Deliverer

by C. J. Cherryh

  “One begs, eat your supper, boy. It may help.”

  “It makes me sick. Oh, it hurts.”

  “We had better tell the major domo, nadi.”

  To his disgust, one stayed with him while the other ran that errand. He continued to hold his stomach, and took only a sip of water when offered, even if he was starving.

  “Where is this place?” he ventured to ask the sole servant.

  “We are not to answer questions, young sir.”

  “It is a very poor place, clearly.”

  “It is by no means poor, young sir!”

  He had stung the man’s pride. And consequently he learned something, at least. Not a poor place, indeed, a place with a major domo, and servants. Something else occured to him. The food smelled a lot like a dish Great-grandmother liked, spices from her side of the world.

  “I think it is very poor,” he said. “And clearly you are not Guild.”

  “The Guild has no power here.”

  That was the East, and the servant was a fool, or thought he was. He remembered Great-grandmother saying that in the East, some lords refused to employ Guild, but that the Guild infiltrated them anyway: it took just a bit more work.

  “My great-grandmother will know what to do,” he said, and doubled tighter. “Oh!”

  “Lie down. Lie still.”

  “It hurts to lie down, nadi. And when my great-grandmother finds out you failed to give me my medicines, you will wish you had Guild to protect you. She will be very put out.” All the while his mind was racing. If there were Guild, the man’chi of the Guild to his father might say that his father’s son was not to be kept in a basement—for that matter, the man’chi of the Guild might argue that this was an illegal action, and Guild could not support it. It was one thing to kidnap someone. It was another to kidnap the aiji’s own son, a minor child: he had studied the law. Mani had thumped it into his head.

  But nobody had caught Murini yet, and there were definitely people who wanted to kill his father.

  The Guild had pulled support from those people. That was a scary thought, that there was one other group of people besides the Easterners who might not use Guild these days, or who might employ Guild who were no longer following the rules. It could mean that he was in the south, and that the household cook had just bought Eastern spices imported in. Maybe these people were tied to Murini-aiji, and rogue Guildsmen were out there somewhere: nand’ Bren’s people had killed the Guild leader who had tried to subvert the Guild into backing Murini—but there were definitely some of that man’s followers loose.

  The man had said—had he not—that the Guild had no power here. That was hard to parse: it could mean either thing. But the spicy aroma was a vote for Eastern. And a stone dungeon? That was more Eastern-like, too. In the East people hated human conveniences—like bathrooms with real toilets and electric lights that ran without a local generator. He knew about Malguri. If they wanted electricity, like for the Guild to run some of their equipment, they had to fire up the generator, because no wires came up from the township. He had that from Great-grandmother. He had been appalled, hearing it. She had been making the point that he was too soft. Maybe he was, but one reasonably expected lights to work when one flipped the switch. And they had a plastic bucket, and used flashlights instead of candles. That said this place or these people were not that kabiu…

  Footsteps came back. The first servant came in with a man of some authority, and they felt of his forehead and checked his eyes and felt his pulse.

  “He says spacefarers have to have medicine,” the man who had stayed with him reported, and the other two asked all the next questions, concluding with: “He says he has no idea what he takes.”

  “Move him upstairs,” the authority said.

  Well, that was certainly a disappointment. Not at all what he wanted. He wanted someone in authority to turn up so he could worry them. Instead they gathered him up, blanket and all, and took him out into the hall, letting him walk, which he did slowly, marking every detail of what was surely a basement.

  They went up a short stairs, and into an electric-lit, inhabited hall, the plain sort of hallway that said servants’ quarters, and maybe kitchens, a place with modest items of kabiu. They brought him to a door, and inside what was someone’s room, which had a single glaring electric bulb in the ceiling—the room belonged, he gathered from what they said, to a junior servant, who would double up with one of the others. They set him on the bed and carried out the little dresser, which, besides the bed, a portable toilet, and a small straight chair, were the only items of furniture.

