Endgame

by C. J. Cherryh

  Quick, light steps in the hall, a frantic knock. Trouble, Justice thought, and not the heavy tread he had to fear. But the noise was to fear. He snatched the door open.

  For an instant, he hardly recognized Sonja as she whisked inside—she wore dark, simple clothing, and the hood to her black cloak was drawn close. "Close the door!" she whispered hoarsely. "For gods' sakes, close it!"

  "Sonja . . . what's happened? Why—"

  "Exeter's moved against my family," she said, pushing the hood back from her face. The tears on her cheeks glittered in the lamplight. She swallowed heavily, tried to speak, and finally croaked out, "They've taken my mother, Justus! Taken her!"

  "Lord!" He tossed the package and the letter into a chair and gently took her into his arms. "When?"

  "I came home this afternoon, later than I'd expected. I found the house in disarray, the servants terrified. They said Exeter's men came to the house and took my mother and four of my cousins to the College. They said the Cardial wanted 'further inquiries' into House Keisel's dealings with Nev Hettek. I . . . oh, Justus! What can I do?"

  He tried to concentrate on her problem, pushing his own aside. "What about your father?"

  She buried her head in his shoulder. "I don't know," she said. "I went there. No one's seen him all day. I'm afraid they've taken him, too!" She lifted her head; tears stood in her dark eyes. "Some of the servants have run. It's terrible out there, Justus . . . terrible! Have you been out this evening?"

  "No."

  "Gods. It's quiet. Terribly quiet. Blacklegs. A few people. Fog's come up. Afobody on canalside—you don't see a boat. I thought I'd lose myself in the crowd—but there wasn't one. I just—just came ahead. And nobody stopped me."

  "You came over here by yourself?"

  "I had to. I slipped out of the house—I was afraid the slinks would come back—I'm afraid to go home— gods, Justus . . . what do we do?"

  Justice drew a deep breath. How much can I tell her? How much right have I to trust her—if she turns me down and gets caught and spills it all—it's not just me, it's Stella—it's Rhajmurti—and Raj—everything leads back to everybody. ...

  He said, "Sonja, there's nothing you can do. Come with me. I've a way out of town."

  "Where?"

  "For the Chattalen."

  "Gods." She straightened back in his arms, seemed to pull herself together, to look at him as if she didn't know him. "What are you saying?"

  "That the threads lead everywhere, Sonja. You're helpless as I am. You have to leave."

  "But Mother . . . Father ... I can't just go off and leave them—"

  "You're one less for them to worry about. And if worse comes to worst, you carry two Names. You can get out of Merovingen." He pointed at the books. "That's money. That's the books. That'll keep us alive after we get there."

  She stared at him. Thinking desperately, he was sure. Then she said, her voice shaking, "More than alive. More than alive, Justus." She backed away from him, pulled back her cloak to show a heavy bag slung from her shoulder. She opened it, and inside—

  Jewelry. Jewels of every kind, color and size. More jewels together than he'd ever seen in his entire lifetime. My God, he thought. Did she know she was running? Is that why she came?

  She said, shakily, "I took these when I left the house," she said, and folded the bag shut again, hugged it close. "Mother's jewelry. Mine. I was scared to death coming here. But I was scared the servants would steal it—or Exeter's slinks take it. I can buy help in the Chat. I can set up Keisel there. . . ."

  The ambitions of Family. Intrigue was in the blood. This was the girl an artist had fallen in love with.

  "There's a ship in port," he said. "I'm going. My aunt is. God, I've got things to tell you—Rhajmurti's arranging us to get out of here. We're to stay put here till he sends for us. . . ."

  ESCAPE FROM MEROVINGEN

  Finale in two acts by

  Janet & Chris Morris

  Act One: THE FOOL MUST DIE

  Kenner and Jacobs wanted to wait until sunset before they murdered the governor's son. That way, the tricky light of the twilight hours would help obscure their identity. Kenner liked to use every natural advantage, and the poor visibility available in the city built on stilts was even poorer when night began to fall and the canal water met the chilling air.

  You could call the result "lake effect," if Merovingen had been built on a lake. Kenner called it canal effect, the first time he'd seen the billows of white mist rising from the canals and covering the dockside like a horde of ghosts.

