Inheritor

by C. J. Cherryh

  Jase also had that tendency to assume a rule could be neither questioned nor broken, a trait that came of the ship-culture Jase had come from, Bren very much suspected, one of those little points of difference between the ship and Mospheira. He and Jase almost shared a language, and met towering problems centered in wrong assumptions. On one level this had all the irrational feel of one of those.

  But the misunderstanding wasn't trivial, this time.

  And it still didn't answer the question why Jase hadn't been informed by the ship via Mogari-nai. And it didn't answer the possibility the aiji's staff had realized something was wrong and hadn't informed him. He wasn't sure Manasi had erred; he wasn't sure, either, that the staff had held anything back from him, but his instincts for trouble were awake.

  Tano's note went on to a second item of the business he'd laid on his staff last night: I forwarded your note to nand' Eidi. The aiji asks we advise his staff as soon as you've finished breakfast. He said he cannot be precise as to the time the aiji will have available to meet, nor should you be kept from your business (it was the lordly you; Tano never seemed to know what to do with their familiarity on paper.) One may have to wait and that will be arranged.

  Also, do you recall that there is a live television interview scheduled today at noon? I asked nand' Eidi yesterday should it be postponed or taken on tape, and nand' Eidi says the aiji believes any deviation in your schedule would be interpreted by the public at large not as your legitimate wish for rest but as the Bu-javid security staff's reaction to the general security alert, an intimation of concern the aiji does not wish to convey.

  It is therefore the aiji's wish that you conduct the interview on schedule. I state the aiji's words. If we may be of service, we will carry another message.

  "Thank you, nadiin-ji," he said, in the plural, figuring that both Tano and Algini had shared duty last night and lost sleep over the Jase matter; the message to the aiji had been much the simpler case, but pursued before he had even thought of it, thank God for Tano's keeping his schedule straight.

  Then there was the second message cylinder, which staff, presumably, had already opened: the seal was cracked. The scarred gold case had a seal he didn't recognize, but evidently it was a message the clerical staff as well as his household thought he should see, on a priority evidently equal to the Jase matter.

  The message he unrolled, as Saidin was serving the muffins and another servant was pouring tea, bore the written heading of the lord of Dur-wajran. That was the unknown seal.

  That matter, he said to himself: the pilot who'd nearly collided with their jet.

  Nand' paidhi, it read in a less than elegant hand, one wishes most earnestly for your good will. The unfortunate circumstance (misspelled) of the encounter was unwished by me because of error and I wish to take all responsibility personally. Please do not take offense at my household. I did not mean to hit your plane. I am solely (misspelled) to blame and offer profoundest regrets at my stupidity.

  It was signed by one Rejiri, with a clan heraldry he took for the seal of Dur-wajran.

  "This was the pilot? How old is he?"

  "Young," Tano said. "I'd be surprised if he's twenty. He brought the message to the residential security post with flowers. On policy, they declined the flowers and sent them to the public display area but accepted the message." Tano added, then, in the manner of a thoroughly ridiculous proposition. "He wanted to come upstairs."

  "What are we talking about?" Banichi asked.

  "A pilot brought his plane very close to ours yesterday," Bren said. "I take it he's not still downstairs."

  "I wouldn't think so," Tano said. "They say, however, he was insistent."

  "Young," Algini said. "One thinks some of his distress may be the impoundment of the aircraft, which may bring his parents to Shejidan. He may wish to ask you to clear the record. I would not advise you meet with him or to grant that request."

  "He," Tano added, "has a record of small aerial incidents around the coast near his home. He had no business bringing the plane to the largest airport in the world."

  "True." He had campaigned for stricter enforcement of the ATC rales. He passed the note to Jago, as the most forgiving member of his security. "I hope they won't deal too harshly with him." One could get into a great deal of trouble coming too close to the aiji's residence during a security alert. "Please have someone advise him I take no personal offense and that the Bu-javid staff has more urgent business."

  "The staff has tried to impress the gravity of matters on him," Tano said, "and to make clear to him that he should pay closer attention to public events. — One does take the impression that this young man lacks seriousness of purpose."

  "Why is the paidhi involved with this person, nadi?" Banichi wanted to know, and the potential rebuke to junior security was implied in that 'nadi.' "And what, in full, happened?"

  "An ATC violation," Tano said. The note went from Jago on to Banichi. "We are treating it seriously, nandi, at least to be sure there was nothing more than seems. It seems to be a young island pilot — the lord of Dur's son."

  "Ah," Banichi said, as if that explained any folly in the world. Banichi reached for more toast and, so supplied, perused the note and looked at the seal.

  "A minor thing," Algini said. "The authorities will advise the parents. — I would advise, nadi Bren, against accepting the boy's apology. Apology to a person of your rank should come from the lord of Dur first, then the boy."

  "I understand," Bren said as nand' Saidin offered him curdled eggs and pastry. Considering the necessity of meeting with Tabini, it might be one of those days mostly marked by waiting. Tabini's day looked to be one of those unpredictable ones, with various emergencies coming in. "Thank you, nadi. The paidhi would have offended half the world by now, and all the noble houses would have filed on him, if he didn't have staff to keep him in order."

