Endgame

  GET OUT!

  "Mondragon? 'S 'at you?"

  She saw a dim gleam of white shirt and blond head in that window. Came a whispered: "Jones? Jones, dammit, get out of here!"

  She hung there shaking with strain and looking up toward that dark that showed her too little, but enough to hope on.

  "Mondragon, ye a'right? Can ye squeeze out some'ow?"

  "No! I can't. You think they're stupid? Get out of here, dammit, don't—" He stopped speaking a beat or two, sounding breathless, and what eyes couldn't see, heart pictured—the desperation, the relief to hear from her.

  "Don't be a damned fool! You can't help me!"

  "I c'n get my gun up there—"

  "Get out! Get out of here, for God's sake! Someone's coming!"

  Shutters closed. She eeled down, getting splinters in her back, and soaked herself to the knees in Det water trying to get around the corner. She made it as far as her skip before the shutter banged open and lights flared above. Someone shouted, "You!" and white light stabbed down the slit and hit the water behind her.

  She pulled the jury-tie, jumped in and let the Det current carry her ahead while she ran the pole out, while the light scanned the black water behind her and ran out and across the canal.

  She thought, I made it worse for 'im, I only made it worse. He won't be there t'morrow night. An' I could've had a chance. ...

  C.J. CHERRYH invites you to enter the world of MEROVINGEN NIGHTS!

  ANGEL WITH THE SWORD by C.J. Cherryh

  A Merovingen Nights Novel

  FESTIVAL MOON edited by C.J. Cherryh

  (stories by C.J. Cherryh, Leslie Fish, Robert Lynn Asprin, Nancy Asire, Mercedes Lackey, Janet and Chris Morris, Lynn Abbey)

  FEVER SEASON edited by C.J. Cherryh

  (stories by C.J. Cherryh, Chris Morris, Mercedes Lackey, Leslie Fish, Nancy Asire, Lynn Abbey, Janet Morris)

  TROUBLED WATERS edited by C.J. Cherryh

  (stories by C.J. Cherryh, Mercedes Lackey, Nancy Asire, Janet Morris, Lynn Abbey, Chris Morris, Roberta Rogow, Leslie Fish)

  SMUGGLER'S GOLD edited by C.J. Cherryh

  (stories by Mercedes Lackey, Roberta Rogow, Nancy Asire, Robert Lynn Asprin, Chris and Janet Morris, C.J. Cherryh, Lynn Abbey, Leslie Fish)

  DIVINE RIGHT edited by C.J. Cherryh

  (stories by Lynn Abbey, Nancy Asire, C.J. Cherryh, Leslie Fish, Mercedes Lackey, Chris Morris, Janet Morris, Bradley H. Sinor, Roberta Rogow)

  FLOOD TIDE edited by C.J. Cherryh

  (stories by C.J. Cherryh, Nancy Asire, Mercedes Lackey, Leslie Fish, Robert Rogow, Bradley H. Sinor, Lynn Abbey, Janet Morris, Chris Morris)

  ENDGAME edited by C.J. Cherryh

  (stories by C.J. Cherryh, Bradley H. Sinor, Mercedes Lackey, Nancy Asire, Janet & Chris Morris, Lynn Abbey)

  Title

  C. J. CHERRYH

  DAW BOOKS, INC.

  DONALD A. WOLLHE1M, FOUNDER

  375 Hudson Street. New York. NY 10014

  ELIZABETH R. WOLLHEIM

  SHEILA E. GILBERT

  PUBLISHERS

  ENDGAME Copyright © 1991 by C.J. Cherryh.

  All rights reserved.

  Cover art by Tim Hildebrandt.

  Maps by Pat Tobin.

  "Endgame" Copyright © 1991 by C.J. Cherryh.

  "Lost Song" Copyright © 1991 by Bradley H. Sinor.

  "Proving Ground" Copyright © 1991 by Mercedes Lackey.

  "Bookworms" Copyright © 1991 by Nancy Asire.

  "Family Ties" Copyright © 1991 by Nancy Asire.

  "Escape from Merovingen" Copyright © 1991 by Janet & Chris Morris.

