Endgame

by C. J. Cherryh

  Richard tried to keep the full extent of his doubts on that matter from showing on his face. "The sun's well above the roofline and there's been no morning peal from the Signeury bells—has there?"

  The younger man spun on his heels to study the smoke rising in the northwest. The wedding-cake islands of Sofia, Eber, and White concealed every part of the Signeury, even the tall campanile tower, but Kamat always heard the bells.

  "Empty? Overrun? Anastasi, Tatiana, some other faction? The Nev Hettekers. . . ? Do you think they burned it?"

  Richard shook his head. "The Signeury's built of rock and on rock. It will still be standing when the rest of Merovingen's swallowed by the sea, Paul—but whoever's in charge there this morning isn't thinking about the rest of us, we can be sure of that."

  There was a peal of sorts to prove Richard's point: the unmistakable crack of gunfire rather than the ringing of the great bell. The gunfire was followed by the sound of a high-power engine roaring flat-out down the Grand. Paul levered his torso over the railing, although there was no way to see the Grand from Kamat Island.

  The Househead felt obliged to fasten a hand on the younger man's belt. "Don't worry about it. Whatever's happening up there doesn't matter," he said firmly. "Make certain Greg's awake, and tell him not to dawdle over his tea."

  A chastened Paul disappeared into Kamat-proper through one of the lower house doors.

  Of course it did matter who controlled the Signeury and the rest of the city; it mattered very much. If Tatiana had secured the upper hand, she would seek reparations from her brother's erstwhile allies. And when all illusion and subterfuge was stripped away, as it surely had been during the night, Kamat would stand revealed as one of Anastasi Kalugin's many uneasy allies. Kamat could breathe easier if Anastasi were in control, but not much: 'Stasi would expect his allies to support him in every imaginable way.

  If neither of the Kalugin siblings had achieved a victory the situation was bound to get a good deal worse before it got clearer, or better.

  Richard had, however, learned one important lesson during the night: In no event would he, or his kin, or any of the folk of Kamat Isle influence the outcome of the struggle. Family, clients, and tenants alike, they were just another island riding out the storm on their own resources.

  Richard made a complete circuit of the levels of his ad hoc fortress ending up on the slick canalside planks of the dye-room freighting gut. A dozen skips and poleboats that normally relied on Kamat for their trade had take refuge in the cavelike gut. The lives and livelihoods of the canalers depended on free traffic through the city waterways; they were the first to feel anarchy's pinch. None of the boats carried more than a day's food or water, and their sanitary facilities, in a close tie-up, were worse than nonexistent. Richard moved steadily from one deck to the next, arranging fresh food and water for them from the Kamat kitchen in exchange for their promise to use the house privies.

  Doing his arithmetic in an absentminded mutter, Richard calculated how many casks of bacteria cultivate to add to the island bilges. He'd just about convinced himself that the burden of the canalers was adequately offset by the coincidental absence of his female relations and their respective entourages, when he spotted Paul and Greg loitering on the dock. His cousins looked uncomfortable and very out-of-place upwater of the family's polished tealwood boat slip. Richard wished the canalers well before climbing the cantilevered ladder to the dock.

  "Are you letting them stay?" Greg asked once Richard's head was above the planks. His tone implied what his own answer would be if he were the Kamat patriarch.

  "We've always let canalers tie-up in the gut during heavy weather. I know these boats and these people." He bounded off the ladder which, at low tide, was quite steep.

  "This isn't exactly 'heavy weather,' Dickon." Greg thought that using Richard's childhood name emphasized his own nearness to the peak of Kamat's hierarchy, but, as Paul had correctly observed, it only made him seem like a petulant child. "Any one of them could put a torch to the pilings and burn us to the waterline. You can't know who, or what, they're hiding in their holds—even if you think you know them. They'll all stick up for each other."

  Richard unrolled the cuffs of his trousers, establishing the relative importance of his cousin's opinions. "You're right. They will stick up for each other. I'm counting on that—even if I don't know all of them or what's in each and every hold. They look to us for shelter and safety, so long as we provide that, so long as we keep faith with them, they'll make certain no harm comes to us through our gut. They may be poor and ignorant, Greg, but they're not fools." Richard straightened and managed to look down on his cousin, though, in fact, Greg was a good six centimeters taller.

