Decided, she strode to her bedside and pulled on the needlepoint bellpull there. Twice she pulled on the strap, three times, four: she would tell Daddy she wasn't leaving until Michael was by her side. That meeting her husband at the College wasn't going to be good enough.
Downstairs, people were already scurrying. Before Cassie had discovered that within her was another woman, a noblewoman who'd been murdered by the colonials when the sharrh scourged Merovin and mobs looked for technocrats to blame—in those days, Boregy House didn't jump to obey her every whim.
She knew she mustn't abuse her privilege, understood that these were gifts from on high, and nothing she'd earned—or at least she remembered Ito's warnings.
But Ito didn't realize what courage it had taken to become a voyager on the astral plane. Ito was a small man who craved temporal power with a giant appetite. He'd never remembered how he'd lived and died and lived again. And died again, in the formless dark. And gone beyond life and death and differentiations of male and female, past and future, to a place where space and time were simultaneous and all futures were equally real, all realities equally desirable.
Ito had never risked anything. Not his unborn child. Not a lover, a mate. Not his sanity or his body.
Cassie risked her body with every deathangel-facilitated excursion out of it.
Someday, she might lose track entirely and become trapped among the planes, never to find her way back to her body again. When she told Ito how this worried her, he said only, "Don't bother your father with such talk. You're tired, Cassie. You're new to this. And the responsibilities are weighing on you, as they weigh on us all. That's why I'm here, to guide you through. To help you sort out what wisdom should be given to the people, and what truths are too frightening for any but the cardinals to hear."
She knew what Ito was doing. He was trying to make her a creature of the College. Michael was right about that. Daddy was right about insisting that she tell her father everything.
Vega Boregy was due her first loyalties, and she knew it. He didn't have to keep telling her. She never kept back anything from Daddy, except what she and Michael talked about when they were alone.
Daddy had a right to know all that the cardinals knew. Although Vega was more difficult to talk to: whatever she told the cardinals, they merely nodded. Of course, she told Ito everything, first, and Ito helped her decide what the rest of the College should know.
But when she told her father that Merovingen must steel for a revolution—when she spoke of her visions of fire and wild mobs and conflict and destruction, then Vega would pace and browbeat her, hoping to force her to renege, to prophesy what was safe, and what was prudent, and what was helpful.
A parent was a parent, and Vega deserved respect and honesty. But not even her father's demands could make her take back the truths she saw, or unmake the visions that drove her. If Daddy wanted her to tell him that Boregy House would last forever, increasing in glory and power, then Daddy would have to do what Cassie told him, when they were truly alone.
Daddy would have to accrue more wealth, more power, more men at arms. Daddy would have to stop being content with maneuvering behind the scenes, and prepare to supplant the Kalugins.
Vega didn't like to hear such talk. Vega was a good adherent of Anastasi Kalugin's. The fortunes of the House of Boregy were tied to Anastasi's, Vega Boregy had insisted numerous times.
And she could only reply implacably with what her visions prompted: "Boregy House can save Merovingen, but only if I am free to speak my mind, and all of Merovingen listens. Under my guidance, and ruled with a steadier hand than the Kalugins', we may escape the worst. When my child is of age, he must be master of all Mero—"
"Stop it, Cassie. That's treason!" her father would say then.
But he'd heard her. He knew the truth of it. He must feel it in his bones, as she did in hers. The canalers were their enemies; the filthy rabble must be controlled, before the uprising in her visions came to be.
This she would tell the College and its invited guests, tonight. What else she would tell them was a matter to be left up to her mantic power, and to their perspicacity.
She could never be sure what the deathangel would being her, what she would see or what she would say. But she was sure of what the College would see and what the cardinals would say.
Ito was not totally devoid of visions, himself. Ito was envisioning the day when the Revenantist College, interpreters of the wisdom of Cassiopeia Boregy, mantic prophetess of the Wheel of Life, would be the sole authority controlling Merovingen—every House, every company worth mentioning, every heart and soul.
This, the high Houses would see tonight, when Cassie's powers were formally introduced to them. And formally offered to them, in a consultative structure allowing each House to consult Cassie, through Ito, as to what were their best courses of action, to ensure the future all in hightown wanted, and prevent the horrid one of anarchy and destruction that Cassie had foreseen.
If Cassie had to do all that, to put up with the manipulation of the College and the cast that politics and her father's best interests put on her pure revelations, then the least that the College and her father could do was make sure she had her husband by her side.
So she waited, combing and then brushing her hair until it flew about her head, for Michael to return.
And when he did, her husband was very angry.
She could hear him arguing with someone as they came up the stairs. Then she realized that the someone was her father, and that Vega's voice was hushed and trembling with anger, and that someone else's voice was also part of the argument.
She listened harder, but couldn't make out their words. But in the back of her mind, she thought she could hear them with a different ear, an inner ear, as if she were right beside them on the stairs.
The vision was so complete, so complex, so full of sight and sound and smell, that she started visibly.
Her heart began to pound. She hadn't taken the deathangel yet. She wasn't supposed to be able to do this without deathangel. She wasn't supposed to be able to do it in the present—she'd never heard of anyone who could.
