Endgame
Page 14
So push had come to shove, and Chance was the man with all the cards in his hand, on site. He had helped in that.
Chance was a pragmatist.
Chance had known that Mondragon would read this opportunity for what it was: the beginning of overt revolution, and perhaps the end of Mondragon.
But Chance Magruder was a man who believed in fighting chances, and Tom Mondragon was a man who believed in fighting.
So maybe it would be all right.
When Mondragon made the floor landing, he saw a Boregy cousin, in lace and velvet, waiting in the hall, and nearly stumbled over his own feet, so quickly did he turn his head away and continue downward.
Downward. Down into the darker underbelly of the embassy. He was still on Nev Hetteker territory. He was still subject to Nev Hettek law. Chance could still change his mind, and send the house guard after him. If Mondragon was killed by Chance's people, and his corpse hidden, Chance could always say he'd escaped.
Thanking Chance for something was like thanking the wind for blowing a storm your way—a storm that might kill you or save you and cared not one whit about which it did to you.
Mondragon was shivering in the dark now, trying to force his eyes to adjust to the dimness, forcing his weak knees onward.
He was getting old. Or maybe he'd finally used up all his nerve. You could run on nerve only so long.
When he got to the watergate, he was dripping with sweat and shaking all over.
But he was alive. And alone, facing the iron bars, with freedom only a hand's breadth away.
Kenner and Jacobs came in the watergate of the embassy jacked up and sweating, snarling at one another and looking over their shoulders.
"Should have got him with the first shot," Kenner kept muttering. The bullet that had gone wide might be anywhere. In Nev Hettek, a bullet lodged in a piece of wood could hang you. Ballistics weren't unknown there.
He kept trying to tell himself—and Jacobs—that a bullet, even if found, wasn't going to hang you the way it would back home. Tech here was lower than a whale's belly. The Nev Hettekers weren't the only ones with primitive firearms. That was why the firearms they'd been issued were so primitive.
But, for safety's sake, they'd chucked both of their guns over the side in the middle of the remotest damned canal they could find.
They'd detoured to do just that. And so Kenner was wet to the skin and shivering with cold. Probably catch the flu and die, because of Jacobs' incompetence.
How the hell could Jacobs have missed, at point-blank range? Kenner hadn't been willing to trust Jacobs to do any damned thing if he couldn't shoot a fool standing in the stern of a boat. So Kenner had had to do everything else himself—had gone over the side, to pull off the fake stern insignia and send the plank to the bottom of the Grand.
Nothing but his first steak in the embassy kitchen had looked as good as Kenner's first sight, tonight, of that watergate—not since he'd come to Merovingen. Nothing would look as good to him again until he left here, for good.
The gate came down with a satisfactory clank of rusty metal and he scrambled to help Jacobs make the boat fast.
Jacobs was up on the quayside already, looking like a skit about to bolt for a hole, when a malevolent shadow stepped out the dark.
Kenner wasn't sure for a moment what was happening: the shadow moved. Jacobs dropped the rope he had in one hand and swung around, holding a grapple like a weapon.
The shadow drew a sword, just as Kenner yelled a "No!"
But the sword in those hands had hissed out with a duelist's competence and it was too damned late to do anything about Jacobs, who was swinging with the pronged grapple as if he had a chance against the level of professional he was facing.
Kenner didn't see more than a glitter of errant torchlight off the duelist's sword before he dived overboard, into the water, holding his breath and swimming for his life.
He didn't know what had happened up in the embassy, or why Thomas Mondragon was on the loose, lethal and lurking here. He didn't bother to stay around and argue.
Maybe you could have talked your way out of a quick death or a nasty wound if Jacobs hadn't started swinging, but you couldn't stop that kind of fight between men any easier than you could between stray cats.
And Kenner wasn't willing to risk himself to save either of those sons of bitches: not Mondragon; not Jacobs. Not after tonight's cock-up.
All he wanted to do was hold his breath long enough to live through this.
The water was brackish, deep and cold.
He had to get to the surface.
His ears and heart were pounding.
