Her baby had hazel eyes; Michael's eyes were lighter than hers. She didn't know why Baby Belle shouldn't have hazel eyes, but she shouldn't.
It wasn't that she didn't love her baby. It was that she needed deathangel. She kept asking for Uncle Ito, but he never came. She'd stare at the cherubs on her wall and yell for Ito at the top of her lungs, but it was always Michael, or Doctor Lambert, or Daddy who came.
But this time, when she yelled for Ito and the baby started screaming so that she had to suckle Belle to shut her up, it was Mikhail Kalugin who came.
Mikhail the Clockmaker came tiptoeing in, smiling his self-effacing smile, his head down and his eyes demurely averted from her exposed breast, asking if he was disturbing her.
"You never disturb me, Mikhail," she lied. She always lied to Mikhail. She'd started lying to Mikhail because Uncle Ito had told her she must, it was necessary for everyone's security. She prophesied in private for Mikhail, telling him what Uncle Ito wanted her to tell him, and Mikhail would look at her with adoring eyes and nod his narrow head and eat up every word.
She really liked Mikhail. She hated to lie to him. In fact, right now she liked him more than Michael. Michael. Mikhail. Maybe karma was trying to tell her something: the right name, the wrong man? But wrong for what?
"Mikhail," she said, pushing herself awkwardly up on her pillows with one arm, the baby clamped to her with the other. "Mikhail, are we the best of friends?"
"Of course, Cassie. I've always told you so. You're the light in my darkness. You and your gift have made my life worth living once again. Even my father's happy with me now, since you've shown me that it's my destiny to take a hand in steering Merovingen toward a new future ..."
She nodded, trying to focus her eyes on his face. She felt so terrible. What could she say to Mikhail. . . ? The truth was something he deserved from her: "Mikhail, I need a friend now as I've never needed one." The baby gurgled against her breast, pinching her nipple and slobbering so that milk and spit ran down her teat. Why didn't she like being a mother? Why did the baby have to be such a brat?
"You have my friendship forever, dearest Cassie," said Mikhail. She held out her free hand and he took it gratefully, stroking it as if it were something precious.
"Then I must ask your help, and your silence. If you can't help me, you'll tell no one what I ask. Agreed?"
"Agreed, light of Merovingen."
"I feel terrible," she said, and saying it made her want to weep. Her voice thickened. "I've been brave, and I've given everything to everybody, not asking anything for myself, prophesying until it endangered my life and my baby's ..." She sniffled.
"Cassie, dear Cassie, what can I do to help?"
"I hate my doctor. I don't trust her. I want a Merovingian doctor."
"I can understand that," Mikhail said, squeezing the hand he held. "I'll talk to Vega."
"My doctor won't let me have any deathangel, Mikhail, and I've been taking it so long, I need it to get my strength back. Maybe I should stop, but not right now. My doctor's a stranger, she doesn't understand our ways. And she doesn't believe in my Gift. So she's trying to control everything, and she's wrong. 1 need my deathangel, and I need it now, Mikhail. Can you get me some, without anyone finding out? Doctor Lambert has everyone, including Daddy, frightened to give me any. And nobody will let me see Uncle Ito in private. I want to see Uncle Ito, Mikhail, and I want my deathangel." She took a deep breath. "Or something terrible is going to happen."
"What, Cassie? What's going to happen?" Mikhail wanted to know.
"Something terrible," she pronounced. "I can't see clearly without my deathangel, not right now. I must have it, Mikhail. And I must see Uncle Ito. And I must have a Merovingen physician. I'm afraid Doctor Lambert ... is our enemy. If she is, and she's here to stop my prophecies before I can save Merovingen from the flames, I'll not be able to stop her on my own. Not while I'm so weak. Not without my deathangel. Not without Uncle Ito. Not without your help, Mikhail."
"Of course I'll help you, Cassiopeia." Mikhail sat up and took a deep breath, thrusting out his pigeon breast. "But what about your husband?" Can't he—"
"Michael," she reminded Mikhail archly, "is a Nev Hetteker. He'll never believe that Doctor Lambert is my enemy. He helped bring her here."