Yet it was as if she floated, disembodied, so near to Michael Chamoun she could count the close-shaven whiskers on his chin, even see one he'd missed, just where his lower lip curled.
And she could see Chance Magruder, the Nev Hettek Ambassador, with Michael and her father on the stairs. And see her father's white skin go whiter as Magruder put a hand on Vega's cyan velvet jacket and said, in a low voice, "Get hold of yourself, man. It's just a circus for the gullible, after all."
"It's my daughter's sanity at stake here. And I expect you, Magruder, to be respectful—keep your cynicism to yourself—and you, Chamoun, to use your influence to control your wife, since you're the only one she seems to listen to, any more."
"Not true, if I may say so, Respected Ser," said Magruder in Cassie's mind. "She listens to Ito, and to the cardinals. And she listens to the deathangel's—"
"Chance," and this was Michael's voice, louder so that she was sure she heard what her husband said as the three men reached the landing and her door: "Let me handle this."
"I've been waiting for you to do just that, Mike. So has your father-in-law, here, by the sound of it."
"Both of you," said Michael, "go downstairs. We'll be with you shortly."
Her father and the Ambassador left meekly, without a word of remonstrance, as if Michael were the lord of Boregy House already.
Already?
Had she thought that? Her eyes filled with sudden tears and she started to shake. She grasped the edge of her dressing table and held on with both hands as tightly as she could while vertigo overswept her.
The dressing table was the only thing that was real. Her father's death was far in the future, not near at hand. All portents were only that. Every disaster was avoidable.
She was suddenly so frightened that she doubled over, still holding the edge of the dressing table
as if she were a tiny child and she was trying to pull herself up by it.
The whole table came over on top of her with a crash.
Michael came through the door, shoulder first, with another, louder crash.
She was only vaguely aware that she was lying in a mess of pomades and spilled powders, of costly crystal perfume bottles, shattered and emptied, of hand mirrors and combs and jewelry.
Nevertheless she was aware of her husband's arms, of Chamoun's worried eyes and beautiful face.
She reached up to touch his lips. He kissed her fingers.
He was saying things to her. She couldn't really hear him, and yet she could hear him in her mind.
Everything 'll be all right, you crazy hophead. Chance and I've got just the thing for you. And it'll save the baby, at least. And you, my love...
Michael's hps hadn't moved. Yet she had no doubt that she'd really heard those words of his, not imagined words for him to say. Because she never would have imagined him talking to her that way. And he never would have risked it.
But in his mind, or in hers, he'd called her his love.
And that was one piece of truth in a world where there was precious little truth but her own.
Then she realized that he was still talking to her:
"Cassie, you've got to stop this. You're eating too much of this stuff. You weren't supposed to have any until we got over to the College..."
She didn't let him finish. There mustn't be misunderstanding between them. There mustn't.
"I didn't eat any, Michael. It just... came over me, the feeling—this feeling. It's as if I had eaten some, but I haven't had any today, honestly."
He was smoothing her hair back from her forehead. She caught his wrist. "You've got to believe me," she added.
He was helping her up, out of the wreckage of her dressing table. "That's worse—if you haven't had any, and you're flashing anyhow. What about the baby, if you don't care about yourself or me? What if you stop taking this stuff, and it doesn't stop: the effects, I mean. Do you want to live like this, going off into trances without any warning, without preparation?"
He didn't usually speak that way to her. His diction wasn't usually that formal. But there was no mistaking the care with which he chose his words or the intensity behind them.
He seemed angry with her. Yet he had her on her feet. His arm was supporting her. He was smoothing her tunic down, over her baby-belly, and brushing her off as if he were a batman.
She turned in his arms and leaned against him bonelessly. His embrace was strong and firm and real. She considered telling him that she'd heard what he was thinking, and asking him if what she thought she'd overheard of his conversation with Magruder and her father on the stairs was accurate.
But something stopped her and that something was fear of his reaction. He didn't want her taking the deathangel as it was. If she told him she thought she'd... read his mind... or at least heard the words he was thinking, what then?
It could be the end of their marriage. But so could towering dishonesty. Yet, though she struggled, she couldn't get out the words. She merely let him hold her as she shivered.
He was saying, "... bring a doctor down from Nev Hettek, with your father's permission—someone who's got all the technical knowledge of modern medicine at his command. Just in case something goes wrong. You've got to agree to it, Cassie, or your father and Ito will never allow it."
"A Nev Hetteker doctor? Why? I'm fine, really." She straightened up to prove it, stepping back against his embrace.
He let her go. His fingers laced in his belt. "An obstetrician," he said. "A professional, best we've got. Please, Cassie—if you won't stop taking this stuff, then at least help me make sure you don't lose our baby."
"Yes, all right." What did she care? "If it makes you happy, that's fine. I'll tell Daddy I want an—an... obsetician, if it means we won't fight about the deathangel anymore. Or my talent."
"Promise," Michael said brusquely. "No problem. You can whack yourself silly three times a day, as long as you don't risk your health or the baby's." He sounded exhausted, but his smile was bright and wide as he came forward and offered her his arm:
"Now, can we get this show moving, Cassie? Everybody who's anybody's waiting for you over at the College."