  "This is a young fool," Banichi said, laying the note aside. "Don't concern yourself with him, Bren-ji. This is for other agencies to pursue. Meanwhile we will be trying to solve the other questions you posed."

  The other questions, meaning the situation among the lords, post-Saigimi: atevi politics.

  Meanwhile he had a computer and a briefcase full of plain, unadorned work he had to do for the space program.

  And he had to deal with Jase personally. His staff said there was no impediment they could locate at

  Mogari-nai with messages to which they could gain access, which ought to be everything; and they did indicate that Jase hadn't pushed Manasi to carry his request through channels. The request still might not have been granted.

  But primarily he had to unravel what in bloody hell was going on inside the ship and why Jase had gotten a message that personal from a source who had apparently been notified by the ship in preference to Jase.

  That just damn well wouldn't do, he thought, not in that personal matter, not, by any stretch of that policy, in other matters regarding the business on which Yolanda and Jason had come down to earth. There was the center of the matter, not Jase's father, however tragic it was on a personal level.

  Meanwhile Banichi and Tano and Algini had fallen to discussing the state of building security and whether they were going to need to establish a service alert on the third floor (a decision which rested in the hands of Tabini's staff, and not their own) regarding the scaffold, which rumor on the staff held was going to be dismantled tomorrow.

  Tomorrow, Bren thought, pricking up his ears. What a glorious piece of news. The workmen finished. No more scaffolding.

  "No more barrier to the breakfast room?" he asked. "They're going to take that ugly door down?"

  "One hopes, paidhi-ji," Tano said.

  "But," Jago said, "there's a Marid lord arriving today to press a claim with the aiji."

  "Or," Banichi said, "he wishes to escape the politics of his district. Note he hasn't applied for an audience."

  "Who is this?" Bren asked.

  "Badissuni, by name," A
lgini interjected. "And one wonders, nand' paidhi, whether it's an honest request."

  "One hardly thinks so," Jago said. "I vastly distrust it. I would protest that door being removed."

  Banichi had a very sober expression. So, Bren trusted, did he.

  "The press says," Tano said, "that lord Badissuni is escaping the politics of his district. I think the press was handed that information."

  "A fair guess," Banichi said, and tapped the table with a sharp egg-knife balanced delicately over his thumb. "My bet? He wants the press to say so. But he wants them following the story so if Tabini-aiji tosses him out of his ancestral apartments in the Bu-javid he can make politics at home."

  "So will Tabini do it?" Bren asked. "Pitch him out, I mean?"

  "The Hagrani of the Marid have an apartment on the floor below, at the corner," Algini said. "Quite close, nand' paidhi. One hopes he doesn't ask to take up residence. But we fear he will. The balcony is standing open for the paint to dry and the room to air. This is not a good security condition. If they take down the security panel we have the same condition as before, glass doors, a balcony, no difficulty if all residents of this wing are reliable. But it's not alone these glass doors. It's the aiji's apartment next door. This is a serious exposure. Saigimi did not use the apartment. He let it to lord Geigi, who is not in residence, nor will be."

  "The aiji should forbid his opening that apartment," Jago said under her breath. "This man is dangerous. He should be sent home unheard. We'll have official functions here in the building, we'll doubtless have windows open. This is an invitation perhaps the aiji is consciously extending. But I protest it when it comes near you, Bren-ji."

  It was sensitively close to this apartment, and close to the aiji, was what Jago was saying. And the glass doors of the breakfast room had already proved a flimsy shield against bullets. That was why they were repairing the lily frieze.

  "I'm here to rest," was Banichi's pronouncement on the situation, meaning, Bren supposed, and agreed, that they could leave that to others to decide, and enjoy their time in safety.

  So Banichi had another helping. And with Banichi, Tano, and Algini at the table, all of them in their uniform black, all in shirt-sleeves so as not to scar the delicate chairs with the silver-studded coats, the paid-hi had his favorite breakfast, thought over his unavoidable problems, and, while the very large bowl of curdled eggs vanished, along with half jars of marmalade and various muffins, listened to his staff discuss in their cryptic way. He pricked up his ears again as the conversation made him absolutely certain the Saigimi business had come as a complete shock to Tano and Algini and that the orders which had caused it had not come at all unexpected to Banichi or Jago. Banichi wouldn't have let that much slip, he well knew, if Banichi didn't trust the entire company, and that had to include madam Saidin.

  Or they were setting something up.

  Since — he realized at that instant — Saidin herself was doing all the serving.

  He was sitting in a room totally occupied by the Assassins' Guild, including madam Saidin, as shop talk went on about this and that, involving Guild policy on the recent assassination, the configuration of the apartments, and the aiji's schedule, on the security of which the paidhi's as well as the aiji's life and safety depended.

  Tiburi, the wife of Saigimi, and her daughter Cosadi, one also learned, had bolted for Direiso's estate as Saigimi's brother Ajresi seized power in the Tasigin Marid.

