Conspirator

by C. J. Cherryh

  “Oh, we’ll see,” he said, and carefully edged the ribbon off, and unstuck the paper.

  “He’s one of those,” Barb said. “He never will tear the paper.”

  “Waste not, want not,” he said.

  “He reuses it, too,” Toby said. “Come on, Bren. Just rip it.”

  He reached the box, carefully, ever so carefully folded the paper and laid it on the mantel with the ribbon. Then he opened the box.

  A pin, of all things, an atevi-style stickpin. Gold, with three what-might-be diamonds.

  He was astonished.

  “Where on earth?” he asked.

  “Well,” Toby said, “I had it made. Is it proper? Kabiu? I asked the linguistics department at the University.”

  “The paidhi’s color,” he said. “It counts as white. Kabiu, right down to the numbers. Now what am I going to do to get back at you on your birthday?”

  “I got my present,” Toby said. “I got my brother back.”

  “You did,” he said, and gave Toby another hug, and offered—not without the hindbrain in action—his other arm to Barb, and hugged them both. “Fortunate three. Two’s unlucky. Has to be three.”

  He didn’t know how Barb liked that remark, but it was fair enough, and Toby duly hugged him back, and Barb did, and he hoped Jago didn’t throw him out of bed that night.

  “All right,” he said, disengaging, “that’s a thorough quota of family hugs for the next couple of weeks. I’ll see you off to sea in good style, but we’ve got to be proper in the staff’s eyes in the meanwhile. Banichi and Jago understand us, but the staff, I assure you, would be aghast, and trying to parse it all in very strange ways. I’m going to wear this pin tomorrow. I’ll wear it in court. I could still get you a lace shirt, brother.”

  “No. If Barb can’t, I won’t,” Toby said, his arm around Barb at the moment.

  “Probably best,” he said. He felt better as he went back to his chair, sat down, and took up his brandy. They did the same, chairs near each other. Peace was restored, despite Barb’s best efforts to the contrary.

  And maybe—maybe he’d actually won a lasting truce and settled something.

  “So where did you come in from?” he asked Toby conversationally, and listened comfortably and sipped his brandy—pleasant to hear someone else’s adventures instead of having them, the thought came to him. They’d been worried sick about Toby at one point, after Tabini’s return to the Bujavid, but he’d turned up, out at sea, doing clandestine things for the human government over on Mospheira, part of a communications network, for one thing, and probably that boat out there still had some of that gear aboard.

  His own had a few nonregulation things aboard, too—or had had, before he’d left for space. That was the world they lived in, occasionally dangerous. He hoped for it to stay calm for a few years.

  He was abed before Jago came in. Abed, but not asleep: he kept rehearsing the dinner, the business with Barb. He lay in his own comfortable bed, between his own fine sheets, and stared at the ceiling, until Jago was there to improve the view. She stripped out of the last of her uniform and stood there, dark against the faint night light. Rain spattered the windows, rain with a vengeance, hitting the glass in sharp gusts of wind.

  “One greatly regrets,” he said to that silhouette, unable to read her, but reading the hesitation. “One ever so greatly regrets that unpleasantness this evening, Jago-ji. Barb is, unfortunately, Barb.”

  “Her man’chi is to you,” Jago said, her voice carefully without inflection. “One understands. She places you in a difficult situation. Am I mistaken in this?”

  Oddly enough, the atevi view of things said it fairly well. “You are not mistaken,” he said. “Very like man’chi. She gravitates to me every time she gets the least chance. But there is anger in it, deep anger. I offended her pride.”

  “Would it mend matters to sleep with her?” Jago asked.

  “Far from it. It would encourage her and make my brother angry. And I feel nothing but anger toward her. Come to bed, Jago-ji.”

  Jago did settle in, to his relief. Her skin, ordinarily fever warm, was slightly cool, and he rubbed her arm and her shoulder to warm it.

  “I might speak to her,” Jago said. “Reasonably.”

  “I shall hold that in reserve,” he said. “I think I may have to speak to my brother if this goes on. If she causes him grief . . .”

