Things were beginning to stir around the house now that the conference was over. Mani and Lord Geigi and Cenedi had had their breakfast, so Jegari reported, which had turned out to be more of a lunch. But nobody was interested in talking to a boy.
So Cajeri, having thoughts of his own about what needed to be done, and with nobody listening to him except his aishid, said, “We shall go downstairs, nadiin-ji. We have business of our own.”
He led the way straight down to the basement from the vacant dining hall, not caring whether or not the servants reported it, since both Cenedi and mani were too busy to bother with him. He had his excuse, besides: nand’ Bren had told him to take care of nand’ Toby, and by a slight stretch, he was still doing that.
He led his aishid straight to nand’ Toby’s door, and Antaro knocked.
Barb-daja answered the door. The smell of sandwiches and spiced tea wafted out. She and nand’ Toby were having lunch in their room. That was a little disappointment.
But humans had different manners. He traded on that.
“Sorry,” he said with a little bow. “Can we talk, nandi?”
“Come on in,” nand’ Toby said, past Barb-daja’s shoulder. Nand’ Toby was looking immensely better today, now that Barb-daja was back. He was still wrapped up in bandages, of course, and he was having breakfast with his shirt unbuttoned, but, then, nand’ Toby was not on mani’s orders, was he? Cajeiri edged into the room. Nand’ Toby and Barb-daja had a little table with only two chairs, but there was the bed to sit on, and Barb-daja quietly relocated onto the edge of the mattress, collecting her tea and her plate, motioning for their guest to take her chair. “There’s plenty, if you want, nandi,” she said. And more doubtfully, as his aishid slipped quietly into the room to stand along the wall and he remained respectfully standing: “Or I’m sure we could send for more.”
“We ate, nandi.” They had, twice, actually. And using nand’ Toby’s name in the human way just was not right, and ship-speak sir was too general, besides hard to say. Cajeiri settled for a mix of ship-speak and Ragi.
“So what can we do for you?” nand’ Toby asked.
“You can hear news, nandi.”
“Tea, Barb,” Toby said, and Barb picked up a spare cup from the little service—it was a seven-cup set—and poured.
Cajeiri sat down and took the teacup with a proper little nod/bow-in-place. Nand’ Toby offered that atevi courtesy, too, being polite and proper, so one had to take at least three sips before saying anything. Mani had thwacked that into his skull.
And he ought to wait. It was terribly rude to discuss serious things over somebody’s food. And in proper manners he needed to wait until they were through with their lunch.
Humans did not observe such customs, however. Even adults thought it was perfectly fine to talk business over food. At least that was true on the ship. He cautiously began to break mani’s rules.
“Mani and Lord Geigi and Cenedi-nadi have talked. A message came. The Guild is attacking enemies in the Marid.”
“A message from Bren?” nand’ Toby asked.
“Not from nand’ Bren, no, nandi. I think it came from the Guild to Cenedi.”
“I think,” Barb-daja said, “I’m sure Bren was doing all right with Machigi.”
“This isn’t going to make the man happy, Barb!”
He had been talking in ship-speak, and nand’ Toby and Barb-daja spoke in Mosphei’, which they used on the Island, but it was close enough they all understood each other.
“Bren’s going to be all right,” Barb-daja said. “Machigi wouldn’t dare do anything if the Guild is moving in. He’d be a fool. If the dowager wants to talk to him and Bren is talking, then Machigi is safe if anybody is. He’d be crazy to make a move like that.”
And everybody said Barb-daja was not a serious person and was always doing and saying wrong things because she was a little stupid, but she had been with nand’ Bren, she had seen the situation in Machigi’s court, and at that moment Cajeiri really, really was grateful she could explain that.
“The Guild will guard him,” he said. “I think so. Yes. And his aishid is with him. They won’t let anything happen to him. I think.” Here was the hard thing to explain. “When we came down from the ship, Murini ran. The Guild with him ran. All to the Marid.”
“Murini’s bodyguard, you mean.”
