Flood Tide

by C. J. Cherryh

  "You'll get over it," Richard said without very much conviction.

  "I won't," she countered with plenty of conviction. "He's got another woman, you know. I saw her. Low class, but easy with Tom, even I could see that. She's living with him, right here, on our island. In an apartment you've provided." '

  Richard took Marina's hands in his. "The woman's name is Altair Jones. She has a poleboat, and we give her work sometimes. She saved Tom's life before you knew he existed, and 'Ree—unless I miss my guess completely—Thomas Mondragon's hurt her more than he's hurt you."

  "Impossible." She pulled free. "What could a poleboat woman know about love?"

  "I'm ashamed of you, Marina." Richard got up. "What's happened to the rebel who thought life was so much more real Below? You've known the likes of Tom Mondragon all your life; this one's just managed to get in more trouble than the rest of us, and not managed to get out of it. Altair Jones probably thinks she dragged the Angel Himself out of the Det. You think she's got family some place to bail her out?"

  "Is that why you're giving her work?" Marina asked in a small voice.

  Richard gave it a moment's thought. "We hire among the boats in our Gut, and lately her boat's been in the Gut a lot." He did not say what he'd do if Tom disappeared and Jones didn't.

  "It's not fair, Dickon. It's not fair that it turns out this way." She'd said this often enough before, but always with tears streaming down her cheeks and her voice rattling every piece of glass in the room. This time there was a hint of maturity in her whisper.

  "Didn't you listen to the cardinals when you were a child? This is Merovin, nothing's fair." That, too, was an axiom that had been shouted before, though now it was said with deprecating humor.

  "I think that in a previous life I must have been a mass murderer."

  "And the rest of us were saints," Richard added as he leaned over to give her a kiss on the forehead. "Keep telling yourself it will be all be over by sundown."

  She squirmed and pressed a hand against her belly where the child had kicked her. "Don't I wish it would all be over by sundown ..."

  Richard left Marina feeling better than he had imagined possible. He made an obligatory call to the library where Bosnou and three valets had turned Denny into a presentable, if sullen and uncomfortable, contract witness. They were about to perform the same magic on an anxious Raj.

  "I won't embarrass you or your sister, m'ser Kamat," Raj insisted.

  The valet sprayed him with cologne. "Close your eyes and don't breathe," he barked as the cloud rose inevitably upward.

  The warning came too late. Raj sneezed violently and a pomaded forelock flopped between his eyes. The problem, Richard recalled from his own youth, was not embarrassing yourself, and the solution didn't come until you were old enough, or powerful enough that your mother didn't dare tell you what to wear.

  Rank did have its privileges and Richard was ready to make use of them.

  "I'll wear the jacket," he informed his valet when he was back in his own rooms. "Put the rest back in the box and hide it."

  "Yes, m'ser Kamat. Anything else, m'ser ?"

  Richard gave the formal jacket a look Denny would have envied. "Get rid of all that lace, and the bombast. I'm not going downstairs looking like a Nev Hettek fancy-boy—"

  "But m'ser, the m'sera, your mother . . . ?"

  "Just rip it off, Ralf. By the time she sees me, it will be too late."

  "Yes, m'ser Kamat," Ralf agreed without twitching a muscle toward the offending jacket.

  "Off, Ralf, every last centimeter by the time I'm done shaving—unless you think my mother's allowance will pay your wages."

  Ralf didn't and when the menfolk of Kamat gathered in the library for inspection shortly before fifteen-thirty, Richard was the only one without lace tickling his ears. Andromeda scowled when she beheld her son.

  "Dickon . . . you don't match."

  "I look fine, as do you, Mother." Richard embraced her properly, careful not to crush the flowers on her collar.

  She shook free. "Everything was planned, Dickon, and now you don't match. What will our guests think?"

  "No one notices men at a marriage," Richard replied without revealing his honest opinions. "Everything is perfect. How is Marina?"

  Andromeda rolled her eyes. "The waist's bagging and the hips are too tight. We had to rip out the seams and sew them back around her. You'd think she was carrying twins . . ."It was the first time the thought had occurred to her. She covered her mouth. "Oh, Dickon, not twins ... the contract isn't written for twins."

