Conspirator

by C. J. Cherryh

  Hell.

  He was losing his grip, was what. He wasn’t looking forward to seeing Toby at the moment. He was outright flinching from the thought.

  He’d pitied his predecessor, Wilson, who had just gotten odder and odder. Wilson had quit the post once his aiji, Valasi, had died, and when Valasi’s son, Tabini, had been a few weeks in the aijinate. Wilson couldn’t deal with the change in regimes, and he’d retired to the university on Mospheira, saying Tabini was a future problem . . .

  So one Bren Cameron had taken over the post, young, bright, academic ace, the only human, at the time, to master the mathematical intricacies of court Ragi . . . Wilson himself had never been fluent; had never ventured far from his dictionary, and, God, researched every official utterance. . . .

  He’d rapidly been better than Wilson. More reckless than Wilson.

  Now he had to ask himself which language he was thinking in.

  Now he routinely limited his human impulses and curtailed his human instincts, shaping himself into something else . . .

  A good talent, up to a point. He didn’t know if he’d passed that point. Maybe he’d passed it somewhere in that voyage, when they’d all gone out to get a human station removed from where it had no right to be. . . .

  Maybe his usefulness to the world had become something else out there. Maybe he didn’t belong on the planet anymore, down in its web of intrigues, plots, and politics. Much as it would hurt—much as it would hurt people he cared about—maybe it might be better if he told Shawn his disconnnect had gotten the better of him, and he wasn’t just resigning from representing Mospheira—which he had done, even before he went off to space—he was resigning from functioning on the planet at all.

  If he couldn’t stop this wireless phone business—God knew, maybe he should go back up to the station and live there, where the view was panoramic and the associations were all knowable and limited.

  Represent the aiji to the station-humans. That wasn’t a small job.

  It wasn’t what he emotionally wanted. He’d put down roots here on the mainland. Deep ones. But if he was becoming inconvenient to the very things he was trying to save . . .

  Damn. He was losing himself. He was scared, was what.

  And in that sense, Tatiseigi’s return was extremely inconvenient: he’d wanted uninterrupted time to prepare his arguments and gather data. He almost wished he didn’t have to deal with Toby. He needed his mind on business: it was a critical issue. He needed to stop this wireless business once for all.

  But Toby wouldn’t overstay. Neither, for that matter, would Barb.

  God.

  Barb.

  No. No. Not a good thing to go into their visit anticipating trouble. The last meeting had been uncomfortable, to say the least—finding an old and troublesome relationship had now ricocheted to one’s divorced brother was, yes, uncomfortable for everybody. But if the paidhi-aiji could negotiate affairs between people bent on killing each other, he surely could find a way to get through a week up close with Barb.

  It was the price of seeing Toby.

  Which he wasn’t sure he wanted to do in this particular week . . .

  No. He did. He’d come too far unattached from his own kind. The paidhi might be the better, mentally, for reforging some of those human links, even if they hurt. It was part of what he had been . . . which had been, once upon a time, efficient.

  Maybe he just needed to recover his balance. Sharpen the edges, to mix metaphors. Regain a lost dimension of himself. The paidhi-aiji was useful when he was human, not when he was embedded so deeply in atevi politics he could no longer be perceived as different from any other clan-centered interest.

  Getting that sense of humanness back, getting his thinking process in better order—that might be more useful than research.

  Banichi said, “We just passed Nomi Dar, Bren-ji.”

  Within an hour of the coast. “We might have sandwiches,” he decided. Staff at the estate knew when they were to arrive—they’d have consulted the train station. And he knew nothing would dissuade staff from having a meal ready, no matter the hour; but nothing would dissuade staff, either, from the formalities of meeting, and that might require a little fortification.

  So he had one of the small sandwiches—small, by atevi standards—and gave half to Banichi. He had a cup of fresh-made tea, and with carbohydrates hitting his system, even mustered a sense of anticipation for Toby’s visit. The air seemed to smell differently—or weigh differently—as they came down toward the coast.

  The sea—changed things. Healed things. He began to feel it.

