Fever Season

by C. J. Cherryh

  "I'm good enough," Raj told her bluntly.

  It came to Marina then, that she knew very little about survival in this world. She couldn't comprehend the dangers that forced an aristocrat like Tom Mondragon to hide in the squalor of Merovingen-below. And she couldn't comprehend the determination that kept Raj's eyes level with hers.

  She looked down at the carpet. "I'll do what I can, Raj," she promised.

  Raj stayed a while longer—considerably longer than either he or Marina had expected. At first Marina had prolonged their conversation because she wanted Raj's memory to overflow. She imagined the youth would spend the entire evening with her beloved, telling him what they had said to each other. But by the time the sun was below the spires and she was lighting the oil-lamps, she knew she kept him because he listened to her in a rapt way that no one else did—not even Richard.

  She found herself telling tales she'd never told before and, when the sky was night-dark, she offered to take him down to the kitchen and prepare a dinner for them both. He accepted and she found herself strangely complimented that he ate her cooking without complaint. When Richard did not appear— and she suspected they were alone in the family suites—she opened a bottle of her father's brandy and poured them both a glass.

  It was well into the second watch, and the second glass, when common sense regained the upper hand in her mind. Raj could scarcely convey her message to Mondragon if she didn't let him leave. Even now it was late enough that the slightly built youth took some risk traveling alone—though he assured her that he felt more comfortable in the city after dark.

  She gave him the rest of the brandy—to share with their friend—and a handful of coins—in case he was bluffing about feeling safe in the night and wanted to hire a poleboat from the Kamat slip. Then, as they said good-bye in the lee of the doorway, Marina rose up on her toes to kiss him lightly on the forehead.

  "For the poet," she whispered, extremely grateful for the shadows that hid her schoolgirl's blush.

  Raj fairly ran away from her then, dashing across the bridge to the abandoned bulk of a Wayfarer's hostel without a backward glance. She waited a while longer, wishing she'd thought to bring a sweater and hoping to catch a glimpse of him darting across the Foundry, but as the moments passed she guessed he was taking no chances with a direct route down to Ventani where Tom, she believed, had hidden himself.

  Marina extinguished the watch-lantern and threw the heavy stop-bolts across the door when she finally went back inside. Anyone from Kamat left outside in the city had best be carrying keys for the canalside entrance. She was not, of course, the only soul in Kamat—not even the only family member. Light showed out under the door where Richard had placed the worker family, and her three cousins were playing music-charades in their own second-level suite. But no respectable person would approach a darkened doorway.

  The heroines of the novels Marina and her mother read and reread never had problems falling asleep. Their thoughts were always filled with visions of their beloved and from the moment their scented tresses touched the pillow their dreams were filled with romantic idylls. Marina had no trouble conjuring Mondragon's image in her mind's eye, but the grinding of her empty stomach completely disrupted the passionate illusions that should have followed.

  Hungry and disgusted, Marina found an old, comfortable robe, a lantern and her keys and scuffed along the hallways to the back stairway. The house was quiet now, or as quiet as any ramshackle Merovingian building ever got. There was always something clattering in the breeze or tide. Locals usually suffered a few sleepless nights when they left their city for some ordinary abode.

  For Marina, the occasional shouts and crashes were the sounds of security. She moved confidently through dark warrens—though she locked the kitchen door behind her once she'd reached it. She had carved a pleasant heap of sausage and cheese when the latch grated and began to turn. Leaving the lantern shielded Marina grabbed the cleaver and hid in the darkness beside the doorway.

  "Who's there?" Richard asked, his eyes drawn to the slivers of light on the table.

  "Who's here, yourself," she replied, letting the cleaver drop benignly to her side. "I thought you were a sausage!"

  "Sorry. Is there any left—sausage, I mean."

  Marina gestured toward the table then watched with some concern as Richard wolfed down the lion's share of her snack. He was dressed in workman's clothes and despite the chill in the air, his hair was sweat-stuck to his forehead. She figured he'd been down in the dye-rooms making First-Bath until she realized she was watching him in moonlight. Kamat mixed its First-Bath dyes only when the moon was new.

