Destroyer

by C. J. Cherryh

  Cajeiri walked back to face his elders with a second proper bow, paper in hand.

  “A letter,” he announced, like a schoolchild reciting, and squared it in both hands to read.

  “Cajeiri son and heir of Tabini-aiji to nand’ Keimi of Taiben. We are guests of Lord Tatiseigi. The Kadigidi are planning to send assassins to kill us and our great-grandmother, also Bren-paidhi and Lord Tatiseigi, perhaps tonight. We need help very badly. Great-grandmother thinks it is a good idea if you will come. Lord Tatiseigi says he will be courteous. I shall always remember your help and hope for you to send help here as soon as possible. The aiji-dowager and Lord Tatiseigi both asked me to write to you.”

  “Hmmph,” from Tatiseigi.

  “Perfectly fine,” Ilisidi said, and asked Tatiseigi, “Does it suit?”

  A scowl. “Well enough.”

  She drew her ring from her finger. “Seal it without comment. Tati-ji, he will do the same for you.”

  Tatiseigi drew off his own seal ring, and gave it into Cajeiri’s hand with a scowl.

  The boy walked back to the table, lit the wax-jack, and in very short order produced a properly furled missive, liberally done up with heavy wax and two ancient personal seals.

  He returned each ring, his great-grandmother’s first, then Tatiseigi’s, and both rings went back onto fingers.

  “So. Which of your staff will you spare for this errand?” Tatiseigi asked. “I will not subject my staff to Taiben’s insolent behavior.”

  “My great-grandson himself has the means, and the best messengers we could send.” Ilisidi waved a hand at Cajeiri. “Dispatch your message, great-grandson. Your grand-uncle will clear the way for them. He will take the western defenses down for an hour and give them free passage.”

  Cajeiri’s face had a rigid look as he looked at the old man. Go tell his young followers to undertake what might be an extremely dangerous ride, if Kadigidi had gotten into Atageini territory? Cajeiri surely realized what Ilisidi was asking, and Ilisidi herself had not volunteered a protective escort. Nawari, who had watched over the young folk, was nowhere mentioned in the equation.

  “Go, go, boy.” Tatiseigi waved a dismissive hand. “All these things. Granted. Enough!”

  Cajeiri bowed stiffly, took the message and left the room.

  “A damnable situation you put us in, nand’ Sidi,” Tatiseigi said.

  “Is it not?” Ilisidi said. “But in the meanwhile, our three staffs need to consult closely together, Tati-ji, with perfect accord and frankness. And who knows? The Taibeni may even respond favorably to the approach. They know I am here. They know we are your allies and that we may secure your benevolent cooperation . . .”

  “And thereby open our defenses to illicit incursions, people who will likely make holes in our fences. You let them scout us out, and lay us wide open to their own mischief, to exercise what they call their hunting rights, damn them, which will be more trouble to us in future than the Kadigidi ever have been! You will not, I say, not give them our access codes.”

  “Your secrets are absolutely your secrets, quite firmly so, Tati-ji. We are certain the paidhi will agree, too, that what you tell us in confidence will remain as secret as within your own staff.”

  Bren gave a deep nod to that proposition. “With utmost appreciation of the sensitivity of such information, nandi, we have no hesitation to issue reassurances. My staff would not breach such a confidence, and they are no minor members of their Guild. I assure you, nandi. I have been a target no few times, and I am still here.”

  That chanced, unaccountably, to amuse the old lord. “So have we all, paidhi-aiji. And we are all still here.”

  “And Murini’s predecessor is not,” Ilisidi observed dryly. “But Murini, alas, is no improvement. Some work must be done until we have gotten it right. So! We are entirely surfeited with tea, Tati-ji. We shall go to the solarium. We have always esteemed your solarium.”