"Of course, I forgot. And I hear what you are not saying, my dearest and most revered Cassiopeia." Mikhail's eyes were shining like buttons. "I'll see to things, never fear. First I'll go to my father and when I've explained—"
"No!" Idiot! She'd forgotten how dim Mikhail could be. "First, my deathangel. Find some for me. Bring it here yourself. As soon as you can. Then I'll be able to help you plan a way to get this woman out of my house before she destroys everything."
"I don't know where to find ..."
"I'll be able to prophesy again, Mikhail. Just for you. Like old times. Please, Mikhail . . ." She let a tear leak from her eye, a real tear of frustration. Couldn't this foolish but powerful man just once do something right?
"All right, Cassie. I'll do it. For you and young Belle, and for all of us."
Mikhail put her hand gently on her coverlet, leaned down and kissed her on the forehead as he'd never before dared to do, and then straightened.
His steps seemed more certain as he left the room, his shoulders straighter. His chin jutted, firm with purpose.
Cassie Boregy slumped back against her pillow and pulled Belle's mouth from her sore nipple. Little suc-cubus. She itched all over; she was sweating, alternately hot and cold, and she had a baby to deal with. She reached blindly up beside her and grabbed the bellpull.
Let the wet nurse come, even if that wet nurse was precisely the woman she least wanted to see—her Nev Hetteker physician, who'd evidently lost her own baby just before leaving Nev Hettek and had valiantly offered to suckle little Belle.
Cassie had refused, of course, precisely because the obstetrician didn't want Cassie suckling Belle. Since Cassie was a drug addict, the baby was, too, according to the doctor, who'd first suggested bottle feeding and then offered her own alien tit.
Well, the baby wasn't looking half so sick as Cassie felt. The baby didn't seem to be sharing any of Cas-sie's symptoms. But then, the doctor was giving the baby medication she wouldn't give Cassie, because she didn't trust Cassie to follow her doctor's orders.
The woman wasn't stupid, but she was an enemy. Cassie Boregy had been prophesying too long and too accurately not to know an enemy when she saw one. If only Daddy would believe her.
If only she could trust Michael. She loved Michael, she told herself, that was why she couldn't bring herself to declare him an enemy wholeheartedly. And no matter what he was, he was the father of her child and a hero, in a previous life, of the war against the sharrh. If everyone wasn't so jealous of her Gift, none of this would be happening to her.
She was going to be a hero in the next war against the sharrh. She just knew she was.
She knew it as certainly as she knew that the fires of her vision would rise up from Merovingen-below in a cleansing blaze that only the strong would survive.
She intended to be one of the strong. Even though she'd seen in one of her visions that her husband would murder her, she intended to change the future. After all, her baby was alive, and she'd been sure it would be born dead.
So the future could be changed, if you had enough deathangel and enough good karma.
Better not tell Mikhail Kalugin that, she thought, and giggled as, beside her, the hungry baby lifted its searching hands and began in earnest to cry.
When Doctor Lambert came to nurse the baby, Cassie was going to tell her straight out that Mikhail Kalugin was on Cassie's side, that Doctor Lambert couldn't keep Uncle Ito away from her, or keep her deathangel away from her. After all, you had to put these foreigners in their place. Didn't you?
She told herself that Daddy would be proud of her, when the smoke cleared, for acting like a true Boregy, the way Daddy had taught her.
Tuesday just was
n't going to be Magruder's day, that was certain.
First he'd come back from an unsatisfactory lunch with Tatiana's father, during which Iosef had ranted about some female cardinal named Exeter who was stirring up Iosef's own Loyalist party, and what that might mean. The only thing Chance Magruder had learned about this internecine squabbling in the Council was that Iosef felt threatened. And, feeling threatened, was doing some threatening himself: Magruder and Tatiana had better make sure that there was not the slightest morsel of potential scandal in anything the two were doing, or Iosef would Take Steps.
Magruder had been put on notice to keep his Nev Hettekers squeaky clean for the time being, or Tatiana and the Nev Hettek/Merovingen alliance and, most especially, Chance Magruder would suffer for it.
He'd come back from the Rock wondering just how much the old man knew and how much was a fishing expedition. And there was Kenner, waiting for him in the kitchen, for godsake, hunched over the remains of a steak dinner.
