Pretender

by C. J. Cherryh

  Well, what the station knew or could see or gather from clandestine networks or doggedly determined spies in rowboats was not his problem, at the moment. Tabini was. Tabini’s gathering force was.

  Tabini’s highly protective guard was.

  “What has the dowager’s staff been able to tell Tabini’s guard?” he asked Tano, as the one of his staff who at least looked unoccupied. “What success have you had passing information to them?”

  But Tano answered: “Algini would know better, nandi,” and quietly replaced Algini in control of the black box, freeing Algini to come and confer with Bren.

  “What information has Cenedi relayed to Tabini’s staff on our mission?” he asked, for starters. “And what are they saying?”

  Algini hunkered down by his chair and, staring into space in the manner of a man recalling minute detail, spilled the essentials, an amazing flow, almost a chant.

  And all coherently organized, more the marvel, carrying the agreements, the persons present at the negotiations, the representations made on both sides, exactly as he would have outlined it—though not the reassuring content he would have wished. The aiji’s guard had given no reaction to news that there were more foreigners out in space, and as to what the dowager had said to Tabini himself, only Tabini’s staff had witnessed that—and Tabini’s security staff was not talking to them.

  After all these years, he was still amazed at the detail, the precise picture of who had been standing where and overheard what. He began, in some despair, to fold his computer away. The essentials had come out. Tabini had not wanted his report.

  His movement interrupted the flow. Algini, rare gesture, touched his hand, preventing him. “Our accounts are necessarily missing some detail, nandi.”

  “Clearly it misses very little,” he said, and decided to consult Algini, who rarely talked but who seemed communicative at the moment. “The aiji has men about him who seem commendably protective of him, Gini-ji. But Cenedi is not pleased. What would his former guard have said?”

  “We are meeting obstacles in communication,” Algini said bluntly. “One cannot speak for the dead. But these men are different.”

  “Their man’chi?”

  “One detects very faint ties to the hills, and perhaps to the south.”

  “To the south.” Alarming. “And the aiji has accepted that knowingly?”

  “Certain of us question, Bren-nandi, how much the aiji knows of those ties.”

  Twice alarming. “Who truly knows these men, Gini-ji?”

  A very slight hesitation, half a breath, if that. Algini’s gold eyes flicked into rare direct contact at so blunt a question. “Various of us have formed independent impressions of the situation. Certainly the aiji and the consort have slept safely under their guard.”

  “So their objective, whatever it may be, is consonant with the aiji recovering Shejidan.”

  “One believes they do oppose Murini, and the aiji has continually been the strongest opposition available. Your return and the dowager’s have created somewhat of a stir: Your renewed influence challenges them.”

  Clearer and clearer. “There is no likelihood this opinion of me will improve.”

  “The paidhi and the dowager represent an arrangement of new numbers,” Algini said, “bringing in Lord Geigi and the establishment in space, as well as other coastal folk, who are now arriving here in considerable number to add their voice to the discussion.”

  The coast and the hills had never been united before the aishidi’tat. There was still conflict of interest. The middle south and Lord Geigi, up on the station, had never been allies in policy except, again, as the aisihdi’tat united them.

  “It would seem then,” he paraphrased the subtext, “that the elements of the aishidi’tat who are against the Kadagidi, but who have not been favorable to me or the dowager, have been the primary refuge of the aiji in this time of need, and they are greatly dismayed to see us returning easily and moving back into our former position, snatching away the influence they feel they have justly earned.”

  Algini’s gaze flickered just slightly. “That would be one theory, nandi, and generously phrased.”

  “Would they ultimately mean the aiji ill?”

  “The elements we suspect have never favored the aishidi’tat’s establishment, and may use it now only as a convenience. To see all central organization fall apart would well suit some of the hill lords, and some of the south.”

  “Disaster, in dealing with the ship-humans.”

  “Your staff thinks so. The dowager thinks so. But the aiji’s staff is limiting what information reaches him.”

  “Painting a picture in which their advice is wise and politically safer.”

  “Exactly so, nandi. And the Ajuri themselves are seeking a position of more importance through their connections. They may be northerners, but they represent a certain discontent up to the north, a minority—they have been a minor force throughout, but the news that the aiji is here, again, under Lord Tatiseigi’s roof—and that you and the dowager are back—has galvanized them and filled their eyes with great expectations. They are a hinge-point, on which other borderline elements may base their reactions.”

  “They thoroughly detest me.”

  “The heir, their grandson, is a critical matter. They wish to see him with their own eyes, to establish his man’chi, where it lies and may lie in future. He departed as a child. He returns having been under your influence and the dowager’s for two formative years. He speaks fluent Mosphei’. This fact will shock them immeasureably.”

  “His fondness for pizza and ice cream will not help us either,” Bren said wryly; so great was his confidence in his staff that he had not questioned Algini discussing these things aloud with him, in this lowest of voices, but now his heart gave a thump and he remembered where they were. “Dare we say these things, Gini-ji?”