  “An honor.” The scowl persisted. “Do make free of it at your leisure, Sidi-ji. We, meanwhile, have detailed instructions to give, to permit this doubtless useless message to go through. We shall lower defenses in the west, altogether, to have no possible misunderstandings. We shall instruct the gatekeepers to let this message pass and let in any Taibeni that arrive, there or at the hunting-gate. Nand’ paidhi, if you will brief your own people and ask them to consult, to join a meeting of all our staffs—except these damned Taibeni teenagers, who will be told what they need when they need it, hear? I shall send three of my men with them, to see them pass the gate and get to the limit of our province. Immediately.”

  “Immediately, nandi.” Bren rose, understanding a dismissal, and bowed. “With utmost attention.”

  He left. He gathered Banichi and Jago to him outside. Of Cajeiri or his young followers there was no sign.

  “The heir has written a letter to Taiben, nadiin-ji,” he said to them as they climbed the stairs.

  “Antaro expressed her great desire to be the one to carry it, nandi,” Jago said in a low voice.

  “There might be Kadigidi out, even in that direction,” he said. “Lord Tatiseigi says he will advise his security to let her pass, but we can by no means guarantee what else is out there that she might meet, the worse as hours pass.”

  “We did soberly caution her, Bren-ji,” Banichi said. “And we advised going overland, by mecheita.”

  “The young gentleman is deeply concerned,” Jago said, “and expressed a wish to send Jegari with her, but Antaro said he should not go. Jegari will likely not leave the young gentleman.”

  Will not, would not. Emotional decisions, man’chi, newly-attached young instincts at war with basic common sense, none of them Guild, none of them with adult comprehension of what they were up against, and Ilisidi encouraging this move, all because he had said one critical word: Taiben.

  “They are attempting too much, Bren-ji,” Banichi said. “Tano and Algini took these youngsters in hand last evening for brief instruction, but that only concerned house security. Jago requested the house staff give the girl a firearm: there is considerable resistence to this request.”

  “The lord has ordered thorough cooperation.” They were in the upper hall. “Go back, Jago-ji, and inform them of that. She should have a gun, if she knows how to use it.”

  “Yes,” Jago said, and dived back down the stairs, pigtail flying.

  He was far from happy with the arrangement—with consulting the Taibeni, yes, that was a possibility with some value, if Ilisidi had sent Nawari. But he did not agree with sending a teenaged kid through a potential ambush, however remote from the expected line of combat, even if Tatiseigi had relented and sent an escort. He least of all agreed with the pressure the dowager had put on the boy, newly possessed of—

  Damn it, friends was not the appropriate concept. But whatever it was, the boy had just picked up longed-for companionship in a damned lonely world, a satisfaction of atevi instincts they had worried would never wake, and now Ilisidi used him and the two Taibeni youngsters without detectible compassion. Twice damn it. And damn the whole situation. He might have succeeded in diverting Cenedi from his notion of a hopeless foray into Kadigidi territory by making that suggestion of his, but it could be at terrible cost.

  And now what did he do? He and his guard were committed to stay here—he couldn’t pull his staff out of the defense of Tirnamardi after he’d backed this alternative plan to stop Cenedi from what his staff called a mistake. He couldn’t urge the Taibeni to come in here, where they historically weren’t welcome, and not be here to meet them, to iron out any misunderstandings. And he couldn’t have sent an appeal to the Guild, asking permission to appear before them and then vanish into the hills, unfindable if things went wrong, or if that Guild safe-conduct turned up.

  And he couldn’t now take Cajeiri out of here, and pursue the chance of finding his father, not when Cajeiri was the principle reason the Taibeni might consent to come in to defend their historic adversary.

  Jago rejoine
d them before they reached his door. “The Atageini staff agrees,” she said, “and has gotten their lord’s word on it. They will instruct her such as they can, providing both communications and a sidearm, and escorting her as far as the edge of the Taiben woods.”

  Much better. Damned much better, and Tatiseigi had come to his senses, not hampering any chance of success. Bren let go a deep breath. There was a chance they would survive this.

  “Good,” he said as Banichi opened the door and let them in. Tano and Algini were waiting inside, on their feet.

  “We are staying here, nadiin-ji,” Jago said. “One believes it may be an interesting night ahead of us. The Atageini have requested Cajeiri send Antaro-nadi to Taiben, to bring reinforcement.”