  "Once Was Enough" Copyright © 1991 by Lynn Abbey.

  All characters and events in this book are fictitious.

  Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.

  "Merovingen Nights", "Merovin", "The Signeury", "The Det", "Moghi's Tavern" are registered trademarks belonging to CJ. Cherryh.

  Songs from this series can be heard on the tape Fever Season available from Firebird Arts & Music, Inc., P.O. Box 14785, Portland OR 97214-9998, phone (800) 752-0494.

  DAW Book Collectors No. 857.

  First Printing, August 1991

  123456789

  DAW TRADEMARK REGISTERED

  U.S. PAT OFF. AND FOREIGN COUNTRIES

  —MARCA REG1STRADA.

  DAW

  HECHO EN U.S.A

  PRINTED IN THE USA

  CONTENTS

  Because the stories in this volume overlap in time they are, by the authors' consent, printed here in a "braided" format—so that they read much more like a novel than an anthology. The reader may equally well read the short stories as originally written by reading all of a given title in order of appearance.

  For those who wonder how this number of writers coincide so closely—say that certain pairs of writers involved do a lot of consultation in a few frenzied weeks of phone calls as deadline approaches, then the editor, presented with the result, has to figure out what the logical order is.

  Endgame, C.J. Cherryh 1

  Lost Song, Bradley H. Sinor 5

  Endgame (reprised), C.J. Cherryh 22

  Proving Ground, Mercedes Lackey 36

  Endgame (reprised), C.J. Cherryh 76

  Bookworms, Nancy Asire 81

  Endgame (reprised), C.J. Cherryh 115

  Family Ties, Nancy Asire 122

  Escape from Merovingen—Act One: The Fool Must Die, Janet & Chris Morris 134

  Family Ties (reprised), Nancy Asire 163

  Endgame (reprised), C.J. Cherryh 168

  Escape from Merovingen (reprised), Janet & Chris Morris 172

  Family Ties (reprised), Nancy Asire 179

  Escape from Mero-vingen—Act One (reprised), Janet & Chris Morris 187

  Endgame (reprised), C.J. Cherryh 191

  Escape from Merovingen—Act Two: Escape From Merovingen, Janet & Chris Morris 201

  Endgame (reprised), C.J. Cherryh 222

  Once Was Enough, Lynn Abbey 225

  Once Was Enough (reprised) Lynn Abbey 255

  Endgame (Concluded), C.J. Cherryh 275

  Maps

  ENDGAME

  by C. J. Cherryh

  Three weeks and the bruises were mostly faded. The cuts were healing. And they trusted him with razors— give or take the large, burly servant who waited patiently for its return. Mondragon wiped the instrument on the provided linen, surrendered it to the servant, who handed him his shirt. Mondragon pulled it on and tightened the laces—silk, it was. White silk. With unstylish lace at the throat—perfectly fine in Nev Hettek, definitely out of mode in Merovingen, that made the lace. He buttoned the collar, adjusted the lace at collar and cuffs—there was nothing but time, where he was, and nothing but thinking, once the daily game with the servants and the guards was done. He straightened his hair—blond and curling and past the shoulder, the one vanity he confessed to himself. The others—the fastidiousness, the minutiae of demands he loaded on the servants—they were games. The precise order of dressing, every morning the same. The single cup of tea, exactingly hot, exactingly timed, one lump of sugar, a piece of buttered toast, one egg—

  It kept the servants busy. Getting that service proved he could get it, and that small victory, in his present situation, gave him something—call it stability in his routine, call it a sense of passing time, call it a sense of control in his existence, which was not in the least under his own control, on any larger scale. He was a guest in Nev Hettek's embassy, after having been a guest of Willa Exeter's inquisition, and at the moment he was a weapon on the shelf. The ambassador might decide to use him. The ambassador might decide to return him to Nev Hettek, to a prison where there were no fresh starched linens and no beds, for that matter. The ambassador might bestow him on Tatiana
Kalugin, who would likely have him hanged, after other amusements paled. Or the ambassador, his old friend Chance Magruder, might decide, today, that he was simply too dangerous to use or to let surface—in which case he would die today, poison in the tea, perhaps. Or a bullet. The ambassador was Sword of God. When the Sword disposed of its own, given time and choice of method, it tended to blades or bullets.