“Lots. Lots of Guild. In Dojisigi. In Senji. The Guild in Shejidan is fighting them.”
“Them.” Nand’ Toby looked confused.
“The Guild in Shejidan says they did the bad stuff in Kajiminda. Not Machigi. They try to kill Machigi.”
“So the Guild in Shejidan is going after the ones in the Marid?”
“Yes.” He was relieved. “They can’t get Bren. The bad guys. But they can come here. Mani won’t talk to me. I don’t know what they’re doing. But I think they come here. The Murini Guild.”
“You’re saying the bad guys are going to attack here.”
“Yes! They want to catch us. We’re not safe in the house. Mani won’t talk to me. I don’t know if she called my father. But the Guild in Shejidan maybe sent everybody to the Marid. So my father doesn’t have a lot of people, maybe. I don’t know if he can help.”
Toby looked at him soberly and finally had a sip of tea.
“Can we get nand’ Cenedi to give us guns?” Toby asked.
“You ask him. We get guns. We set booby traps in the halls, too. All sorts of things.”
“Where’d you learn that?” Toby asked him. “Booby traps?”
“On the ship. We used to make them. Safe ones. We can make bad ones.”
“I’ll bet you can.” Toby downed the rest of his tea in two large gulps. “We’re going upstairs, Barb. Help me get dressed. We need to talk with Cenedi. Cajeiri.”
“Nandi.”
“Come with me. You’re going to translate.”
The boot seam was giving way, a stitch at a time. That was a damned nuisance, and grit and bits of dry weed found their way in. But stopping to deal with it was impossible. Bren picked out a bush, a rock, any objective on the way ahead, and getting there, picked out another one, trying not to slow Jago down and not to cripple himself by stupidity. He planned his transitions from high ground to low, never gathering too much speed, never risking his balance. He had one contribution to make to Jago’s efforts, and that was a mobility exceeding Lucasi’s and, he hoped, enough common sense to go with it.
So he did his best. Whether they were walking into something and where Banichi was at the moment—he left that to Jago, whose senses and skills were on the alert. Tano and Algini were lagging behind them with Lucasi and hadn’t shown up in the last brief rest.
Jago suddenly held up a cautioning hand. He froze right where he was—not an advantageous spot, but at least a tenable one, in the shadow of a tall upright rock and next to a growth of scrub.
She melted backward and indicated he should get deeper into cover.
He did that, set his back against springy brush and put his hand into the pocket with the gun, just in case.
She was leaving him for a while, she signed to him. He couldn’t go where she was going or do what she was going to do.
But if Jago couldn’t handle it, he was sure it couldn’t be handled. He just needed to stay absolutely still, remembering the acuteness of atevi hearing. She was apparently going hunting.
He settled to stay where he was. His best contribution was to rest and catch his breath, in the theory they were likely to have to move and maybe move for a long distance and fast.
In the best of situations, they’d nearly caught up to Banichi, and she was going to move up on him with the appropriate moves or signals, so Banichi wouldn’t, God help them, shoot them both by accident.
In the worst—they were running into trouble, and Jago was going to have to handle it.
He mopped his face with the back of his cuff, never mind the chill in the air. He wanted to sit down, but that involved moving, and not moving i
n the least was just safer. He had a rock and a springy bit of brush to lean on, he had his legs braced, and he was not in pain, which was all he asked, at the moment. He was sure she’d be back in a few minutes.
He didn’t know how far they were from that nebulous transition that humans would call the three-way border, the district between Taisigi land and Maschi territory, and likewise between the Marid and Sarini Province. “Border” might be a lovely distinction for a human brain that didn’t like shades of gray, but the people who’d like to kill them wouldn’t be at all fussy about where they were when they ran into each other, and they wouldn’t be safe until they’d gone far enough to have a substantial enough contingent of allied Guild forces between them and everybody who wanted them dead.
It wasn’t mani nor even Cenedi they found, going up the stairs; it was Lord Geigi, with household servants carrying baggage, and headed for the stairs.
“Is the enemy coming, nandi?” Cajeiri asked.