  They brought his supper up, and set it down on the chair. They brought a metal water pitcher. That rated a little interest. But he tucked up on the mattress under the bedclothes and feigned misery.

  He simply had to start over, was all. And up here the rooms were closer together, and he knew where the next room was. And here there was electric light, but the switch was not in the room. Damn.

  There was no window, either. That was not good. The walls were plastered. There was probably stone underneath.

  They called a workman to reverse the lock in the door. That took a while. The food would be cold, if he wanted to sneak a bite or two. They brought him another couple of blankets and piled them on, so he was too hot.

  They left, finally, leaving the light on. He got up, took the spoon from the tray and had a couple of cold, disgusting bites, which helped the hunger, nonetheless.

  They might not miss the spoon. It was, he thought, silver. That was a conductor. He had electricity. That was a good thing. The switch was on the outside of the room. That was a stupid arrangement, if it was regularly a bedroom. But probably it had been a storeroom of some kind before it had been a servant’s room.

  But he had a chair. A bed. A spoon. And a portable toilet, which was a disgrace and an embarrassment.

  Besides that, he had the bucket handle, which he had kept under the blanket with him.

  He was locked in.

  But electricity and light: that was certainly looking up. The air was warmer. And the bare overhead bulb, far up out of his reach, at least worked.

  And he was ahead by one other thing. He had a reasonable glimmering where he was: the East. And he wondered why the East, and he thought of the mysterious dinner guests. Which led him to think of Great-grandmother, and he remembered how Great-grandmother was with Uncle Tatiseigi, since right after that dinner party. Then his father and mother had moved in with Great-grandmother’s staff, and Bren-nandi had moved out, and things had gotten boring and disgusting, but then—

  At that point his memory of what had happened had a big hole in it, one in which Jegari and Antaro disappeared, and he found himself here, in what smelled and tasted like the East, which had no tie to anything in his recent life except that dinner party.

  If Great-grandmother had wanted to bring him here, she could have just done it, easily.

  So it was definitely somebody Great-grandmother would not approve of, and possibly something her recent guests had to do with.

  Something could have happened to his father when they took him out, but he thought not, somehow, because these people were locking him in and being very careful not to tell him anything.

  That meant they were afraid of somebody finding out.

  And that probably meant his father was all right, and that Great-grandmother was, and that they would be looking for him, and so would the Guild in their employ.

  Well and good. The Guild getting involved was a good thing. That would be Banichi and Jago, and Cenedi and Nawari, none of whom would take his disappearance lightly. And he would enjoy seeing them take these people to account.

  This level of the place was much more occupied. People came and went outside. Voices reached him. It was harder to know when someone might come in. What he really, really needed was a wire. A nice long conductive wire that might reach that door latch. He might almost manage it with the bucket handle, but it was not long enough.
And there was no other metal available but the dinner spoon.

  So in the meanwhile he got down under the bed and took the bucket handle to the plaster of the adjoining wall. It wasn’t too bad a place to be changed to.

  Plaster was a lot easier than mortar.

  It was not the servant’s quarters Lady Drien provided them, nor yet was it Ilisidi’s degree of housing, one could well imagine. It was a modest, though gentlemanly room that allowed a man and his staff to dispose their baggage and settle, at least enough to dress for dinner.

  “The staff, Bren-ji,” Banichi informed Bren, while Jago re-braided his queue, “is by no means Guild and resents our presence, conceiving us a threat to their lady. This is a house belonging to the aishid’itat only by convenience, and only as long as convenient. They fear us, one can reasonably surmise, and very much hope not to be set against us.”

  “There is, however, news,” Jago said from behind him.

  “News, yes, Bren-ji,” Banichi said, folding his arms in an attitude of thought. “We are not at the moment in communication with this staff. But we have heard, since being here, a small item or two which persuade us that Caiti tried to enlist the lady, and failed. At least he came here and was rebuffed. This we find encouraging.”

