Destroyer

by C. J. Cherryh

  His appetite began to override the pain. Food, hot food, and not concentrate bars. The fire seemed reckless, if they were being followed. The smell of smoke carried. But a hot meal was oh, so welcome. He resisted second-guessing the rangers’ judgement.

  There were other whistles in the woods, some near, some far. Their guides fell utterly silent and listened for a bit.

  “There has been no investigation of the bus, nandiin,” Keimi said, standing by the edge of the clearing. “The Sidonin authority evidently is not particularly zealous. We shall likely receive a message by hand, from another direction. We shall let them retrieve the bus, eventually.”

  A whistle sounded startlingly close to them. One of Keimi’s people answered it, and meanwhile business around the stove went on as if nothing alarming had happened. Tea was served, soup was on to boil, water supplied from the spring, in a pot that otherwise served as a packing container. And someone out in the woods was watching, guarding them.

  “Mind, we have a human guest,” Ilisidi had said, when they were putting together the meal, and she had her staff watch, personally, every item and spice that went into the stew, for which Bren was entirely grateful. It smelled better and better. Anything would have appealed to him, laden with alkaloids or not, and he would, he thought, have died mostly happy if he could only get a bowlful of what was preparing.

  Some little noise attracted their own bodyguards’ attention. “We have others arriving, nandiin,” Keimi said, and Assassins relaxed. Hands left weapons.

  In a while more, indeed, while they were ladling out the contents of the pot, which turned out to be a thick stew presented as a sauce on hardtack, other riders turned up, three of them, a woman, two men, these all in mottled dark green not unlike the leaves, on dark, well-kept mecheiti.

  There were introductions, and the dowager stayed seated, but she inclined her head courteously to each—whose names, it turned out, she already knew.

  “Nand’ dowager,” they addressed Ilisidi, with great respect. It appeared, by what conversation flowed, and by the exchange of bows with the two youngsters that had settled by Cajeiri, that these were the parents of the two teenagers, and now they were on much more formal behavior. The elders recalled that they had known Cajeiri as a babe in arms, not the sort of thing a young lad of any species liked to hear recalled in front of his new friends.

  But there they were, in the heart of Taiben, where Cajeiri had spent much of his babyhood. And the two teenagers recalled they had met Cajeiri then, if one could meet a toddler in any social sense.

  So it was old acquaintance. The chatter went on, in a tumble of particulars for a second or two, entirely displacing adult business, until Ilisidi meaningfully cleared her throat. “There is a better sitting place over near the spring, great-grandson.”

  “Mani-ma.” Cajeiri gratefully took the hint and took his two teenaged conversants with him, out of the stream of adult conversation.

  “His father’s son,” the older man of the arriving party said. His name was Jeiniri—Bren had noted it; and the woman was his partner in service, Deiso. Those two were the parents. The other man, Cori, was Deiso’s brother.

  “In very many ways,” Ilisidi said, “he is his father’s son.” Some quiet current ran in that exchange that Bren could not quite gather, but there was a little tension in the air, and eyes were quickly downcast.

  Is there some problem in this meeting? he asked himself, and cast a worried glance at his own staff, who were busy with their supper. Is there some news passed, some particular difficulty, that brought this pair in?

  Or have they come in to retrieve their teenaged youngsters from our vicinity? It was a dangerous vicinity, he had no question of that, and it made sense they would feel some awkwardness in saying so. The aiji-dowager and her great-grandson being the gravitational center of that danger, sensible parents would want those two and all the rest of the young children and elderly away from them. It would be a relief, to have the vulnerable part of their band withdraw to safety.

  So here went another set of youngsters out of Cajeiri’s reach, he thought, if they did that, and he was sorry, immensely sorry they could not send Cajeiri to safety too.

  They finished eating. They took tea, a solemn, quiet time.

  Community was established. Food and tea had gone the rounds. Then it was permissible to get down to bare-faced questions.

  “How many of the staff survive, nadiin?” Cenedi asked their hosts directly. “One apprehends they are fairly well scattered.”