  "Are you saying I'm a fool?" Greg demanded. "Are you?"

  At midnight, when Richard realized that the crisis would likely last longer than anyone could stay awake or competent, he'd divided his forces into two watch-crews. He'd seriously considered making Paul, not Greg, crew-leader of the second watch. Gregor Kamat was a fool of the highest order, and just enough aware of his deficiencies to bridle at the least slight, real or imagined—as his younger brother, Paul, was swiftly learning. And it was necessary that Paul learn his brother's failings without Richard's obvious interference. So Greg, by right of seniority in the family, was in charge of the second watch, and carefully surrounded by house retainers and clients who knew him too well to be cowed by his tantrums.

  "Dammit, Greg," Paul hissed, just before Richard was out of earshot. "Dick wasn't talking about you.

  He just said that the canalers won't let anyone burn them out of a safe tie-up. You're the one who's foolish for being so thin-skinned."

  Richard swallowed a smile: Paul was learning fast. He paused by the mid-level door to confer with Ashe, one of those trusted retainers who was immune to Greg's shortcomings. After telling Ashe about the need for an island census, Richard left orders to be awakened at the first sign of renewed disorder although he expected his sleep, when he finally got it, to be undisturbed. The most opportunistic rioters would be at least as tired as he was—if they weren't passed out drunk already. The truly dangerous people—the Swordmen from Nev Hettek, the Kalugins, and that ilk—would reconnoiter the city thoroughly before the sun set and they became active again.

  Before climbing the stairs to his private apartment, Richard visited the kitchen to make certain there was ample food in the pots and on the table. In the long run, Merovingen was painfully vulnerable to food-siege, but because Kamat was no more vulnerable than the rest, and because so far as he knew there was no blockade threat in the harbor or on the Det, Richard didn't want to dull his household's wits by starving them. He satisfied himself that there was enough in the larder to feed the whole island—household, clients, and tenants—for several days, if worse came to worst, but as he was filling a plate for himself one of the housemaids tugged on his sleeve.

  "There's St. John folk in the vestibule and Ralf says they won't speak to anyone but you, m'ser."

  With a sigh Richard left the kitchen for the sloping corridor to the mid-level entrance. He expected to greet the St. John Househeads, Christen and his sister, Amitra, and he expected them to offer Kamat aid and assistance—which he would gladly accept. St. John's island was roughly the same size and overall population as Kamat's island, although the House of St. John—parents, grandparents, children, aunts, uncles, cousins to the third degree, and body-servants—was considerably larger than Kamat. Moreover, St. John's island had half the number of bridges to watch, being more regularly shaped and disconnected from Sofia on account of a previous generation's piece of sour business. But the "St. John's folk" turned out to be Pradesh St. John, the Underhead of his house and Richard's closest confidant.

  Prad looked worse than Richard felt. "We're bailing out," he announced as soon as Richard shut the door. "I thought you'd want to know. The high tide changes tonight at the bottom of the first watch. We mean to leave with it. And not just us alone. Weil b
e forming a convoy down the backwaters to Eastdyke with Eber, Chavez, and Dorjan. Kamat's welcome to join. There's safety in numbers."

  Richard was incredulous. "Bailing out? You're leaving Merovingen?" The idea had not occurred to him. "All of you? All of St. John—the whole island? How in the stars will you get everybody out? Did a Chat freighter heave across the horizon during the night?"

  Pradesh raised a hand to forestall the stream of embarrassing questions. "Dorjan settled badly during the 'quake; one whole wing broke loose. It was a family wing. There were casualties. They came to us as soon as they could, saying they wanted out of the city. M'sera Jane Dorjan—you know she's one of Cassie Boregy's circle. I guess the last things Cassie said were that there'd be death, there'd be fire, and the ground would tremble before the end. We got three of the four by the end of the first watch and, I guess, the Dorjan folk aren't alone in thinking the end—whatever it will be—can't be far off."

  The Underhead of St. John grinned sheepishly and shook his head before continuing. "I've never had much time for Boregy prophesying, Christen hasn't neither, but Amitra. . . .Cassie Boregy may be mad as a drunk skit, but she's on the mark right now. After a while, Dickon, you've got to start wondering if maybe she isn't onto something—"

  "I'll tell you what Cassie Boregy's been on—" Richard retorted.

