Endgame

by C. J. Cherryh

  And it was fear and control of fear that was 'Stasi's game. So Jones would only be the means. Tom Mondragon was the object, what he knew and what Chance knew was what 'Stasi would want from him, and whether or not Jones was in that boat, Jones was in dreadful danger—a threat against him or a lure or, if he'd dared to get the better of Anastasi Kalugin, the shot to the heart that would leave him dead on his feet: 'Stasi knew that. 'Stasi'd figured that out the first time he'd seen them together. And 'Stasi'd made him believe he'd do; left him the impression Stasi'd reach out from a Merovingian's watery grave to do it, if Mondragon failed him in the least.

  But 'Stasi had made one mistake—he'd taken up a man Karl had made expert at evasion. And made Jones' survival contingent—not on his fear of 'Stasi; but on his patience with it. That was 'Stasi's error.

  And fire and quake and the coming firefight made the situation different for the first time: if 'Stasi won the firefight that was coming tonight—there'd be war with Nev Hettek, no matter who was at Nev Hettek's helm; and Tom Mondragon might be too useful to kill—in which there was still a failsafe for his walking in there.

  He figured he'd live at least until things sorted themselves out, until 'Stasi won or lost; and if Jones was in there, he'd save her the same way he had; and if she wasn't, 'Stasi wouldn't waste him till 'Stasi knew Jones was dead and he had no hold over him—'Stasi was at least that self-controlled: so he had a free shot at 'Stasi, no penalties, no danger to Jones worse than was, no matter where she was.

  Only if Chance had told half the truth—if Chance's men had killed her and she wasn't available to be 'Stasi's pawn, then he'd have to sort that out from 'Stasi's behavior—-which wasn't altogether easy to read; and take his shot at 'Stasi from the first instant he knew the truth.

  Same business as Chance getting a shot at Karl. You had to get close and you had to get inside. And you either had support or you didn't, and in one case you died. He just wanted to make sure Jones wasn't in there. And to get her free if she was. And maybe put things back to zero, and stand at 'Stasi Kalugin's side while he fought Chance Magruder at the helm of Nev Hettek, if he could convince 'Stasi Kalugin he was still useful.

  Or if Chance still had Jones—convince 'Stasi Kalugin he'd kill Chance to get her back.

  Fool if you believe that, 'Stasi. And fool on Chance's part not just to tell me so and own me outright. So Chance didn't have her and couldn't get her.

  Which means she's free, dead, or where Chance said, on that boat or in the Signeury.

  And if she's free, good luck, then, Jones. There won't be a 'Stasi Kalugin. You won't matter in high-town. They won't even remember your name. Even if Kamat double-crosses me and never gives you that money—you'll be no worse than before I came.

  Sky's going to fall tonight. But so's 'Stasi Kalugin— if his power's gone, Tatiana will take out the ones that carry out his orders in this chaos; and if I see the morning I'll go to Tatiana, see if she's any different kind of fool. Go to Iosef, maybe. The old man wants to live. But he won't live long, and his power's fragmented, last night. His militia's deserting. He might sweep up 'Stasi's, if 'Stasi were out of the equation, and take on his daughter. Or declare her his heir and hope for a cease-fire.

  Hell, it's too damned dangerous. And taking out 'Stasi isn't survivable. Not my damned concern, what happens to those two. Just Jones. Just Jones.

  Damn the luck that made Min Fahd the only source of information he had. The woman's loose tongue had spread the news of his being loose from Rock to Rim-mon, and that Jones hadn't done something stupid yet was only reason to think she was down there; but you couldn't depend on Min knowing what century it was, or where she was in it: she could have been talking about Jones' mama, or Jones, or now, or a year ago. She was only a telegraph. Tell Min and it was public. Depend on it.

  One constant in the world. Granted Min hadn't gotten sunk last night.

  And if Min had said Jones was waiting for him?

  He'd have been a fool. He'd have gone for her. And involved her again.

  The only thing he was wrestling with now was that— whether he had the nerve finally to let go of life, take out 'Stasi and leave Jones to survive on her own.

  Trust she could do it. Trust he had the courage finally to believe in someone else's competence and quit living her life for her.

  Hell, she was seventeen. Eighteen, maybe. She didn't need a Sword of God agent throwing her out of bed in his nightmares or making her a target when Chance won Nev Hettek and decided to collect a stray who could be useful to him.

