Fever Season

by C. J. Cherryh

  "Let's go into my study," Boregy said, indicating the door with his glass. "I have some additional details to ask you.

  Your own estimation of m'ser Rosenblum, for one. You seem to have a fine grasp of mercantile affairs..." "Tool of the trade, m'ser."

  "Of many trades, m'ser. I do not ignore ability. Especially when it is there for me to use..."

  LIFE ASSURANCE

  Lynn Abbey

  The Ramsey Bell looked no different from any of the dozen or more taverns tucked into the nooks and crannies of Ramseyhead Isle. A faded shingle swayed in the tidal breezes, proclaiming both name and brew; a plume of damp sawdust spread out from the doorway proclaiming that the previous night's tailings had been swept away and today's business could begin.

  Inside, the owner, a burly man who looked as if he could stop or start the occasional barroom brawl, supervised the simmering stewpots while empty kegs clattered down a ramp to the canalside cellar. A scene no different from that in any Merovingen tavern as it prepared for an ordinary day in the fire-wary city where a home with a legal fireplace or kitchen was a luxury.

  No, the Ramsey Bell took its personality from its patrons, the first of which arrived not long after the wharf bells (situated on the tavern's roof and from which it took its name) echoed the noon peal from Signeury. A regular, Franck Wex, nodded at the chalkboard menu and needed no further word nor gesture to place his order. He settled into a hardback seat at the large left-side front table and appeared to doze off immediately.

  It was unlikely that anyone else who frequented the Bell would have taken his favored table, but habit and a certain type of caution was bred deep into Merovingen's wealthy mercantile houses. Someone always arrived early to assure that the appropriate places at the afternoon gathering place for trading heirs and second sons were properly reserved.

  "G'day, ser Wex. Ships in?"

  Dark eyes opened and examined the questioner with perfect alertness. Dao Raza, scion of the corn merchant, and not a casual question, considering the Wex traded mostly in corn themselves.

  "Some."

  "Unloaded?"

  "Most."

  "Same," Raza acknowledged, shuffling chairs at the opposite table.

  Franck Wex shut his eyes again and wondered if Raza had lied as well. Likely. No dock crew had been spared by the seasonal fever; everyone had to be short-handed and scrambling. And no house had been spared the economic anxiety that had sprung up in the wake of the pathati attack on the Signeury. Indeed, that malaise was spreading beyond Merovingen to her trading partners and though there was nothing so formal as war along the River Det, the city's merchantry cloaked themselves more and more in an atmosphere of siege.

  Having long feared the wrath of Kalugin within Merovingen's Signeury, the disorganized merchants had looked there now for leadership against real, if still generally faceless, enemies. And old Iosef Kalugin, who had passed his life confounding all around him, kept his record intact by doing nothing the merchantry recognized as useful. For a census—whatever else its civic merits might be—did nothing to grease the wheels of commerce.

  But their offspring and journeymen came still to the Ramsey Bell after their morning's work along the wharfside, in the markets and at the warehouses had been completed. They took a late lunch as their parents and grandparents had done before them and engaged in the discreet art of gossip without which no mercantile culture could function.

  The outer door repeatedly slammed on a broken hinge, stifling the beginnings of conversation at some of the back tables. The owner, muttering that once broken nothing on Merovin was ever truly fixed, hastened to prop the door open. His more important customers—those who would in time be among the more important men in the city—would be arriving soon and they had no need of grand entrances. Besides, the day was close enough that a breeze was welcome despite the inevitable flies. He placed a tray of glasses and a pitcher of pale ale on the Wex's table, then took a page of orders from less familiar faces.

  Gavin Yakunin, looking hot and tired in a sweater that should have been appropriate for autumn but wasn't, slumped into the second seat at the table.

  "Pour me one, while you're about it," the newcomer asked.

  Wex did so silently. The time was not yet right for conversation.