  Particularly encouraging, seeing that he prepared to share the lady’s table, in an absolutely classic machimi situation. Or it could be a tidbit the staff had intentionally let fall—Banichi and Jago would not be off their guard in the least, nor should he be. “One certainly hopes not to be poisoned tonight, nadiin-ji.”

  “They know we would take revenge,” Jago said. “And that, Bren-ji, is why your staff does not share the table.”

  They had brought their own rations, in the baggage. Prudent, Bren decided. He wished he personally had that option.

  But he had delayed about dressing as long as he dared. He had washed off the grit and scent of the trail, had arrayed himself in a fine lacy shirt and a good coat, not to mention the soft house boots. He headed out and down the hall, looking fairly splendid, all things considered—he caught his reflection in the antique mirror at the landing, pale individual flanked by two looming shadows, Banichi and Jago, in their polished Guild black and silver.

  He was a little behind the dowager. She and Cenedi were in the process of admittance to the dining hall as he arrived downstairs, and the major domo, who had escorted her to her seat, came back and gave him a curt wave of the hand—not quite sure of the protocols with a human guest: that was at least the most charitable interpretation of the gesture.

  “Thank you, nadi,” Bren murmured, the old woman having been moderately polite, and took his chair opposite the dowager at a table that probably, with other leaves installed, could have served twenty: the room was of that scale, and a host of spare chairs stood about the walls.

  Drien was not much slower in arriving. Her formal dress was neither in fashion nor out of it—rich, and dripping with lace, and sparkling with small stones. The dowager almost out-glittered her, in a rich green sparked with small diamonds, but, for the dowager, it was modest, calculatedly so, the paidhi could well guess. His own attire was plain, pale, and moderately fashionable, give or take an unfashionable abundance of lace. It could not have given offense in the East, where fashions always lagged Shejidan by a decade.

  There followed the initial service, the offering of drink and the opening course of seasonal items, preserves—those items were usually to avoid, and Bren picked his way through the alkaloid minefield of atevi cuisine without the usual assurance that the cook knew better. It was not polite nor politic to mention his sensitivities. Staff should have taken care of that—if they listened: perhaps they did, since poisonings outside policy and purely by accident were a very embarrassing event in a dinner.

  He didn’t bet on it, however. He set himself to be hungry only for items he was relatively sure of and knew that the real danger attended the main course, which there was no dodging.

  There was a good deal of small talk: Ilisidi caught up on neighbors’ births and deaths, endured a few small barbs with remarkable patience, and generally remained in fair humor—which meant, Bren thought, that Ilisidi thought there was a very great deal to be gained here.

  The main course turned out to be adichara, a fish recognizable in its presentation, the head and dorsal spines set on one side, the tail on the other, in a bed of autumn berries. He was vastly relieved, and took a child’s portion, with no berries.

  “The paidhi-aiji hardly eats enough to keep alive,” Drien observed, and Bren bowed his head.

  “At my size, nandi, I forever leave too much of my servings. It is by no means a slight to the cook, whose skill is extraordinary. One will remember this dish, indeed.”

  “One is hardly sure that is a compliment,” Drien said, looking at Ilisidi. “Do you think his taste can judge anything good?”

  “The paidhi’s own table matches any lord’s,” Ilisidi said. “Even mine.”

  “One is extravagantly grateful, nandi,” Bren said with a little bow of the head toward Ilisidi.

  The small barbs went back and forth, right into dessert, which was another variation on autumn berries—Bren declined, professing himself full, and wondered quietly to the server if there might be co di suri, instead, a white, sweet liqueur he knew was safe.

  It appeared, duly served. The one attempt to poison the paidhi-aiji fell aside, whether a test of his aplomb, or his knowledge, or whether it was the mere mischance of an unaccustomed cook. He sipped, and the dowager and their hostess ate, and got down to brandy. Then talk moved to the salon, the room with the fire, which was blazing high this wintry highland evening.

