A Merovingian boat. Magruder's custody. Damn. Jones. . . .
It all came back in a rush. He tried to get up. He couldn't. That was no dream. Exeter's henchmen. The Justiciary basement.
Constant interrogation. . . .
The boat started. He tried to watch where it was going. Magruder's custody. He was seeing double when he saw anything distinguishable at all in the night.
"What—" It was a croak lost in the roar of the
engine.
A shape came toward him. A face peered down. "You say something?" Magruder's face.
"What do you mean, I'm in your custody?"
"You're released, pretty much cleared of charges, but on probation. We used a diplomatic immunity ploy. You're officially an employee of the Nev Hettek government. Congratulations."
The cynical humor in Magruder's voice chilled Mondragon so that he began to shiver uncontrollably.
The blurry Magruder went away and came back with a blanket and a tin mug of something hot. When he tasted it, it was tea.
He had to hold it in both hands. "Jones?"
"Not my problem."
"I need to know if she's—"
"You need some sleep. Food. Medical attention. Then we'll worry about your girl."
Richard would have taken care of her. Richard would have. "What's this going to cost me, Magruder?"
"Everything. Your soul. Your allegiance. Maybe your life. Got any complaints?" "What else?"
"Things are too unsettled here for me to talk to you now, with you in this kind of shape. We've owned to you. You, they say, have owned to us. It won't be so bad. No worse than you've been enduring. A little information here, a little there—"
"What else is new?" Mondragon muttered.
Magruder didn't answer. But something was new. He was alive again, free again—but free under Magruder's supervision. And that was very new, and very unsettling.
But maybe it would be all right. When you came out of prison, everything looked black. He remembered that from the last time. And in the truly black Merovingen night, with the moon setting, black was at its blackest.
"I don't like those shakes of yours," Magruder said after a while. "I'm going to have Dani look at you."
Dani. Danielle Lambert. "No. I'm fine. Just underfed and overexcited." "And scared to death," Magruder said softly, and squeezed his arm in wordless comfort.
That was the thing that always threw you about Magruder: when he wasn't being a bastard, he could be a nice guy.
Or make you think so. And Mondragon wanted to think so. Even though his mind knew that Magruder was trying to gain his confidence, Mondragon wanted to confide in someone. He needed someone right now. He needed to sleep without worrying about where he'd awake. He needed to eat without worrying about what was in his food— truth drugs or poisons or worms.
And he needed to gain back his strength. If what Chance said was really true, and Mondragon was officially recognized as a Nev Hetteker under the protection of the embassy in Merovingen, then everything was changed.
There might be some hope for him after all. As long as he could keep Magruder happy, that is.
And how long would that be, when Magruder was here fomenting a revolution and needed information badly?
Well, spying was what had kept Mondragon afloat in Merovingen this long.
He'd have to find a way to keep doing it. There was always a way to survive, he told himself. He could play one faction against the other here for years, he told himself. If Magruder wanted him dead, he'd have been dead by now, he told himself.
But he couldn't encompass all the changes that had come to pass while he'd been imprisoned. He sat in the bottom of Magruder's boat and shook. He was sure he had a fever.
Magruder was, too. He didn't protest when the big man helped him out of the boat, or when he was hustled into the embassy by the back door.
And there, waiting for him with her physician's bag in hand, was Dani Lambert.
The shock of seeing her was almost enough to convince Mondragon that he was still hallucinating, that he was back in his cell in Nev Hettek, and all this—everything he'd thought had happened in Merovingen—was a figment of a prisoner's imagination.
But Dani was no figment. Her strong, cool, sure hands took hold of his face. Her lips tightened, and orders for his comfort came out of them.
And Tom Mondragon finally relaxed: Magruder might be an expedientist and a sometimes-enemy, but Dani was the best of them all, had always been the best of them.
"What—what are you doing here?" he managed.
"Ssh," she said. "You just rest. Everything's going to be all right."
And he believed her. You had to believe Dani, or else stop believing in the human race altogether.