  “It seems likely she will,” Jago said.

  “Very likely,” he said, and sighed. “Barb has good qualities—at best advantage when I appear nowhere on her horizon. Her man’chi, given, is very solid . . .”

  “Except to your brother,” Jago said.

  “Except when I appear,” he said.

  “Conflicted man’chi,” Jago said. “The essence of every machimi.”

  The dramatic heritage of atevi culture. Plays noted for the quantity of bloodshed.

  “Let us try not to have any last act,” he said with a sigh. “Not on this vacation.”

  Jago laughed, soft movement under his hand.

  And slid her arm under his ribs, around him, a sinuous, fluid embrace that proved the chill had not gotten inside—a force and slight recklessness that advised him Jago was in a mood to chase Barb right out of the bedroom, in no uncertain terms.

  Reckless to a fine edge of what was pleasure, but never over it—and deserving of a man with his mind on her, nowhere else in the universe.

  He committed himself, with that sense of danger they hadn’t had in bed in, oh, the better part of a year. The storm outside rumbled and cracked with thunder, making the walls shake, and they came together with absolute knowledge of each other—not quietly, nor discreetly, nor even quite safely . . . but very, very satisfyingly.

  5

  He slept. Really slept.

  And in the morning he had a leisurely breakfast—Toby and Barb slept in, but he and Jago were up with the sun, and being joined in the dining room by Banichi, and Tano and Algini, they all five had a very ample country breakfast, absolutely devouring everything on the plates.

  “You should consider this your vacation, too, nadiin-ji,” he said to his staff over tea. “Arrange to fish, to walk in the garden, to do whatever you like as long as we are here. No place could be safer. I have my office work to do. My brother and his lady will be engaged with me when they finally do wake. I promise not to let them free to harass the staff.”

  There was quiet laughter, even from Jago, who frowned whenever Barb’s name came into question. But Banichi proposed they should go down to the shore and inspect the boat, and see how it was, and Bren said they should do it by turns, because he very well knew that his bodyguard wouldn’t consider all going at once.

  “Manage to take a fishing pole or two,” he said to them. “Catch us our supper, why don’t you?”

  “And shall you be in your office all day?”

  “Oh, I foresee walking in the garden with our guests, or maybe down to the shore, or sharing tea in the sitting room. Nothing too strenuous.” In fact, he had some sore spots from last night, and regretted not a one of them. “Just amuse yourselves. I shall assign two servants to the hall, to forestall you having to escort either of them. Just relax. Trust even me to find my way, nadiin-ji. I shall just be going between bedroom, dining hall, and my study.”

  He sent them off with a gentle laugh . . . sure that, since Banichi and Jago were going to the shore, Tano and Algini were going to be close about, probably finding a place to sit and work on things that interested them . . . and still within call, supposing there should be some sort of emergency. They never quite relaxed. But he tried to encourage it.

  He had, first on the agenda, a meeting with the major domo, Ramaso, who brought the household accounts, all balanced and impeccably written . . . the old man never had taken to the computer, but the accounts were simple. The village and the household both sold fish, they bought food and medicines and items for repair, clothing and rope and tackle, they had shipped a boy with a broke
n arm and a pregnant woman down the coast to medical care, which the estate had paid for, as it bore all such expenses for the village.

  All the history of the past months was written in that arithmetic, and told him that the place had prospered, and made do, even during Murini’s regime. They sold to neighboring districts, they shipped an increasing amount to Shejidan, recovering the trade they had once enjoyed before the coup, and they maintained a good balance in the accounts.

  “Very well done,” he said to Ramaso. “Come, nadi-ji, call for tea, sit with me, and tell me all the gossip of the district.”

  The old man was pleased, and a man brought the tea in an antique and very familiar service with a mountain scene on the teapot . . . there was no end to the things his enterprising staff had smuggled out of Shejidan during the collapse.

  “Extraordinary,” Bren said. “I greatly enjoy that tea set.”