  And when the train finally slowed to a stop and they had reached the station, he was properly kitted out and ready. He carried his own computer: Banichi and Jago stood near the door awaiting the signal from Tano and Algini that they had found things proper outside.

  Then and only then did Banichi throw back the lever and shove the door open, and a pleasant cool breeze met them—a breeze and a cheer from the station platform, where very many familiar faces waited.

  His staff. His people. Familiar faces . . . chief among them, Ramaso, his major domo—silver-haired, entirely now, around the face: that was a shock. Ramaso was a cousin of Narani’s, that excellent man, his major domo from up on station; and looked very like him, now that the hair had changed.

  There was Saidaro, who almost single-handedly had saved his boat from destruction; there was Husaro, and Anakara . . . there was a whole crowd.

  “Nandi,” Ramaso said, with a deep bow and a beaming face. “One understands there is baggage: we brought the truck as well as the bus. The boys will take care of the baggage. You and your bodyguard should come in the bus.”

  “One doubts being able to persuade my aishid, nadi-ji, but they will quite happily let the young lads do the loading.”

  “Indeed,” Banichi said, at his shoulder, and Jago relayed that information to Tano and Algini—the baggage car had opened up, and some of the group was tending in that direction: a glance showed Tano outside on the platform, and doubtless talking to Jago.

  It suddenly all felt better. Ramaso, and Saidaro, Husaro and others, some lifelong domestics, some clerical staff who had retired from office service during the Troubles, and who had come here to Najida to live out their retirement in service to the estate—mostly attending the needs of the adjacent village, teaching the children, handling forms and applications and helping out in general. The names came back to him, the faces moderately changed, in some cases the hair newly salted with white . . . all of them wearing their finest, and positively beaming. They bowed. He bowed. They crowded about—as much as atevi ever would crowd and jostle.

  “Have you heard from my brother yet, nadi-ji?” Bren asked Ramaso, and that worthy smiled and nodded.

  “His boat was tying up at dock as we left to meet the train, nandi. Staff will see him and the lady up to the house. He will be settled in the south room. Will that suit?”

  “One is extremely gratified,” he said, and meant it. He bowed again, and they all bowed, and Ramaso showed him and Banichi and Jago toward the platform steps, and the waiting bus. As he had thought, Tano and Algini, not leaving his baggage even to this devoted crew, marshaled junior staff to carry baggage down to the truck, which waited behind the bus.

  Najida Estate, the bus said on the side, with a bright, rope-encircled picture of a peaceful blue bay and a small ship right below the name.

  The truck was a little less decorated: its side panel said just, Najida, which was the village: a market truck, well-maintained, perfectly adequate for their baggage. Bren saw that matter going well, and climbed up and took his seat on the bus just behind the driver, with Banichi and Jago just behind him, and Ramaso and Saidaro just opposite, as other staff piled on in noisy commotion, all those who weren’t seeing to the baggage-loading.

  The dedicated train would go back the way it had come, with no passengers—possibly with a car or two of freight for Shejidan, if the stationmaster so decided
—back to Tabini, to wait the aiji’s pleasure. So they were here, peacefully settled, in rural solitude until that train made the return trip to pick them up . . . closer than the airport; and much more leisurely a passage.

  The grassy road, greening in spring, showed recent mowing; and the dust of fairly frequent use—mostly the village and the estate going back and forth for supplies, very little in the way of passenger traffic. They passed thickets into which caiki dived for cover . . . nice to think that his land sheltered the little creatures: bobkins, Mospheirans called them, quick, gray little diggers that undermined planted gardens, common on the Island as well as the mainland . . . food for larger hunters, which were scarce here, so the caiki thrived. A small herd of gigiin grazed on the hillside above the village, fat and prosperous and complaisant, not seeming alarmed by their presence. Nobody hunted them in this season. The hunt was permitted only for seven days a year.

  Najida mostly fished the bay for its living, hunted very little. It sold a part of its take for farm goods and supplied its village as its village supplied it, mostly by green-gardens; and during the summer the village kids probably hunted bobkins out of the village gardens, making some items out of the hides.