When the revolution had been a real ethical movement, Dani had been all of their best parts. Somehow, seeing her here, feeling her hands on him, looking into her clear eyes full of empathy, he knew he could sleep without fear, even under Magruder's roof.
"But, for Retribution's sake, why didn't Exeter release him back to Kamat?" Vega Boregy wanted to know.
Cassie didn't understand the question. She didn't know what to answer. She and Mischa had just been . . . talking.
Mikhail Kalugin was toying with one of the watches he'd made. It was as large as a cookie, held on his wrist by a strap. And the man no one but Cassie thought was smart said, "Probably because someone pulled a string somewhere. That's the way it goes, isn't it?"
Cassie's father had his hair pulled back in a club. They were in his office. She didn't want to be here. She wanted to go to her room, see Baby Belle, and perhaps have just a little deathangel before she went to sleep. She had to hide the deathangel from Michael, of course, but she hid so much from her husband these days, what was one more fib?
Michael had been someone named Mickey in his regression, when he was warrior against the sharrh. Mikhail was Mischa to her, now that he was a warrior against the evil forces of revolution and his horrid brother and sister who were driving Merovingen toward the vision of fiery retribution that Cassie had seen.
She wanted to go hold Belle. She stood up: "Daddy; Mischa and I just came over to see the baby ..."
"Sit down!" her father thundered.
She sat, beside Mischa in one of the two chairs facing Vega's desk. Her father wasn't sitting behind his desk, he was pacing behind it, hands clasped in front of him.
"Cassie, Mikhail: there's been a murder in this house tonight. And a robbery."
"Oh!" Her hand flew to her mouth. Her heart nearly stopped. "Belle? Is Belle—"
"Your daughter's fine. One of the retainers, that's all. But down at the water-gate. Whoever Titled your rooms was an insider. That person must have been surprised by the water-gate boatman, and that's why the boatman was murdered."
"You've notified the proper authorities, of course," said Mikhail.
"Your sister? Of course the blacklegs have been informed. But we're concerned, Cassie. We're concerned about what might have been taken from your rooms."
"What might have been taken?" She didn't understand.
"When you became engaged to Michael Chamoun— his gift to you. Do you still have it, to your knowledge?" Her father's face was even paler than usual as he came around to stand before her, arms crossed, leaning on his desk. "You didn't happen to throw it away, did you?"
"The flash—"
"Don't say it." Vega looked over both shoulders. "I'm no longer sure that the house is secure. The gift. Did you, to your knowledge, still possess it?"
"Yes, of course." She was embarrassed, and uncomfortable. She never liked to talk about Michael in Mischa's hearing. Mikhail was so . . . sensitive. Mikhail was her devoted lover. Mikhail never criticized her the way Michael did. Michael didn't even love their baby as much as Mischa did. . . .
"Good," said her father. Mikhail was looking between her and Vega. "Cassie, are you in trouble? Vega, is she in trouble? I can help—"
"That's why we're so g
lad you're here right now, Mikhail. I think we can use all the help we can get with this. If you'll both come up to Cassie's bedroom while she finds the betrothal gift, perhaps we'll be lucky." As he spoke, he was shepherding them out of his study. "Perhaps the gift will be where Cassie last put it. Perhaps this is all a false alarm, to shake the tree and see if any overripe fruit should fall."
"Fruit?" Mikhail followed Vega up the staircase, a puzzled look on his face. "Cassie, m'ser Chamoun gave you fruit for a betrothal gift?"
"No. Mischa. Not fruit. A—"
"A figure of speech," her father interrupted. Vega was always interrupting her these days, except when she was prophesying.
Just tonight, she'd given Mikhail a private audience and tried to prophesy the wonderful future he saw for them both, with him at Merovingen's helm and her by his side and Baby Belle between them, but she'd had to force it. The vision she saw wasn't the vision Mischa wanted to have described to him.
It always made her sad to force a vision into some predetermined mold. But she'd done it, for Mikhail.
