Flood Tide

by C. J. Cherryh

  She'd found it all exciting, fascinating—even titillating—while she had herself convinced that she was master of his unsavory skill, of all the violence embodied in Chance Magruder. She'd found him intriguing, dangerous and sexier for all of that.

  Now she saw the self-serving expedientist, and realized that no man was attractive without moral courage, without honor, without loyalty in his soul. How could she have been so blind?

  In her mind, she pulled the trigger, so much did she want to see the pure surprise on his face. In reality, she said, "Take your hands off me, thug."

  He did. Very carefully. Then he stepped back one pace. Two. She felt the pressure against her wrist and arm lessen as his stomach and the gun barrel parted company.

  His voice, so husky, seemed to shake when he said, "Please, Tatiana, you've got to listen to me."

  "Don't whisper at me, you bastard. You think you can whine and mewl and I'll melt because you're so overswept with remorse and honesty? You don't know the meaning of emotion. Go try that trick on someone of your own class."

  His eyes were pale and pale-eyed men, she'd always known, were lacking something. The pale folk from Nev Hettek were not like the rest of them, not like the Merovingians.

  Tatiana Kalugin knew all about pale eyes; she saw them every time she looked in the mirror. She shook her red hair back and looked at her gunhand. Somehow, she'd cocked the hammer. With the gun still pointed at Magruder's midsection, she brought the hammer down, slowly and carefully, with the thumb of her other hand, on a live round in a full chamber.

  He didn't even flinch. He only watched her. He said, "You've got to let me help you find a way through this. I—" His voice broke.

  If she thought she could have kept control, she'd have pistol-whipped the smile from his face. But if she tried, someone would get hurt tonight. The violence inside her, aching to get out, was a surprise. She wanted to hurt this man for not being what she needed him to be—what she'd warned him he must be, and what, so many times, he'd agreed he would be.

  "Fine," she said instead, denying herself even the little joy of slapping him with gun hand or free hand. "You show me that you know a better way." She holstered the pistol. "Teach me the Nev Hettek skills that have turned you into so much less than a man." She let her eyes run down from his face to his crotch, and then back up.

  Then she shook her head. "All the times I let you clamber around on me ... I should have known you hadn't the manliness to follow through—"

  He looked at the floor. He held both hands up toward her, tentatively, palms out, forfending something.

  Then he let them drop. And turned away. And said, "You've got to join forces with Anastasi on this."

  She started visibly. Anastasi and she had talked about it, on the boat. But of course, Magruder with his spies would know. . . . But Magruder couldn't know how difficult an alliance with Anastasi was, especially with both their intelligence organizations paralyzed because of Mondragon, who knew too much about everyone.

  Magruder hadn't noticed that he'd hit a nerve. He was still talking: "Find a way to get Mondragon out. Legally. Then kill him, if you want. But make Exeter release him first. Find a loophole, an inequity. Cry false arrest and scandal. Decry an open attempt to play politics with a man's life. . . ."

  "Tell the truth?" She tried to say it with haughty disbelief that he, of all men, should suggest such a thing, but the words came out amid a throaty, half-hysterical giggle. "How novel. How utterly un-Mero-vingian. Who'd care? Who'd know the truth when they heard it? Why bother, when no one would credit the truth enough to be surprised by it? What's the use of—"

  "Try to find a way to get Mondragon out of the Justiciary. With Anastasi's help. Or without him. I'll help you do that much. ..."

  "Oh? Now you'll help me. And how will you do that?"

  "I'll petition the court—Exeter's office. Mond-ragon's a Nev Hetteker, after all. I'll say he's a protected person. I'll contrive some papers to prove that he is, and date them appropriately. Show him as part of my staff, an ambassador at large or a dignitary of some sort—I'll think of something—I can probably ram through a plea of diplomatic immunity. Exeter doesn't want to be seen as the force that destroys relations between New Hettek and Merovingen. If it comes to it, I'll have Karl Fon recall the whole staff—me, Chamoun, everybody— Mondragon included, back to Nev Hettek as a result of Mondragon's unilateral detention without trial. We'll demand the right to dispute and disprove all allegations. Break off diplomatic relations, or threaten to, unless they release him into our custody and drop all specious charges. How's that?"