  "No need to tell me." Prad lowered his eyes and his voice. "She's a symptom, a catalyst, not a cause— I know that. But there has been death, there has been fire, and there has been a quake. There's also been looting on Dorjan, and Boregy, too, by the number of broken windows we can count. And more gunshots and cannonfire than I've heard in my life, nor my uncle's life, for that matter. I don't believe in Cassie's apocalypse any more than you do, but, Dickon, Merovingen's not safe, and we've got a whole lot at risk here. We've got to get the family out at least, and, putting it bluntly, our strongboxes, too."

  "Let's talk about this, Prad," Richard said soothingly, reaching to guide his friend to the greater privacy of the doorman's empty closet. "It was a bad night, but it was just one night—"

  "That's easy for you to say. We're not you, Dickon, we don't have Kamat's karma. Your family's never kept its wealth in the city. You're still sheep-farmers at heart, just like old Bosnou. Don't tell me you didn't load up his boat once you got it hosed out from the sheep he brought for the wedding-feast. I've known you too long. That ship was riding right on its water-line. And, as if that weren't karma enough—'Talya gets kidnapped. Angel knew, it put the fear of God into all of us—but you got 'Talya back and sent your whole damned family out to Bosnou's stancia on the next tide. And that ship was wallowing like a leaky bucket." Pradesh shed Richard's arm. "I'm not saying Kamat knew. We've been friends too long. If anybody had told you something, you'd have told us—" Prad was referring to Kamat's sometime client, Tom Mondragon, who had been known to untangle a rumor or three in lieu of rent. "—But, Dickon, your karma— Kamat's karma—must be clear as crystal."

  Richard shrugged awkwardly. Crystal karma was the purest of the ten named karmas. It was rarely bestowed on mortal souls, especially Merovingen souls. "Hell's bells, Prad, you know how long I'd been trying to get my sister out of Merovingen. I wanted her to go before she got pregnant. I wanted her to go with Great Uncle Bosnou. It was luck—blind coincidence— that we'd find ourselves with a deranged woman in the nursery. The rest was trade."

  "What's luck but unpaid karma?" Pradesh retorted.

  Richard thought of a reply and rejected it. He raked his hair, seeking another tack: "Luck, karma, whatever. You're right, if they were here, I'd be trying to get them out. But I wouldn't be leaving, Prad, and I wouldn't let anyone who could help me maintain order on the island leave. This is my family's island, my family's city. This is where I live. It's going to take more than one night of crazed Kalugins fulfilling Cassie Boregy's drug-dreams before I'm ready bail out. Come on, Prad, give it another thought. This is Merovingen: home."

  Pradesh St. John retreated until his shoulders struck the doorframe. "I have, Richard. I thought you understood." His voice had gone soft and distant with disbelief. "I thought you were with us all the way. We're crowded together here. We're like sheep in a pen— you said so yourself: A city of hostages no different than our ancestors were. I thought you agreed with us: Once was enough. We waited until Juarez finished the transceivers. After that all we needed was opportunity. The transceivers are all shipped. When will we have a better opportunity?"

  Once was enough.

  Richard heard nothing clearly after those words. The phrase had become an oath of sorts: a trio of words fraught with meaning for a clandestine group of educated Merovingian citizens, of which both Richard Kamat and Pradesh St. John were members.

  They saw Merovin's history repeating itself in Karl Fon's strongman ambitions and their own cardinals' rabid rejection of any innovation that might strengthen Merovingen against her undeclared enemies. Praddy's fierce, dark eyes held the three words in the air between them. Richard blinked and looked away.

  "Not like this, Prad. This isn't a Scouring; this is anarchy and it can become an opportunity if we all stick together to fight it. . . ."

  "You swore, Richard, when you accepted the first transceiver," Pradesh reprimanded his friend. "Once was enough. No second times. No half times. No wea-seling distinctions or retreats. Once was enough."