  “The lodge is mostly intact, nadi,” Keimi said. “And the Kadigidi have attempted to base there, but to no good, not for them.”

  That covered bloody actions, Bren thought.

  And still that strange reserve.

  “You wonder, do you not,” Ilisidi said sharply, “who claims the succession.” Her mouth made a hard line, and she leaned on her cane, which rested at a steep angle before her. All around the fire, eyes fixed mostly on the ground. And the cane lifted, pointing. “There is the succession, nadiin, should it come to that.” The cane angled toward the spring, and Cajeiri.

  A scarcely perceptible tension breathed out of the newcomers as they followed that indication. Not an eastern claimant, then, but an heir of the central provinces, a Ragi like themselves; and no proclamation in the solemn halls of government provoked more tension or more relief than this. Bren himself found his breath stopped, and when they looked back to Ilisidi, Taibeni heads bowed in deep, deep respect.

  “Nand’ dowager,” Keimi said solemnly.

  That old, old divide between east and west, that had once, in the previous aiji’s death, voted Tabini into office, passing over Ilisidi: too eastern, too much a foreigner to manage the Western Association. It had been a bitter dose.

  And Ilisidi knew these people, knew where their man’chi lay, and gained everything in one stroke. The whole atmosphere had changed.

  “So what happened here, nadiin?” Ilisidi asked, leaning on that cane again. “And where is he?”

  A small silence.

  “The aiji,” Keimi said, “had come to the lodge for safety. He had intended to send Mercheson-paidhi to Mogari-nai, and he intended to follow, when news came that Murini of the Kadigidi had conducted assassinations in the legislature itself, and lords had scattered for immediate safety. Sabotage was aimed at the shuttles, and Tabini-aiji dispatched staff immediately to prevent that. He intended, himself, to go to Mogari-nai and communicate directly with Ogun-aiji up on the station. The shuttles could not launch: they were in preparation, as best we understand, but we have never heard that they launched.”

  Bad news. Terrible news.

  And Tabini had made a critical choice, to neglect all other matters and protect the shuttle fleet, as an irreplaceable connection to the space station, to his mission, to the ship and its business. Some atevi might not understand that, might not forgive it, in an aiji who had already committed so ruinously much effort into the space program, to join with humans.

  “It was suggested by the staff,” Deiso said further, “that he be on one shuttle, and that some of us would go with him. He refused, nand’ dowager, and said it was impossible, anyway. He said that he belonged to the earth, and that he would never expect us to die for him while he sat safe in the heavens. By all we know, the spaceport is still in provincial hands, the shuttle grounded, but intact, and the crews in hiding. The Kadigidi have taken the shuttle facility at Shejidan, however, and maintain a guard there.”

  A profound relief. The investment, the unique materials, the irreplaceable staff . . . protected, thus far. But now that the ship was back at the station, the Kadigidi and their supporters would know that the shuttle there and the one on Mospheira represented a dire threat to them. Destroying it, or taking control of it, would become a priority.

  “And where is my grandson?” Ilisidi asked.

  “No one knows, aiji-ma, but he left eastward—whether skirting through Atageini lands, or more directly inward, we do not
know.”

  A border where there was only uneasy peace, an old, old feud within the Ragi Association—not often a bloody one—that had been patched within the larger Western Association, the aishidi’tat, first by pragmatic diplomacy, then by the marriage of Tabini-aiji to an Atageini consort . . . Cajeiri’s mother.

  And Cajeiri, with his two companions, had quietly gotten up and moved back to stand nearby, listening, lip bit between his teeth.

  “The dowager proposes to go ask Lord Tatiseigi where his man’chi lies,” Cenedi said, and Bren’s heart did two little thuds.

  But of course. Of course that question had to be posed, and posed face to face, if it was to have the best chance of a favorable response. Man’chi worked that way. Ilsidi could ask that question by phone, supposing they found a phone, and that would indeed shock her former lover to a certain degree, perhaps jolt him enough to get the truth out of him. But he might equally as well puff himself up and take personal meaning out of the fact that she had used the phone, not confronting him—and then the shock would diminish into recalcitrance at best. Nothing on earth would match the emotional impact of personal appearance, on Atageini land, and very little could match Ilisidi’s force if she got inside his guard. If there was anything calculated to catch the old gentleman at a disadvantage, if there was any appearance of the old regime capable of shaking him to his emotional core—Ilisidi could.