  It was typical seaside rural life, keeping a schedule that didn’t have committee meetings looming, and didn’t greatly worry about the capital, in the best times. The village gardens would still lie asleep for the winter, areas nearest the houses probably being turned now for the first time, but the vines still were protected under neat straw rows, down in the fenced fields, the orchard trunks wrapped with straw rope in the old way. Bren gazed out the bus window, taking it in, always fascinated by the attention to detail, using so many materials that never passed through a mercantile chain—just made off the land, out of waste straw from neighboring grain fields.

  His mother’s house on Mospheira had never had a garden: they’d been city-dwellers, though Toby had once made a try at a garden when he’d lived on the North Shore, and probably harvested three tomatoes and a few carrots after his summer of trying. Next year, at least, the garden had gone back to flowers.

  And Jill—Toby’s wife, then—and the kids—they’d laughed about it when he asked how it had gone.

  Pity that Jill hadn’t stuck it out. He hadn’t had time to ask Toby the details of that breakup. He knew there was too much of his own fault in it, his fault that he hadn’t been home to take care of their mother, his fault that Toby’d done it all . . . done too much of it. Way too much, but that had been Toby’s choice, in his own opinion.

  And Jill had taken the kids and left.

  No more little house on the north coast. No more family. Toby had sold the house, bought a bigger boat . . .

  And God help him, Toby had immediately taken up with Barb . . . with his brother’s old near-fiancée . . . if you asked Barb about their relationship. He’d been trying his best to shed Barb. Barb had immediately flung herself into one bad marriage, then gotten out of that and straightway moved in on their mother, taken care of her in her last illness . . .

  And who had shown up regularly at that same bedside, if not the ever-dutiful if not the favorite son? Toby. Toby, who’d worked all his life for the kind of recognition their mother lavished on her absent son the paidhi-aiji . . . and never, to his knowledge, got a shred of thanks.

  Barb had lost no time. Moved right in on Toby while Toby was visiting their mother in the hospital. Mum had died, Jill had left Toby, and—oh, yes—there was Barb, as fast as decency possibly allowed, moving right onto Toby’s boat . . . just helping out.

  Well, Toby could use a hand on the boat, that was sure. It was safer sailing, with two of them: hand Barb that.

  So he could worry less about Toby, knowing he had somebody with him,in bad weather and the lonely stretches of water where he persisted in sailing . . . sometimes on covert business for the Mospheiran government.

  Just so Barb stayed with him. That was all he asked. He forgave her everything, if she’d stay with Toby, so Toby had somebody.

  The bus passed the village, took the curve, and his own land spread out across the windows, the sinking sun just touching the bay in the distance, spreading gold across the water. The red tile roofs and limestone walls of Najida estate showed from the height, a mazy collection of courtyards traditional in the west coast provinces; and at the bottom of its landscaped terraces, two yachts rode with sails furled, one at anchor—his own Jeishan—Northwind—that he hadn’t seen in more than three years, riding at anchor; and, tied up to the estate’s little wooden pier, Toby’s slightly larger Brighter Days, that he’d last seen when Toby had let his party off ashore on the mainland, well north of here.

  It was a cheerful sight. Banichi and Jago had noted it, he was sure, and he suddenly realized he hadn’t said a word to them since they’d left the train.

  “Toby’s boat,” he said.

  “Yes,” Banichi said, the obvious, and Jago: “It shows no activity.”

  Meaning Toby and Barb must surely be up at the house by now, which was where their bus and the trailing truck were going—directly so, now that they made the turn from the main road to the estate drive, a modest little track lined by old weathered evergreens, the sort of seaside scrub that, aged as it was, never grew much larger than he stood tall, all twisted shapes and dark spikes in the waning light.

  Lamps glowed at the portico, a warm, welcoming light for them at the edge of twilight, showing the flagstone porch—his own porch, a place he’d rarely been, but been often enough to love in every detail.

