Deceiver: Foreigner #11

by C. J. Cherryh

  Two of his aishid had a real man’chi to him, and he cared deeply about that. The other two—it might yet come. If he got control of his temper. His father’s temper, Great-grandmother called it, and said she had none.

  But he rather hoped it was hers he had, which was just a little quieter.

  He had not shouted, had he?

  And he thought he had put a little fear into those two. More than a little. He might be infelicitous eight, but he was nearly nine, and he was smarter than almost anybody except the people his father had left in charge of him, which he thought might be why his father had left him here—unless his father was tired of him getting in trouble and wanted to scare him.

  Fine, if that was the case. He was only a little scared . . . less about what was going on outside the house than about the two Assassins his father had given him to protect him.

  His father had given him a problem, was what. A damned big problem. And for the first time he wondered if his father knew how big . . . or had these two so wound up in man’chi to himself that he never conceived they could be that much of a problem where he sent them. Maybe they were to be perfect snoops into his aishid, and into nand’ Bren’s household and into mani’s.

  Would his father do a thing like that?

  It was what mani said, Watch out for a man whose enemies keep disappearing.

  Well, that was his father, damned sure. Most everyone knew his father that way.

  But then, one could also say that about Great-grandmother.

  Both of them had been watching out for him, all his life. Now he had to look out for himself.

  If he could take the man’chi of two of his father’s guard, that would be something, would it not? He had gone head to head with these two, and scared them.

  The question was, did he want them? And could he get them at all, the way he had Jegari and Antaro? Did they have it in them, to be what Jegari and Antaro were?

  Mani had told him, when she took him away from the ship and his human associates, that there were important things he had to learn, and things he never would feel in the right way, until he dealt with atevi and lived in the world.

  Was this it?

  His whole body felt different, hot and not angry, just—overheated, all the way down to his toes. Stupidhot, like a sugar high, but different. Not bad. Not safe, either . . . like looking down a long, dark tunnel that was not quite scary. It had no exit to either side, and no way back, but he knew he owned it, and he suddenly conceived the notion he was the danger here. He wondered if he looked different.

  He needed to be apart from Veijico and Lucasi for a few hours, was what. Antaro and Jegari were all right. They steadied him down and they could make him laugh, which was what he very much needed right now. He very, very much needed that.

  10

  Thus far, probably bored out of their minds, Bren thought, Toby and Barb were dutifully keeping to the basement, through all the coming and going in the house.

  He went downstairs into the servants’ domain—Banichi and Jago stayed right with him despite his assurances that everything was calm and they could take a little rest; and they walked with him through the halls, two shadows generally one on a side, except where they passed the occasional servant on business. It was a bit of a warren down here, rooms diced up smaller than those above, and the floor plan much more humanish, having a big square of a central block and a corridor all the way around. The main kitchens were down here, with their back stairs up to the dining room service area; and next to them the laundry and the servant baths all clustered together at a right angle—sharing plumbing.

  Beyond that side of the big block, beyond fire-doors and sound-baffling, was the servants’ own recreation hall, their own library and dining room, and beyond that, again another fire-door, the junior servants’ quarters.

  Baiji occupied one of these rooms. One of Ilisidi’s young men, on duty at that door, had been reading. He set down his book so fast he dropped it, and got up with a little bow, which Bren returned—though likeliest it was Banichi and Jago whose presence had made him scramble.

  “Your guest is not my concern,” Bren said mildly. “One trusts the fellow is busy at his writing. My brother is down here. Where would he be?”

  “The third left, nandi.” The young man walked ahead of them, escorting them that far, and knocked on the door for him before retreating and leaving Banichi and Jago in charge.

  The door opened. Toby saw him with some relief—stood aside as he entered, and left the door open; but Banichi and Jago opted for the hall, and shut the door, likely to go back and pass the time sociably with Ilisidi’s lonely and very anxious youngest guard.

  Barb sat at the little table, where the light was best, doing a little writing herself. The disturbed second chair showed where Toby had likely been sitting before he heard the door and got up. The bed, just beyond the partial arch, was made and neat: the servants would have seen to that; but maybe two ship-dwellers had taken care of it themselves.

  “Are we being let out?” Toby asked hopefully.

  “Sorry. Not yet.” Bren dropped into the chair by the door and heaved a heavy sigh as Toby sank back into the second chair at the table.

  “Ah, well,” Toby said. “Any idea when?”

  “Well, it’s stayed quiet out. We haven’t had any further trouble. And Geigi’s talking about going home to his estate—that may provoke something. Likely it will. But if it does, it may shift the trouble over to Kajiminda—and that may get your upstairs room back.”

  “That still throws you short,” Toby said. “If you can get Geigi home, you can at least get us to our boat.”

  “Sorry. The bus doesn’t go down the hill. You’re safer here.”

  “You can only play so much solitaire,” Barb said, and Toby said nothing, only looked glum.

  “You’re exposed to snipers down on the boat,” Bren said. “It makes me nervous, your being there.”

  Sighs from both of them. “We can’t go into the garden, I suppose,” Barb said.

  “No,” he said. “But it’s not forever. There’s movement in the situation.”