  “One knows now exactly who is doing the monitoring and why,” Algini said. “We have established ourselves. We have installations in several rooms. We are secure.”

  The black box. The monitoring. And “installations.” God knew how installations had gotten into other rooms.

  “Downstairs, too?”

  Algini’s face became incredibly hard to read, and Bren broke off, assuming his staff’s secrets were not for him to penetrate.

  “So must we approach the Ajuri in a conciliatory way?” he asked, and seemed to have startled Algini for once in their association. It was as if he had hit a nerve.

  “One should not, by no means,” Algini said, “but rather trust that they will swing to the prevailing wind. They are not a ruling clan. They have not the heredity. Yet.”

  “They need Cajeiri.”

  “They need his good will,” Algini said, “if they have any hope of prominence. They are ours because it is not in their interest the heir should perish.”

  Cajeiri being their only claim to power and prominence.

  Politics made strange bedfellows indeed. And Tatiseigi let the Ajuri under his roof and into his hospitality when other, higher ranking claimants to that hospitality were likely to sleep on bare ground or in their buses tonight. The Ajuri lord had certainly been caught off guard, meeting him and Cajeiri on the steps, as if they were there solely to confront him and prevent him reaching that goal. The old man had not recognized the heir, in his borrowed coat, but he had certainly recognized and affronted the paidhi—only to be set straight by an eight-year-old. Ajuri had been thoroughly discommoded, and hit Tatiseigi’s hall not in smooth advance, but in a fit of embarrassed outrage.

  A delicious moment, if he had had the hand in planning it that the Ajuri must have thought he had…no wonder the old lord had been put out with him, and now thought him more cunning than he was.

  “Interesting,” he said. The member of his staff that had been sitting here at a table all afternoon proved to be a fount of information on everything in the house, while Banichi and Jago had been busy keeping him safe and Tano had been back and fort
h in the room, running clandestine errands, one had a slight suspicion, on the backstairs servants’ routes and wherever else he could reach within the secret ways of the building. Unlike Banichi and Jago, who had gone to deep space with him, Tano and Algini had spent the last two years at the station, hearing all the reports of disaster from the world below their feet, developing their own picture of politics as all order fell apart. Trust Algini to have a very good grasp of where lines of power ran.

  “Interesting indeed, the position the Ajuri now find themselves in,” Algini said, “and their staff is making very cautious approaches to Tatiseigi’s and to the dowager’s staff.”

  “To the dowager’s?”

  “She is respected,” Algini said, which was no secret from anyone, “and feared. You are the unadded sum in many equations, nandi. We have received approaches from out on the lawn. So has Lord Keimi of the Taibeni, at no few points. Now that you and the dowager are back in the numbers, there is some feeling of familiarity in the structure of the world, as certain people see it. This restores a sort of balance of tensions which some find comfortable.”

  “One can see that,” he murmured. Certain ones might oppose him, but he was a known quantity. “The heir, however, is a new quantity.”

  “Indeed,” Algini said, “and he is young, nandi. Youth is always a cipher, when it comes to what his influence may become. You are the fixed point. No one believes you will break man’chi.”

  “I?”

  “You will not leave the aiji,” Algini said.

  “Or the heir,” he said. “Or the dowager.”

  Algini nodded. “A point of certainty. You are stability in these matters. More than the dowager herself, you represent a simple, sure number in all calculations. This reassures even your enemies, nandi.”

  He was startled into a grim, soft laugh. “One is glad to perform a service.”

  “A vital service, at a time when the aiji has issued a call.”

  His heart sped. “Has he, Gini-ji?”

  “As of this morning,” Algini said. “But certain people were already coming.”

  “The Kadagidi have issued a call, on their side.”

  “Momentum. Momentum and the will of the people. One wonders where the summons will bring a muster.”

  “Well,” Bren said, “I shall not leave him, and he will not leave the people out there, and you for some reason a human can never understand will not leave me, so here we sit, one supposes, until the sun goes down, deeply appreciative of your analysis, Gini-ji, ever so appreciative.”

  “Salads,” Algini said.

  He had to laugh. He had to laugh aloud, touched to the heart. “Extraordinary salads, Gini-ji.”

  Algini was a grim fellow. But he smiled, all the same. “Aiji-ma,” he said, not nandi. Not nand’ paidhi, not even Bren-ji. And one could hardly believe one had just heard that word. He supposed he stared at Algini for a second.

  “Nand’ Bren.” Cajeiri bumped the other side of his chair. “Antaro says she and Jegari can go downstairs and get us food for tonight, if we are not going to great-uncle’s dinner. They will ask,” he added, as if to dispel any notion of theft.

  “One might accompany the youngsters,” Algini said wryly, “and lay hands on a bottle of brandy.”