  "Words. Paper." She spat. "You think you can save yourself by pushing paper around from one desk to another?"

  "Can you sell it to Anastasi?"

  "I'm not selling anything for you. And I'm not asking my brother for anything." She would not be impressed. She refused to admit that the plan was good, perhaps even workable. Let him go to Anastasi. Let Magruder crawl on his knees to her brother.

  And then let Anastasi come with Magruder in tow and both of them crawl on their knees to her— after they'd taken the risk, once the deed was done.

  For then she'd know their secret. If they implemented Magruder's plan, they'd pay dearly themselves for the privilege, after the fact. And then, perhaps, if she liked the show, she would let the man called Chance Magruder live. But only if she had Thomas Mondragon as a gift from him. . . .

  "Deliver Mondragon to me, Magruder, and you'll keep your embassy, your standing here, the rest. But I won't lift a finger to help you, actively. You and Anastasi do what you will. If Mondragon is not in my personal care by the end of the week, pack your things. As easily as I created all this for you," she waved a hand around, "I can destroy it."

  "You won't have to, if this doesn't work," Magruder reminded her as he went slowly to the tapestry and pulled it back, to reveal a window onto Merovingen. "If we can't get Mondragon out using this strategy, I'll have no choice but to close the embassy, return to Nev Hettek, and take Michael Chamoun and the whole trade mission with me."

  "Good," she said through gluey lips. Threaten me, will you? He was rattled, to take such a risk. This was better than shooting him. A bullet hurts only for a short time. "Too bad you can't take crazy Cassie Boregy, the prophetess you and Chamoun made, and her baby with you. Now get out of my sight—"

  Too late, she remembered that she was in his office, not her own—on his turf.

  But he bowed his head and said, "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

  And she thought she heard him mutter, almost wonderingly, as he headed for the door, "But I really did love you," before he went through his own doorway and shut the door behind him, leaving her alone in his sanctum.

  He'd never done that before. When she'd wanted him to show his trust by giving her the run of his embassy office, he'd never allowed her to contrive to be alone here.

  Now, she didn't care. And here she was. She went over to his desk, which she'd given him, and sat behind it.

  Wonder of wonders, it wasn't locked. He hadn't been expecting her. He'd been working. She looked at the papers stuffed hastily into his top drawer.

  One of them was a letter from Danielle Lambert, the Nev Hettek physician he'd brought down to attend to Mike Chamoun's child.

  These two—Magruder and Lambert—were old friends, from the tone of the woman's letter, which asked for a quick return to Nev Hettek.

  She sat back, holding the letter in her hands. Nothing overtly incriminating, but something in the tone, nevertheless . . .

  Cassie Boregy, who prophesied revolution whenever she'd chewed enough deathangel, was Michael Chamoun's wife and entre into the powerful house of Boregy. The baby was the cement of their union. And the way this glorified wet nurse talked about that baby to Magruder made Tatiana wonder about the child.

  The child was addicted to deathangel, this was clear. Why the physician was distressed, was not clear. The mother was a deathangel addict. Everybody knew that. Even Cardinal Exeter,
who was ignoring the fact. So why should the physician be disturbed about the child being an addict? This was natural. And yet the physician was disturbed. And what was stranger, was that the physician would entreat Magruder to allow the baby to go back to Nev Hettek—back. This was very strange. Unless the Nev Hettekers were ready to start the war that Anastasi longed for between Nev Hettek and Merovingen, there was no way the child of Boregy House could be taken from its mother.

  Unless, of course, the child wasn't Cassie's at all. One heard rumors. One heard all sorts of rumors. But Michael Chamoun's baby out of Cassie Boregy was referred to, throughout the document that Tatiana was holding, as "our Hope."

  Code words, of course. Nothing more, certainly. The baby's name was Belle. Belle Boregy. And yet, this letter was a letter from a distraught woman to a man who was privy to her most intimate concerns. And the most pressing of those concerns was the rapidity with which the baby, suckling at Cassie's teat, was becoming addicted to deathangel. Tatiana was no Nev Hetteker physician, but she naturally assumed—anyone would—that, if the mother was addicted, the child would have been born addicted. So, even if they had withdrawn the child from the deathangel after birth, what did a little more deathangel matter now, one way or the other?

