Deliverer

by C. J. Cherryh

  “The culprits are likeliest Eastern,” Tabini said, “and our position is that we will not negotiate with them in whatever they demand. If my grandmother goes East, nand’ paidhi, you will join her.”

  “Yes, aiji-ma.”

  That the kidnappers were Eastern was certainly the most logical assumption in the current situation—and Tabini’s position was the only position he could take in the situation. Both Tabini and his grandmother had to maintain their grip, and after them, that boy, and, no, Ilisidi might actually have done in a husband and maybe a son and might conceivably be aiming at her grandson, Tabini, but the boy she alone had raised—

  God, had that been part of Tabini’s motive in sending his son and Ilisidi on that voyage? To forge that sense of connection, that unbreakable man’chi? To make his son and heir safe from his own great-grandmother?

  The mind jolted absolutely sideways, when it needed desperately to be here and now, eye to eye with Tabini, as Tabini laid a hand on his shoulder, a grip that bruised. “You are valued, paidhi-aiji. You are valued.”

  “Aiji-ma, my value in this situation is my persuasion. I beg to try.”

  “Defend my grandmother,” Tabini said sharply. “Thankless though the task may be, keep her alive, paidhi-aiji, her and my son. We want her back.”

  “Aiji-ma.” Acceptance of his proposal—with all it meant. Persuasion. He was profoundly touched, and simultaneously terrified.

  Assure the aiji-dowager turned from Eastern to western man’chi? Break the influence of her neighbors, if it was a factor—if, somehow, Ilisidi was in on this maneuver? Give her a politically safe turn-around if she was actually behind the kidnapping?

  The boy being attached to his grandmother and not to his father…the boy might become a force in the East, a rival claimant, to shift the balance of power. All these things flashed across his horizon like summer lightning.

  And he had no choice. “I shall do everything possible, aiji-ma. I shall do absolutely everything possible.”

  “Cenedi-nadi,” Tabini said, and as Bren got up, Cenedi came close, not without Jaidiri’s frowning and jealous attention.

  “Nandi,” Cenedi said. And if there was a man in the room at an unenviable focus of attention, it was Cenedi…sent here, in advance of the dowager taking action. He was, literally, in danger of his life, if Tabini had any suspicion at all.

  Or not. Tabini, like Ilisidi, was capable of playing a very, very subtle hand.

  “Go to the airport. There is no need for my grandmother to come to the Bu-javid. We know where one of those planes has gone, most surely, nadi. Do you dispute this likelihood?”

  “One does not dispute, nandi,” Cenedi said. And without aiji-ma. No acknowledgment of man’chi. Only Cenedi was, being in the household of the aiji-dowager, entitled to that familiarity.

  “The paidhi will accompany you and the aiji-dowager: she may take command of the search in the East. One trusts she will act for the aishidi’tat.”

  Cenedi, his face deep-graven by duty and the dowager’s service, frowned. But this time he bowed deeply. “In her name, nand’ aiji, and subject to her orders.”

  Tabini’s hand shot out and seized Cenedi’s forearm. “Return my son, Cenedi-nadi. And her, and the paidhi-aiji. Return them alive.”

  “Yes,” Cenedi said: how did one refuse the force of that order? Bren froze, and remembered to breathe as Tabini released Cenedi’s arm.

  A second bow. Then Cenedi straightened and walked out. Bren hesitated a breath, a glance at the aiji. They were leaving Tabini—abandoning him to Jaidiri’s competency, and to the attitudes and conflicted man’chiin of the court, all of which evoked the greatest misgivings. He wished, not for the first time, that Tabini’s guard of many years had survived the coup, and that every resource Tabini had once had was around him now….

  But they were not. He bowed. He glanced from Banichi to Jago, and bowed slightly to Lady Damiri, and walked out, hearing Banichi and Jago fall in behind him.

  Cenedi was outside that room. They went together, with Cenedi’s two men, out into the outer hall, where Taibeni stood on guard.

  “You will be welcome, nandi, one has every confidence,” Cenedi paused to say, plain to be heard. “Her plane will be landing—one assumes it will get clearance.”

