Festival Moon

by C. J. Cherryh

  "Then it's been too long. Small wonder you're falling at my feet. That's reserved for women, you know."

  As Raj tried to adjust to the fact that he'd just made a joke, Mondragon busied himself at the table again, and turned around with fish stuffed into a roll. Raj stared at it as though it was alive, not taking it.

  "Go on, eat—" Mondragon pried one of Raj's hands off the mug, pressed the roll into it. "Rigel—"

  Raj looked up to meet his eyes squarely. And the eyes were warm, like the sea on a sunny day, and the little, amused smile was reflected in them.

  Lord and Ancestors, they were saved. Raj's head spun—this time with relief.

  "About the Gallandrys—"

  Raj took a tiny bite of bread, swallowed around a lump in his throat, and began.

  "You've got a bloody lot of gall, Mondragon—" When Raj had finished telling Mondragon all he knew and most he guessed, and when his knees could hold him upright again, Mondragon had chivied them across to Gallandry (Denny, for once, looking appropriately apprehensive) and brought them into Gallandry proper. Though those that had let them in hadn't been at all pleased with his being there.

  They'd been brought in through a water-door, down long, unlit halls of wood and stone, and finally into a room piled with ledgers and lit so brightly Raj was blinking tears back.

  Now they fronted a man Mondragon called by name, and that man was coldly angry.

  "Granted. However, I'm not the only one standing here with an unpaid debt and a broken promise. These boys are Takahashi. Rigel and Deneb Takahashi."

  Raj had rarely seen words act so powerfully on someone. The man's anger faded into guilt, visible even to him.

  "I've brought them here," Mondragon continued deliberately, "—so that we can all even some scales. You made a promise to Elder Takahashi, and didn't keep it. I—lost you some personnel. Both these kids are useful—"

  Now the man looked skeptical, as if he doubted Mondragon's ability to judge much of anything.

  "M'ser," Denny piped up,"—ye've used me, I know.

  Ask yer front-office people. I'm a runner—a good one. Don't take bribes, I'm fast—"

  "You could take him on as staff runner, and train him for bargework as he grows into it. And the older boy clerks," Mondragon continued.

  "You don't expect me to take that on faith—"

  Raj took a deep breath and interrupted. "Set me a problem, m'ser. Nothing easy. You'll see."

  The man sniffed derisively, then rattled off something fast; a complicated calculation involving glass bottles—cost, expected breakage, transportation and storage, all ending with the question of how much to ask for each in order to achieve a twenty-percent profit margin.

  Raj closed his eyes, went into his calculating-trance, and presented him with the answer quickly enough to leave him with a look of surprise on his face.

  "Well!" said the man. "For once—I don't suppose he can write, too?"

  Mondragon had that funny little smile again. "Give him something to write with." He seemed to be enjoying the man's discomfiture.

  Raj was presented with a pencil and an old bill of lading—he appropriated a ledger to write on, and promptly recopied the front onto the back, and in a much neater hand.

  "You win," the man said with resignation. "Why don't you tell me exactly what's been going on—and how you managed to resurrect these two?"

  Mondragon just smiled.

  The man took Mondragon off somewhere, returning after a bit with a troubled look and a bundle which he handed to Denny.

  "You, boy—I want you here at opening time sharp, and in this uniform. And you're not Takahashi anymore, you're—Diaz; you're close enough to the look. Got that?"

  Denny took the bundle soberly. "Yes, m'ser."

  "As for you—" Raj tried not to sway with fatigue, but the man saw it anyway, "—you're out on your feet—no good to anyone until you get some rest.

  Besides, two new kids in one day—hard to explain. You get fed—and clean, real clean. We have a reputation to maintain. And get that hair taken care of. I want you here in two days. With those eyes—you're no Diaz. Make it—uh—Tai. I don't suppose you'd rather be sent back to your family? They'd be glad to have you."

  "No m'ser," Raj replied adamantly. "I won't put danger on them. Bad enough it's on me."

  The man shook his head. "Lord and Ancestors— you're a fool, boy, but a brave one. Right enough— now get out of here. Before I remember, I'm not a fool."

  Mondragon escorted them to the door, stopping them just inside it.