He wanted to surface as far away from the boat as possible.
He kicked his feet as little as he could, and kept his hands close to his body, and headed for what ought to be the watergate wall.
Then, with red dots spinning before his open eyes, fighting the pain in his chest and the desire to gulp water, he let himself slowly come to the surface.
Slowly.
Just your nose. Just get your nose up there.
And then his nose broke water and it was all he could do to breathe through it without letting instinct overwhelm him and sticking his head up.
If he stuck his head up, Mondragon was going to cut it off. You didn't kill one man of a pair and not make at least an easy attempt on the other—not when the living one was witness to what happened to the dead one.
Kenner knew that Jacobs was dead, the way a mother rabbit knows it when her babies are killed. And even if he hadn't felt it with an operator's keen instinct, he'd seen the start of Mondragon's deadly stroke. He knew Jacobs' abilities. The result was only logical.
Breathing through his nose, he listened as hard as he could. Sound traveled through water better than air, and his ears told him everything he was afraid to let his eyes see.
He heard the watergate begin to winch up. He heard the boat cast off. He heard the putt of its motor starting up.
And he dived.
If he got chopped by the motor, it would be his own fault.
When he surfaced again, he couldn't hear anything of the boat.
So he stuck his head up, very carefully. No boat. No Mondragon.
He swam for it. Something brushed him, under the surface, bumped his thigh.
When he clambered up onto the floating dock, he didn't see Jacobs' body anywhere. So, maybe his instincts weren't as keen as a mother rabbit's. Maybe Jacobs escaped somehow.
He wanted to believe it. He kept trying to believe it, as he dripped his way along. Then he saw a little blood, diluted, in a puddle of water as if someone had made a hurried attempt to sluice down the bonds.
And then he knew what had bumped him in the water: Jacobs' corpse.
Corpses float unless you gut them and weight them right, and sometimes they float even then.
He vomited, retched on his knees until all the water he'd swallowed and all the bile he had was mingled with the blood in the puddle.
When he staggered to his feet and away, Kenner didn't look back. He headed up the watergate stairs, and then out through the kitchen.
It was deserted. And the stocks were a lot leaner than they should have been. Shelves nearly empty. Funny.
He needed to change clothes. He was going to freeze to death. He couldn't find anybody down here to help him. That was strange, too.
Magruder would skin him alive if he showed up on the business floor in sopping black night-action clothing.
He almost snuck out the back, but he was so hungry he grabbed a hard roll and started gnawing on it, trying to catch his breath and stop sneezing. He ought to go get on with his job, wet or not.
But Magruder needed to know what happened here—about Mondragon, about Jacobs.
Or did he?
The mission wasn't over. Kenner still had some things to do.
Just as he was deciding to get about his business, wet clothes or not, one of the cooks came in and Kenner jumped, startled, and spun arou
nd, hand going to the knife at his waist.
"Ya! You scared a' me, boy? What the—lookit ye, yer sopped!"
"Yeah. Get me some clothes from upstairs, okay? And have one of the boss's people come down for a second. I gotta leave a verbal message."
The woman wasn't listening. She was telling him he needed a cup of tea and he should get out of those clothes so that she could dry them for him.
He wanted to wring her neck. Instead he said, "Listen to me," very quietly, in a voice that brought her up short. "I need clean, dry clothes—now. Matches. Money. Boots. Get one of Magruder's people down here now or I'm going up there."
She went with wide eyes, calling back in a wheezy whisper, "Everybody's getting ready to leave, you know. You should, too." as if she was giving up a state secret.
"Leave?"
Because of what he'd done? Had they botched it that bad? Was the assassination being blamed on them?
Kenner panicked.
He was supposed to be out on the canals, right now, with Jacobs, blaming Mikhail Kalugin's murder on Exeter and starting as many rumors as he could, while he did some selective arson that had to be completed before dawn.
In the end, Kenner didn't wait for the cook to come back, or for Magruder's people to come down so that he could give an interim report. He couldn't. He didn't have time.