  “One is certain it will,” Bren murmured; and Jago:

  “I shall see to the packing.” Leaving Banichi with him, and not leaving him alone with Cenedi, she went down the hall at a fast clip, and Banichi nodded to Cenedi. “We are ready.”

  “Nadi,” Cenedi said, and with a nod of his head to Bren, “nandi.”

  And they headed for the lift, with no more than that.

  No question that plane was going to stay on the ground any longer than it took to refuel, not unless the dowager was hell-bent on an interview with her grandson, and one doubted that would happen until there was a definitive answer, one doubted it extremely.

  “The hotel has been searched, nandi,” Cenedi said after they were in the lift, after one of Cenedi’s men pushed the button. “Caiti’s party has indeed remained. And left in the night. One plane has turned east. One north. One south.”

  North was no problem. South, however, south was bad news. Scary news. If anything had moved south, it would likely be the Assassins’ Guild, not the paidhi, who had to deal with that.

  And a plane happened to go south when Caiti’s party moved east?

  Their mission might, by that fact, be in the right direction; or it might be following a diversion….

  No. If, at very worst, the dowager was involved—

  God, dinner with the Kadagidi. Her great-grandson smuggled out of her apartment—

  No. No, and no. He refused, emotionally, stupidly, it might be, to believe it.

  It could not be their concern: they had to deal quickly with the target they were given, and the best chance of stopping events short of a bloodbath was the dowager’s going back to her own region and knocking critical heads together, among her own neighbors…granted she was not behind this, God help them. If Caiti had made some deal with the south—the dowager knocking heads was not an inconsiderable force. The paidhi couldn’t be everywhere. He couldn’t do a damned thing if they had taken the boy south. He could do something in the East, with his connection to the dowager.

  His own best use was as her support, and as a representative of the aiji’s confidence in her…and ultimately as a negotiator, once he had the whole truth of what was happening…whatever happened.

  He was, he realized as the elevator plummeted toward the train station, woefully short of staff, short of resources. These Eastern conservatives would respect appearances. Force. A full staff. He had no domestics: his personal staff was up on the station. Tano and Algini were at the coast trying to get his brother back and could not join them in time to back up Banichi and Jago. For servants—he would have the dowager’s staff, at Malguri, presuming that was where they were going. But he had by no means all the wardrobe; he couldn’t even pack his needful items. He had to trust Jago for that—and did. She would bring his computer: that, he wanted with him, where he could at very least wipe it, if things went wrong. He hoped there was nothing else waiting in the wings, no other assassins aiming at Tabini from within the dowager’s staff—

  God, God, when one stopped taking security for granted, within a household, there were so many things to think of.

  And priorities had suddenly shifted. He had, as best he could, to rearrange the pieces on the board.

  “It might be well if we recall Tano and Algini, ’Nichi-ji. One assumes their assistance would be useful to you and Jago.”

  “If we can reach them at this point,” Banichi said. “One will try to contact them.”

  “Surely it was not Guild, nadiin-ji,” Bren ventured to say, in the company of those who sincerely were. “Surely—if it were—”

  “If it were Guild, the Taibeni boy would not have escaped,” Banichi answered him—the one thing all of them could well
conclude. “Unless escape was part of the plan.”

  The car whisked past level after level, bound downward on a high-level security key. Bren’s stomach floated, in the precipitate drop.

  And he clung to one hope. The kidnappers hadn’t killed anyone. Their light-handedness argued for amateurs rather than Guild, argued for someone who feared bloodfeud that might well bring allies in against them.

  But their being amateurs had its own particular dangers—not least, the possibility someone in their number would panic and all hell would break loose.

  And, the other worrisome component of the problem, someone had let them into the dowager’s apartment. Someone who was at this very moment close to the aiji, being either part of his staff or the dowager’s, because, without that help, there was no way on earth they could have gotten in to reach the boy.