  "This wasn't free—" he told Raj quietly. "M'ser, I know that, m'ser."

  "Just so we both know. I'm going to be calling in this debt—calling in all those things you promised me. I may call it in so often you wish you'd never thought of coming to me."

  "M'ser Mondragon," Raj replied, looking him full in the eyes, "I owe you. And I can't ever pay it all."

  Because you had us in your hand, said his look, And you didn't kill us—when you had every right and reason to—and then you went over the line to help us. I know it, and you know it. I don't know why you did it, but I owe you.

  "Well.. . ." Mondragon seemed slightly embarrassed by the intensity of that stare. "They say the one who wins is the one left standing, so by all counts you came out of this a winner. Be grateful—and remember to keep your mouth shut."

  Raj figured that was the best advice he'd had in a long time.

  Denny hauled Raj back to Rif and Rat before taking him "home." The Raj that came from their hands was much shorter of hair by a foot or two; and a bit darker of complexion—not to mention a lot cleaner and with a good hot breakfast in his stomach. It wasn't quite dawn when he and his brother descended to the bottom of the dry air-shaft on Fife that Denny had made his home. Denny gave him a pair of blankets to roll up in, and he was sleeping the sleep of the exhausted before Denny had gotten into his store clothes. Denny smiled to himself, a smile warm and content with the world, and set to one last task before heading back to Gallandry.

  He pried up a particular board in the bottom of the shaft, felt around until he located the little bag he had hung there, and pulled it out. Jones was bound to hear of this—and he reckoned he'd better have a peace-offering. And there was that scarf he'd taken off that duelist to prove to Rif he was able.

  After the Gallandrys let him go for the day, he waited under Fishmarket Bridge, knowing she'd be by. When he spotted her, he swung down to hang from the support by his knees.

  He whistled. She looked up.

  "Yo—Jones—" he called. "Peace, huh? Truce? Okay? Here's something for sorrys." He'd knotted a pebble into one corner of the scarf—and it was a nice one; silk, bright red. He dropped it neatly at her feet, and scrambled back up before she could get over her surprise. With Jones it was a good idea to get out of line-of-sight and find out about reactions later.

  Besides—he warmed to the thought—he had to get back home. His family was waiting.

  FESTIVAL MOON (REPRISED)

  CJ. Cherryh

  Jones carefully tucked the skip up in the midnight shadow of Princeton Low Bridge, on the backside of Ventani. Meritt warehouse was to shore on the one hand; and a papermill on the right, not an interesting neighborhood for Festival celebrants or foot traffic on the low bridges. Boats with lanterns glided past on the canals to either end. This was dark, inky dark, where she snagged a bridge timber with the boathook, and drew close.

  There was a low odd whistle. A shadow unfolded itself out of the bridge supports and a weight dropped lightly onto the well-slats.

  "That you?"

  Thump.

  "Damn," Mondragon said softly, and tackle went rattling off across the slats. "What's this junk?"

  "Hey, this here ain't no fancyboat." She squatted down on the halfdeck, holding them steady with the boathook locked in knees and arms, toes flexing as the skip bobbed against the hook-hold and the motion of old Det shoving at them. "Turn up anything?"

  "Nothin
g I was looking for." The boat rocked to a new motion as he worked aft and came up closer, to stand bracing them against a bridge timber. "Fish won't take the bait. I think they know."

  "Good! Maybe they suddenly got sense."

  "Take me home." "You gone crazy?" "Home."

  "Now, why don't I just run ye out to Megary, go knock on the door and ask 'em take you in?" "I can walk."

  "Ye can damn well use sense! If you ain't heard nothing, it's because they heard your Friend is into it. You got Her and Him stalking each other round and round now, is what, and what they're looking for ain't stirring, no way they move in on that."

  "Move the damn boat, Jones. We're up against shore."

  Noise, the man meant. She unhooked and pushed, ran the hook-pole butt out end down and stood up, poling out from under the bridge-shadow as her passenger sat down, a blackness up against the hidey entry, his arm on the halfdeck under her feet.

  Around Ventani and into Margrave East, under Coffin Bridge and out onto the Grand, where Festival lights spilled gold and red and green onto the inky waters, and the Angel watched with sword half-drawn.