He took some cooking oil, a flour sack, some matches, added bread, and cheese for good measure, in case he was searched, and grabbed a handful of the petty cash fund that he knew the cooks kept in a rice barrel.
Then he went running out the delivery entrance, hunched over and still sick to his stomach.
He got to the rear gate before he started to retch again. Jacobs was dead. He kept seeing Mondragon's sword stroking down. He kept feeling the corpse nudge him under the water.
Damned canal water was pestilential. He'd tried not to swallow any. But he'd swallowed plenty, from the way his stomach was behaving. Jacobs was dead. They'd been a team for so long. . . .
FAMILY TIES (REPRISED)
by Nancy Asire
Lights haloed in the fog. The air had a bite this evening, and the walkways suddenly seethed with people, most of them with no apparent goal. Rhajmurti gathered his dark cloak closer and dodged through, head bowed, trying to escape notice of the blacklegs who forged through the steady stream of foot traffic. Something was going on. He sensed it with every nerve he possessed. He picked up bits and pieces of scattered conversations as he walked, most of them exchanged in low voices.
"—Exeter's crazy. Why?"
"—was the College. The College—"
"—can't know who's on what side—"
"—shot Mikhail."
He stopped, nearly tumbling forward as someone behind him ran up on his heels. He apologized, sought the inner wall, and followed the press of traffic, his heart pounding against his ribs. Mikhail, dead? Gods! Shot? When?
By what side?
"—some slink blew his head right off. Yey, they saw the boat—with the Bloody Cardinal's own seal. . . . Yey, I know, I know it ain't reasonable— but 'at's what they seen!"
He stopped and hovered next to the wall of Spell-bridge. He'd been headed for the College. But a major player dead—assassinated by his own side—and the ripple of panic and speculation would run like fire through the town ... he daren't go back to the College now. If Exeter was making a grab for power—if partisan violence had gone that far and Mikhail was dead, a priest could find himself answering more questions than he wanted, questions he had no more idea of than anybody else on the walkways. He clutched his cloak closer, thanking every god he knew he had worn dark colors this evening. Not a hint of saffron showed; at the first opportunity, he'd get rid of the sash that marked him as a priest.
Exeter—against Mikhail? With witnesses? Instinct said not, instinct and his own knowledge said not. It could be pure rumor—the sort that could fly in an instant through the tiers of a nervous town. It could be the wrong name—might be Tatiana, or Anastasi dead. Or some Signeury clerk who'd fallen on a stairs.
But what it started was real. And deadly dangerous if it kept going. He heard the name of Cassie Boregy. Heard Mikhail had died right outside Boregy.
He had to get to Stella's shop, get her, and get back to Kass and Hilda's. If the gods loved him, Justice would have followed orders and stayed there.
He only hoped that in the spreading panic and the movement of police of every faction, they weren't going to seal off the walkways.
Or order them completely cleared.
Justice stood for a moment at the edge of the common room of Hilda's Tavern, his eyes moving slowly. This time of night, the tables were usually full, the place awash in conversation. That was nothing new.
But this crowd wasn't the usual mix of students, and it was sudden and mostly standing: unnatural quiet had given way to a gathering of shopkeepers and students and a scattering of poleboatmen, Guy the bartender was dispensing drinks, tables were partly full, while Hilda—Hilda looked grim: she kept darting glances over her sudden wealth of customers as if she suspected devils in the shadows.
She smiled as Justice approached the bar, but the smile looked forced.
"What's going on?" he asked.
She hesitated, then leaned closer. "Mikhail's dead."
He put out one hand to the bar for support. "How?"
"Word is, he was shot, though some say he fell an' knocked hisself into his next life. Some are sayin' th' cardinal—" She lowered her voice further. "Some is saying She done it. Word is th' blacklegs is movin' on the College."
"God. How long ago?"
"Inside th' hour." She nodded toward one of the men seated at a far table: "Jonas come flyin' in on th' edge of—"
The lights swayed. The building jolted and there was a panicked silence, then a nervous ripple of oaths.