  All this time Banichi and Jago had stood by, as Cenedi had, with Nawari, this time stationed outside the salon doors, which a servant shut. The room was the very essence of the East: the beamed ceiling, the ancient hangings on ancient stone, the wooden floor overlain with carpets which had seen at least a hundred years of wear: the sitting-group, of carved wooden chairs with rich cushions.

  “He does persistently go with you, Sidi-ji,” Drien remarked rudely.

  “He certainly does,” Ilisidi said with a tight smile. “And will go where we go.”

  “Perhaps he might stay behind when you go. He has a certain interest.”

  Bren’s heart did a little jump. The last time Ilisidi had gotten him involved with local lords, he had ended up with a broken arm. It did another jump when Ilisidi answered:

  “Perhaps. Why would you wish it?”

  “Curiosity,” was Drien’s answer. “Mere curiosity.” She sipped her brandy.

  “We were speaking of my great-grandson, nadi,” Ilisidi said sharply. They had not been speaking of him since before dinner.

  “One has no idea, nadi,” Drien said.

  “We did not ride all this distance for dinner and a dance, cousin. Out with it! You have an opinion. Let us hear it!”

  “My opinion. Now when has Malguri asked that?”

  “I am asking,” Ilisidi said in a low voice. “I am asking, Dri-aba.”

  Drien drew a long, slow breath. “Perhaps there have been exchanges of letters to the south, nand’ ’Sidi.”

  Bren’s heart sank. He had hoped they could dismiss that fear. It was the worst news.

  “And?” Ilisidi asked.

  “Distraction,” Drien said. “Distraction serves the southerner. That fool Caiti did have the sense to hold apart from him while he ruled. Now, seeing your absence, your preoccupation with affairs in the west, one suspects he has ambitions…not favoring Murini, no. But favoring his own agenda.”

  “One suspects he has ambitions.” Ilisidi’s tone was contemptuous.

  “One has no proof except his actions. He has made a move which he alone cannot sustain. What profit to him, if he must invite more powerful allies? He has offended the Ragi and their association. Of what profit is this to him?”

  It made an unwelcome sense. Caiti had made a move that could only draw Ilisidi here, that
could only alienate the Western Association, and that could only serve to divide Tabini’s attention and divert it from pursuing Murini.

  Only one thing made sense in that context—that the most likely target was Ilisidi herself. Take down Malguri, and Caiti had the heir to Malguri in his lands. If Tabini attempted to intervene, the East might fall away entirely, and Caiti would rule the East, a situation that would make Murini court him for an ally.

  Murini had already spent all his credibility with the west, and might not gain power there. That left…of potential aijiin of the entire aishidi’tat…

  Caiti.

  “It is aimed at you, nand’ dowager,” Bren said out of turn. “By this account, it is aimed particularly at you. With you dead, Caiti has the heir to Malguri. And a great deal of leverage with the south.”

  “Well,” Drien said with a little astonishment. “It speaks. And it is not stupid.”

  “No,” Ilisidi said, “nand’ Bren is not stupid. Nor are we, aba-ji. You knew they were about to move. A letter would have been courteous.”

  “And dangerous, nand’ ’Sidi. Your power here has grown dim, and we have no man’chi to the West. You have not bothered to visit here. How should we know you remember us?”

  A direct statement, and on the surface, rude. But Ilisidi nodded slowly. “You wish us to inspire you.”

  “Astonish us, nand’ ’Sidi. Prove you are what you were. Get the boy back. He is with Caiti, and he is, one is certain, in the Haidamar, not the Saibai’tet. I have said what I would say to a guest under my roof. I ask you nothing, until you have the power to promise something.”

  Ilisidi gathered her cane before her. “Then we shall not linger to distress your hospitality,” Ilisidi said. “We shall ride back tonight.”

  “Folly, cousin! The snow is coming thick out there.”

  “We have no time to lose,” Ilisidi said. “And you will help us, Dri-daja, you will communicate to us anything you learn. Cenedi will leave you the technical means, and despite your distaste for western ways, one would advise you take advantage of a resource your neighbors would not expect you to possess. Use our secure communications, Dri-daja.”