  And Ilisidi with the advantage of guardianship over Cajeiri, half Atageini, himself, and destined to rule, by what Ilisidi had just declared—canny politician that she was . . . oh, damned right she had a hand to play.

  If they lived long enough. If the Atageini had stayed free of Kadigidi forces. If, if, and if.

  Granted they had set something in motion back in Adaran, and stirred things up at Sidonin. They were about to do something far, far more dangerous.

  He decided on another cup of tea and kept quiet. This was an atevi matter, and not one where the paidhi-aiji owned a particularly valid theory of how to proceed. This choice depended on emotional hard-wiring, the psychology of the business—it was ninety percent psychology, where it involved convincing people to risk their lives to support an eight-year-old successor. The same way the mecheiti stayed, unrestrained, where their leader stayed, this group just sitting round the fire was doing something, arguing things, exerting persuasions and enlisting arguments that human nerves might perceive, but couldn’t quite feel.

  Excitement was in the air, resolution in the direction of glances, the attitude of heads, the expression in golden eyes, shimmering the other side of the small gas flame. Dusk had settled deep as they heated more water for another, easier round of tea.

  The fate of the aishidi’tat was potentially being decided, right here, between one great player and a handful of lesser ones. Tabini’s choice under threat had been to come to them, and even absent, he had for months been a nebulous presence, whether dead or alive, sustaining them in their fight. With Ilisidi and the boy came an emotional pressure that Ilisidi, canny as she was, seized, directed, bent to her own purpose.

  One saw how she had survived coups and assassinations—why she was alive and many of her enemies were dust.

  “Tea?” one of Keimi’s people asked, and poured for him. He sipped it, feeling, despite the painkiller, the early twinges of what was going to be a truly excruciating day in the saddle tomorrow. Cajeiri had dropped down to sit with the two teens, all of them listening, questions in abeyance, feeling—God knew what.

  Sometimes the paidhi’s job was best done by keeping his mouth firmly shut.

  The folk of Taiben seemed at least not to forget him, in his silence. He had to refuse another serving of hardtack, but he sopped up several cups of tea before he reached capacity. And the discussion went not that much longer before Ilisidi declared she was tired and wished to sleep.

  Bren was glad enough to lie down. He was unwilling for Jago to lie beside him and make their relationship that apparent to strangers—it was her dignity he was thinking of, in settling in a narrow spot, between two tree roots. But she sat with Banichi and Cenedi and the rest in a second conference with the three latest-come rangers—perhaps asking particulars of trails, quasi-boundaries, and affiliations, not to mention rumors from outside . . . all that sort of thing their Guild would be interested to know, on which they did their job.

  Trust at least when his staff slept, they would sleep, under ranger guard, far more soundly than he would, with half-formed speculations and useless plans swarming through his head.

  “But they will come here now, nadiin,” he heard Banichi point out. “They will not ignore our landing. They must suspect our route.”

  Comforting, Bren thought to himself. He shifted onto his back and stared at the branches moving gently above his head, against a sky ragged with cloud. A wind was getting up, that line of cloud, perhaps, that they had seen at sea, now reaching the mainland. It might rain.

  He heard the distant voices of Banichi’s conference, heard small rush of water flowing, and, nearer at hand, eight-year-old Cajeiri astonishing two teenagers with the account of how he had gone aboard an alien space-ship, and how their kyo had been extremely fond of Bindanda’s teacakes . . .

  Far too much information to be scattering around the countryside. Information, in strictest sense, that should be classified. Information that he could use to his own advantage.

  But it was late for that now. And as Cajeiri told it, the kyo, who could slag a space station with their weaponry, were in fact capable of reason. The boy had helped find that aspect of them. He was a hero in his own right, and was certainly basking in the admiration of his audience. Would he cheat the boy of that, with a request to keep it all quiet?

  No, he would not.