" 'S all we need," Hilda breathed, hand to her heart.
"Just a shake," Justice said, his own pulse fluttering. Someone was talking about Mad Cassie, how she'd said there'd be fire and earthquake, how there'd be blood—
Hilda said, "Ye take my advice, lad . . . don't go out. An' the lady who come t' visit ye . . . tell her the same. If that's the one I'm thinkin' of, the hightown lady, she for sure don't want t' be out right now." She crossed her arms on her ample bosom, her hands nervously rubbing her shoulders. "Truth t' tell, I ain't felt nothin' like this in all my days. Bad feelin'. Bad feelin' in this crowd." "My aunt—"
"Lissen. You stay in here. She's got enough sense t' stay off th' walks. She's a grown woman an' she ain't a fool, is she? So don't you be!"
Rhajmurti forced himself to stand still and substituted rocking from heel to toe for overt motion. The noise of people standing and talking on the walkway outside the shop had grown to a steady thunder of wooden clogs and hightown boots. A sudden, loud boom rattled his nerves, but it was likely something bumping into the wall outside.
Stella looked up, clutching her canvas bag. "That wasn't a shake. I think it was a gun."
"Rama protect us. Come on, Stella."
"I—" She looked about her, at the shelves, at the shop, looking lost. "I guess we don't need to lock up. God save us."
"Come on," he said, and took the bag from her, took her arm. A fast change of clothes, he'd thought on the way here—something of Justice's might fit him; but he'd decided against it: they had the ship's captain to deal with and priestly saffron might be out of favor in some quarters, but it still meant rights and immunities. He wrapped his cloak close, snugged the bag against him. "We've got the gold?"
Stella pressed a hand to her bosom. "Here. I'll be dead before anyone takes that from me."
He opened the door on a walkway resounding with hurrying people, no few of them carrying bags. Shopkeepers. Scared students. A man went running past, took the stairs, knocking others aside as he disappeared into the dark and the obscuring glow of fog-hazed lanterns.
"Stay with me," Rhajmurti said sharply, and with a firm grip on her hand hea
ded down to the bridge as fast as they could. Somebody was yelling, "They're closin' the high tier! Lindsey's closin' the night-gates!"
"If they close the bridges ..." Stella gasped, on the stairs.
"Don't talk. Stay with me! Don't get separated. . . ."
ENDGAME (REPRISED)
by C. J. Cherryh
Wasn't what they'd looked to meet—her and Rif and Black Cal. Hard as they'd tried, them with their black powder and their few guns, slipping halfway up to Hanging Bridge before the word hit canalside, before the crowds hit the walks all hurrying away from uptown.
"What's goin' on?" Jones asked, hailing a passing skip, and when she got the answer, shoved the engine open wide and moved, no matter she had a fearful load of powder and a damn dangerous package: wasn't any need slipping up on the embassy, now, all hell was breaking out, and Rif and Black Cal with their fancyboat lurking off by White were going to see it, too.
She cut past and yelled a follow-me as the first shots rang out from the roof of the Signeury, and whatever had happened uptown, the moment she rounded the corner she could see the black smoke rolling out of the embassy's second tier door and mixing with the fog.
She had her gun in her waistband, and fog and smoke and load of explosives and all, she steered straight for the embassy's frontage and its watergate—
Fire, mama, God, if they shoot me we're all goin' t' hell t'gether—
Blow Mondragon a hole t' get out of, if nothin' else, he ain't goin't' sit around if he's got a way out—
An' if he ain't got one, there's Rif an' Cal ahind me. They won't lay back, they won't leave 'im t' burn, they ain't that kind. If I make 'em a hole, they'll use it-She throttled up into a sharp turn into the open watergate and into the dock, she hauled mama's pistol out and thumbed the hammer back, despite her eyes running and that she couldn't see clear targets in the smoke. She had the throttle wide before she saw the dockside clear and empty of boats, the building door standing wide—she yanked back and reversed the prop hard, thinking, God, I'm going to be blown t' hell an' the skits've already left this place— Goin't' hit 'er . . . God!