  "What happened, Richard? Why've you been out so late— and dressed like that?"

  The kitchen echoed with the thwack of steel against hardwood. "No good reason," he muttered, raising the cleaver a second time.

  "How very unlike you, Dickon," Marina retorted, the sarcasm and nickname an insufficient mask for the anxiety his behavior brought her.

  He raised the cleaver, then aborted the chop in mid-descent. His hand was shaking as he laid the blade on the block. "I can't tell her." Richard's arms were braced in a triangle against the table, keeping him upright, though his neck sagged and he spoke to the tiled floor, not his sister.

  "The new woman?"

  The shoulders hunched together as he nodded. Marina tried to remember when she'd last seen her older brother cry. It hadn't been at Nikolay's funeral.

  "He was worried that his kids would get the fever, so he took on extra work: gray work—loading and unloading at Megary. Or that's the guess canalside; Jordie Slade isn't the only one who's gone missing from Megary this month."

  Marina took the unnecessary precaution of drawing the cleaver to her side of the table and shoving it into the deep-socketed knife rack. "You went to Megary?" The question was also unnecessary.

  Richard managed a bitter laugh. "Hide in plain sight— that's an old one, isn't it? Why would they expect anyone to look for Jordie Slade? Why would ser Megary expect to see a face he recognized hauling his freight?"

  "You took an awful risk, Richard. What if anything had happened to you?"

  The ugly laugh surfaced again. "That would have been most worthwhile of all. They couldn't hide me; couldn't pretend I hadn't happened. The lights would shine in the shadows, Marina—and no man could ask a better karma. You'll never guess who I saw at the Megary slip."

  "Kalugin?" She didn't like his tone or direction. He'd been in the grip of the lifetide all day and it no longer seemed benign, much less romantic.

  "That's no answer, Ree. There're three Kalugins—four if you're counting bodies, not brains. But no, none of them were there. Someone else."

  "I don't want to play games."

  "Ser Rod Baritz."

  Megary alone was a blot of bad karma across Merovingen's fate. Megary and the Sword of God was a combination so malign and yet so logical that Marina swayed sideways, barely catching her weight on the cook's stool. Her memory brought back the smell of gasoline in her hair.

  "And Jordie Slade?" she asked in a hoarse whisper.

  "One of two places: shipped out drugged and slaved or shipped out dead and dumped. I pray God the latter. That's what I'll tell Eleanora, I think. And the children. It's better that way."

  "But why? If he knew where he was going—he must have know it wasn't square."

  "I'll wager a guess. One of the crates I hauled tonight had a Kamat mark on its side. Maybe indigo, maybe salts we thought we were transhipping down to the Chattelen. I loaded it up without a question asked—I'll wager Jordie didn't."

  The sons and daughters of Kamat took pride in status as ethical, sensitive citizens of a world where such graces were often a luxury. They felt real pain for the loss of Jordie Slade. But they felt something colder, harder and far more enduring over the loss of their indigo. Morality was a hobby of the rich and Kamat would be rich only so long as it had a virtual monopoly on indigo in the Det Valley.

  "What will
we do?" Marina asked, her fingers absently curling over the knife hilts exposed at the edge of the table.

  "First, I think I want to visit our warehouses with Uncle Patrik's account logs in hand. Second—well, second will take longer. But Megary and the Sword only have power because the rest of us don't stand up to oppose them. I think maybe it's time for the merchants who keep this place going to stand up together for a change."

  "Do you suspect Uncle Patrik?" The words burned across Marina's tongue like treason.

  Richard shook his head. "No, nor our cousins, nor—for that matter—anyone having to do with Kamat. Not that they are immune to conspiracy, but this doesn't have the marks of an inside job."

  There was no reassurance in her brother's words. "So, you could suspect Uncle Patrik—or anyone else, if the situation were different?"