  Suppressing a weary shrug, Richard put an arm around his mother's waist and guided her toward the door. "No, Mother, not twins. Doctor Jonathan would have known and told us long before this.

  Ree's going to have a single, healthy child born within the bounds of a duly empowered marriage contract. Stop worrying."

  One might as well tell the Det to flow upstream. Richard spotted Alpha Morgan, Andromeda's personal maid, hovering at the end of the hall. Richard's affection for the stern old Adventist was tied to her ability to keep his mother on an even keel; today he loved her. "Find my mother something harmless to fuss over," he whispered.

  "We've done the flowers five times over," Alpha Morgan replied. "An' the kitchen. It was you or your sister ..."

  "What about the parlor? Can't she rearrange the gifts?"

  The maid-servant brightened. "Endlessly," she agreed. She turned to Andromeda. "I saw more boxes arrive in the vestibule, m'sera. Do you think we can trust that clod Ashe to put them in their proper places?"

  Andromeda's expression was eloquent. The two women headed for the parlor where an unconscionable number of expensive trinkets was arrayed under the watchful eye of Ashe and two other burly men. Richard rejoined the other men. They had Raj in Takahashi crimson with deep blue lace hanging past his knuckles. The young groom was muttering and his eyes were tightly closed. He'd committed the entire contract to memory, not trusting himself to find, much less read, his portion when the time came. Richard could think of nothing to say that would reassure Raj, so he opened the nearest book.

  He read and reread the same poem until it had, despite everything, wedged itself in his memory.

  Denny was eating his way from one end of the buffet table to the other; Raj ran to the close-closet and came out paler than a corpse. Reaching into his pocket, Richard flicked the catch on his repeater watch. A little hammer struck the case four times; he frowned. The repeater, which used the ancient meridian system for convenience, told him only that it was after the sixteenth hour and before the seventeenth. Usually that was all the time a man of Merovin needed to measure, but not today.

  He paced to the balcony. The clouds that had hovered beyond the harbor since dawn were gaining height and growing darker. There'd be rain before midnight; there might be rain in the next hour. A small crowd milled outside the mid-level door waiting for a share of the largesse. Kamat's reputation would suffer if delays within the house overlapped with rain outside it. Of course, there were other delays that could damage their reputation even more. . . .

  "Sit down, buko," Great Uncle Bosnou commanded. "Your pacing makes the rest of us worse."

  In the moment while Richard framed a terse reply, the bell above his office finally began to ring. Marina had left her room. It was time for Kamat to assemble for the ceremony.

  Andromeda Kamat's great design began with the sounds of a hidden string octet. Those fortunate enough to have an invitation crowded into the vestibule and halls. The luckiest of the uninvited jammed the doorway. All eyes focused on the broad landing where the parchment contract overflowed a small podium. Two liveried servants brought in the banners of Merovingen and the blue ram of Kamat.

  After hanging them where they would block no one's view, they took their positions at the base of the staircase.

  Traditional protocol brought the host family in from the left and the guest family from the right, but as Takahashi was represented by Denny and the g
room against some two dozen Kamat scions, Andromeda made a less traditional division by gender. The deviation not only allowed her to balance the numbers on either side of the podium, but made it possible to slip Cardinal Willa Exeter and Mikhail Kalugin onto the landing without drawing unwanted attention to their presence.

  Marriage was a family affair, but a marriage contract wasn't ironclad until the proper civil and spiritual authorities witnessed it. Ordinarily it did not matter if hours, days, or even weeks elapsed between the signing above the seals and those below. This contract was not ordinary; everyone who was privy to Kamat's secrets, or Tom Mondragon's secrets, recognized the possibility of a messy challenge down the line. Exeter came of her own free will; Mischa came because the cardinal had her favorites among the Kalugins. Anastasi stood with the other guests in the foyer; Iosef claimed a last minute attack of gout; Tatiana was nowhere to be seen.

  Raj's trembling made the brocade of his jacket shimmer in the sunlight while Denny, who'd made them all so nervous, soaked up everything like a well-behaved sponge. The music stopped when Bosnou braced his hands on the podium. The house was silent except for the distant tolling of its bell.