Someday, if things went well, Mikhail might be Belle's new father. Surely, if her husband kept behaving in so dastardly a fashion, Mikhail could find a way to save her from the misery of her marriage.
On that they were both agreed.
"What's happening, Vega?" Mikhail asked as they topped the landing. "Tell me what's wrong."
"I don't know what's wrong," said her father, rounding on them both. "Tonight has held a murder, the release of Mondragon into Nev Hetteker care for reasons I don't believe and only half understand, and a purported burglary. Whether the burglary is serious will determine the rest."
"What rest?" said Mikhail, who put an arm around Cassie's waist protectively, where her father -could see. The gesture thrilled her.
Vega scowled at it. "Cassie, let's find it."
Slipping free of Mikhail, she went dutifully into her room to get the flashlight. She'd never bothered to truly hide it. It wasn't in one of her good hiding places, the way her deathangel was. She didn't have to hide the flashlight from Michael Chamoun—he'd given it to her.
As she was reaching for it in a drawer with her underthings. she said, "I don't know why you're so worried, Daddy. It's right— Oh."
And she looked harder, but she couldn't find it.
And then Vega said, "So it's gone," and sat down on her bed as if he were a balloon and someone had let his air out.
"I still don't understand."
"I've had an enquiry about Cassie's being in possession of illegal technology—a Nev Hetteker battery-operated device." He shook his head. "Damn Exeter, anyway. We can always say that the flashlight wasn't illegal when Cassie accepted it. . . ."
"Illegal?" Cassie asked wondcringly, as she straightened up empty-handed. The flashlight was truly gone. She knew where she'd put it and it definitely wasn't there.
"Flashlight?" said Mikhail Kalugin, his glance flickering from her face to her father's. "Exeter? What has Cardinal Exeter to do with—"
"If she arrests Cassie, Mikhail, I expect you to use all your influence to make sure that my daughter never sets foot in the basement of the Justiciary."
"The Justiciary! That's unthinkable," Mikhail demurred. "Willa Exeter is a good woman. My friend. I'll go speak to her—"
"Your friend?" Vega looked up, his face a mass of lines. "If she's your friend, then you're safe. But she's no one else's friend. She's tearing Merovingen apart. So don't be so sure she's your friend, Mikhail."
"She is." He crossed his arms.
Cardinal Exeter, Mischa had told Cassie, was paving his way to become Iosef's successor, uniting the old families. . . . "Mikhail, you promised that our family would be among the ones that the cardinal—"
"I know what I promised. I'm going to see her. This whole thing has gone too far." He came to Cassie and took her in his arms right in front of Vega. He kissed the top of her head. "Don't you worry, little truth-seer. No one's going to hurt you. Nor your family."
He looked over her head at Vega. "M'ser, take my word for it. Your daughter will be safe if I must stand bodily between her and any agents of the inquisition."
"Good," said Vega Boregy with a nod of his head. "That's just what I wanted to hear."
Tatiana and Anastasi greeted the sunrise together on her balcony. Neither had slept all night. Their agents had been in and out with reports.
The last report, one of Mikhail going into Exeter's office and shouting at her so loudly that half the words had been heard through the cardinal's stout door, was cause for celebration.
Anastasi kissed her on the cheek and bowed low, toward a table set with flaky pastries and fresh eggs and fish. "Breakfast, sister? I do think we've earned it."
"After you, brother. And I dare say, yes, we did.
The inquisition may not be over, but it's lost its head of steam. Mischa will never trust that woman again, and with the Boregy girl's future in the balance, Mikhail will not bend an inch. The fool."
"So," said Anastasi, pouring her tea. "A toast, then, to business as usual and Merovingen's future under our rulership."
"A toast," Tatiana agreed, sitting down and feeling the revolver she still wore jab her flank as she did. They were going to carve a new alliance together that would solidify their gains of the evening. Alliances came and went. Neither of them was such a fool as to think that anything lasted forever.
When Exeter was a memory, there'd be time to worry about whether Tatiana or her brother would prevail and rule in Iosef's stead. Now was not that time. Now was the time to make sure that Mikhail was never, ever considered a serious contender for Merovingen power again.