  The lift hit bottom. So did Bren’s stomach. Banichi, meanwhile, was on his small com before the door opened, issuing orders while he kept an unceremonious and surely distracted handhold on Bren’s arm and pulled him along in Cenedi’s wake: it hurt, and that was all but unprecedented. Banichi was entirely on edge.

  Cenedi’s two men meanwhile went ahead of them around the corner of the elevator bank, heading toward the trains that came and went in this heart of the Bu-javid complex. In better times, a small train had always waited in the event of the aiji’s need—and one sat there, now, on a concrete-rimmed siding, an engine with three cars, the way it always had been, and the middle one a luxury special belonging to the aiji. There it sat waiting, apparently unscathed in the interregnum, and Cenedi’s men, jogging ahead of them, split up short of the cars, one heading up to the engine, one moving to open the door of that middle car. That man went inside first, to be sure of it.

  So they had clearance to use that train, that car. Bren now had no doubt where they were going. Banichi was moving fast, with Cenedi, and Bren kept up, dragged along, as it were. They reached the car and both of them, behind him, shoved him roughly up the atevi-scale steps.

  They followed, and pulled the door to behind them. It shut with a thump.

  Bren caught his balance against the transverse brass railing inside, near the bar counter. “Will we wait for Jago, Banichi-ji?”

  “We shall wait, nandi,” Banichi said distractedly, clearly listening to something else, and, thus assured, Bren worked his way among the padded red-velvet seats and small tables, and on to the rear of the car, the position he had always favored as simply less in the way of traffic.

  They were as safe here as armor plating could make them. The windows were bulletproof and shaded in red velvet, affording not even the hint of a target.

  Cenedi meanwhile spoke to Banichi in that shorthand the Guild used, half with handsigns. Bren caught enough to know that they were sure of the dowager’s plane’s security, and would have it or another plane fueled and diverted to their use, on their subsequent flight—likely a second plane, since the transcontinental flight needed a longer range. Cenedi indicated that the dowager was bringing all her security with her, leaving only Cajeiri’s guards in the Bu-javid apartment, and that would reinforce them considerably.

  Meanwhile, Bren thought he caught, via the conversation between those two, that air traffic control was reporting on the three planes that had already taken off. Directions had not changed: one eastward, one northward, and one bound to the hostile south. And he understood from that conversation, too, that Lord Keimi, lord of the Taibeni, had not been in the city, that he had gone back home two days ago, and that he now was coming in by train, to arrive by morning. That was a relief: Tabini could rely on Lord Keimi, absolutely, and to hell with critics trying to dictate the political composition of his bodyguard and staff. Lord Keimi’s arrival would take some of the pressure off Jaidiri, and that was to the good, within the staff. But Lord Keimi had just had two of his own injured in this situation, and he would arrive with fire in his eye, bent on answers from someone…not to mention the youngsters’ parents were probably coming in with him.

  And, again, who had taken Cajeiri?

  If the Taibeni boy had gotten to a security office phone, what had he reported, and what did Banichi know, by now, that Banichi was too busy giving orders to explain?

  He sat gnawing his lip, wanting to ask, but Banichi and Cenedi leaned close together, talking urgently, and that must not be interrupted.

  Who could have gotten through Ilisidi’s security net—if not Ilisidi? Or had someone dared take service under her roof and betray her interests?

  There’d be blood for that—if betrayal was the case. This wasn’t the ship, and whatever staffer had double-crossed Ilisidi of Malguri had better be on that plane with the kidnappers, unless suicide was part of the plan—or unless that wasn’t the picture at all. He just didn’t know. And the reason Banichi and Cenedi were talking like that, so intently, so quietly, without him—could be Banichi trying to feel out just what the hell was going on, and even to learn whether Cenedi himself knew more than he admitted of what was happening.

  It was like the first stage of entry into a gravity well, a little courage, and a little bit of confidence, until one had reached a point of no return…both in circumstance and in emotional context. They were sliding over the rim—the moment they boarded the dowager’s plane.

  Dangerous. Ilisidi always was that. That never changed. But there had to be a way for a diplomat to bend the situation. Any situation.

  The train started into motion, a slow, inexorable sense of force.