  The letter was so strange that Tatiana sat for a very long time with it in her fingers, until she realized that the perspiration from her thumb had smudged the signature.

  Then she carefully put it away and left Magruder's embassy. She would have plenty of time to think about what use she could make of the letter from Dr. Lambert to her old friend, the ambassador.

  Plenty of time. If Magruder's plan worked and Anastasi came into line and all three of them didn't find themselves swinging from Hanging Bridge some fine morning.

  "Mike," said Magruder to his protégé, "I want to you to ask your father-in-law to support anything and everything that Anastasi comes up with to get Mondragon out of the Justiciary basement."

  "Whaddever y'say, m'ser. Whaddever y' say." Mike Chamoun trolled his hand over the side of the fancyboat that Magruder had sent for him as the boat cut black water and white froth boiled back to the stern.

  They were reasonably safe from eavesdropping on the boat, with just one trusted Nev Hetteker at the helm, in the dark, with low running lights and a reasonably fair wind as they headed toward Rimmon Isle where, once arrived, they'd turn around and motor back. All Magruder needed was privacy, for a talk with this boy who was coming apart under the strain at just the wrong moment.

  Young Chamoun had been drinking heavily ever since Magruder had sent him out with Kenner to assassinate Ito Boregy. Although the action had been necessary and justifiable, if Ito hadn't died, Willa Exeter couldn't have begun her current reign of terror.

  Starting a revolution in Merovingen was only a little more dangerous than starting one in Nev Hettek had been; and that, because Magruder was older, calmer, and farther from home. He didn't regret anything that was happening here and now—except, perhaps, Tatiana's reactions.

  When it came down to it, Magruder didn't care who the hell ended up at the top of Merovingen's heap, because he meant to incite Merovingen-below to burn the whole heap to the ground. But young Chamoun did.

  The boy looked up at him and took a defiant swig from a bottle of Boregy's private stock that he'd brought along.

  Damnfool kid. Whatever pain it had caused Chamoun to lose his real child because his wife was a dope-fiend, and have another baby smuggled in to take its place, that pain was less than what the living child's mother was feeling, as the attending Nev Hettek physician to a purported Boregy heir.

  "Chance," Mike Chamoun said, "we can't hold this together much longer. Y'know it. I know it. Even Vega knows it. Only Cassie," he sniffed and rubbed the back of his hand under his nose, which seemed red even in the boat's low running lights, "doesn't know it. But she knows that Mikhail's her bosom buddy. Bosom buddy . . . boson muddy . . . gotta get Cassie's buddy outta our hair, over there, or everything gonna go splat in our faces. . . ."

  "Mike, what are you trying to say?"

  "What if she divorces me and marries Mikhail, takin' that kid with 'er?"

  "Then it's a good thing that kid's who she is, and not who she's supposed to be. Think of your own parents." He had to pull on Chamoun's leash, somehow. "Back in Nev Hettek, your folks are sweating this out. Everybody is, right now. I don't want you to screw up over there, Mike. I'm going to send Kenner over to you, full time. Call him your cousin. He's half a hero as it is, for opening that machine shop. I want him bunking in there. . . ."

  "Him 'n' Dani Lambert, too? You need both o' them t' keep an' eye on me? Then you don't need me and I can go home. ..."

  Even Chamoun knew that was ridiculous. The only way that Michael Chamoun was going home, now that he was in this deep, was in a box. The kid took another swig of Vega Boregy's wine.

  "How'm I supposed t' get Vega to—"

  At least Michael wasn't completely brain-dead. "Remember that flashlight you gave Cassie as a betrothal gift? Get it. Give it to me. Then report it stolen—but just to Vega. Mess up the room where she keeps it so it'll look like an inside job, some servant in a rush rifling her things."

  "I don't get it," Chamoun said.

  "Willa Exeter is declaring everything more sophisticated than a hatpin as illegal technology and prosecuting on those grounds. I want Vega spooked. And I want Mikhail to find out—not be told—what happened, and get spooked, too. If we can get Mikhail thinking that Willa Exeter is his enemy, then her whole initiative is going to fall right apart."