  Once the Sharrh had come to Scour Merovin. They'd swept through the skies on fire-spewing ships, sterilizing their possession after humanity's taint, then the star-faring bugs abandoned it. Those men and women who survived the Scouring—those few individuals, self-selected for inborn stubbornness, tenacity, and fatalism—staggered out of their boltholes and set about rebuilding their shattered world. They dreamed wistfully of their ancestors soaring between the stars, and their increasingly distant cousins who, one hoped, still maintained humanity's tradition of exploration and colonization out there. But in their daily lives the survivors looked up at the stars with foreboding. Once was enough.

  The renascent society of Merovin was a society of denial: they denied themselves the technological wonders diagrammed in those archives so carefully preserved in the locked storerooms of Merovingen's College and similar fortresses of abnegation. Technology cast a shadow which might bring back the sharrh and the days of fire. They would never forget the philosophy of progress which carried humanity from Earth to the stars and from the stars to Merovin; but Merovin would never be allowed to progress.

  Once was enough.

  If the societies of Merovin had forgotten their origins—if they'd allowed themselves to forget—they might have known peace. Neither progress nor technology was an imperative coded into humanity's genes like eating, sleeping, or reproduction; wondrously complex societies could, and had, maintained themselves quite nicely without it. But the abandoned inhabitants of Merovin would not forget and invention lurked beneath the surface of their society like a stubborn infection. Each outbreak was fought and purged; each left scars of innovation. Progress occurred. Technology reappeared, subject to formal prohibition: it must not leave a trail. Once was enough.

  Richard recalled the afternoon he and Pradesh became friends. Karma, nothing more or less, had kept Richard from harassing Pradesh the way the other boys did. Murfy knew, Richard had greater opportunity to shout "Cat-nose" or "Rabbit-lips": The houses' nurseries faced each other and a voice did not have to be raised much at all to be heard across the canal separating them. But karma had held Dickon Kamat and Praddy St. John apart until they met on the flatland north of the city where their Houses administered adjacent farms. Dickon was searching for additions to his mineral collection; Pradesh was chasing a native butterfly with a net. Pradesh tripped over Richard and Richard hadn't said the first thing that popped into his mind.

  By sundown they were friends, and hours overdue at the flatland pier. Men from St. John and Kamat formed a joint search party. The boys were found together and thrashed on the spot for the grief they'd caused their respec
tive families. Shared punishment cemented their friendship for life.

  So Richard knew the depth of Pradesh's rage against Merovingen's Revenantist hierarchy as no one else did. Praddy was not a St. John cousin, but the much-younger, half brother of Christen and Amitra who was denied his birthright. The cardinals had decreed his split lip was the karmic manifestation of the sins of a previous incarnation. The College would not, therefore, sanction the surgery necessary to repair it, and St. John would not acknowledge a congenitally deformed infant.

  All that had changed when Amitra's legitimately contracted children drowned in a boating accident. The House of St. John had needed an heir. The cardinals had reconsidered their earlier decree; they retracted it before the mourning banners were removed from the high door. A flawed and unwanted younger brother was supposedly shipped off to a client's estate; a high-priced Nev Hettek surgeon was secretly summoned to the same estate; and some months later St. John legitimatized a supposedly distant cousin with the same name and a fresh scar between his nose and upper lip.

  No one was fooled—least of all Praddy's schoolmates. Richard had many friends; Pradesh, to this very morning, had just one. In spite of his exhaustion—or perhaps because of it—Richard was uncomfortably aware he was far more important to Pradesh than Prad was to him. A part of him, an admirable part under most circumstances, wanted to find a compromise: he even reconsidered his own decision to remain in Merovingen.

  As Richard's eyes darted from side to side, pursuing vagrant thoughts, and the silence in the vestibule lengthened, Pradesh became desperate and irritable. "It is karma, Dickon. Don't you see? Juarez's wireless transceivers are all in place now, we don't need the city any more. Every estate is in the network. We're closer to each other than all the bridges put together. It's time to go. Time to leave Merovingen to the Kalugins, the cardinals, and all their enemies. Let them destroy each other—but not us: Wex, Raza, Yakunin, Balaci, Martushev, all the others, and Kamat. We don't need Merovingen to trade with each other. A free confederacy of trade—remember, Dickon?—a free confederacy of free Houses, trading freely with each other, with no one to tell us what we can or can't do, and spread so far over Merovin that not even the sharrh could Scour all of us. "It's what we've worked for, what we've been waiting for. Don't break ranks now we're so close to the dream."