  Whatever Bosnou thought of Merovingen or fancy clothes, it was clear he loved marriage contracts. He recited the Kamat ancestry so the least canal-rat waiting for the largesse outside the door could hear each name clearly. He called for the grantor of the contract, and beamed with pride when Marina made her way to the landing.

  "My Angel's-daughter!" He helped her down the last few steps.

  Andromeda had worked wizardry with satin and lace. At a first or second glance no one noticed the precipitous bulge below Marina's waist. They noticed her uncertainty, the trembling of her hand as it rested on her uncle's arm. But that was nothing unusual. The most promiscuous sower of wild oats confronted that first marriage contract with trepidation: the assumption of adult responsibilities was implicit in the signature.

  Bosnou returned to the script. He called upon Richard to give Kamat's assent; he called on Deneb Takahashi to attest Raj's legitimacy with the Nev Hettek house. Richard could not help but notice wide-eyed stares on the faces of those who thought they knew the name of every skeleton in Merovingen. Denny had no trouble until he came to his mother's name which brought a quaver to his voice. If it meant the boy gained some understanding of who, and what, he was, even that boded well.

  So far as anyone could tell, Raj said everything he was supposed to say, exactly as he was supposed to say it. Bosnou nodded, at least, when the youth was finished, and he was the only one who could possibly have heard him. The quill pen dropped a huge blot on the parchment the moment he lifted it.

  "Don't worry," Great Uncle Bosnou said, letting his sleeve absorb the excess. "Take a deep breath. Take your time." It was wasted advice. Raj's signature was illegible—another reason to have Exeter and Kalugin close by. "Now turn around and face everyone."

  Raj could not have looked less happy if he'd faced the noose on Hanging Bridge. He was numb from the navel down. His eyes were watery. Then something by the door caught his attention. It took a moment to recognize a neated-up Jones waving a foil-wrapped marriage gift. Jones! And behind her, looking neither sullen nor happy, Tom himself!

  The tension drained from Raj's neck and shoulders. He could feel his knees again, they hadn't turned to jelly. But—damn—his eyes got all cloudy again when he heard Marina read her lines.

  ". . . It is my free given will that Rigel Takahashi be my marriage partner until one child is born between us and for so long thereafter as we do both consent." She took up the quill and signed her name with an audible flourish. "Marina Melora Cassirer Kamat."

  She joined Raj at the edge of the landing. She did not resist when Raj took her ice-cold hand in his. She did not seem to notice him at all—or anyone else despite the slow rotation of her head from the left to the right.

  Bosnou read the text of the contract: the rights and the obligations of the signatories to each and their respective families to each other and to their offspring for the duration of the contract and through karma to eternity. It omitted significant details—like the alum mordants Takahashi promised Kamat—and dwelt for several interminable clauses on the unlikelihood of Marina's barrenness.

  Raj's thoughts wandered to the future; Marina's gaze wandered toward the front door. She let out a shriek that actually shook the chandelier. It was a primal sound full of fear, rage, and blackest hate. Jones knew it for what it was, and that it was directed at her. She was gone before the sound had died away. Tom understood when he felt her leave. Raj understood when he saw Tom's expression and the emptiness where Jones had been. No one else had a clue.

  Marina screamed a second time, an equally primal sound of pain that stopped as suddenly as it began. She grabbed her bulging abdomen, lost her balance, and collapsed headlong down the stairs.

  The Angel of Merovingen looked after drunks, fools, and Marina Kamat. Her thrashing and sobbing confirmed that she hurt, but they also confirmed that she was alive. Anastasi Kalugin, at whose feet she'd wound up, was among the first to recover. He barked at the honor guard who pushed the guests back while he helped Marina into a more comfortable position. Richard shouted for a doctor.

  In other circumstances—out in the swamp or down along the canal—Raj might have come forward. It was not, however, professional discretion that kept him rooted on the landing carpet, but stunned disbelief. His eyes watched his wife move; his brain said she hadn't hurt herself badly; but his emotions simply screamed that he'd failed to protect her. Since Raj was ashamed of himself, he interpreted the wet smear on the back panel of Marina's costume shamefully, as well. Several moments passed before he understood that it signified something entirely different.