  Some distance away, Richard Kamat threaded across the narrow bridges that connected one isle to the next and Kamat, ultimately, with Ramseyhead. He had the longest walk of any of the regulars at the Bell and, since the death of his father, no real reason to go. He was househead now, without the narrow directives of a house's dockside agent. He could have—perhaps should have—dined in his own quarters or in intimacy with his peers, the scant eight dozens of househeads who stood at the top of Merovingen's pyramid.

  That thought, frankly, still set his innards twisting. At twenty-five he was the youngest major househead in the city and could not yet sit across a table from his peers without thinking of Nikolay Kamat—of his father and of himself as untried son. The image of his suddenly mortally-stricken parent rose unbidden to the forefront of Richard's memory. He could not shake it away, but in the months since the funeral he'd learned to modify the scene and the mood it invariably brought.

  He'd approve, the young man thought as he waited for a pushcart to clear the entrance of Fishmarket Bridge. I’ll always be your son to the men who were your friends and enemies, but at the Bell I'm the first who's jumped. Not fish nor fowl, but they look up to me, and I'll be their spokesman. Karma. Not balanced, but it will serve.

  A shout rose up from beneath the bridge: Damn you to Megary—or some such. Richard pushed his way to the side and stared down. A poleboat had gone broadside in the current, fouling a canaler as it went. The poleman, woman actually, was scarcely into her teens and short on skills as she recovered her course. The insult had shaken her—Richard could see the sweat on her white face from the bridge—or she was fevered. More likely the latter, he considered as he started walking again; no one who lived canalside, not even a child, was unaccustomed to insults.

  Megary, though, flew in the rumors these days and Kamat, which had better ears in Merovingen-below than many, was sensitive to the sound. Kamat had a score to settle and word had come back it might be settled at Megary. Sword and slaver—an appalling sort of partnership if it were ever proven, but a logical one for all that. If there were Sword of God in Merovingen then Megary would be working with them as they had with every other shadowy or illicit enterprise for a generation or more.

  Richard was almost positive he could prove it. Prove it through the person of Rod Baritz who was certainly from Nev Hettek and almost as certainly an operative of the Sword. If there was karma then it weighed against Kamat each day he delayed—but interrogation in the Justiciary wasn't Baritz' destiny—yet. No one there would care that he had drugged Marina Kamat, Richard's sister, and left her for dead at Nikolaev. And since Kalugin and the city would kill him for the crimes they did care about, Baritz would have to answer for Marina before he went to the Justiciary.

  Vengeance was an unpracticed art in Kamat. Nikolay Kamat had had few enemies and none whom he didn't respect or mingle with socially; he'd brought up his son the same way. It was measure of the depth of the Sword's cut, of the damage it had already done to Merovingen's delicate structure, that Richard cherished vengeance in the coldest regions of his heart.

  And kept it hidden there, for no one at the Ramsey Bell, not even his cousin Gregory who was now Kamat's agent wharfside, suspected it as he took the last vacant seat at the table.

  "How goes the war, Dickon?" Gavin asked, using the nickname that went far back into Richard's childhood.

  "Holding our own," Richard replied with a laugh as he poured the last of the pitcher into his glass.

  "Ah, but how long could you hold if the city shuts down?" Franck asked morosely. The Wex trade in perishable foodstuffs was more vulnerable to day-to-day shifts in the city's mood than that of Kamat, whose dyestuffs and textiles were durable and more ea
sily stockpiled. "And who has the power to shut down Merovingen?" Richard replied with another laugh, but one that was less sincere.

  "Our own governor, for a start," Krespin Balaci muttered.

  So they were into it without a mouthful of food among them yet. And Richard, feeling his way in his new role as elder statesman here, sat back to listen.

  "A census—by all that's sacred, what does he hope to accomplish with a census?"

  "If there's outsiders in the Below, then no nose-counter's going to smoke them out. And as for religion, saving the lunatic Janes, who's going to say they aren't precisely what they're supposed to be?"

  "And who cares—save that the Below's riled and there's no business with strangers ..."

  "That's not the census… that's something else again."

