Deceiver

by C. J. Cherryh

  Gruesome. His current homework was court language verbs. Which was not too exciting.

  But his father’s visit loomed large in recent memory and it was clear to him he was very lucky to be left here in nand’ Bren’s house, instead of being packed back to Shejidan and his tutor. Sitting in his father’s apartment while his Ajuri clan aunt was visiting and while his Atageini clan great-uncle was living just down the hall—that would be awful. Not to mention that his mother would be upset with him for the mischief he had been in, and if his Ajuri grandfather heard about the train and the boat, through his aunt, he would have his grandfather fussing about his supervision and demanding more guards, too, possibly even demanding to install some of Ajuri clan with him, which was just too grim to think about. Even if he thought he and his aishid could get the better of anybody Ajuri clan had, it was just too many guards, and more guards just got harder and harder to deal with.

  He understood his situation. He understood the threat hanging over him. He had to behave here, and learn his court verbs beyond any mistake, or he would be back in the Bujavid with grown-up guards at every corner.

  So after a little while he grew entirely bored with the slingshota and the circumstances they had, and took his aishid back to their suite to think about what they could do in the house. Lucasi and Veijico being still new to his service, they were getting used to things, though they really were Guild, unlike Antaro and Jegari. They were brother and sister like Antaro and Jegari, and everybody older said they were very good . . . but.

  There was always that but . . . with Lucasi and Veijico.

  The but that did not let them find out everything they wanted to from senior Guild.

  But . . . that made Cenedi look grim when he talked about them.

  But . . . that made Banichi and Jago sigh and talk together in very low voices.

  If Lucasi and Veijico had been younger (they were felicitous nineteen and the year after) people would probably call them what they called him: precocious—which was a way of admiring somebody while calling him a pest. Precocious. Pert. Sometimes, even toward him, they were stuck-up; and they were far too inclined to tell Antaro and Jegari they were wrong about something, even about how they sat and how they stood at attention, even when Antaro and Jegari were not allowed to wear a Guild uniform yet. It was just a pest, their know-it-all manner, and it made him mad, but Antaro said, with a sigh, when he mentioned it: “We need to learn, nandi.”

  It really was true: having two real Guild in his aishid meant Jegari and Antaro were learning things around the clock now, not just going out for a few hours to the Guild hall. Even he could see a change in how they stood and just the way their eyes tracked—which was probably really good. Jegari and Antaro seemed glad to talk about Guild stuff with Lucasi and Veijico, even if the newcomers were snotty about it—snotty was one of Gene’s words, up on the ship, or the space station, now, where Gene lived; and it was a good word for those two. Snotty.

  And full of themselves. That was another of Gene’s expressions.

  The fact was, though, they were smart, they knew they were smart, and they were short of patience with other people, which was going to get them in trouble if they were not just very careful. He was just a year short of nine and he could see it on the horizon . . . but not Veijico and Lucasi, oh, no, they were far too smart to take personal criticism from somebody who was infelicitous eight.

  Well, he knew they were not smarter than Banichi and Jago and Cenedi, or Tano and Algini—and Cenedi and Algini in particular had no long patience with fools. Algini had been very high up in the Guild before he sort of retired from that job, and one could just see Algini’s eyes looking right at Lucasi’s back in a not-very-good way.

  “We did not authorize them to ask!” he had almost blurted out on one occasion, when those two had repeated a request to which Banichi had said no. He had witnessed that second request, and Algini had looked mad. But they were his aishid, and he was responsible for anything they did, so he had only said, later, “You made Algini mad, nadiin-ji.”

  “We report to your father, nandi,” Veijico had said quite smoothly and with a shrug. “Not to them.”

  “You will not disrespect them!” he had shot back, very sharply, and that had backed them up just a bit. “And if you do it again, nadiin, I shall report to my father!”

  That had set them back for at least an hour.

  The thing was, there was a fairly fine dividing line between precocious and fool . . . he knew that better than most, having crossed that line a few times and having had to hear Great-grandmother tell him where that line was in great detail, interspersed with: “Tell me where you made mistakes, boy. Go think!”

  Maybe the Guild instructors had told Lucasi and Veijico that exact same thing a few times, too, but Lucasi and Veijico were never going to listen to Guild instructors the way he knew to listen to Great-grandmother—who had used to thump him on the same ear so often he swore it was larger than the other. Great-grandmother probably still made his father think of ear-thumping: she was that fierce.

  But clearly the Guild instructors had not set the proper fear in Lucasi and Veijico, and by the way they carried themselves, maybe they had lacked a great-grandmother, up in the high mountains, where they came from.

  Maybe, he thought, he should maneuver those two afoul of his great-grandmother and sit back and watch the outcome. That would be interesting. But he was not sure he would ever get them back if they did. So he kept that in reserve.