  He had his breakfast in private. He finished his tea, standing by the small slit of a window—a room with a view, Chance Magruder had joked, putting him here—and for that one favor he was ambiguously grateful. When there was no passage of time, when there was no sunrise and sunset, he slipped too easily back to that Nev Hettek prison. And such were the uncertainties in his situation that he worried even about that joke Chance had made—whether in his delirium he had betrayed that weakness, whether Chance had given him that small window precisely to keep him sane—until it suited the Sword to have him otherwise.

  He had no illusions. He performed no heroics. He answered every question they asked. He answered precisely and thought how all of it connected, because he did hold things back: about Anastasi Kalugin, whom he served; about Richard Kamat, whom he likewise served; about the merchant militia he had helped create; about various Names, dates, and facts he had accumulated in his many times doubled career. He kept secrets about Karl Fon, the governor of Nev Hettek—many, many secrets about Fon and his rise to power. There were so many things Chance and his interrogators didn't know how to ask—didn't know they should ask. He thought sometimes that he should spill a few about Karl that might disturb Chance's sleep at night—it might shake Chance; it might advise Chance that he could never, having kept him prisoner this long, ever be quite safe with Karl, unless he was already privy to those things, and had agreed profoundly with Karl.

  In which case, Chance should still sleep lightly, and only with the absolutely trusted companion: the lives of Karl's confidants were no more secure than his own. The lives of those Karl loved were more precarious still, because Karl hated and feared his dependencies.

  God, did he know that.

  He finished the tea, he rang for the servant. He stood watching the narrow dark slot of water outward from his high window; he watched the beginning sunlight on the canal, and the passage of poleboats and freighter-skips past that opening on the world. He could stand there for hours, because he knew many of the boats and their owners—he saw Suleiman's, and Rahman Singh with his wife Mary, and their daughter. He saw a hundred faces he knew not by name. And the next boat to pass might be one special skip, one that did come past now and again, damn the canal-rat who owned her for not staying clear—if he saw it, he felt a sudden tightness in his throat, his heart beat faster, and he knew why he wanted to live; if he saw it, the sight shattered him, and he had most painstakingly to build back his nonchalance toward his fate— because, damn her, she wouldn't listen, she hadn't taken the money he'd left with Kamat for the day she might need it. Or she had it, and meant to use it for some fool attempt on a fortified embassy.

  She was seventeen. She was canaler and hard-headed and if Chance swept her up, it was all over, there was nothing left, and he'd give Chance everything he knew—

  After which Chance could kill him or send him to Karl, and beyond that he could not see. He would already be dead, whatever happened to him. Wreckage. That was all Karl would get.

  He had his tea. He rang for the servants to take the breakfast tray away. Precisely on schedule, by the shadow of the embassy on the buildings across the canal.

  Exactly the same, day by day. Because if he lost track of time, he was breakable. And Jones was alive, and would live so long, Anastasi had promised him, as certain things he knew never surfaced.

  So he waited. He dreaded to see Jones pass through the embassy's shadow. But the days that he did see her, he knew that his silence was still buying what he'd bargained for.

  LOST SONG

  by Bradley H. Sinor

  When Ethan Yeager heard the whistling, he stopped in midstep. A chill ran through him and leached his breath away with it.

  The whistling continued down on the canal. A rough, uneven tune mixed in with the sound of water splashing against pilings and the regular strokes of a pole as it hit the water.

  "No!" Ethan's voice was a choked whisper.

  Light still lingered among the western towers of Merovingen. Down among the canals, shadows and darkness had already found their playground for the night.

  Feeling gooseflesh on his arms, heart thumping, Ethan looked back at the door he'd let slam behind him. The sign nailed to the center read, "Cord and Company, Imports." At that moment he desperately wanted to see it flung open.

  Please, let this all be part of some sort of elaborate joke; a bad joke, yes, but nonetheless, a joke.

  Ethan knew that wouldn't happen. There was no one left in the building. He'd heard the lock bolt fall into place when the door had closed behind him. In point of fact, Ethan himself shouldn't have been there; normally he would have left two hours before.