  "Her water's broken," Doctor Jonathan confirmed the moment he reached her. "Get the midwives. Get her out of that thing and start boiling water."

  The midwives were quite willing to deliver the baby right there at the foot of the stairs in front of the highest and lowest members of Merovingen society. Marina had other ideas. She used the doctor's cravat to haul herself upright. A contraction brought her to her knees, but not before she'd grabbed the banister. She dragged herself and one of the mid-wives up two steps before Richard gave the order to have her carried to the library.

  "She's gone into labor ..." Raj murmured to no one in particular. "We didn't even finish the wedding. ..."

  All who heard him lapsed into silence.

  "... Before the contract was proclaimed . . ." Raj was miserable, wallowing in his own sense of failure, with no inkling of what he was actually saying. ". . . I might as well not have signed at . . ."

  Raj's soliloquy ended abruptly as Richard hauled him back up the stairs. "Finish the ceremony," he commanded his great uncle.

  Bosnou shrugged and gestured toward the men carrying his Angel's-daughter from the foyer. This sort of complication simply did not happen on a well-run stancia, but for that very reason he did not argue. Clearing his throat he returned to the unfinished paragraph. " 'Whereas the purpose of marriage is the procreation of healthy children of known ancestry—' "

  "—This is outrageous. A travesty. An affront to all decent people and decent marriages." In a virtually unprecedented display of self-assertion, Mikhail Kalugin tore the parchment from Bosnou's hands. "It's not legitimate. I won't have any part of it."

  Some people watched the faint smile on the face of Mischa's younger and very ambitious brother, Anastasi. Some people watched the tight brows of Mischa's patron, Cardinal Willa Exeter. One or two caught the disbelief on Richard Kamat's face. But no one in his right mind spared a glance for Mischa.

  "I witnessed Marina Kamat give a willful consent," Anastasi said in a silken voice. "That's what matters, isn't it? The Signeury shouldn't have a problem accepting the contract." He was looking at the cardinal; he didn't need to look at Richard Kamat.

  Exeter wasn't in as tight a corner as Kamat, unless she gave weight to all the mercantile
househeads waiting for her next words. Kamat and its ilk could accommodate any orthodoxy, so long as it did not impinge on the truly sacred—and for a merchant only trade and contracts were truly sacred. Quash the Kamat-Takahashi contract, a contract she'd known from the beginning was strictly trade, and she'd have the Clockmaker's support. Quash Mischa and she might as well climb in bed with Anastasi.

  "Marina had given her consent," she reminded Mischa, playing on his sentimentality. "Even now, she thinks the marriage is valid. She thinks the child will be within the lines. Would you deny her that?"

  Mischa crushed the parchment. "Within the lines! The ink's not dry on the lines."

  "A second contract child takes nine months," Richard took up Exeter's cause. He'd pay Anastasi's price, but not if he could get Mischa for nothing.

  "The first born is when God wills it. That's the law, m'ser Kalugin."

  They didn't call him m'ser Kalugin very much: Mikhail, Mischa, Clockmaker, and worse—those were the names he heard most often. He rather liked the difference . . . the deference.

  "The law's not right," m'ser Kalugin replied almost reluctantly.

  "You can change the law when you're governor," Willa whispered. "But first you must become governor."

  The standoff ended wordlessly as Mischa spread the wrinkled parchment across the podium. He signed and passed the pen to Exeter. "The laws must tell the truth," he said as she dipped the quill in the ink.

  Cardinal Exeter didn't comment on the likelihood of that happening any time soon—not with Anastasi an arm's length away and grinning like a cat.

  "A marriage!" Bosnou Kamat shouted, lifting the battered parchment for all to see. "A girl!" echoed back from the stairwell.

  There were cheers, there was laughter. There was largesse in the form of penny-cake and largesse in the form of mutton. There was the restrained music of Andromeda's string octet, and the far more infectious music of the stancia. There was a thunderstorm of appropriate proportions which instead of dampening the celebration simply concentrated it— along with the mutton and the cake—within the house.