  Fools, Angel, fools, two of us, right here in this skip, enough to set the Retribution back a hundred years. "Home," he said.

  "You just been kidnapped," she said. "I got you, you ain't going nowhere till you got better sense. You ain't going nowhere near Petrescu—less you drink Det water doing it."

  "Jones, don't be an ass."

  "I ain't. I ain't taking you where they can get you."

  "And where do we hide? Kalugin pays my rent, dammit, and it's Tatiana's bullylads he's scared off us. Where do we hide from him, when the money runs out? You think he'd drop me? You think he'd let me slip?"

  "He ain't asking ye to commit suicide! Ye go out in public, ye sit in the bars where we got friends, ye wait for Lord knows what—that's one thing. But it ain't your fault if there ain't nothing going to try, if it's a fish going to spit out the bait—ye don't got t'go swimming with the sherks!"

  "And when do I go home, now?" he asked softly. "When do I go—now, when we have Anastasi's attention—or later, when Festival dies down? When I have to live there and wait? No, Jones. Anastasi didn't just happen into this. He knows something he isn't saying. He's onto something. He wants me for bait—we're not alone out here. Take me home. Let's do what he says—stir the water, and see what surfaces. The word is out—in some places. I know that much. Justiciary may not know. But it's out. And if they're going to move, I want it face-on. Hear me? Not at my back, three months from now."

  Her gut hurt. She missed a stroke with the pole. "He don't want to lose you."

  "No. He doesn't. But coin's for spending, isn't it?"

  "I dunno."

  "You want help poling?" "Yey."

  SWORD PLAY

  Janet & Chris Morris

  The sword is drawn, slow clearing its scabbard, but drawn nonetheless, riverboat captain Michael Chamoun thought as his pilot steered the great boat toward its New Harbor slip at Rimmon Bridge past the statue of the lesser angel standing guard over the harbor, toward the trellised town beyond. Coming into Merovingen in sunset, two nights before 24th Harvest, everything seemed fraught with meaning to Chamoun.

  Especially the angel, whom the Revenantists called Michael. His angel, his namesake. They shared the name, if not the stock the Revenantists put in it. Ain't nothin, ain't squat, Michael Chamoun told himself, spread-legged on the poop above his captain's quarters in the gilt-edged dusk, letting the pungent wind buffet him.

  They'd come past Rimmon Isle, home of the Nikolaevs, who had their fingers in the Revenantist College and the Signeury, both. Deep waters, there. That passage had brought him out onto the deck and kept him there, it had, chasing his ghosts and his hopes, fending off notice and questions from his pilot's boy. He'd outright stared up at the Rimmon Isle houses, ignoring the bustle on the main deck of his crowded boat, the Detfish, as if none of it existed. Because it didn't, not when he passed Rimmon, where the Nikolaev family lived; where the Nikolaev girl, Revenantist and forbidden, lived: Rita Nikolaev, Revenantist, devout, off-limits and out of bounds.

  "Michael? Like the Angel back home in Merovingen", Rita had said to him delightedly, that day five-odd years ago, in Nev Hettek at the inauguration ceremony for the present governor, Karl Fon. Then she'd smiled like salvation, this girl-woman, adding gravely, "Touch my hand, Michael, for luck. My karma's improving. . .." When he'd done that she'd fled, giggling, into the crowd of uptowners and foreigners. A Revenantist, a ghost, a forbidden nymph who was by now probably prematurely aged with child-bearing, fat and ugly like some contented cow.

  Wherever she was now, then she'd been above his station—a hightowner from a political Merovingian house, and a Revenantist to boot, who worried about her personal Karma—entanglements to her future lives.

  But he'd taken this trip because he might see her at the end of it, no matter the dangers, no matter the difficulties.

  And if he saw her, so what? The Revenantists think the Angel is named Michael. I'm Michael Chamoun, a Nev Hetteker Adventist, he reminded himself. If I weren't what else I am, it would still be impossible. Her family's patroned by Anastasi Kalugin same as Boregy, and you'll not be popular with Kalugins of any degree if you screw around with both, Michael boy, Romanov had told him.