"And your friend Chance? He's here, isn't he? I didn't imagine it?"
"Ah... yeah, downstairs with your father. We're all going over together, one big happy family, showing the strength of the merger and how well Nev Hettekers and Boregy House get along. Okay? Take my arm and let's go?"
She went with her husband, down the stairs although they seemed miles long and she bit her lip rather than admit to him that each stair seemed to be wiggling and humping itself like a staircase of restless cats.
She held tight to his arm, as if by doing so she could hold onto the reality she was supposed to be living in, instead of the one that kept creeping around the edges of her perceptions, the one that deathangel brought her.
Why was this happening? She hadn't eaten any deathangel for three days. She kept blinking to restore her normal sight, but everything was too bright and too particulated, and the walls seemed to undulate as she reached the bottom of the stairs and greeted her father and Michael's mentor, Chance Magruder.
When she took Magruder's hand, a shock went through her that made her slump against Michael in front of everyone.
They were all fussing over her now. Was she all right? Could she continue? Did she want water? Tea? A physician?
She told them no, over and over. She called for her coat.
And she couldn't take her eyes off Ambassador Magruder, whose hand had been so hard and sharp like a sword, and whose whole mind had collided with hers for an instant that left her breathless and afraid.
Michael's friend and mentor was her enemy, this the touch of his hand had shown her clearly. In his mind was destruction and treachery, murder and deceit. And Tatiana Kalugin.
Cassie had seen the other woman, during that brief instant of contact, so clearly that she might have been in the same room when Chance Magruder undressed the Madame Secretary, very slowly, very passionately, and climbed on top of her to scheme about changes to come.
"That wife of yours is really getting to be a problem," Magruder told Chamoun after Cassie had been handed over to the College cardinals and the two foreigners had been shooed out front to wait with the rest of the theater's audience for Cassie's performance.
There was tea in Magruder's hand but precious little sympathy in his eyes.
"She's okayed the obstetrician, though she can't even pronounce the word. That ought to count for something."
"Stop helping her get the deathangel, Michael," said Chamoun's controller unequivocally.
"It's not that easy, Chance. She'll get it anyway."
"Maybe. Maybe not. Don't facilitate it. Don't accept it. Don't look the other way."
"That'll destroy my marriage just as surely as..."
Chamoun paused while two of the gathered luminaries wandered too close.
They were standing by a buffet that would have fed the whole population of Ventani Isle for a week. There were canapes and whole smoked fish, ice sculptures keeping unseasonal fruit cool and delectable, expensive wines and cheeses, meat pies and pastry rolls. And the rich and powerful loaded their plates from that buffet as if they hadn't eaten in months, though fat rolled over their waistbands and flopped under the women's bare arms.
This place needed the Sword of God, that was certain. But the Sword was a hard taskmaster, and Magruder was the Sword in Merovingen. ". . . just as surely as the deathangel," Mike Chamoun finished when the couple moved away. "She's having flashbacks, anyhow. What good's stopping the drug when she's got so much in her system?"
"I'm not a specialist. If it gets too difficult, she'll have an overdose." Magruder shrugged as if he'd just made a comment on the weather, rather than warned Chamoun that Cassie might have to be assassinated.
"What abo
ut the child?"
"What about the reason we're here?" Magruder reminded him, looking off into the crowd. Chance Magruder's profile was sharp and hard; his graying, pale hair had grown long this winter but now he'd cut it short and the shape of his skull was clearly visible. Around his mouth, the punctuation marks of shadow were deep tonight. Yet when he turned back to Chamoun and smiled with paternal affection, he was positively handsome. "Let's not take our eyes off the target, Mike. This is a mess, let's be clear on that. How bad, we don't know yet. Maybe you can control her."
"Everybody and his brother's trying that. She knows and she's resentful."
"Everybody and his brother, if you mean Vega and Ito, aren't her husband. Trust me, I know a little about women. It's your kid in the oven; your words will carry a little weight."
"Like about the doctor, yeah. Okay, what else?"
"Let's get her off the deathangel. Maybe she'll still be able to do whatever it is she does without it. Be better if we got her faking it altogether, the way we'd like. Think you can do that?"
"You bet. Right after I turn myself into the Angel of Retribution, wings and all, and clean out this nest of cardinals."
"Try. For me. At least don't lose whatever influence you've got. The medic we send down will have a pharmacy of his own to work from. We'll get her tractable for you. What's that ritual you kids were using? The 'listen only to my voice' part might be a good place to start."
"Chance, you're underestimating her..."
"A male failing. We'll huddle on it. Meanwhile, I've got my own female problem to deal with, coming up behind you." Again, the quick and energizing smile.
Chamoun looked over his shoulder and stepped re-flexively from the path of the Governor and his entire family, bearing down on them.
Iosef Kalugin, white-haired and charismatic, with ribbons on his chest and striped hose to match, had one arm around his idiot son, Mikhail. Mikhail was dressed like an imitation of his father, which was what Iosef was trying to make of his dimwitted but good-hearted son.
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