  He shrugged himself erect. "Patrik is weak, but loyal. So long as he is not exposed to temptation there is no need to suspect him."

  "He knows Baritz, and Baritz knows him."

  Richard grimaced at a mote of knowledge he had not considered. "No," he repeated, letting the sound of his own voice convince himself as well. "It will not wash—not now. But it is something I must not forget again. He must be kept on a tight, but familiar and comfortable, leash."

  "Then it will not do to take his accounts and logs and march through the warehouses checking after him."

  There was an overlong pause in the conversation while Richard considered not only what his sister had said but—and more important—that it had been Marina who had said them.

  Nikolay had never been able to rely on Patrik and, as a result, he had never advised his son to seek his sister's advice.

  "You think there'd be a better way?"

  "Go down to the warehouse right now and see if any-thing's amiss. It's our warehouse, after all. We don't need to make an appointment to inspect it."

  The young househead considered the risks in a notion—it could hardly be called a plan—that would never have entered his mind. A part of him, the part that had known from childhood that he would someday be the head of a Merovingen house and a man of power, balked at sneaking into his own warehouse. But the risks? Well, the risks were negligible compared to gray work in Megary Cut.

  "We?" he asked with the first honest laugh of their conversation. "Don't you think you should change your clothes first?"

  So lifetide was making itself felt already, Marina realized as she sped up the stairs in front of him. She had her spontaneous elder brother back again, but hardly on the scale she had imagined. This was not an expedition to the bedrock beneath the house nor a romantic escapade such as unfolded in her novels. It wasn't romantic at all. Worse, sooner or later it was going to touch Nev Hettek and the Sword of God.

  Without being consciously aware she'd made the decision, Marina postponed telling her brother that Thomas Mondragon had become her admirer and that Kamat was going to sponsor an Adventist to study medicine at the College.

  "Bring your signet," Richard cautioned as they reached the branch-landing that separated her level of the house from the spire-rooms Richard called home these days. "And wear something appropriate."

  And what was appropriate attire for breaking into one's own property? A signet ring, of course—such as Richard had not been wearing for his Megary adventure. A gold ring, with a House's intricate monogram or device etched across its flat surface, and a familiar face was the best security a Merovingen aristocrat could hope for. Identity, after all, lay not in chits of paper passed out by the recently formed census committee, but in objects and manners that were not so easily forged.

  The ring, though, was only one aspect of the total image. There was also a serviceable sweater—identical with those worn by every canaler save for one detail: it was knit from dense merino wool and that wool had been carefully dyed First-Bath. After the sweater, canvas trousers: nearly indestructible but also in Kamat's trademark midnight blue indigo. The high lisle socks were also that special dark blue, but the high boots of tough but supple leather with flexible soles were sooty black. All of it had been made to fit Marina Kamat to the exclusion of all others.

  In short, from a distance, as she sat in the prow of a nondescript poleboat the family used for shuttling the daily groceries between the market and the house, Marina could have been anyone from the less fortunate parts of Merovingen. Should her presence be challenged—examined at something less than an arm's length—any native of the city would know what, if not who, she was.

  There was little enough traffic in the dead of fourth watch. The tide was running out, tugging at the boat as Richard guided it into the Grand Canal, but the moon was near full; Marina could have handled the boat had she been so inclined. Here and there a tavern glowed; voices could be heard at the more popular tie-ups. Richard had a ready reply for the comments they got: Uplowner party. Kept us waitin' half the night, then passed out in the hall. Their passage was observed but not noted.

  Marina found a battered cap under the rails and stuffed her long blond hair into it. She passed for a boy the rest of the way and acquitted herself well when they tied up off the East Dike. Not that any one—male, female, rich or poor—who reached adulthood in Merovingen didn't know how to make a boat fast against the Det River tides.