  Not popular by a long shot, if he took too heavy a hand, or missed his cues; not when Anastasi Kalugin, youngest and most militant of the governor's three children, had certain families in his pocket; not when Anastasi was about to be confirmed as "advocate militiar"—chief justice for Merovingen's entire military justice system, including the blackleg militia. Not when the chief militiar's commission was all but in Anastasi's hands as well, making his sister, Tatiana, understandably nervous that something might happen to Papa Kalugin before she could move against her little brother.

  And most especially not when Anastasi Kalugin wanted nothing so much as war with Nev Hettek, and the Nev Hetteker governor, Karl Fon, had ideas of his own along those lines.

  Fon wanted a war, all right, but one that would gain him the whole Det Valley, and perhaps Merovingen as well—a war on Nev Hetteker terms, a war he couldn't lose. And Nev Hetteker terms were quite different from Kalugin's Merovingian ones. They had nothing to do with fielding forces to fight the blackleg militia that was the law in Merovingen in peacetime, its army in wartime.

  Nev Hetteker war was already under way. It was war in the shadows, war in the streets, war by intimidation, by assassination, by terror. Karl Fon had become governor of Nev Hettek under the bloody auspices of the Sword of God, shadow movers, empire shakers, revolution makers. Karl Fon was secretly Sword of God, publicly orthodox Adventist, and cramped in Nev Hettek.

  Sword of God: Adventist crazies, militants, assassins, so far as Merovingians were concerned. The Sword trained its people in martial arts and taught that a second Scouring was coming, a Scouring that would bring Retribution on earth. Toward that day, everything was channeled: the alien sharrh and sharrist influence must be obliterated so that technology could come again; temporal power must be increased, no matter the personal cost; self-sacrifice in the cause brought rewards in God's good time— when the sharrh were obliterated back to their homeworld. Meanwhile, you readied for war with the alien sharrh and you knew damn well that Revenantists and sharrists and Janes and the rest were all alien sympathizers. Or, at least, you ought to know it.

  There was only one group capable of steeling this world for what was to come, and that was the Sword. Based in secret cells in Nev Hettek, where tech was more than a remembered dream, it was growing stronger. Needed to grow. Didn't care what it took.

  Bases had to be expanded, power coordinated. For up there, beyond the placid sky, there might be sharrh right now. Sharrh in orbit, sharrh with planet-singeing tech, sharrh ready to fry you to cinders. You couldn't know, not for certain—the tech level it would take to find out, to build the devices from the books the Sword had, would draw sharrh fire i
f you dared to power it up. Emissions were deadly.

  So you made your weapons out of men, and you spread the strength. It was Karl Fon's doctrine of revolution and it was digging into Merovingen at a bedrock level, reaching right up where it counted, into high-town—into Merovingen-above.

  Yo, angel, Michael Chamoun called out silently as his boat passed beneath the harbor statue, say hello to Rita for me.

  He'd plotted a course past Rimmon to a farside slip on the excuse of picking up some contraband from Megary, all by the charts and the notes and the contacts that the previous captain had left for him. It was as close as Michael Chamoun was going to get to the Revenantist girl he'd only seen once, unless she was at the Merovingian governor's 24th Eve Festival Ball.

  Chamoun fervently hoped she wasn't going to be. He had a cargo more illegal than slaves and more deadly than pathati gas weapons: his riverboat, the Detfish, had Sword of God aboard.

  The Detfish was bringing five Sword of God men (two hidden among her crew and three hiding in plain sight, bold as brass, flaunting their diplomatic invitations via Boregy) to Anastasi Kalugin's party.

  " 'Ware! 'Ware aft!" came a call from behind, and Chamoun looked back. He saw a small craft, a woman at its helm, a woman with a cap down over her eyes and no business crossing his wake and bitching about it, nearly invisible in the afterdusk swathing the Harbor.

  " 'Ware my ass, where's your running lights?" Chamoun called back, and realized he'd made an error. It was too poor a boat for running lights, a flimsy thing with an ancient outboard.

  And there were others, as they nosed their way toward the slips, where the Sword wanted to go— boats of all descriptions, but small. Not like the craft he's seen headed toward Rimmon Isle, a long black yacht belonging to the Nikolaev. Now Chamoun was entering unknown territory: Merovingen was all stories and second-hand knowledge; he'd never brought any boat this far south before, let alone a riverboat.