  “What kind of movement?”

  “Best not discuss all of it. But things are happening.”

  “We’re not pacing the floor yet. We’ve threatened murder of each other if we get to that.”

  “The room is bigger than the boat.”

  “There’s no deck,” Toby said. “And there’s no window. —I’m not complaining, Bren. Honestly not.”

  “You’re complaining,” he said wryly. “And I’m honestly sympathetic. Just not a thing I can do to make it safe out there.”

  “We’re just blowing off steam,” Toby said. “Honestly. We aren’t complaining. Being alive is worth a little inconvenience. We’re grateful to be here—grateful to the servants who gave up their room for us. We’re here, we’re dry, we’re not full of holes—”

  “I’ll relay that to the fellows who live here,” he said, with a little smile. “But I can at least give you a day pass. Things have quietened enough you’ll be welcome up-stairs at most any time. Just don’t wait for directions. Duck down here fast if there’s an alarm of any kind. I’m afraid the library’s off limits now; just too crowded in there. But you can use the sitting room, what time we’re not having other meetings. Staff will signal you. I’ll advise them to tell you that.”

  “We’ve become the ghosts in your walls,” Barb laughed. “Spooks in the basement.”

  “That’s it,” he said.

  “Staff has been really good,” Barb said. “They won’t let us make our own bed. We tried, and the maid had a fit.”

  He laughed gently. “The juniors have that job and if they don’t do it, the seniors will be on them. Don’t object.” Which said, he got up to go.

  “What?” Toby protested. “You’re not staying for a round of poker? We play for promises.”

  “I’m up to my ears in must-dos. I just want you to know there’s some movement in the situa
tion, and so far, so good. We have people watching your boat round the clock. No worries down there.”

  “Can we possibly help?” Toby asked. “Can we actually do anything around the place? Can we hammer nails, carry boxes, help with the repair?”

  He shook his head. “That’s the downside of having an efficient staff. They have their ways. Just relax. Rest. Take long baths.”

  “Can I at least get some coastal charts?”

  Those were slightly classified. But he did have them. And Toby was in Tabini’s good graces. He nodded. “I’ll send a batch down.”

  That brightened up his two sailors. He felt rather good about that.

  So he took his leave, collected Banichi and Jago, and went back upstairs to his office, while Banichi and Jago, secure in the knowledge of exactly where he was, in a fortified room with storm shutters shut, got a little down time of their own.

  “Coastal charts,” he recalled. “Toby wanted coastal charts.” He went over to the pigeonhole cabinet, unlocked the case and pulled out several. “Have these run down to him, nadiin-ji. I take responsibility.”

  Jago went to do it. Banichi diverted himself to somber consultation with Tano, Algini, and Nawari.

  And he sat down with the database again, trying to discover how Pairuti’s bloodline—and Geigi’s—connected to the world at large, over the last three hundred years.

  Meticulous research on kinships. Who was related to whom and exactly the sequence of exterior and internal events—negotiations in which certain marriages had been contracted and when they had terminated, and more importantly with what offspring, reared by which half of the arrangement, and with what claims of inheritance. Dry stuff—until you discovered you had a relative poised to lodge a claim or engage an Assassin to remove an obstacle.

  One of the interesting tactics of marriage politics was infiltration of another clan: marry someone in, let them arrive with the usual staff. That staff then formed connections with other, local staff—and even once the original marriage had run its course—it left a legacy in that clan that could be activated even generations down.

  And there the paidhi ran head on into that most curious of atevi emotions: man’chi. Attachment. Affiliation. When it triggered, by whatever triggered it, be it the right pheromones or a sense of obligation or ambition or compatible direction—one ateva bonded to another. When it happened properly, in related clans or within a clan, it was the very mortar of society. When it happened between people from clans that were natural enemies, it could be hell on earth.

  There’d been a lot of marrying, for instance, of Marid eligibles out and around their district, begetting little time bombs—people never quite at home in their birthclan, longing, perhaps, for acceptance; and one could imagine, ultimately finding it—because the Marid clans were not stupid.

  So the web grew, decade by decade, and that sort of thing had been going on for a lot of decades all up and down the coast and somewhat inland. Sensibly, a stable person was not going to run amok in the household at the behest of some third cousin down in the Marid. But take a little unscheduled income from that cousin for some apparently meaningless datum? Much easier. If you were a very smart spymaster, you didn’t call on people for big, noisy things or life changes. You got bits and pieces from several sources and never let any single person put two and three pieces together.

  If you were a lord like Geigi, who’d actually married into the Marid, or drawn a wife out of there, you sensibly worried about the safety of your household—but that household being Edi, the likelihood of any lingering liaison was not high at all. It had surely frustrated the Marid, and perhaps made them wonder who was spying on whom. Geigi’s ex-wife had not risen high in her life, nothing so grand, after Geigi. She’d gone off to the Marid taking all Geigi’s account numbers with her, but Geigi, Rational Determinist that he was—had not been superstitious. He had immediately changed them, and the Marid’s attempts to get into those accounts had rung alarms through the banking system, a defeat that had greatly embarrassed Machigi’s predecessor.