  Today, the canal effect had started early, and the mist was as thick as smoke from a raging fire. It sparkled when the late day's sun hit it. It swirled. It skimmed the surface. It eddied upward, toward the blue sky above. That sky, where he could glimpse it through the crazily-canted tiers of the stilt city, was already beginning to lower toward dusk.

  Sunset was the ticket, Kenner had insisted, and his henchman Jacobs, pale and fair and still smooth with baby fat, had gone along with the plan.

  But now Jacobs was clearly musing, mulling things over. Kenner knew it was dangerous when subordinates had time to think. Kenner had led death squads back home in Nev Hettek when Jacobs was still a privileged child shielded from the Revolution by his parents' position, before the Revolution had become Karl Fon's Revolutionary government and all of Nev Hettek had gone Fon's way.

  These days, Karl Fon was Nev Hettek's ruler and Fon wanted Merovingen brought into the fold—or had wanted it. Kenner wasn't included in the elite councils of the revolution. He was a weapon in its hands. He'd been sent down here to help Chance Magruder, Nev Hettek's Ambassador to Merovingen, teach the Merovingians that they didn't have to suffer under a corrupt religious state.

  They could do some damned thing about it, these Merovingian fools, if only they had the nerve. The plan had been subtle, at first. But subtlety didn't seem to work where karma was involved, and the Merovingian majority believed in karma—when they believed in anything at all besides greed and making sure the other guy didn't do any better than you did. Karma was the excuse for all prejudice, greed, envy and more: for all corruption, the rationale behind all bad fortune, the justification for all the oppression in Merovingen. Karma was the driver that powered Mero-vingen's ruling class, an unholy merger between the mercantile elite and the religious bureaucracy.

  This being the case, or so the reasoning had gone in Nev Hettek, karma could be made to work for the revolution.

  That was where Kenner had come in. Shipped down here with Dani Lambert, a high official of the revolutionary council, Kenner had been put to work by Magruder immediately, dispensing karma in the form of favors, low-interest loans, technical quick-fixes, and death.

  So Kenner hadn't minded his job description as a machinist, or his real job, that of a covert Sword of God agent in Merovingen. After all, Magruder had put Kenner to work doing what Kenner did best: assassination and incrimination.

  As soon as Kenner had gotten into town, almost, Magruder had sent him off to murder a cardinal in the College. Kenner had taken Mike Chamoun, Magruder's pet Nev Hetteker agent, along with him, to share the blame and the risk.

  Having thrown Kenner into the thick of Merovingen intrigue, Magruder had then waited to see how Kenner performed. Once Cardinal Ito was dead, Kenner had been put away, seemingly forgotten, minding his cover in the Nev Hettek machine shop that provided Merovingians with marginal technical competency.

  Until now. Now Something had changed. Maybe everything had changed. Even Jacobs could feel it. Kenner's big, soft assistant wandered away from the pier, to a fish stall.

  Jacobs soon came back with fish and chips he didn't have the stomach to eat. The chubby kid sat on a moldy barrel and looked rebelliously up into Kenner's watchful eyes as he chucked chips off the pier, into the white swirl of mist. There the bandit-birds dived to catch them before the morsels fell into the water, where hungry blue-gills were congregating in hopes of a feast.

  "Quit
lookin' at me like that," Jacobs snarled, when Kenner watched but didn't say anything.

  "Like what?" Kenner asked quietly, taking a quick look around. Behind his back, over his shoulder, up the pier and down, all looked quiet. Too quiet: There weren't even the usual number of folks around, today.

  Maybe the reason for that was simple caution in Merovingen-below: Everybody stayed indoors if they could, since Cardinal Exeter's Inquisition marshals had begun arresting folk for congregating without a license or for saying the wrong thing or for looking indigent or for any damned thing at all.

  So maybe it wasn't smart to be out here, on Ventani Pier. But the boat would come, the way Magruder promised. Then he and Jacobs would get in it and motor to the kill zone, and on, up to the embassy, the way they were supposed to. There they'd leave the boat, for somebody else to take, the way they'd been told to do.

  "Yer lookin' at me funny. Lookin' at me like I was dead already, is how," Jacobs growled.