  He shut his eyes, still alive—he reminded himself—still alive after the shuttle ride, still alive after a very remarkable stretch of hours in which their only rest had been slow baking under the tarp, and slow freezing on blocks of ice, and a long ride on a very uncomfortable saddle, all in the fear of being shot or captured. The ground still felt as if it was moving under him, still with the thump and clack of the rails, or the thump and heave of the boat cutting through water, or the shuttle’s tires rolling rapidly down the pavement.

  Just too damned much moving in the last few days. And too little real sleep. At the very edge of oblivion he forgot where he was, except he was down, and they’d landed, and the wind was moving, and atevi voices were around him. Jago was close by. And the mecheiti were ripping the leaves off trees.

  He could trust that, he decided. The solid earth was reliable. He finally let go all defenses, and did sleep, deeply.

  He waked by daylight, with people moving about, with breakfast cooking, an aroma of crisping meat. As sore as he had anticipated being, he took three more pills, then set himself to rights, straightened his by now disreputable queue, shaved the old-fashioned way—no servants to comb his hair, dress him, all the quick attentions that had started most of his days in recent years. He missed Narani and Bindanda—missed their society and their quick briefing on everything in the household. But he found something morally refreshing, being sore in very inconvenient places, sitting on a rock beside a gurgling spring.

  Jago brought him hot tea, his one special attention, and dropped to her haunches in front of him.

  “How are you this morning, Bren-ji?”

  “Very well, really. Will we ride today?”

  “We must, Bren-ji,” she said.

  “If the dowager can do it, nadi-ji, I certainly have no cause to complain.”

  Jago folded her arms across her knees and leaned close. “We have a plan, Bren-ji, a dangerous plan. The dowager wishes to inquire at Tirnamardi.”

  Tatiseigi’s country estate, about half a day’s ride out of Heitisi, the cluster of medium-sized towns that was the economic center of the Atageini holdings. Dangerous didn’t begin to describe it. “I heard, last night.”

  “There is a relatively safe approach,” J
ago said, “through the hunting reserve, which is contiguous with this woods, which both Taiben and the Atageini manage.”

  As the animals they hunted were in common, so certain territory overlapped, and game-chase became a matter of hazy rights and who protested—civilly, at least modestly civilly, recently. One hoped it persisted.

  “From there,” Jago said in a low voice, “we may be able to reach our Guild.”

  Oh, now it got dangerous.

  “By phone?” he asked, doubting it.

  “It would be far better, Bren-ji, if we were to go ourselves.”

  He didn’t like it. She knew he didn’t like it. He reserved a thought to himself: If you go, I go, and he was sure they’d try to outmaneuver him unless he strictly forbade it.

  “What do you think, Jago-ji? Is venturing to Shejidan a good idea?”

  Jago looked at the ground, then at him. “We consider this a risk, and we have reservations as to whether to attempt Tirnamardi, or to bypass Atageini territory and keep within Taiben. The whole question is where Lord Tatiseigi stands in the current crisis. The dowager is firm in her notion. Cenedi has doubts, too.”

  “Cajeiri will be at risk.”

  A second hesitation. “Not from Lord Tatiseigi,” she said. “Nor, we think, would the dowager be. You, on the other hand, Bren-ji—”

  “Have no particular favor in his sight. I know. I enjoy very little favor from the majority of the population of the mainland, at the moment, one would think.”

  He had never been particularly acceptable to this very conservative lord, who disliked human influence and all modern intrusions.

  “There is misperception, perhaps.”

  Loyally put. He did not think, however, that he had yet reached the foundations of Jago’s thinking.

  “Do you, personally, think that Tabini-aiji is dead?” he asked.

  “We have had no proof,” she said, and that was a delicate, revelatory matter: they had seen no proof they accepted, and therefore had no emotional disconnection of man’chi. They were, she and Banichi, still functioning as if their highest man’chi of all was intact, and that opinion would color all others, affect all other decisions, define all other logic—whether to go to the Guild, whether to bend every effort to empower Ilisidi, whether to agree to this mission entering Tatiseigi’s lands.