  Eyebrows lifted. That was all. But Banichi said soberly, “Measures will be taken all about the grounds, once the girl has cleared the perimeter. Likely we will see eastern defenses activated in very short order, if they are not now. But the Kadigidi will expect that, and go around, if they are not already in the province. House defenses are generally adequate on the first floor, Bren-ji, far less so on the upper floors. There exist some few very modern surprises. And we do not know if the house staff has told Cenedi all its secrets, either of deficiencies or of capabilities. Soft target, hard target. One earnestly begs you recall your precautions at all points, particularly if there is an alarm, Bren-ji.”

  Wires. Nasty devices that could slice a foot off. Electronic barriers. He hadn’t had to live with such hazards since the worst days in the Bujavid, and coping with them now meant setting a series of checkpoints and alarms in his head, not to cross narrow places without extreme precaution, not to leave his bodyguard for an instant and never to precede them through a door, insert a key in a lock, or expose his head in a window.

  And soft-target/hard-target. Which meant the upstairs was certainly not where they wanted to be tonight. The upstairs was where an attack was meant to enter—and descend at disadvantage, into much more modern devices, and defenders ready and waiting, likely in the dark. Soft-target, hard-target was a fairly transparent mode of defense, but one still hard to deal with, even if the enemy had reliable spies to inform them, because the line at which the defense would go from soft to hard was not going to be apparent and might change quickly.

  Antiquated equipment, but maybe the sort to lull an attacker into thinking it was all going to be easy. He didn’t utterly trust Tatiseigi to tell them everything.

  But he didn’t look forward to tonight at all. He didn’t look forward to the rest of the day, which held a diminishing few hours of tedium and tension before twilight brought a rising likelihood of trouble. He had drunk tea enough to float, and his nerves were jangled—always were, after one of those breakneck logical downhills with Ilisidi, not to mention Tatiseigi in the mix.

  Not to mention, either, a human urge to go down the hall and offer the poor kid some sort of reassurance or at least moral support, considering an order far too hard for children. Damn the situation. Damn the Kadigidi. He passionately hated gunfire. It always meant someone like him hadn’t done his job. And there was far too much evidence of that all around him.

  His staff settled down near the fireplace for some quick close consultation of their own, and he found there was one thing constructive he could do in that regard. He unfolded his computer and produced a detailed map of the terrain. He had no way, in the upstairs of this traditional and kabiu household, to print it out for them, but they clustered around him, viewing the situation down to the hummocks and small streams. There was a discussion of the stables, where their riding gear was stowed, which Tano had checked and located—it was the pile of stable sweepings, curiously enough, which had told Tano the story of recent visitations: one lived and learned. They discussed the dowager’s rooms, which Jago had observed were similar in layout to their own, and they even considered the topiary hedges, where devices or automatic traps might be located, if such sensors had survived the mecheiti’s foraging.

  “There will be electronic sweeps,” Banichi said, and pointed to a stream that ran from the Kadigidi heights down toward Kadigidi territory. “That low spot, Bren-ji, is as good as a highway for intruders, except one can be reasonably certain the Atageini will have detection installed there and at other such places. And the Kadigidi will know it. So there should be devices set at other alternatives. We could not pry details out of this staff. Unfortunately, we are far less sure the Kadigidi have not done so.”

  He had not considered such things in years. He studied the map, tried to recall how the pitch of the land had seemed as they had ridden in during the rain—a deceptive pitch. He remembered how cleverly the rolling hills concealed things one would never have expected—the whole length of the fence and the perimeter had vanished at certain times—which meant attackers might likewise be below electronic sweeps, moving as they pleased. His staff pointed out the probable course of a large, late incursion from the Kadigidi, and then the route the Kadigidi were likeliest to use because that first one was too probable.

  A knock came at the door. The household staff came to beg his staff’s attendance at a general meeting. Jago opted to be the one to stay with him and stand watch.