  Richard's table froze into silence; the last remark had come from Raza's table, though not from Dao himself. Angel knew these men listened to each other and often spoke for the room rather than their closest companions—but actual conversation between tables was rare enough to raise eyebrows. Richard felt the dynamic pendulum swing his way.

  "What else, ser Martushev?" he asked, giving the unseen pendulum a shove.

  Martushev shared Rimmon Isle with Nikolaev, among others, and knew more about the deaths and destruction there than had ever officially been put out.

  "Nothing you don't know of yourself, ser Kamat."

  Richard drummed his fingers lightly against the side of his glass. He didn't doubt he knew more than Martushev imagined. "Safe to say. Who knows what the Sword of God will do? Or what the Janes have already done."

  The taproom grew closer as every man drew his breath in. Not even Kalugin, in his commands and proclamation, had said what the census was supposed to isolate and expose. Now Kamat, not the highest of the mighty, but a respectable source all the same, had put its name in front of the rumors. The silence broke like a storm surge.

  Trade balanced its risks with intrigue. A little disorder, a little uncertainty in the world beyond the counting-rooms, was the oil that kept the machinery running smoothly. Too much chaos, though, and the mechanism slipped out of control.

  "I pay an out-city agent a silverbit a hundred-weight as surety." The softly spoken words came from Dao Raza, and the grain surety he quoted amounted to nothing less than extortion.

  Franck Wex pushed his stew aside. "Same here," he admitted, "give or take a copperbit."

  Richard knew the House Wex balance sheet better than he knew House Raza. In his mind he calculated how much the com traders would have to raise their prices, then he made another guess of when Merovingen-below would erupt in food riots. It could make for a very long winter—and it could make the diplomatic niceties of war completely unnecessary for Nev Hettek.

  Other voices emitted brief tales of up-river pressure. Richard retreated into silence as the scope and pattern of Nev Hettek meddling emerged. He had supposed, owing to the blood-tie between Nev Hettek and his mother, that Kamat was alone in receiving thinly veiled threats; that his house was uniquely vulnerable to economic blackmail.

  He was wrong. Someone in Nev Hettek knew the city's traders better than they knew themselves. Someone had tailored the blackmail to each house's particular weakness. Someone understood the habitual secrecy with which each house shrouded its inmost affairs. And someone had been willing to stake everything that no househead would turn to the Signeury for help.

  It had happened before. Famine or glut had tipped the balance too far toward the side of disorder and chaos reigned in the shops and warehouses of Merovingen. Fortunes were made and lost in a season. The Adami, who had lent their own name to Kamat Isle not two generations past, had crumbled into poverty in just such a tumult. But their downfall had been the result of a season-long failure of northern timber (the organic skeleton of Merovingen which must be constantly restored and replaced). This cycle would be driven by the Adventist expansionism of Nev Hettek into the far-flung trade of the Det River delta.

  Everyone knew the Sword of God could be relentless and brutal; Richard had contemplated his vengeance in that same spirit. The face of Rod Baritz floated square in Richard's mind. He took a new measure of the man—his physical softness contrasting with his hard, porcine eyes. Such a face, such a man, could plot a city's downfall through riot and starvation. The young Merovingen househead had never before imagined how subtle the Sword might be in using Merovingen against itself.

  "They must be stopped," he muttered.

  "And how would you stop the Kalugins?" Franck inquired.

  Richard shuddered as he came back to the tangible reality of the Ramsey Bell and sought the context of the question. The census—everyone was still griping about the city census while his thoughts had wandered down more twisted pathways. "The way we always have," he said, sounding more casual than he felt. "Obey and ignore."

  "What? Ask his prying list of questions and hand out his filthy scraps of paper? Canalside will run wild," that from Balaci.

  "Forget canalside—what business is it of Kalugin's who resides in our house or on our isle?" That from Martushev again, at the other table.