“Not imminently, young gentleman,” Lord Geigi said. “Staff will be moving furniture. A precaution.”
“Is mani calling my father?”
“One is certain your father is aware of our difficulty, young gentleman.”
It was an adult trying to keep him from worrying. Which always meant there was something to worry about.
“Is mani calling my father, nandi?”
Geigi had intended to go on down the stairs. They were impolitely in the way. Lord Geigi said, “It is being taken care of, young gentleman.”
Nand’ Toby said, in Mosphei’, “What’s the problem?”
Geigi understood ship-speak. And he looked at nand’ Toby, looking out of breath and bothered.
“Communications,” Lord Geigi said in ship-speak. “We have transmitted a general alert to the station. Phones are not . . .” It was a ship-speak word Cajeiri did not know. It was not fair.
“What?” he asked. “Reli-ble.”
“Reliable,” Lord Geigi said in Ragi. “Neither phone nor radio is secure at this point. The enemy is preparing something.” And Lord Geigi said it again, in fluent ship-speak, adding: “I’ve alerted the station, nandi. They will be contacting Mospheira and Shejidan, and at that point, what they will do is up to them. The Edi, on the other hand, have contacted the Gan, and that is—” Another big word.
“Nandi,” Cajeiri said, frustrated. “What will the Gan do?”
“They will come, young lord. They will arrive in the middle of things, armed and with no connection to Guild authority. One has asked the Grandmother of the Edi to fortify Kajiminda, and if the Gan then arrive in the midst of this, one can only hope not to have complete confusion.” He changed to ship-speak, addressing nand’ Toby and Barb-daja. “Guild action does not tend to be long, nandiin. We must hold Najida for the next number of hours, perhaps three days, before help will . . .” More words, involving Shejidan. Cajeiri drew a quick breath and got a question in.
“My father has nobody to send, nandi?”
The question drew a strange frown, a calculation, maybe, and a hesitation in answering. “Your father will have received our message, young gentleman. One has every confidence he will act—or that he has acted would not surprise me in the least. If you would assist, young gentleman, persuade your great-grandmother to move downstairs. That would be to the good.”
“But what is my father doing, nandi?”
“One has no idea at all, young lord,” Lord Geigi said, and said in ship-speak: “We expect attack. Cenedi hasn’t been able to get new information from the Guild. We can send messages out, but no one is talking to us, and we only dare say what we don’t mind the enemy hearing. At this point we simply get ready.” And back to Ragi: “Persuade your great-grandmother to move downstairs, young sir. That would be a service.”
Nobody was going to listen. Mani was clearly in a bad mood. And the enemy had tapped the phone lines.
“Can we get guns?” nand’ Toby asked.
“Nawari, in the security office, nandi,” Lord Geigi said. “He’s arming any staff who knows how to use one.”
Time passed. More than half an hour. An hour. Bren watched the shadow creep across a small knob of rock, and pass it entirely, and eventually start to decline off the rock entirely.
He heard nothing. Saw nothing move but a small creature digging roots, out beyond the rocks. He had been still enough that that shy creature felt safe to come out. His feet had gone to sleep.
The shadow crept off the rock entirely and traversed the brown dust of the ground.
He’d stood and waited as long as he could. He moved very carefully so as not to rustle the branches he’d been leaning on and sank down to one knee, and finally down to sit as far back in the rocks as he could manage.
He still refused to worry at this point. If Jago had gotten into a situation, he only hoped she would rely on him absolutely to do what she had told him to do. The last thing he wanted was for her to risk herself and Banichi because they expected him to be a fool.
And, he told himself, Tano and Algini would be arriving here, sooner or later. He hadn’t heard any explosions besides the one back at the ridge. But that didn’t mean that pair was through dealing with the opposition, and it didn’t mean that anything had happened to them. It was entirely possible they would show up and just move him along toward Jago, relying on the signals they occasionally passed to one another. The second last thing he wanted was to be rambling around out in the countryside, either to draw enemies to himself or to get himself shot by his own bodyguard.