  “The staff is pleased, nandi.” A sip of tea. “Please visit the storeroom. The moment the irregularities are worked out in the capital, you will have the great majority of your furnishings returned. The Farai got very little of historic value.”

  He had not been inside that apartment since his return. He had understood the staff had gotten a great deal of his property away, but now that he had reached Najida, there were surprises at every turn, items forgotten and rediscovered. “One is very pleased, very pleased, nadi-ji. Not least to see the faces of staff. One has not forgotten.”

  “I shall relay that, nandi.”

  “Thank them, too, for their understanding regarding my brother’s companion last night. Her customs are informally Mospheiran. She has no education in the manners of an atevi house. Such actions would rouse no great stir on the island—they are not entirely appropriate to formal occasions, to be quite frank, but they are not, there, scandalous, nor did she understand the nature of the dinner.”

  Atevi didn’t blush, outstandingly, but it was possible that the old man did. At very least he found momentary contemplative interest in a sip of tea. “Indeed, nandi, one will so advise the staff.”

  “One earnestly hopes to forestall another such event,” Bren said. “And one apologizes to the staff. My brother and the lady will guest here—perhaps two weeks, certainly no longer. Kindly station staff in the main hall to see to their comings and goings. During part of that time, I hardly dare wonder if I might leave them here unattended for a day. One is urgently obliged to pay a visit to the neighbors.”

  That was to say, Lord Geigi’s estate, their nearest neighbor—whose regional influence had likely saved the paidhi-aiji’s residence during the Troubles, or he might not be sitting sipping tea in this sitting room now.

  “You do know, nandi, that Lady Tejo has died.”

  Geigi’s sister Tejo had been in charge, in Geigi’s long absence, a fairly young woman, too, though not the most robust in health. “Yes, one did hear that. A loss, especially to that clan. Illness, was it?”

  “One is given to understand so.”

  “Her son is in charge. Beiji? Baiji, is it?”

  “Baiji, indeed, nandi. A young man. New in his post, new to responsibility,” Ramaso said. And added: “Samiusi clan, on his father’s side, nandi, and of a little flightiness that has become a concern to us. One is sure your influence will be as good as his uncle’s presence to remind him of responsibilities.”

  The Samiusi were inland, containing most of the remaining identifiable elements of the Maschi clan, some distance east—no need to jog his memory on that score. All the nuances were important. Alliances outside the coast and somewhat southward were uneasy alliances, these days, and the Samiusi had provided Geigi’s last wife, who had politicked with the Marid. “Is there some question of Baiji’s man’chi?”

  “None to speak of,” Ramaso said.

  “None of his associations?”

  “He is young,” Ramaso said. “Just a very young man, not in years, but Tejo-daja coddled him extremely. He spends a great deal of his time on his boat, he neglects his purchase debts . . . he simply does not pay his suppliers until the second and third request.” Ramaso broke off in some uneasiness. But Najida was one of those suppliers, at least in fish. “One hesitates to speak ill, nandi, but this is a boy who definitely needs a more attentive accountant. He was not expected to succeed Tejo for years yet. He was unprepared for this.”

  “Time I did pay a visit, perhaps.” It wouldn’t be easy to tell Geigi his nephew was a fool and a dilettante, but his own strongest memory of the boy in question was ten years ago, when his mother had had to go upstairs in person to bring a recalcitrant adolescent down to dinner. “Geigi will want to know, nadi-ji, if he delays any further payments. Perhaps one can bring a little fear of clan authority under that roof.”

  “He seems not a villain, nandi, but one suspects his management is lax. He owes the village some three thousand five hundred fifty-three, in sum.”

  He blinked. It was a large sum. And it was entirely unpleasant, to go bring the law down on a young fool, the relative of a trusted associate. But he was lord of this district, and the young fool had not well served Lord Geigi, and had brought financial hardship on his people, who had their own bills to pay. So there it was, one thing he had to do, and at the earliest.