  "I still don't get it."

  You poor dumb, drunken bastard. "Mikhail's in love with your wife," Magruder said, leaning close to the boy in the stern, even though he could see almost full around him and no boat was anywhere near by. "In case you hadn't noticed. If he thinks Exeter's going after Cassie—which she surely would have by now, except for Mikhail's fascination with her—then he's not going to want or accept Exeter's support, at best. At worst, he'll cause enough embarrassment and suspicion within the ranks of those Old Families that Exeter's trying to form into a coalition to support Mikhail that it'll come to a grinding halt on its own."

  "Okay," Chamoun nodded with shitfaced solemnity. "I'll get you the flashlight."

  As if Chamoun had a choice. That was what Magruder was sending Kenner into Boregy House for. With Kenner in there to ride herd on Michael Chamoun, Chamoun was going to find out what it meant to be Sword of God. Until now, he'd been only a pampered tool of the revolution. Now he was going to become a soldier in the army called Sword of God.

  There was one hell of a difference.

  In Cassie's powder-blue bedroom filled with golden ormolu cherubs, Michael Chamoun rifled bureau drawers like a thief in the night.

  Where was that foolish flashlight, anyway? Kenner, newly introduced into the household by the simple mechanism of Michael's bringing him home, was outside the door. If anyone came by, Kenner would knock on the door, purportedly looking for Michael.

  So that was all right. Michael had a right to be in here—it was his wife's bedroom; it was his bedroom, too, although he'd taken to sleeping on the other side of the baby's room. So it was all right, he told himself again. Then why did he feel like a thief—a real thief, a thief in the night? He'd given her the flashlight, hadn't he? Then it was all right.

  Kenner wasn't all right, though. Kenner was dark as Merovingen-below on a moonless night, all tanned skin and black eyes and with a perpetual shadow he carried with him that no light seemed able to dispel.

  Kenner was a born killer. Chamoun had seen that for himself, when he and Kenner had gone after Ito. Magruder was a man capable of anything in the service of the revolution, but Chamoun was aware of the difference between a man and an animal, and between an omnivore and a carnivore. And between a battle-weary veteran like Magruder, and a hungry young wolf like Kenner.

  Kenner was pure carnivore. They should have picked somebody like Kenner to do Michael's job�
��to come here and marry Cassie and have a baby and lose his heart and soul. Well, soul, because Kenner didn't have a heart.

  And neither did Mike Chamoun, anymore.

  As he swished his hands through a drawer of Cassie's silken underthings in the dark, feeling for the hard cylinder of the flashlight that had announced his intentions to marry the Boregy girl, Chamoun kept thinking, My parents did this to me.

  Others people's parents were like Cassie's parents: staunch, loving, giving, competent, protective. Michael had gotten into this whole Merovingen adventure because his parents needed to be protected from their own screwed-up lives. He'd been doing things to help his parents all of his life. Now his parents had all but ruined his life. They might even have managed to get him in a position where he'd die out here.

  He couldn't have said no to Chance tonight, any more than he'd been able to say no back in Nev Hettek—because his parents were virtual hostages to the revolution. The whole Chamoun shipping empire was a fabrication of Karl Fon and Chance Magruder and the rest of the revolutionary council.

  Michael Chamoun's parents were still living—and living marginally well—because Chamoun was willing to do whatever he was told. He was chosen for this specifically because he could be controlled through his family, and because he looked likely, and because, probably, he wasn't a Kenner. He wasn't somebody who knew how to fight back. The only thing he'd ever known how to do was take orders, work his heart out for his family—and now for the revolution.

  Had he been picked to come here because he'd fixate on Chance and take Chance's orders the way he'd taken his father's all his life? He didn't know. He couldn't have said if his life depended upon it. Everybody always needed him to do something. Nobody around him could ever get along without him. He always had to pitch in and forget his own wants and needs and put off his life till later.

  Well, maybe there wasn't going to be a later. Maybe, this time, his parents had finally destroyed his life while he was trying to save theirs one more time.