  And thus far he was managing things. At least today Lucasi and Veijico seemed to be showing a little improvement, and being much more polite to everybody all morning. So maybe his threat yesterday had worked. He hated being mad at people. It was like the business with the slingshota. They were so sure they would never miss that they thought they could shoot it in the garden hall, never mind the woodwork. Never mind Ramaso would scold them all and he would get in trouble for it.

  And never mind Lucasi had stolen five teacakes from the kitchen this morning, when they had no need to steal at all: Lucasi had rather steal because, he said, it kept him sharp—never mind that some servant might get in trouble for the miscount. It was not Lucasi’s habit, to think of things like that. Great-grandmother would thwack his ear for not thinking about it—if she knew it. But tattling to her was hardly grown-up.

  He had a dilemma, was what. He had to make Lucasi and Veijico care.

  More, he had to make Lucasi and Veijico care what he thought.

  His father was very clever. His father was a great strategist and absolutely ruthless, which was what his father’s enemies said, even though his father was really good to people who deserved his good opinion. His father was so smooth that sometimes people had trouble telling which he was being at the moment—ruthless, or good.

  He had thought, a few days ago, that his father had given him two very good guards, despite the suddenness of the surprise; and they were real Guild, and young, and he was going to like them just the way they were and everything was going to be splendid.

  Not so easy.

  It was like dealing with Great-grandmother. About the time one thought one had her figured out, Great-grandmother proved to be a few moves ahead. Dealing with his father was like that, more than anybody else he had ever met, and he thought about it, sitting in his little sitting-room at his desk, parsing his verbs, and watching Jegari and Antaro over in the corner with Lucasi and Veijico. Jegari and Antaro were listening, all respectful, to something Lucasi and Veijico were telling them—and he thought—

  I was stupid when I thought I could ever bring somebody that smart in that fast. I was too nice.

  These two are not easy to manage and they come with no ties to me the way Jegari and Antaro have. These two cheat. They lie. They sneak. And that would be all right, except—they disrespect me. They annoy me. One has to be smarter than they are to make them behave themselves, there is no kinship between us, and the fight has to go on all the time—because their man’chi
is not to me nor to anybody in the whole midlands—maybe not to anybody up in their mountains, who knows?

  It would be easier if I were older. If I could impress them—I could get their man’chi. But they left home to join the Guild. So one supposes man’chi is no longer there. And right now they belong to nobody except maybe the Guild. They say they report to my father, but I doubt they really feel man’chi toward him, or the Guild, or anybody in the world, even their own clan, which is small—too small for their ambitions. One can see that. They have probably always had trouble.

  Which was not to say they were bad. Or wrong.

  They were just going to be work. A lot of work. Running them, he would need to be sharp all the time, or he could never trust those two to do what he said—until he got old enough and powerful enough to get their attention. His father probably thought if they were going to make a mistake they would make it so senior Guild saw it and fixed it, but that was not necessarily so. They were sneaky. And everybody in this house was busy. And there was something his father might not have seen: these two were upset, and maybe they thought they were being disrespected in being given to a child, even a child who was the aiji’s son and heir. They happened to be wrong to think that—he bet his father bet that he would duck out on them and give them trouble the way he had always done.

  But that kind of behavior was for guards that people set over his aishid. Part of his aishid—that was something else, and it had stopped being fun, was what, because inside an aishid—there had to be trust. There had to be man’chi holding the whole thing together. And that was what he was not able to get out of these two.

  He had escaped his tutor, escaped his lessons in the capital, and come out here to go on nand’ Bren’s boat and go fishing with Jegari and Antaro. Life was going to be easy and good and constant fun.

  Now they had been shot at, the windows were all boarded up, both the boats were out of commission with repairs, and his father had sent him a gift to protect him, as if he was that same boy who had ducked out of the Bujavid to get away from that old fool of a tutor?

  Hell, nand’ Bren would say. Bloody hell.

  And he could call those two over right now and tell them exactly what he was thinking, but they were too self-assured to take any shame of it.

  And his father might think those two were naturally in awe of the aiji of the whole aishidi’tat, and that they would follow his orders, if nobody else’s . . . but they were, in fact, just too smart to be impressed. They would absorb any warning the aiji’s son gave them and come out of it just the way he would, thinking he still could get the better of the situation and run things the way he wanted. They were more than twice his age and they had had a long time to get into bad habits. And they had every fault Great-grandmother said he had.

  Which made him mad, because it meant maybe his father saw the same thing—

  Was it possible? Would his father do that to him?

  Things he was involved in were serious. Lucasi and Veijico thought they knew how serious and just how much they could get away with.

  But he was Great-grandmother’s student, and nand’ Bren’s, and Banichi’s and Cenedi’s and Jago’s, and he was not going to be found at fault for their misbehaviors.

  They thought they had his father figured, and they could just run things in his household until he grew up, and that they could get past Jegari and Antaro and be senior. On a second and third thought, probably everything had been fine with them until they had found out he was going to prefer two Guild trainees to them, and then they had gotten their backs up—gods, they might even have the notion of getting rid of Jegari and Antaro, if they were really ruthless.