  They went on calling up maps, he and Jago, Jago taking mental notes, absorbing what might be useful to the team tonight. The meeting elsewhere went on a considerable time, more than an hour, until finally Banichi, Tano, and Algini came back, very sober of countenance.

  “One has asked the staff quite bluntly, nandi, about the activity at the stables,” Tano said. “They maintain they shifted the lord’s herd in eight days ago for a seasonal hunt and out again, in favor of a small group used for ordinary purposes, and that this was all done by staff. One detected no lie, and this activity predated any action the Kadigidi may have taken against us. The lord generally keeps only seven mecheiti here against personal need. That also agrees what what I saw.”

  An autumn hunt. Plausible. Plausible, because one did not move part of an established mecheita herd out of its territory—or one had the remnant trying to join the others cross-country and tearing up fences and crops in the process. Even if it had been a small hunt, the lord would have brought an established herd in for the use of his guests, and then moved back a small herd, following the hunt. One did not believe Lord Tatiseigi himself still rode. But his staff would. Out of such events came the meat for table, the meat for market, meat for all the people of the province, the cull of game before the coming winter. Hunters from every Atageini village and town would have participated.

  “They may or may not have been completely forthcoming about the deficiencies or the strength of the defenses,” Banichi said. “They had already activated the southeastern perimeter defenses last night, when we arrived.” That would be, precisely, the Kadigidi boundary. “They say there had been nuisance activity, spies, that sort of thing—likely because of the ship in the heavens. The Atageini raised defenses on the others today, repaired the one we blew, and have privately called on the various town-aijiin to take other precautions, asking them to avoid conflict with outsiders and to avoid the boundaries, the usual sort of thing. The Taibeni girl left some time ago, with two men in escort. She will likely have passed the gates by now.”

  Things were moving.

  Moving in the hall, too. Footsteps passed their door at a high rate of speed, drawing a look from his staff.

  Jago got up and went to stand near the door, not opening it, but listening. She shot back an anxious look.

  “There is some little disturbance,” she said, from that auditory vantage, and her hand was on her sidearm, unconsciously or not. She made the hand sign for man, and run.

  The staff got up from their chairs. Bren shut his computer, rising, listening, his heart beating a little faster. The dowager’s rooms were in the direction toward which those steps had run. The boy’s were in the direction from which they had come. But the steps were heavy, a man’s.

  Second set of hand-signals, Banichi to
Jago, and she unlocked the door, opened it a crack, then looked out, and went outside.

  Banichi followed, hand on his sidearm, not quite going so far as to draw a weapon in an allied house, but a heartbeat away from that move. The door stayed ajar. Bren stood still, not retreating as he ought to the neighboring room, but again, it was an allied house, in which they had basic confidence. Tano and Algini were on either side of him, Tano a little to the fore, protective position relative to the door. They signalled a move out of line with the window. Algini moved instantly to check that, and evidently saw nothing alarming.

  More running steps, these audible. Jago, Bren thought, headed for the stairs. He stood still, then remembered his gun and went and retrieved it, still within Tano’s protective screen. He slipped it into his pocket, along with an extra clip.

  Jago came back, running, and came inside. Banichi headed down the hall in the direction from which the first runner had come.

  “Nandi,” she said. “Cajeiri is not in his apartment. The window is open, the alarm is disabled, and no one is in the apartment.”

  “Damn.” The thought was instant and ominous.

  Tano and Algini headed for the door, going out the way Banichi had gone, doubtless to have a firsthand look for how and why.

  But it was foreseeable. They’d gone, they’d gotten out of the house. Banichi reported Antaro had left on her mission, and now the boy and Jegari had vanished? Enemy action?

  No. They were all three of them going, fortunate three, sticking together, while the house staff had been in a meeting and nobody had been expecting it—a human could at least hope that was the case, and not that some Kadigidi assassin had gotten in.

  “The outlying defenses are still down,” Bren recalled. Had not this boy grown up on human novels, human stories, human notions of heroes and desperate adventures? “I know exactly what they have done, Jago-ji. They have gone with Antaro. We should check the stables.”