  He didn't want to be used again, dammit. One last job, Chance had said. One last time, Tommy-lad.

  There was a lump in his throat when he thought about that. He didn't know whether it was anger or gratitude or whether he wanted to think about it at all. Just do it, that was all. And don't do it if they've got Jones in hand. So they probably didn't. And Chance had lied. Which left dead—or out there somewhere trying to find him and involve herself again.

  Find her and lie low till things in Nev Hettek could sort themselves out again? Chance could have offered that—if Chance had let him in on his plans. Which Chance wouldn't. But Chance didn't offer charity.

  And take Jones off the water?

  He'd tried that once. Jones would die, shut away from sun and wind and the deck under her feet. He'd watched her. He'd felt it in his gut. And that was all he could offer her in Nev Hettek even if he could go home.

  So solve the problem, Tommy-lad. It only adds up one way. Give her Merovingen to live in. Give it to her without politics or the Sword in her life. Let her go, stop fouling up her life: she never asked for you.

  The ships were gone. That was plain enough. Fire and quake and they'd slept through it, waked to the smell of ash on the wind, an unnatural quiet in the town, and Rat had gone out on canalside and had a look at the Grand without hardly a boat on it, and smoke lying low over town.

  Which was when the Falken lad, what was his name? Pavlos? Pavel? had grabbed up his pants and declared he'd better look to harbor.

  Good idea, had been Rat's thought. If there was fire in town, if there was quake, then you got to somewhere—if there was fire you got to the harbor; if there was a quake you got up to the Flat, if there was the big quake, the quake to raise the Ghost Fleet and bring the Retribution, then you prayed to whatever gods you thought were listening, because the wave from the big one the Astronomer foretold would come, would sweep Merovingen to kindling and its souls to rebirth or to New Worlder hell.

  The quake she hadn't heard about—till she and Pavel got to the harbor, running from the smell of smoke, and found crowds thick on high Eastdike and up and down the wharves, and small boats thick in the harbor.

  No sign of the Falkenaer ships, not one. The tall masts were gone from the end of the pier, and the pretty fair-haired lad beside her on harborside stood staring and said, "Gawd, they've off an' lef me. . . ." as if his heart was broken. "Gawd, oh, Gawd, th' cap'n'll 'ave me skinn't f’ this 'un—wot day is it? Wot day c'n it be?"

  "Retribution day," Rat said, because that was what it looked like, with the smoke pall over the town. "What's happened?" she yelled at a skip-freighter, and the freighter yelled back,

  "Where?"

  She waved her hand at the harbor, at the boats, at all of the city. "I overslept! We just waked up—what happened?"

  The skip-freighter stared at her with his jaw dropped, and said to his mate, "Vishnu save, slept through, d' ye believe, Rish? —Mikhail's dead, Tatty an' 'Stasi been slammin' away at each other wi' cannon, Zorya burned t' th' waterline, the College doors is down an' they're sayin' Bloody Exeter is dead!"

  "God," Rat said, and Pavel. Or Pavlos:

  "W'ere's me ship, f’ Lor'sake? W'ere's me ship gone?"

  The skip-freighter pointed to the open harbor, to the horizon, where clouds gathered and thundered. "T' wherever th' rich folk bought. They was usin' sticks and guns t' keep th' gangway from bein' overrun. Gone an' left ye, lad?"

  Wa
sn't a lot of sympathy Falkenaers got from townsfolk. But there was sympathy on the canaler's face that hadn't been there before the boy said that. The boy said, pleading, as if please would help,

  "But th' cap'n needs me."

  Moment of silence then, the canalers bobbing there, the boy standing there, and Rat trying to make a hangover headache think.

  She said, desperate herself, "There's others need us. —Can y' tell me, seri, I'm lookin' for a skip-boat—"

  The canaler waved harborward. "We got plenty in this pot." "Jones?"

  "That 'un. Yey." Real sober now. "You a friend or a hire?"

  "Friend. And a hire if I can find her." Shake of the head. "Jones ain't takin' any. You ain't seen Tom Mondragon, have ye?" "You expecting him?"

  "The Trade's lookin'. The Nev Hettek embassy burned last night. It don't look good." The canaler frowned, lifted an elbow against the sun-glare. "What's yer name?"

  "Rat. Name o' Rat. Singer at Hoh's. Partner's name is Rif."