  And it was not supposed to move. Not without Jago. That brought him to his feet.

  “Banichi-ji.”

  “Jago is in the baggage car,” Banichi said quietly, diverting his attention from his conversation with Cenedi. “The plane will be ready for us.” With the information came a direct look from Banichi, a look that, after all their travels, he could read as well as Jago could: don’t interrupt, don’t rock the boat. Sit down, Bren-ji.

  “Indeed,” he said, and sat, immediately, as the train rolled slowly, inexorably on its course downward. He found himself half-paralyzed with thinking—the only action he could take at present, and with precious little data to do it on.

  But if he believed one person present, he believed Banichi, and Banichi thought they were right to be here, surrounded by Cenedi’s men. He was at least as safe as Banichi could make them, and Jago had made it aboard. She was riding with the baggage, probably sorting equipment into order as they went, and probably eavesdropping on Banichi and Cenedi all the while.

  Nor could he be a trusting fool, where he sat. Banichi might mistake the acuteness of human hearing. He could not hear what they said, not, especially, over the sound of the train. But clearly he was not welcome in the current conversation, which was, if he could make a guess, deeply Guild, and deeply dangerous, and possibly even that rare thing among atevi—completely frank.

  Emotionally—he—that human word—liked Tabini; but that was not the be-all and end-all of his decisions. He wanted Tabini in power if Tabini could hold power, that had to be the bottom line. He wanted the dowager in possession of her habitual power if she could keep it…he wanted both those things not to become mutually exclusive.

  His wits had to stay sharp, was what: if there was a word in isolation he had overheard, he still had not the pieces to put together any sane plan out of those words—east, north, south, and the dowager. He daren’t woolgather once he left the train. He daren’t think about anything but what was immediately at hand.

  Meanwhile he sat in a rail coach rocking along as fast as a train could move within the curved tunnel, in company with Banichi, the two of them outnumbered by Cenedi and his men from the start.

  If, God forbid, he himself had to choose loyalties between Tabini and the dowager—he had one, one overriding concern: what it would do when the kyo came calling, expecting to find a stable situation, the way they had described it to be—if Tabini couldn’t hold his own grandmother’s man’chi, something had to shake out.


  It might, in fact, rest on him to straighten it out—keep her in the aishidi’tat. Keep the aishidi’tat together. Credit to Tabini, who more or less trusted him, the way he more or less trusted Tabini.

  Not good, he said to himself, to the rhythm of the rails, not good, not good. Trust outside one’s own household was a sure way to get into a hell of a mess.

  Every turn of the track, every pitch and sway he knew—and they were three quarters of the way to the airport when one of Cenedi’s men rose from a side bench, steadied himself with his hand on the bar rail, and announced, to Cenedi and Banichi both:

  “A fourth plane, nadiin, has left southbound from Bedijien. Lord Wyndyn is the owner.”

  Damn. That was a smaller airpark, across town, where luxury aircraft underwent maintenance—at least that had been its role two years ago. And a fourth plane was in the air.

  “Lord Wyndyn is himself in the south,” Banichi said, from the other side of the car, “having traveled by train. Why his plane is in this region at all is a matter for inquiry.”

  Wyndyn was a southern lord, neighbor to the Taisigin Marid, and not even in the capital, from the borders of which his plane took off. Murini was down there in the south, somewhere. At least they thought Murini was down there. Tabini’s loyalists were out hunting for the usurper, and if he or one of his aides had instead been here in the capital, all along, and left on that plane—

  No. If it was Murini’s people who’d snatched the boy, how in hell could they subvert Ilisidi’s staff, and why spare the Taibeni youngster? No. They had three planes aloft, four, five, now, with the dowager’s inbound flight…and they were tracking all of them.

  What in hell was air traffic control doing, allowing that takeoff?

  Or had they allowed it? Had a flight crew panicked, seeing the airlanes closed, and themselves cut off from their homeland? If no one had physically blocked the runway, a plane could have done it. Once in the air, there was no way to stop them except flinging another plane into their path…and that didn’t help the situation.