Still chasing inferences squeezed from Iosef Kalu-gin's masterful display of implication and innuendo, the sight of Kenner made his mouth go sour. The last thing Magruder needed was a petty crisis right now.
Keep his Nev Hettekers squeaky clean. How'about fly to the sun on wax-and-feather wings? Or dump enough herbicide in the canals to solve the problem that Iosef was having with Exeter, send Kenner and Lambert back to Karl Fon because he'd then have no explicit need for either, and let Cassie Boregy raise Dani Lambert's baby on deathangel milkshakes.
If Iosef pushed Magruder hard enough, he was going to do just that, he decided, as Kenner followed him up the back stairs to his office. The possibility of using an herbicide was something Magruder had reported to Fon; that was what Jacobs was doing in Ken-ner's fix-it shop: waiting for Magruder to give a dump order, or not.
Meanwhile, there was Kenner's problem, which turned out to be infuriatingly nebulous when the young Sword agent finally blurted it out:
"Tom Mondragon came down to the shop at noon and ordered a weed-cage from me," said Kenner, arms crossed, jaw locked, his hair stirring in the afternoon breeze and his eyes looking way past Magruder, out over the rooftops of White and Boucher to where you could see the Signeury spire from here.
"So?" said Magruder softly. The Signeury. The Justiciary. His mind's eye saw the interrogation cells everyone knew were there. Go carefully. On a day full of too many questions and too few answers, he didn't need even one more problem. Dani hadn't bothered to send a note back when he'd sent a messenger over there to inquire politely how she was faring. . . . Tom Mondragon was the least of his worries. Or should be.
Kenner turned on the balcony, hands curling on the balustrade, and looked Magruder right in the eye. "So what's it mean, if he's recognized me? I can't judge the situation, sir . . . m'ser. What— How come that bastard's still alive, anyhow?"
Magruder's world hiccoughed, then settled. He said, "Mondragon's alive because he's no use to us dead."
"So he's one of ours?" There was incredulity in Kenner's voice.
The agent was Dani's creature, Magruder reminded himself. It was just hard to think of Dani as an enemy. But the baby had changed everything—maybe changed things Chance Magruder wasn't capable of analyzing.
"He's useful, at times. Right now I think he's Richard Kamat's. Probably others." He considered, finally handed over a tidbit of information. "That big boat on Pardee Isle. That's his. He's watching you. You're strangers. He may have recognized you."
"Kamat fits with what he wrote on his charge slip."
And if he's Kamat's, he's working with Anastasi Kalugin, kid. But you're too green here to understand what that means. "Again: so?"
"So, —do I expect a midnight hit? Who's Kamat? Do I give him the weed-cage, then? If he's ours, am I supposed to help the son of a bitch?"
"You're supposed to keep your cover wrinkle-free. If there's a step-up in harassment from the blacklegs, let me know, that's all. There's nothing Mondragon's going to pick up. Let him look."
"That's all? What am I supposed to tell Lambert?"
"Whatever you choose."
"I mean, what's the official line about this guy? Is he actively . . . useful ... to the revolution? Am I going to be acting as a drop for him, or what?"
"Look, Kenner, it's not that way here. Not cut and dried. If and when 1 want to do something about Mondragon, I'll make sure you've got point. That's what you want, right? To be the executioner if the order comes down?"
"I . . . yeah, that's what I want. You mean I'm overreacting?"
"Everybody sees things in terms of his specialty, Kenner. Assassination isn't always the answer to a problem like Mondragon." Tell Dani I'm mellowing, if you like. Or losing my edge, which is probably what you think you see. But I've got too much on my plate to make room for Tom Mondragon right now. "You just keep doing what you're doing. Sell the fool a weed-cage if that's what he wants. Same terms as for anybody else."
Kenner knew when to quit. The younger man started to back away, mumbling that he was glad he'd come up and reported it, anyway, and that he'd keep Magruder informed, when the door to the balcony opened and Michael Chamoun came bursting through it.
"Michael, you remember Zack Kenner," Magruder said as if he'd been expecting Chamoun.
In a way, he had been: nobody but Michael could have gotten into Chance's office without an appointment; none of Magruder's staffers would have interrupted a balcony conference. So it had to be him.