  "Yey. Now I know ye. Yey, Rif, I seen. Her an that blackleg cap'n. You want them—" He pointed, out across the harbor, and a bobbing soup of boats, where—Rat shading aching eyes—she could see the boat, nosing along the harborside.

  "God," she said, putting pieces together, the quake, the fire. She grabbed Pavel's hand, said, " 'Scuse," and thought of running. But the canaler said, right off, "Ye want a lift?" and she looked in her pocket for what she hadn't spent. Found a silverbit. "This enough?"

  "Yey," the canaler said. "Can ye ease down?"

  " 'Oo's this we're meetin'?" the Falken lad objected. "Where're we goin'?"

  She said, "Only place I know t' go," thinking— damn, Rif's going to skin me. Slept through it. God!

  She'd spread her rumors, she'd gone the rounds, she'd done that part. But be where she was needed last night—that, she hadn't been. Dammit, something had jumped the schedule. Or it was the Retribution.

  She slid down from the wharf into the skip's well and caught her balance, caught it again as her Falken lad came aboard with a grace that wasn't born ashore—Lord, he was beautiful. She had to think that even while she was squatting down and grabbing the side of the skip, how Pavel and the canalers didn't have to do that, while the canalers fired up their engine and chugged into reverse, swung about in the crowded, choppy harbor and put their bow about for that fancyboat the Trade thought was Cal's.

  But Cal was Rif's. So that was about the same.

  She thought, but she didn't say it, Better not stand, Pavel, lad, my partner's like to shoot at me on sight.

  God, what've they done, what's this about Zorya burning? And Mikhail and Exeter dead? That wasn't in the plan.

  A fuse running from those barrels, all up through the well. And a slow match that made Raj nervous even to think about it, even if it wasn't lit. Jones had showed him that. And Jones was just waiting now, waiting for dark. They'd gotten their fuel aboard, tanks were filled—taken a little bit from this skip and that and some wouldn't charge but a copperbit to avoid the karma—family folk, thinking of their kids, Raj thought, who might risk it for themselves, but who had innocents to think of: Jones was a kind of karma you might not want in your next life, unless you wanted a wild one—good karma, Father Rhajmurti would say, but tied to Merovingen as close as the bandit-birds and skimmers that looked for pickings off the boats. Or maybe she was paying karma from past lives, who could know? Something like Jones came through your life, you got tangled; and got to thinking about involvements, and karmic debt, even if you took the Revenantist catchism at skin-deep—

  Even if that part of your life had gone toward the dawn. That big Falkenaer ship had stood off from shore a bit, folk said—for fear of riot, and sat there along time in a harbor full of little boats. Time enough for more than one fancy boat to come alongside it, and skip-boaters to help steady the folk climbing that scary heaving distance up—not that they loved rich hightowners that much, but because, poor rich folk, they had to run, they didn't know how to live in troubled waters—going to their estates in the country, they were. Or further. And some dropped coin, to be kept from the crowds ashore, and some paid to be ferried out and some had taken themselves.

  Malenkov fancyboat was one, the rumor was. Canalers noticed such things, accounting debts; and passed him the message—it came through the Suleiman's Tommy—Justice says he's all right. He and Rhajmurti and Sonja are all right. No, the Malenkovs were staying. There were still Malenkovs on Rimmon Isle. And canalers gossiped that, too, who was holding fast and who was running, and they began to talk about their hightowners, and who were real Merovingians, and who were cutting line and running.

  Couldn't count the Nev Hettekkers, of course. Toward dawn, the canalers said, the shore wind had come, and the Nev Hettek riverrunners that had had their gangplanks withdrawn long since had stoked up their engines and their paddles began to turn. And the Falken ships had spread their sails and gone out of harbor, and the Nev Hettek riverboats had churned out behind them, with their smokestacks spitting sparks like demon's eyes in the dark, they'd gotten there only in time to see that, to Jones' complete despair, gotten there only in time to see those smokestacks, and their running lights, and their paddlewheels churning up a white froth and a chop in the harbor.

  Weren't so many folk sought passage on those. Talk was half and half, how the Nev Hettekkers might be behind what was happening; or whether it was Exeter's slinks had set the embassy afire. Or whether it was some follower of Cassie Boregy who'd done it, distraught about Mikhail and wanting war—

  He didn't know, himself, and you didn't talk to Jones right now, not about that. Jones damned the Nev Hettekkers on those ships. Jones hadn't talked much for a long time after that, and all day Jones'd talk about the weather, Jones'd say how the Singh's had gotten out all right, she'd spotted them over there. Jones'd see some skip edge close bringing her a message and Jones' face would be all guarded and grim—

  But every time she was hoping, Raj knew it, and every time there was no news of Mondragon, and Jones would look a little grimmer and more desperate till she could remark about the birds, or the sky, or how the smoke was clearing, maybe, and how if she saw tomorrow and she'd got through this, she might sell the boat and go shoot Karl Fon.