They had Wilia Exeter on the run. She clinked her teacup against her brother's and sipped the winey brew. Even if it had taken so extreme a measure as giving Mondragon, and all his information, into Magruder's care, they had done it.
Now, all they had to do was get Mondragon back out of the Nev Hetteker's clutches, and things would be as they most preferred them in Merovingen.
It would serve Magruder right, to find out he'd been used while he was trying to manipulate her. And it would serve Anastasi right, to find himself indebted to Magruder.
And, when the next few rolls of the dice were tossed, Tatiana would find herself just where she'd wanted to be, all along: with an edge on her brother in the deadly game they played.
And if gaining that edge had cost her a faithless lover, then what of it? Power was always lonely.
But power was what she wanted. And she would have it, by and by.
Dani was finished tending to Mondragon and lying on the little daybed in the embassy's third guest room when a knock came on the door.
She started guiltily. She should have gone back to Boregy House by now, but she was just too tired. Worse, she didn't want to go. Little Hope, her baby, was in good hands at Boregy House.
But Dani wasn't. Every time she saw that stupid drugged-out cow, Cassie Boregy, pick up Hope and croon to her and call her Baby Belle, Dani wanted to vomit, or throw something at Cassie, or take her baby and run.
But where did you run to, from here? Merovingen was the end of the earth, the bunghole of civilization, the bastion of what Karl called the "Fundies": the fundamentalists.
She couldn't run back to Nev Hettek with her daughter, Hope, not when Karl had sent her down here to do a specific job. She couldn't run out on the revolution and its leader. Not with her baby. Not anywhere that Karl wouldn't find her.
Find her and kill them both, if she did that. Karl Fon was a long-term planner. In fifteen years or so, when Dani was old and wizened, somebody would knock on the door of Boregy House and Belle Boregy, heir to Vega's empire, would be told that her father wasn't Michael Chamoun at all, but Karl Fon, liberator of Nev Hettek.
By then, if the revolution wasn't already a complete success, they'd have an agent in place to make it so. If Dani took Belle/Hope out now, the very least that would happen was Dani's capture and the baby's return.
<
br /> Magruder himself would see to that.
The knock came again. This time, louder, more urgent. Knock-knock. Knock-knock-knockknock-knock.
Damn, she'd forgotten all about the fact that somebody needed to get in here.
That person tried the door she'd locked so she could get some rest, summon up the courage to go back to Boregy House, and play the professional physician to her only begotten child.
It sucked. She'd never thought it would hurt so much. As she got up to unlock the door, colored lights played at the edges of her vision, spiraling inward: fatigue signs. She'd better get some serious sleep or she was going to pass out, one of these times she stood up too fast. She'd never really rested up from her own pregnancy.
And damn the pregnancy, too.
Damn Karl and Chance and damn them all. You couldn't liberate these Merovingians from their superstitions, which meant you couldn't liberate them at all. Karl hadn't realized that, even when he came down here to take a look. He was too focused on his goal.
Magruder probably knew but didn't care: Magruder forced issues, that was his way. If you were unrecep-tive, stubborn, or hostile, he pushed harder. He always found a way. Dani could attest to that.
She stumbled on a carpet badly laid, and then turned the key in the lock and pulled open the door.
"Chance! I'm sorry. I just meant to take a short nap ..." The look on his face stopped her cold.
Her blood rushed to her head. She slumped against the door, too tired for the adrenaline flooding her system to do more than dizzy her and make her pant. "What is it now? What's wrong?" she nearly gasped.
She must catch her breath.
He looked her up and down and shook his head. "You're a mess, you know that?"
"Screw you, Chance."
"You liked it that well the last time?"
"What's wrong?" she said again.
"Tatiana wants to see us."
"Tatiana Kalugin? Wants to see us? I don't even know—"
"Wants to see you, which means us."
"But, why?" Oh, her heart knew why. Her soul knew why. She took hold of the door's edge with both hands and leaned against it, waiting for him to answer.
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