  The warehouses—squat, ugly buildings devoid of the whimsy and improvisation that marked the rest of the city's architecture—belonged, strictly speaking, to the Signeury, not the Houses. Kamat, like everyone else, rented only what it needed, but its needs had been consistent over the last fifty years. Not Iosef Kalugin, nor any of his children, would have considered exercising any theoretical right to break a family's padlocks.

  Kalugin was, however, supposed to provide protection in return for the rents the Signeury received once a quarter. Blacklegs should have manned conspicuous platforms on the roofs and should have made it difficult, at the very least, for Richard to guide the boat into the shadows unchallenged.

  Brother and sister glanced across the loading platform, each able to see nothing more than the other's silhouette, neither needing to see more. Richard fumbled with his keys beneath his sweater.

  "No need to break the locks," he said in a normal voice, handing her one of the heavy iron keys.

  A single person could enter the warehouse, unlocking one end of the bar at a time. But the beam would hit the dock and echo clear across the harbor. In the unaccounted absence of the blacklegs Richard wasn't concerned about the noise but he had a mind for the cost of the locks and beam. They lowered it carefully—silently, and were glad enough that they had when a light started flashing several bays down.

  Four short, one long, then a repeat: not a recognized signal, but not an accident either. Richard gripped Marina above the elbow, very much regretting that he'd brought her along. He gestured to the doorway and she followed him in silence. As there was always some noise in Merovingen, no one—not even the mysterious signalers in the other bay— paid any attention to the single, sharp creak the door gave as Richard flung it open. To be sure, the others cocked an ear for another sound, but the Kamat siblings were motionless where they stood. It was less than a minute before the irregular crew went back to its tasks and Richard led the way through the Kamat crates.

  "Wait here," he breathed in his sister's ear.

  She shook her head. It was neither the time nor the place for an argument; Richard had no choice but to let her follow as he wove closer to the circle of light. There'd be time to count the Kamat inventory some other night. They were well out of the family's storage area before they were able to get a good look at what was going on.

  Shaped pieces of steel and iron rested in partially completed crates. No two were alike, and no proper Revenantist knew much about the structure of steam engines anyway, but the simple presence of tech machinery in a Merovingen warehouse boded no good. The siblings glanced at each other with wide eyes, then looked back into the light, hoping some additional piece of the puzzle would fall into place. It di
d— though it merely expanded the problem. The crates were labeled as they were completed: shipper, destination and customs clearance. Richard saw that Kamat was sending an iron hemisphere clear across the Sundance Ocean; St. John was sending a similar piece to a different receiver in the same far-off port.

  Kamat had been caught in smuggling scams before. At least once a year drugs or other illegal luxuries turned up in a bale of wool or cotton. It didn't take much imagination to piggy-back on the usual routes of trade. But a few kilos of psycho-active extract were considerably different from full crates of machinery.

  No, this, was directly related to the absence of the blacklegs and, by extension, to Megary and the Sword. That machinery, after all, hadn't been made in Merovingen's foundry. Richard would have dearly loved to drop a net over the crew boss and take him to some deserted spot for an interrogation. Failing that, he committed the man's face to memory and memorized those labels he could read.

  That done, and well before the last crate was finished, he tugged at Marina's sleeve and pointed back toward Kamat's bay.

  Marina pulled away when they were out of sight of the machinery. "Aren't we going to do anything?"

  "Like what?" he whisper-shot back at her and grabbed her arm again.

  "Stop them. Scare them away."

  Richard said nothing until they were back on the Kamat portion of the dock, then he locked his hands on her shoulders and forced her to look at him.

  "Don't you understand what we saw in there? That isn't some canalside operator trying to make a back pocket lune. It couldn't be happening at all if someone hadn't bought protection in high places. And, Marina—people who have tech like that, they don't protect it with swords and knives."

  "What was it?" she asked in a smaller, sober voice as they lifted the bar into place.

  "Damned if I know. A machine, probably. An engine to make something bigger, or faster; to do the work of ten honest men, maybe." For Richard, as for many other merchants and workers, technological disdain, after nearly six hundred years, was more economic than religious.