  And they were real Guild, and had no orders about that . . . and no scruples.

  That was a terrible, terrible thought.

  He hadn’t thought it when, of course, he had told them how the household was to be ordered.

  He had told them that back when he had made assumptions they would automatically have man’chi to him . . .

  It was just not good, when he thought about things from the side of two very ruthless, very determined, almost-adult Guild.

  Algini, who let very little slip, had given him a direct warning: They are not all good.

  When Banichi and Jago and Cenedi had all been with him in deep space, Algini and Tano were the ones who had stayed on the space station. Algini in particular had helped reconstitute the Assassins’ Guild after the coup.

  So Algini’s letting slip that one small expression was no casual remark. It was a very purposeful warning. Had he been asleep? He did not think Algini ever was.

  So he had to get control of his own aishid, fast, before somebody got hurt. He had given orders maybe his elders would not advise, and he had either to give up control of his own household to them—or get these two to change their ways.

  Gods, mark it down to remember: annoy his father the way he had done and his father was eventually to reckon with. Had his father known what might happen? Did he still predict it?

  Did his father care whether his son and heir could rely on his own household—when a mistake could get people killed?

  His mother and father were having another baby, a safe baby they would bring up themselves, and who would not have been off in space with Great-grandmother and nand’ Bren, that was what. Succeed or not. Obey or not. Rule or not. Make these two obey—or not. There will be an alternative to you.

  Damn it!

  Lucasi and Veijico were homework, was what. They were capable of becoming a real major problem.

  And he could solve it one way by asking Great-grandmother to take them away and put them in her guard. She would make an impression on them, and she was almost the only person who could—because Guild who had served high up in the aiji’s house could only go to a related aishid; or they had nowhere to go. And in the Guild—that could be fatal. Were Lucasi and Veijico thinking about that at all when they acted so snotty with Antaro and Jegari?

  Or with him?

  He could go to Great-grandmother, and she would assign them tower duty in Malguri, which was about as far from talking to anybody as you could get . . . for the rest of their lives.

  If they were as smart as they thought they were, they would be afraid of that eventuality. They would have figured out that if this assignment went bad, they would know too many house secrets to be let loose into someone else’s employ.

  So Lucasi and Veijico were in a bit of a trap, whether or not they figured it out. He was ahead of them in that.

  And he was not ready quite yet to go to his Great-grandmother, but he had thought out his alternatives. He scowled at them, thinking this, and they noticed, and pretended not to, and then he smiled at them with his father’s nastiest smile. They would ask each other, later, “What was that look about?” and they would probably not come up with the right answer.

  Which proved that they were not quite as smart as they thought they were.

  He had to impress them and get them to take orders from Antaro and Jegari. That was the first thing on the menu. And he could not sit around playing with the slingshota and being told that he could not meet the bus and could not find out what the important business was between nand’ Bren and Lord Geigi. He had a rival. His father had warned him about that. And maybe his father had even thought he would go on playing games while things were happening that were serious, even after being warned. Maybe his parents had decided he was stupid.

  He was not Baiji. Maybe if he were, having Lucasi and Veijico around would not matter at all and he could just sit back and let them run his life.

  But he was not Baiji. And his father regarded him enough to challenge him, really challenge him. That was an encouraging idea.

  So he got up, he had Jegari go get his better shirt and best coat, and Antaro help him with his pigtail and ribbon, to look absolutely his best.

  He was, first of all, going to go call on Great-grandmother, because he was sure Lord Geigi and Lord Bren would both be
talking to Great-grandmother among the very first things they did, and if he were there when they came back, and in very good graces because he showed up looking like a gentleman, he might be able to stay with Great-grandmother once the bus arrived. And it should be coming soon. The airport was about a quarter of an hour past the train station: he had heard staff say that.

  And he would have Jegari and Antaro for a presence inside mani’s suite so they would get the information first-hand. Even better, all the information Lucasi and Veijico could get would have to be second-hand, from them. Which served them exactly right.

  So when he had dressed, he found a moment to pass close to them, and said:

  “You should stay here, or in the library with Tano and Algini, if they permit. What Lord Geigi says when he gets here will be important. And his presence here will upset the Marid. So possibly they will attack us again. But attacking my great-grandmother is not a good idea. So learn from what you hear.”

  “Nandi,” Lucasi said, with a little bow of his head. They looked just a little put off—maybe because they had not had outstanding success getting to sit in the security station with Tano and Algini.

  Too bad for them.

  He left his apartment, then, and went just next door, to Great-grandmother’s suite, and knocked. Nawari opened the door. That was good. Cenedi was there, behind him. And that was not.

  He bowed. “Is mani receiving, nadi-ji?” he asked, in best form.

  “Perhaps soon, young sir,” Nawari said.

  He had made his move little early then. Damn. Very damn.

  But then Cenedi said, with unexpected generosity: “You might come in and wait in the sitting room, should you wish, young lord. Is there some particular business?”