  "Eat your dinner. It may be the last time we get to eat for a long while," Kenner advised. His own mouth was too sticky to even consider putting food into.

  Kenner could never eat right before an operation. Magruder had told Kenner to leave the boat for "somebody." Somebody who couldn't be seen to be leaving on his own recognizance, or seen leaving openly at all. Leave the boat for whom? Magruder himself? Dani Lambert, Magruder's old girlfriend? Tatiana Kalugin, his new girlfriend, who was the governor's daughter and a power in her own right in Merovingen? Or for Vega Boregy, Mike Chamoun's father-in-law and Magruder's unwilling ally? Or for somebody even more sinister?

  You could never anticipate Magruder. It was futile to try guessing what the ambassador had up his velvet sleeve. Kenner, who admired nobody and respected nothing but his own ability, had come to possess a grudging admiration for Chance Magruder.

  Magruder was the closest thing to a role-model that Kenner had ever stumbled on, and not just because Magruder had made it clear to Kenner on their first meeting that if Kenner screwed up—any way at all— Magruder would kill him.

  Magruder was determined to have an error-free environment in a covert venue. Kenner had to admire the guy's guts. And Magruder was getting what he wanted, it seemed. Until now.

  Now, something was so wrong that even Jacobs could feel it.

  Jacobs looked up at Kenner, a greasy chip halfway to his pale lips, and said, "So are you sayin' this is my last meal? You gotta give me a chance to i get through this, Kenner. If I messed up, you owe me a chance to make it right. I been a good long time takin' your orders, doin' whatever I was told. You can't just . . . waste me. ..."

  The pudgy Sword of God agent was nearly in tears. Jacobs' chin became two chins. Both chins quivered as if they were made of gelatin. A trick of the late-day light made the sun sparkle on Jacobs' sparse whiskers.

  "Retribution protect me from fools and cowards," Kenner swore softly, aloud. But there was nobody in Merovingen to protect Kenner but Kenner's own self. "Look, Jacobs. I know you've been hearing lots of rumors. So have I. So what? We do our job, and we do what we're told. Both of us. Then we get the hell out of harm's way. Just like Magruder wants. Both of us. Get me?"

  Kenner couldn't say T don't have orders to kill you, Fatty—not yet, anyway.' Because you couldn't tell who might be listening—under the pier, behind a barrel or in one, or hidden in some doorway. But he came as close as he could, then and there, even joining Jacobs and picking out a piece of greasy fish to pop into his own mouth.

  "Get me?" he said again.

  The fat agent made a noise that was part sob, part grunt, part moan. Jacobs was actually shivering.

  Well, it was chilly out here, and the wind had oncoming winter's bite in it. Some place else, not so cursed crazy, the damn sky would have given up some snow. But it wasn't going to snow here. It was just going to spew cold white mist off the canals as if there were steam engines with billowing smokestacks down there under the murky water.

  This place didn't deserve any better than it got. When Kenner had first come down from Nev Hettek, Magruder had told him that Merovingen had exactly the government it deserved. The crack had seemed strange and inappropriate at the time, but now Kenner had been among these superstition-ridden crazies long enough to agree.

  If these folk had their freedom, they wouldn't know what to do with it, Kenner sometimes thought. If they had control of their fates, they'd start killing each other in droves. Most of the factions here misunderstood freedom as the ability to force your will and beliefs on anyone and everyone else with impunity.

  Freedom wasn't worth crap without judgment, fortitude, forebearance, and strength of character.

  As Kenner understood from the last revolution he'd helped manage, real freedom wasn't the freedom to force your will on everyone else; real freedom was the freedom from having everyone else's will forced upon you; real freedom was having some say in and making sure the rules were obeyed equally by all. And that took restraint on the part of citizens. Tolerance. Control over prejudice and greed—self-control, not state control.

  If you destroyed the current regime here, you'd have civil unrest, ethnic violence between minorities, and religious wars among the currently ruling Reve-nantists and the Adventists and the Janes and all the other sects waiting for their turn in the catbird's seat.

  Magruder knew that revolutionary fervor without guidance would just lead to bloody anarchy here. He just didn't seem to care any longer—if he'd ever cared. Kenner had realized long ago that the power brokers didn't always believe in the causes they promoted; they just believed that they should have the power to call the shots.

