If I had any choice—

  But he didn't have a choice. By the time he'd finally met his ephemeral girl, he'd already given his word to Richard Kamat and Marina. And it was too late. He couldn't back out of the contract, not then, not when so many people were relying on him to keep his word. Kat, thank God, had understood. Really, honestly understood, not just pretending to understand. And they'd made a kind of pact; while he was honor-bound to Marina they'd be friends and stay friends by never, ever going anywhere alone together. He met her two, three times a week, down in John's Tavern, and they'd talk—

  Seemed like Kat understood hi
m better than anyone. He kept no secrets from her. Maybe that wasn't wise, but with Kat, he didn't much care about being smart. And maybe, in a year or so—

  Maybe they'd do more than just talk.

  But that was for later. Right now he had Marina, and all the commitments he'd made to her.

  Ironic that he was taking credit for her baby, who hadn't so much as seen her unclothed.

  Well, at least we're friends. And this really cancels out Takahashi debt. He was under no illusions about why Richard had made the marriage offer—or why Marina had accepted it. No way is she gonna get Tom to lay claim to the kid. So this's about the only way that baby is going to get a daddy that wouldn't bring all kinds of karma down on Kamat—and if Marina didn't name a daddy, anybody who wants to put the screws on Richard could come along and claim it.

  But that didn't make what was going to happen any easier. His eyes went without any conscious thought on his part to the shadowed nook of Richard's office that held the ceremonial sword marking the alliance of the two houses. Cords of Kamat blue and Takahashi scarlet hung at a precise angle from the hilt. Getting married wasn't exactly what Raj had had in mind when he'd been in love with Marina—and now that they were just friends—

  And hell, I'm only seventeen—

  But this was duty, and much more important than his own feelings. This was Clan business, and for the sake of the Clan and Takahashi Honor Rigel could no more back out than fly to the moon.

  "I can't say I blame you for staying roommates with that friend of yours over on Kass," Richard continued, looking up with a wry twist to his mouth.

  "There are times lately when I wish I could move off the island. By the way, those herbal teas you brought do seem to be helping Mother."

  It was an oblique sort of "thank you," but neither of them particularly wanted to openly allude to Andromeda's addiction to deathangel—nor the flashback she'd had that had revealed the addiction to Raj, the outsider.

  "I'm glad Doctor Jonathon was willing to trust me," Raj replied.

  Richard smiled faintly. "He was rather dubious at first, but you've convinced him that you know what you're talking about. In fact, he's invented an 'old herb-doctor' to account for the things you brought him, and he's been leaking the information over to the College since the remedies seem so effective."