  “Send to Baiji,” he said. “I shall write the message myself, and visit him in five days. The letter alone may jar the late payments out of him. Then we can have a much happier visit, and he may be more careful of our accounts. The lord of this estate has been absent. Perhaps that has encouraged him to believe our people can wait for payment. One expects we can change his priorities.”

  They had their tea. He turned aside at the last to pen, with fair calligraphy, salutations from a neighbor and the intent to visit five days hence . . . with absolutely no mention of the debt. He delivered that to Ramaso for delivery by courier. “One has not mentioned the money, but if it does not arrive before the day, advise me, nadi-ji, and it will assuredly arrive, if Lord Geigi has to be the source of the instruction.”

  “Nandi,” the old man said in some satisfaction, and took the message, to properly encase it in a cylinder and send it.

  Five days was notice enough.

  And five days from now he might be ready for a day’s vacation from Barb . . . but he tried not to borrow trouble. He found his briefcase, his reading, and his notepad, and called for a second, contemplative pot of tea—to cool mostly untouched, as he read up on cell phone and wireless technology, and tried to frame a persuasive arguement for the legislators.

  All the while he had a Guild pocket com on his person. But that was a security matter—that connected him to his long-suffering bodyguard, who, with that connection, could let him out of their sight for at least half an hour at a time, and know he could still reach them instantly.

  There was one legitimate use for the technology—if it saved the life of a lord on whom the aishidi’tat relied.

  It would not be a legitimate use, however, to shortcut the process of informing, for instance, young Baiji. One could, in hot blood, call up, call the young man a fool, demand immediate payment, and, due to startling the young man and embarrassing him, have a nasty quarrel on one’s hands that might force even a reasonable Lord Geigi to take his own estate’s side.

  A beautifully written note, in a courtly hand, in a message cylinder that bore the identification of the paidhi-aiji and the Lord of the Heavens—reminding said young fool who he was dealing with, and all the associations involved—gave the young fool time to panic as to the content of the message, to cool down, figure out that owing money was not the best frame of mind in which to meet one of his uncle’s closest allies. So with any sensitivity at all, he would pay up, and create the best possible mood in which to meet his visitor . . .

  He could hardly use that example in his speech to the legislature. But it was the heart of the problem. There were ways of doing things. Old ways, graceful ways. And not every ateva born was gifted with verbal restraint—to say the least. Things w
ent through channels for a reason.

  On the other hand . . . atevi had wisely concluded that phones, however convenient for summoning an airport bus, reaching the space station or the Island, or notifying a receptive associate of an imminent Situation, were not for social calls, and ought not to replace the appropriate hand delivery of a written, courteous message in its identifying case.

  Which was precisely the argument proponents were going to throw back at him. Atevi had coped with regular, nonportable phones.

  Portable, into any inappropriate situation—there was the problem.

  The speed of wireless messages could accelerate a security situation out of safe limits, or enable the involvement of non-Guild in Assassins’ Guild operations. That was one great fear.

  That the young would take to the wireless as a way to save effort, as they had on Mospheira, thus undermining the traditional, conflict-reducing forms of messaging . . . that was a worry. That it would accelerate the exchange of information into an exchange of misinformation or half information—the evening news managed that. On a national scale, at times.

  People could get killed over bad information. Information and the misconstruction of information was, history told him, exactly the sort of thing that had led humans and atevi to war—bad information coming too fast, too easy interaction, too many people who thought they understood each other.

  People communicating without going through channels, obviating the office of the clan lords, making independent contact . . . because humans had no reciprocal institution and didn’t want one.

  Fracture, of the atevi way of life. Fracture of the associations . . . fracture of the social structure.

  Chaos. And reacting on micro-information, only part of the information . . . and the other side reacting, and this side reacting . . .

  Disaster. There was his argument. It was . . .

  A slight rap at the door, a servant signaling entry, possibly to see if he wanted more tea.

  It was Ramaso himself.

  “A phone call has arrived, nandi,” Ramaso said, his aged face much in earnest. “The aiji’s staff requests you to speak to the aiji.”