  Didn't sound reasonable to him. But Jones' opinion about tomorrow shifted like the wind, and he got the feeling in Jones' mind there wasn't going to be one, and if she got one by total surprise she was trying to settle in her mind what she was going to do with it.

  He didn't know how to argue with that. He'd said, "You could go to Kamat," which was the best advice he knew. "Jones, Tom's left money for you there. ..."

  And that had gotten him a look like a dagger and a quiet, "Ain't walkin' in there. If I need it—you get it. You get it f’ me, hear?"

  "Yey," he'd said, last time she'd brought the matter of tomorrow up. And shut up, because thinking of Kamat he thought of Denny, and thought of the riot and the burning, and his—Tom's daughter. He thought of saying, "Jones, Tom's left a baby," but he shut up on that; it was Marina Kamat's baby, and Jones and Marina didn't get along. Take that baby, she might. And, God, he might help her. He'd thought he'd loved Marina; but he'd loved love, not flesh and blood, and if Marina's baby would keep Jones alive, he'd betray Marina, and Richard, and keep a promise to Tom.

  Wasn't anybody moving back into the canals yet. You could hear the gunfire even this far away, just little pops that made you know it was still going on, and it was only stage-setting for this evening. "If he's anywhere," Jones was saying now, "he's up there. Possible 'Stasi's snatched 'im."

  "So what'll we do?" he asked, because the silences were awful, and all day Jones had talked alternately as if Mondragon was still alive and then as if he wasn't, and never had said where she was making delivery of this powder.

  "You don't do a thing," she said. "I do."

  "Jones..."

  "Kat'd skin me," Jones said, and gave this funny, awful laugh. "If she could sort us out. Ney, ye're get-tin' o
ff this skip. Ye want t' help, you get t' Kamat an' get me that money out."

  "Jones, —Tom wouldn't want you to kill yourself."

  "Yey, well, a lot o' things've happened 'e wouldn't o' wanted, ain't they?" She was whittling on something. Shavings piled up in the well between her bare feet.

  He felt like a coward, but, dammit, Kat might come after him if he went off being a fool. They could drag all Merovingen to hell after them, karmic debt by kar-mic tie. He said, "I'll get it, Jones."

  "What?" she said without looking at him.

  "The money," he said. And she made a funny move of her mouth as if it had been the farthest thing from her mind. That was how much she thought about it.

  He said, desperate, his best throw: "You going to leave Tom's baby in Kamat?"

  She said, cold-eyed, "You'll take care of 'er. I'm my mama's daughter. Retribution's. And she's hers."

  Dark came by bits and pieces to Merovingen—first to places like Spellbridge Cut, and Spellbridge canalside; and then to middle tier, and finally to high, about the time it came to canalside out on bright Archangel, where that yacht was tied, and about that time Mondragon began thinking about moving, flexing this small muscle and that, making sure when he moved he wasn't going to raise the alarm—because there was militia on Spellbridge roof, traffic going right over his head, a thumping on the wooden bridge, the giving of orders. If he'd been Tatiana's, lying where he was, he could have taken out the emplacements on two rooftops before they got him, and maybe gotten away clean. As it was, he had no quarrel with the militia and no interest in the maybe: when dark came, he just climbed back the way he'd gotten up there, back along the underpinnings of Spellbridge High walkway, not into Spellbridge North Cut: they spanned that and left the three tiers of the waterstairs to the Family. But to a small, dirty shutter, which had been obscured when the walkway'd been extended on this upper tier, and which had gotten jimmied last night. From the inside, when he'd been looking for a way out to a vantage-point. Nobody had found the window open. Nobody had occupied the storeroom, but he didn't give odds about the stairway. He just got a dusty coil of rope from the floor where he remembered it, tied knots in it at convenient intervals—it'd been too long since he'd done this one, and his hands were callused from Jones' boat, but not enough: he needed the knots and hoped it reached, measuring it with each knot and counting, while the evening's shells and bullets began to fly.