He didn’t know whether there was any specific Guild code for “I’ve left the paidhi in a cul de sac and I hope he stays there,” but he wouldn’t be surprised to know that his bodyguard had a code for pretty much that idea.
The one thing he was sure of was that he truly had no business even taking a look outside his hiding place, no matter what. A human just couldn’t easily judge what an atevi could hear or what one could see in near darkness. Twilight and high noon were the two times when the differences most mattered—advantage went to the human in blinding glare but to the ateva in near darkness. And he very much hoped somebody showed up before dark.
He grew hungry over the afternoon. He grew very thirsty. He didn’t carry a canteen, which he regretted. And Jago, who had had that foresight, hadn’t left it with him, so she planned to get back before he was in dire straits, at least.
Which he was not yet, only uncomfortable and with far too much time to think of things that could go wrong.
The best thing he could do to alleviate the discomfort and get ready to move when Jago got back was rest and sleep. He had his pistol, the only excess weight his staff let him carry. He had taken it out and laid it across his lap as he sat, but it was far, far better not to fire it and bring down the entire countryside—not to mention making his bodyguard scramble to get back to him and possibly risk their necks doing it.
So he had the rock to lean on. It was cold, here in the shadow, but the damned vest, besides keeping him upright, kept him warm, give or take his hands and feet.
He tucked his hands under his arms and shut his eyes.
Actual sleep eluded him except by fitful moments, but very slowly, very slowly, he noted the shadow creep across onto another rock and climb it, until the whole nook was in twilight. It grew decidedly colder. His backside was long since numb. His legs and his arms were getting there.
He was careful shifting position. But he had to, several times, to prevent his legs going to sleep. It was, thank God, not damp dirt, but it was chill. So was the rock, give or take the thin, springy brush he had for a cushion at his back.
It had been an anxious day. A few of the servants were armed, even if Cenedi still refused to let Antaro and Jegari carry guns; and some of the young servants were out at more distant posts, watching the roads. It was a scary feeling, and an empty feeling, as the house at Najida went on defensive alert.
Mani still refused to go downstairs. By late afternoon, various Edi and two of th
e Guild that had come in with the bus came in for mysterious meetings with mani and Cenedi. Cajeiri could get no reports about what they were saying, but he was sure it had to do with Guild moving somewhere: it had that kind of hush about it.
So there were at least some reinforcements, he told himself. He hoped there were a lot of them, but nobody had said anything about that where his bodyguard could overhear it—informing nand’ Toby of what he knew and getting nand’ Toby armed had had one unintended side effect: Cenedi had found out that information was leaking out, and Cenedi had not been happy.
So now nothing leaked, not even from Nawari and not even to Antaro.
And nobody had time for supper, either. Cook made pizza for most of the staff and a country dish for mani and Cenedi and for Lord Geigi and him, too.
Cajeiri could smell the pizza. He had far rather have that. But saying so would upset the cook, and mani would call it rude. Pickled eggs and spiced fish were not too bad. He ate with mani in her upstairs sitting room, and so did Lord Geigi, who had second helpings. So did nand’ Toby and Barb-daja, who had been talking to mani and to Cenedi and nand’ Geigi—well, they had been answering what Cajeiri translated, a lot of it about Tanaja and what Barb-daja had seen. Cajeiri had been translating back and forth; but everything stopped long enough for supper. Cajeiri was glad of the break because his brain hurt, and eating was a little while he did not have to be thinking of words that had gotten away from him.
Nand’ Toby and Barb-daja got pizza right in the same room, which was just unfair, but they were specially privileged because they were allergic to the pickle spice, so mani said.
Mani, especially since the last report from Nawari, had been upset about something before supper. There was a long list of things she could justifiably be upset about. Her bodyguard picked it up: they moved especially fast when they came into the room—even during supper, which was how urgent things were getting to be; and they delivered their reports in concise order, largely to Cenedi, who still gave no hint whether the reinforcements they thought might come were coming here or not.
Betrayer: Foreigner #12 Page 22