  Maybe Magruder was no exception. Kenner had seen the singleness of purpose in Magruder's pale hazel eyes when Chance had given Kenner the order to take out Mikhail Kalugin.

  Mikhail Kalugin was a dimwit, a fool, an idealist, and the governor's annointed successor, whose primacy was endorsed by the strongest cardinals. If Mikhail was dangerous, he was so only to the factions in his family and allies of those factions—those who didn't want Mikhail to succeed Iosef Kalugin; those who needed to make sure that the status quo would stand.

  But Nev Hettek had aligned itself against the status quo here. Giving Kenner the order to assassinate Mikhail Kalugin, Magruder's head had been high and defiant: Don't ask me any questions that aren't operational, kid. Don't question my judgment. You and I know that killing is going to rip a new asshole in Merovingen. So we do it. Because those are my orders.

  Magruder's eyes had seemed to say, We don't generate policy; we execute it, remember?

  But Magruder had a personal stake in this: he was sleeping with Mikhail's sister, who'd have a chance at the helm if Mikhail was out of the way.

  So Kenner began wondering if those orders Magruder had given him had really originated in Nev Hettek, or in Magruder's ambassadorial bed here in Merovingen.

  With Mikhail out of the way, Tatiana Kalugin and her brother Anastasi could fight it out for their father's power base; with Nev Hettek on her side, Tatiana was bound to win eventually, either before her brother Anastasi got Merovingen into an all-out war with Nev Hettek, or after. Either of those results would suit Karl Fon. But maybe Magruder was playing favorites.

  Magruder had never said outright to Kenner that the assassination order had originated in Nev Hettek. Could be it hadn't. Could be it had originated with Magruder. All the briefing had covered was the likely result of Mikhail's death, once discovered. And how to make sure the death was discovered. And their secondary action plan, which included putting the blame on Cardinal Exeter; using the rumor mill to explain that Mikhail was out of the cardinal's control and under the spell of the drugged-out prophetess, Cassie Boregy; that, and setting a couple fires.

  Leave it to Magruder to come up with a coup de grace so complex you needed a scorecard to tell the players.

  Set a couple fires. The right fires, at the right time, in the right places. That was why Kenner had wanted to do this at sunset. Cassie Boregy, Mike Chamo
un's wife, had been prophesying a fiery revolt in Merovingen for so long that some well-timed arson would result in the whole power structure of Merovingen going up like a tinder-box.

  Those fires were going to look so pretty in the sunset.

  Kenner couldn't wait.

  He chucked his fish over the side of the pier and said, without looking back at Jacobs, "Let's go, Jacobs. Weil feel a lot better once we get moving. We got a timetable to meet."

  The fires were going to be so pretty, all those orange and gold and green flames against a purple sky afire with sunset. A little blood, a little death, a little destruction, and Kenner was going to ride out of this hellhole without a single regret.

  After all, somebody had to light the fuse to blow this powderkeg to the karmic hell it had imagined for itself. Let Magruder worry about the repercussions: Kenner was going to give Magruder his error-free environment, a perfect operation, and get the hell out before the flames got too hot to survive.

  Mikhail Kalugin wanted to go see Cassie Boregy, but that was easier said than done, these days. Son of the governor or not, Mikhail would need the permission of a College cardinal, or of someone high in Boregy House, to see Cassie alone. He'd been caught smuggling deathangel to Cassie in a clock, and now no one trusted him.

  Standing in his fancyboat's stern on the waterway in sunset, Mikhail glared defiantly around at the mist and the city beyond, gilded in sunset. Coming to see Cassie like this, he might not be allowed any time alone with his magical, mystical prophetess.

  But he was going to try. He was still the governor's son. He wasn't going to knuckle under to the College, inquisition or no. Not to Cardinal Exeter, who had even Mikhail's arrogant sister and murderous brother frightened. Certainly not to Cassie's father, Vega, who ought to know that Mikhail's wishes were more important than the orders of the Nev Hetteker physician brought in to tend Cassie in the wake of childbirth.

  Just because his beloved prophetess was married to some Nev Hettek bean-counter, that was no reason to keep Mikhail from the counsel of his beloved.