  "No business—unless he gets so curious he sends his own eyes over for a look. Kamat will tell Kalugin what Kalugin needs to know—nothing more, nothing less—but Kamat knows more about Kamat than Kalugin will ever need to know." He gave them food for thought to accompany the steaming bowls appearing at their places. It would have pleased them even more if Richard had told them that Kamat had already refused to use its First-Bath dyes to tint the identity-card paper. Those cards were going to be hated and forged out of all proportion to their effectiveness, and Richard would not see the words "First-Bath" associated with them. Not even at the price Iosef Kalugin had offered.

  The excitement which had bound the tables together had almost completely faded when Pradesh St. John, whose lips were twisted by a childhood scar, spoke up in his slow, careful voice: "It's not the foreigners who need separating out. We shut our eyes to our own."

  That meant Megary—everyone knew it, and no one meant to acknowledge it. So Desh, who was not accounted much power here anyway, lowered his eyes and said nothing more.

  His words stung, though. They haunted Richard throughout the meal, inhibiting his conversation and causing him to invent a pretext for leaving early. Then they led him up the far side of Grand Canal, to the canalside slips of Calliste and a dark, tilt-angle alleyway no man of property ought dare to walk.

  Richard didn't know the names and homes of every man who drew Kamat pay, but he knew most of them who'd been there any length of time. He knew Jordie Slade for a hard working, god-fearing man. It had been five days since Jordie had picked up his sack and sweater and headed for home— and nary a word since. Probably nothing more serious than the fever, which was serious enough down here. But Jordie was a member of what Hosni Kamat, who started the Kamat fortune, called the greater family. Richard would give him a lune for medicine; more if the crud had spread through his family.

  Karma. It was the least a house could do… should do.

  He rapped on the door and listened with growing curiosity as furniture was shoved aside. The door opened a crack—not enough to cast light on the room or its occupants.

  "What're you here for?" a voice more hostile than female demanded.

  "M'sera Shade?"

  "So. Who're you?"

  "M'sera, I'm Richard Kamat—your husband works for me. He hasn't been to work for several days. We're worried about him, it being the fever season and all. Has he taken sick?"

  "M'ser Kamat?'

  The voice changed its modulation away from hostility toward something Richard could not immediately identify. More furniture was quickly shoved aside. The door swung wide.

  "Come in, come in. I didn't know ..."

  Richard ducked under the doorway. He stood still, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the dim light while the woman re-erected the barrier. He was used to hearing surprise and embarrassment in their voices w
hen he entered their homes, but Jordie's wife's voice held only faint hope and despair.

  There was no fever in this spotless, threadbare flat—and no Jordie Slade either. Only a woman no older than Marina and two small children who watched him in huge-eyed silence.

  "Does he do this often?" the Househead asked.

  "No, not my Jordie. He never done this before…"

  Her eyes filled while she spoke, then released her tears down trembling cheeks. Richard wondered how many days she'd hidden behind her door, sharing her terror with none but her children. He guided her to the sofa where, once she was seated, the children immediately moved to her side. Richard asked what had happened, then offered her his hand- kerchief as the question brought forth more tears than words. The wise man of wealth and power knew better than to presume casualness in the homes of his inferiors; Richard stood at military rest while the young woman stumbled through her story.

  Their youngest had been fevered and Jordie had cast about looking for quick work to get the medicines that would see the child to health. He'd found something five nights ago.

  "He must've known something," the woman said, her voice suddenly steady as she stared into Richard's eyes. "He come back here with the coin first. Said he'd got less for the work, getting the coin first and all, but it was enough for the medicine an' that was all that mattered."

  "Did he say where he was going, or who he'd be working for?" Richard asked, already certain that Jordie hadn't told his wife.

  She hesitated then hid her face behind the cotton square. "He said he'd be back by third watch, and he just said he loved me.… Oh, m'ser, Jordie'd always say he loved me an' not to worry—but he just said he loved me."

  Richard felt his blood go cold with karma. If he'd been his grandfather, who'd grown up working beside men like Jordie, he'd have taken the woman in his arms like a daughter and promised her that Jordie's vengeance was Kamat's vengeance. But Richard wasn't Hosni, and compassion pounded through his veins without ever breaking the surface.