  As if he and Cajeiri had not eaten their fill of teacakes. But in all the arrangements for getting staff fed, staff had had much more opportunity to drop belowstairs and take advantage of the offerings. If there was a buffet laid out, the two Taibeni youngsters, otherwise without useful employment, might carry a basket up here in reasonable safety. “Go with them, Gini-ji. But not,” he added, and got only that far before Cajeiri dropped crosslegged onto the floor at his side.

  “Not me,” Cajeiri said glumly. “Never me.”

  4

  The sun sank. It grew dark out, or dark in that last stage of twilight. A human eye might take it for full night. Not an atevi eye.

  And the hammering went on downstairs, incessant, which argued either workmen driven by Lord Tatiseigi’s fraying temper (unimproved by the family discussion, one might guess) or workmen on a project on which security depended. Presumably dinner was in the offing down there.

  Jegari and Antaro, with Algini, missing for the better part of an hour, attended Adaro and Timani up from downstairs, a party loaded with paper-wrapped packets and baskets redolent of savory meats—and clinking with bottles far in excess of the promised brandy.

  “Ah,” Banichi said, diverted from his small wiring project. Bren would have sworn he could have no appetite of his own after all that sugar and tea, but his appetite perked up at that wonderful smell.

  “The lords have gone to supper, nand’ Bren,” Algini reported. “And it seems at least that all parties have gone to the dining hall. The argument beforehand was loud, but they are all at the same table.”

  Encouraging, at least. And the kitchens, whether with Adaro’s and Timani’s urging, or because they had cooked up a precautionary surplus of food, had provided them a very handsome supper, which one had to trust.

  Adaro and Timani began to search for a serving surface, the apartment not being provided with a dining table. The computer table was obliged to serve that purpose, and several chairs besides, holding the various dishes. The informal arrangement left only the bed and the floor for sitting, but there were glasses and utensils enough, and bottles of ice water as well as wine and the fine brandy.

  The servants served while the household sat cross-legged on the floor, Cajeiri as well, lord and bodyguard and servants all safely below the level of the windows as night came down, as they appreciated the first morsels of a grand dinner which Algini had assured them had come from the same dishes which served the whole household—and Banichi and Jago instructed the sober Taibeni young folk in the subtle arts of assassination the while, while pointing out some of the features of the black box, and some delicacies of the art of poison. It was to be noted that Algini had a com-plug in his ear since he had come back; affairs in the kitchens were not all he had been arranging.

  “Poisoning rarely happens in a well-managed kitchen,” Jago said cheerfully, “and this kitchen, whatever the failings of the electronics in the house, does not allow people to wander through at liberty. The cook manages the pantry under lock and key, and only allows observation, not touching. If one wishes food, one obtains it from the table outside.”

  “Could you not break in, Banichi-ji?” Cajeiri asked, appealing to the greatest authority in his young experience.

  “Probably,” Banichi said in some amusement, which gave Bren a certain niggling doubt about the bite currently in his mouth, but, hell, he said to himself, in a household which had just purged itself of all the Kadagidi spies it knew about, likely if there was one topflight man in all Tatiseigi’s household, it was the cook, seeing that Tatiseigi was still alive despite his long-standing feuds and the onetime presence of Murini under this roof. The cook of a stately home was up on food safety—in all its senses. Witness Bindanda, his own cook and staffer back on station—who was incidentally connected with Tatiseigi’s household. There was a man who managed his kitchen with great skill.

  A little polite laughter, and the servants offered the next course.

  Downstairs, the hammering stopped. Abruptly.

  Everyone in their little circle stopped eating and cast bemused looks into the ether, and then toward each other.

  Someone of note from the camp might have walked in past the workmen. Possibly Rejiri had just arrived with a sizeable delegation.

  Or not.

  “Did we hear a vehicle engine?” His staff’s ears were far keener than his.

  “Yes,” Banichi said. “Not the first such, but a moment ago, yes.”

  “Guild,” Algini said. He still had the com device in his ear, and suddenly had an intent, distant look. “A Guild delegation has arrived.”

  News of it had just reached Algini’s downstairs contact.

  “It has come, then,” Banichi said sole
mnly.

  Bren swallowed the last of the bite he had in his mouth and looked at Banichi, who was looking at Jago as if they both understood something and then at Tano. As if everyone in the universe would understand, if they had any wit at all.

  “From Shejidan?” he was obliged to ask the stupid but necessary question.

  “They are expected,” Algini said, dinner forgotten as he followed the information flowing into his ear from presumably secure systems. Or Tatiseigi’s compromised ones.

  But withholding the knowledge of Guild official presence would not be in their interest. The Kadagidi would hardly attack with Guild officials in the house. All sense of that seemed off.

  “Perhaps the Guildmaster received my letter,” Bren said quietly, hopefully, while Cajeiri positively had his lip bitten in his teeth, restraining questions. His eyes were taking in everything.

  “Perhaps he has,” Banichi said.

  Bren moved his napkin from his lap. “I should go downstairs.”