But Chamoun didn't have to be this drunk, not while it was still daylight. Or this upset, not where Kenner could see.
As if reading Magruder's mind, Chamoun said, "Kenner, maybe you'd better forget you saw me here."
Nice thought, but highly unlikely. Chamoun wiped his lips with the back of his hand, stalked by the two of them stiff-legged, and braced his hands on the railing, looking down and away.
So Magruder had to say, "Kenner, why don't you stay. From the look on Mike's face, maybe we'll be able to use some of that special expertise of yours, after all."
Magruder's mind was racing toward a plan built of accident and tactics: Whatever Michael had on his mind, the only safe move now was to involve Kenner in its solution. He couldn't have Kenner running back to Dani saying that Chamoun was out of control, or that Magruder was losing his focus, or his grip.
"Yes, m'ser," said Kenner, and stepped back to lean against the building and wait, ready and able.
Okay, hotblood, let's find something that'll cool you off. The Kenners of the world thrived on action; without it, they became dangerous to themselves and those who thought to command them. The last thing you wanted was somebody named Kenner doing any thinking on his own. Or going to Dani with questions.
Merovingen was awash in questions, and answers were at a premium. Maybe it was time to field some of the solutions that Kenner could offer.
"Michael, let's hear it: what's wrong?"
Chamoun turned his head like an animal in a trap who sees his torturer approaching. "She's way out of hand: Cassie. Mikhail was over to see her today, and she told him to get her deathangel, and tell Ito she wanted to see him. I know because Lambert's having a fit. She sent me over here to tell you to do something."
"All right. Calm down." That's not what's bothering you, sonny. We've been together too long for that sort of fabrication to fly with me. Kenner was another matter. The languid eyes of the Nev Hetteker assassin rested on Chamoun as if Mike were a target. "Did you get drunk with Dani, too?"
"Nope." Chamoun took a breath and turned all the way around. "Chance, this baby swap thing's messing everybody's head around. I can't handle it. Lambert's way out of bounds, pushing the household around like she owns the place, issuing ultimata ..."
Thanks, kid. You just earned your keep. Magruder slid a glance off Kenner. No expression. But the data was having an impact, Magruder would be willing to bet.
Would bet. "We'll do something about it," Magruder promised.
"What?" Chamoun wanted to know. His voic
e was thick; every muscle in his body as knotted as if he were about to spring at Magruder. "Fight or flight," they called that set of reactions in training courses. Once those reactions set in, you had to flush the stimuli or vent the system, some way.
"I think it's time you and Kenner went out on a night mission together, anyhow. Bonding, and all. And it's surely time we put an end to Ito's meddling. Permanently. ''
"Chance!" Chamoun was aghast.
Kenner stood up straight, not saying anything, but watching him now with a clear demand for clarification in those killer's eyes.
"Look: It's Ito that got us into this mess, pumping Cassie full of drugs. If he mixes in and spots Dani as a plant, the whole charade could come apart. It's bad enough that Ito pushed Cassie so hard, forced so many dope-induced prophecies, that your real baby was stillborn . . ."
Chamoun shivered visibly. Kenner picked at a hangnail.
9Magruder continued: "We can't have Ito and Dani clashing over the healthy baby you've got, or over Cassie, or over deathangel. Do you concur, Michael?"
That brought Chamoun's head up. "Yes, but ... how?"
A half-smile flickered over Kenner's lips and his eyes sought the rooftops.
"Let's take Ito out. Tonight if we can. Soonest. The two of you ought to be able to handle it. Zack, Michael knows the College better than I do. You two find your own ways and means. I'm late for another meet-ing. . . .
He'd left them to hash out their assassination plot, headed for a fictional meeting. Never thinking that Dani would dare show up at the embassy with her baby—with Cassie's baby—in tow.
And then Magruder had been sure that this was his unlucky day. Danielle Lambert was fire-eyed and white-lipped and clutching the baby to her breast.
And she was furious with him. She wasn't going to put up with this. Poor little Hope was going to be turned into a drug addict. It was all Chance's fault. Didn't he care about the baby? Didn't he care about her? Didn't he have any self-respect?
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