  The bus pulled to a stop. Banichi and Jago got up in the last moment of braking, got to the door as it opened, and were first on the ground. He followed, down the atevi-scale steps, and onto the stone drive, up the walk, as Ramaso and the staff poured off the bus behind him and other staff came out of the open doors to welcome him. The house staff bowed. He bowed, and when he lifted his head there was Toby in the open doorway, with Barb behind him.

  “Toby,” he said, and was halfway embarrassed by old habit, the impulse to open his arms, as Toby did—and there was Toby oncoming, and nothing to do: Toby embraced him; he, with no choice, embraced Toby, a little distressed. Toby slapped him on the back and, hell, he did the same with Toby, stood him back and had a look at him, grinning. “Missed you,” Toby said.

  “Missed me! Hell! Worried about you, damn it, when you dropped out of contact after you dropped us off.”

  “You worried! You were the one getting shot at!”

  “I was safe enough,” he said, with a nod over his shoulder toward Banichi and Jago. “They make me keep my head down.” The reserve he cultivated was deserting him. Staff had seen it before. Hell, he said to himself, there was no teaching Toby differently. He had stood back enough to look at Toby. Toby’s face was getting sun-lines that showed plainly in the lamplight: his wasn’t. Toby lived in the sun and the weather. He rarely saw the out of doors and took care of his skin with lotions. Time passed. Things changed. They both grew older. Further apart. But now was now. “Missed you,” he said.

  “Mutual,” Toby said. And despite everything, all the water under that bridge—it was probably still true.

  He truly hoped Barb wouldn’t move in for her turn, but she did: a public hug that had more warmth in it than the one he returned.

  A woman, his brother’s lover, and in public: it was far more of a scandal to the staff than the human habit of embracing brothers, but there it was, and he treated it as natural, if only for the benefit of his watching staff and bodyguard. More to the point, he felt Jago’s gaze on his back in that moment, and set Barb firmly back at arms’ length, seeing the faint traces of weather on her face as well. “You’re looking good,” he said. “The sea agrees with you.”

  “You never change,” she said.

  That meant several things, and he knew which. His perfunctory smile had an edge—just like the statement.

  “Nice to know.” He let Barb go and said, to Ramaso, “Thank you, nadi, and thank the s
taff, for your welcome to my Mospheiran household, and to me.”

  “Indeed, nandi.” The worthy gentleman bowed. “The kitchen has a supper ready, at the lord’s pleasure, rooms are ready, and water is hot.”

  Supper, or rest, or a hot bath. Every possibility.

  But cooks could hardly be disrespected. And the truck had pulled around to the garden gate, where Tano and Algini were busy supervising the offloading of baggage and belongings. “One will visit the room, wash, and enjoy a leisurely supper, nadi-ji,” he said quietly to Ramaso, and to Toby and Barb: “Wash up and dinner, forthwith. I’ll see you at table.”

  “Right,” Toby said.

  The south room, Ramaso had said, which was actually a small suite, but with only one bedroom. The staff had lodged his family before. And someone had found a way to ask, apparently, about bedrooms—that, or staff had been unable to dislodge Barb from Toby’s arm.

  The brother of the paidhi-aiji and the paidhi-aiji’s former lover, together under the paidhi’s roof. Atevi did readily comprehend political realignments. And knew how to accept them without comment.

  “Tano and Algini have gone the back way, nandi,” Banichi said as they reached the door of his room—his room, indisputably his, and when he opened the door...

  He knew that carpet. He knew that vase on the peculiarly carved table. That bed. That coverlet.

  They were from his apartment in the Bujavid. He had known that staff had rescued significant items of his furnishings and gotten them out by train. And there they were, his bedroom, reconstituted just as it had been. He was quite amazed.

  They didn’t enter alone. Domestic staff arrived to take his traveling coat, and to supervise the arrival of his personal luggage, followed by more staff, who set things in the hall of his two-room suite. Banichi and Jago directed matters while Bren changed his shirt and coat—or changed it with the help of two of the staff who deftly assisted him with the lace cuffs and the collar: staff he knew, staff who’d been his for years: Koharu and Supani, who’d grown at least half a hand while he’d been gone and, gangly young men that they both were, grinned like fools and kept bowing, delighted as they could be. He felt—