  Only, word had come at just past noon that m'ser Simon White's wife had gone into labor two weeks earlier than expected. So it had fallen to Ethan to handle both his own and White's duties, which included locking up.

  Sitting on the walkway was a dark gray cat, missing one fang, who was carefully preening his fur. He eyed Ethan for a moment before resuming his bath.

  Ethan stepped toward the railing and looked down at the canal. A dozen yards below and to the right was a single skip, riding low in the water, boxes and barrels filling every available inch of the well. At the back of the boat was a square figure of a canaler, wearing a heavy sweater, massive hands tight around his pole. He steered his skip carefully through water half-covered with tangle-lilies.

  In the months since the plants had first appeared, they had become such a common sight that most people who had been cursing them, now ignored them. There were uses for the weeds, uses that the College was trying to suppress.

  For him, the only thing was that song the canaler was whistling. A song the man had no right to know. A song that shouldn't exist anywhere except in his own memory. Kayleigh's song, and it had died three years ago—with her,

  "You! You there on the skip!" Ethan shouted.

  At first the canaler acted as if he hadn't heard anything. Then the whistling stopped and he pushed down on his pole, dragging the boat to a halt.

  "If there is somebody wantin' to talk to Galen Loway," said the man, "they better have a good reason, or coin to pay for me time. I got deliveries to make."

  "I've both." Ethan let fly with two copper disks that clattered onto the boat's half-deck near the canaler's feet.

  " 'At's good enough fer me." "I've got a question for you," Ethan said. "Then might be I got the answer ye want, or might not."

  "That song, the one you were whistling just now. Where did you hear it?"

  The man stared at Ethan. This wasn't what he'd expected. Although hightowners were notoriously strange in their doings, any canaler could tell you that. Better to have as little to do with them as possible, especially in these troubled times: you never could tell who was working for the priests and who wasn't. Trouble with the blacklegs was the last thing he needed, especially considering what was buried inside one of his crates.

  "Song? You mean that thing I was whistlin' just now? I couldn't tell you, don't rightly know. Last week or two I probably heard someone else whistlin' it and just picked up the tune without really thinkin'. Happens all the time."

  "So where have you been the last week or two?"

  "Here and there, mostly makin' deliveries fer Rohan. They got a couple of ships in from the Falken Isles and they definitely been keepin' me busy."

  Ethan knew the Rohan Family, one of the smaller merchant companies. He'd heard something not that long since about m'sera Rohan booting her daughter out for trying to kill her.

  He turned on his heel and headed off. From the canal came the sound of laughter and the muffl
ed words, "Crazy hightowners."

  * * *

  Ethan sagged down in his chair. He scowled at the distorted reflection in the copper side of the mug. The bloated, dark face seemed to match the way he felt right then.

  By now half the canalers in this town must be convinced I'm either a spy for the College, or demented, or both.

  The last three days had jogged memories of Kayle-igh and her death among the canalers. Only they knew as little as he. On one thing, all agreed: there was no way she could still be alive.

  From the far side of the common room came a wave of laughter. Ethan drew a long swallow from his beer, forcing a tired chuckle. A good, stiff drink had seemed just the thing; help clear his head so he could figure out what to do.

  Kay-leigh.

  Ethan glanced across the sea of bobbing heads that filled Moghi's. Most were locals, canalers and the like, with a scattering of faces he didn't know.

  The first time he'd laid eyes on Kayleigh had been at one of old man Greely's parties. He'd not been invited, but that hadn't stopped him from going, if for no other good reason than to irritate Simon Greely. When the two of them had met as children, they'd taken an instant dislike to each other. The passing years had done nothing to change that feeling.

  Kayleigh had been part of the night's entertainment, along with two other musicians. It hadn't surprised Ethan in the least that Simon had fastened on her like a leech.

  She'd protested and that had been all the invitation Ethan had needed. "I could have handled him without your interference," she had told him later.

  "Oh, little doubt you could've, m'sera," he'd laughed. "Little doubt indeed. Understand that you were a means to an end. Irritating Simon has been a minor hobby with me for years."