  It had been an elegant, quiet revenge that had done the wife’s whole family no good at all. Doubtless they took it personally.

  Paru was the subclan in question, on the ex-wife’s father’s side. He wrote that name down, then got up and walked to the security station, the library, walked in after a polite knock and laid that name on the counter.

  Jago, who was nearest, looked at it, and looked up at him curiously.

  “This is the clan of Geigi’s wife,” he said, “who was greatly embarrassed in her failure to drain his accounts. And they do own a bank in Separti Township: Fortunate Investments. One simply wonders if they have any current involvement.”

  “Paru,” Algini mused. “Fortunate Investments, indeed.”

  “Certainly worth inquiring,” Tano said.

  “Bren-ji is doing our job, nadiin-ji,” Jago said, amused.

  “One does apologize,” he said, though the reception of his little piece of information was beyond cheerful. It clearly delighted his aishid.

  “Permission to discuss with Geigi’s staff,” Banichi said.

  His bodyguard had a new puzzle. They were cramped in these quarters, they were operating nearly round the clock, and Banichi and Jago had bruises and stitches from the last foray, but they had a puzzle to work on. They were happy.

  “I leave it in your hands, nadiin-ji,” he said. “Whatever you deem necessary.”

  And they thought his small piece of information was worth tracking. Nobody said, as they usually did, oh, well, they had already investigated that.

  So he went back to mining the database with a little more enthusiasm.

  When one was put out with half one’s aishid and not speaking to them, it was a grim kind of day. Everybody in nand’ Bren’s house was serious and busy. Cajeiri was bored, bored, bored, and tired of being grown up, which he had been all morning and most of the day, but it was not his fault half his aishid were obnoxious, and he was tired of dealing with them, so he just found excuses to keep them elsewhere and away from him—it was no cure, but it at least made him happier.

  There was a beautiful bay out there, probably sparkling in the sunshine, with boats and everything—but one would never know it, in the house, with all the windows shuttered tight.

  There was a garden out there, with sky overhead and things to get into that they had never had time to investigate.

  But it was off limits, because there could be snipers.

  There was the garden shed, and the wrecked old bus, and all sorts of things worth seeing, not even mentioning there was Najida village not too far away, about which they had only heard, and which they had never yet visited.

  And there were fishing boats and the dock and all the shops on down the beach toward the village, from a blacksmith to a net-maker. The servants talked about the net-maker’s son, who was about his age, so he gathered, and it was all off limits, because of snipers and kidnappers. The net-maker’s son could be outside in the sunshine. The aiji’s son was stuck inside, behind shutters.

  The Marid was a damned nuisance to him personally, along with all the real harm they had done to completely innocent people, including one of mani’s young men being dead, which was just hard even to think of and terribly sad. When he was aiji, he was going to be their enemy, and they had better figure how to make peace with him or it would turn out very badly for them.

  Probably his father was thinking the same thing, by now, and one was sure Great-grandmother was not going to forgive what the Marid had done, but he wished he knew what his father was doing, and one never knew entirely what Great-grandmother was going to do, but it could be grim.

  It was a scary, worrisome thing, to send Guild out on a mission. Nand’ Bren had had to send Banichi and Jago out, and Jago had gotten hurt, which he was really sorry about. And if things got really bad, they were going to have to send a lot of Guild out, and people he knew could get killed. He hated even thinking about that.
<
br />   He just wished the Marid lords would do something really stupid and that his father’s men—mostly strangers—would go in and settle with them before somebody he knew got hurt.

  But the Marid sat down in their land and had their fingers in everything, including, apparently, trying to finagle or bluff their way into Geigi’s clan, if what Lucasi and Veijico occasionally reported back was true. The Marid had possibly infiltrated the Maschi, and Great-grandmother was making a lot of phone calls, but his informants had no idea what she was saying or who she was calling, except it was code.

  And Lord Geigi and nand’ Bren were planning to go take Kajiminda back.

  And the Edi thought they were going to replace his father’s Guild, who were occupying it at the moment.

  And meanwhile Guild was investigating things on the other side of Kajiminda, down in Separti Township, because Marid agents had set up down there.

  But that was not all that was going on, because once Lord Geigi had taken Kajiminda, he was going to go inland and visit his cousins in the Maschi stronghold, and it was possible he was going to tell the current Maschi lord to retire so Lord Geigi could take over the whole clan. How this was going to work, one was not certain, but it sounded risky, and people were likely to say no to that . . .

  And if the Maschi lord agreed, and Geigi moved in at Targai, there was the Marid right next door. It looked to him as if Lord Geigi was setting up to be real trouble to the Marid, and if it looked that way to him, being a kid, one could expect the Marid was going to figure it out—and figure they had one choice at that point: give up annoying the west, or go after Geigi.

  He really hoped the Marid would decide then, just like in chess, that they really should not make the next few moves. That was the way he saw it: just like the chessboard—which he played pretty well, but not as well as mani, not nearly as well as mani. And there was nand’ Bren, being the Advisor; and Geigi, being the Rider and moving by zigs and zags; and the Marid could see them maneuvering.