  "Don't count that as the final skirmish," was Jago's observation.

  "Badissuni," Banichi said, "may be a messenger from Ajresi to Tabini."

  Queasy thought to have with the breakfast eggs — uncommon discussion to have flowing around him, but he took his own internal temperature and decided he wasn't nearly as shocked as he ought to be about the recent assassination.

  And he'd just thought — maybe it would be a lot better if an accident befell several more people associated with Saigimi.

  He was slipping toward a certain callous view of these things; and did he lose something by that change in himself, or gain something, when he envisioned the fear Tabini could strike if he decided to kill the first messenger of peace and by that action to signal (as in the machimi) his wish for Saigimi's Hagrani clan to remove its own new leadership in order to have peace with the aiji? Clans apparently had done it in the past.

  But Tabini wouldn't make that demand. At least the paidhi didn't think so. Tabini continually asked the filers of Intent to choose recourse to the courts instead. It would say something very unusual for the aiji who backed judicial resort as policy to choose a second assassination.

  Possibly Tabini's own moderate position on this issue had placed him in a bind and threatened more bloodshed.

  And Tabini was dealing with an Edi lord. That was another consideration: the ethnic division. The fact that Tabini was Ragi, and the majority of the peninsula, the most industrialized section of the nation, was Edi.

  There were reasons for moderation, then, rather than touching off ethnic jealousies; and Tabini knew what he was doing first in taking out Saigimi and then in leaving alive a man Jago in her own judgment called dangerous.

  Jago clearly wanted the assignment in Badissuni's case, should Tabini decide to take the harder line.

  Don't count that as the final skirmish, Jago had just said, regarding Ajresi's seizure of power. Meaning Badissuni was going to take out Ajresi? Banichi said Badissuni was here as Ajresi's messenger — while the other heir to the Edi lordship of the Marid, Cosadi, the daughter, was currently sheltering in Direiso's household.

  Ajresi might not like Tabini, but he'd definitely take alarm at Cosadi running to Direiso. He'd be watching his doors and windows for certain, since Direiso could give Cosadi a springboard to try to take the Marid and the peninsula from Ajresi.

  So damn right Ajresi might send someone to hold talks with Tabini. Jago believed Badissuni was unreliable and didn't want him near; but Banichi said a) the heirship wasn't settled yet and b) Badissuni was a messenger.

  If Ajresi claimed the clan by force of arms and sat as lord in the Hagrani household, he had no percentage at all in dealing with Direiso so long as she was sheltering the other Hagrani heir from Ajresi's assassins, bet on it. Ajresi had, at least for public consumption, detested Saigimi's previous adventurous dealings with Direiso — the attempt against the paidhiin, which had cost the clan so dearly.

  And as a result of Damiri's association with Tabini, which had gone public in that attack, now Direiso's association — the Kadigidi, the Atageini, the Tasigin Marid and the lords of Wingin in the peninsula and Wiigin in the northern reach — was threatened. Damiri was the Atageini heir as well as Direiso's neighbor, and the day Damiri succeeded her uncle as head of the Atageini clan, Direiso's days were numbered.

  Tabini's removing Saigimi, whose heir, if it was Ajresi, would take the Marid and Wingin out of her association, meant Direiso was twice threatened. If Ajresi once secured an understanding with Tabini, the two holdings, the Marid and Wingin, wouldn't become independent from Tabini — they'd never get that — but possibly they'd be held with a far lighter grip. They'd win rights, even economic consideration. Ajresi could win an immense advantage by talking to Tabini early and very politely in his rise to power.

  Ajresi might well be talking to Geigi politely, too, and mending fences with another Edi lord increasingly important in the peninsula and high in Tabini's favor.

  He very much hoped so. That could be immensely important to the space program.

  As for why Banichi might have been selected for an assignment in the peninsula, Banichi was from Talidi Province, right next to the Marid. His house, whatever it was (and Banichi had never said) was at least well-acquainted with the situation.

  "What do you think?" he asked Banichi. "Are we under threat from the south now?"

  "Not from the Marid," Banichi said. "Ajresi isn't that crazy."

  "If he relies on Badissuni he is," Jago said.

  "Make the man commit in p
ublic to serve Ajresi as lord?" Banichi returned. "Badissuni had as soon eat glass. But he has no choice but represent Ajresi; and he'll be dead by fall."

  "Do you know that?" Bren was so startled he forgot the softening nadi and spoke intimately and into Guild business at the same time.

  Banichi didn't give a flicker of offense. "Of course Ajresi might be dead by fall, instead, if he doesn't move first. So everything Badissuni negotiates with Tabini is also for himself, if he gets Ajresi before Ajresi gets him. I don't think he will, though. I know who's working for Ajresi."

  "Simpler for us to do it," Jago said glumly. "And make Ajresi come in person and beg for himself."

  "I don't think he'll beg," Banichi said. "But a message may already have come from Ajresi signaling Tabini that a public agreement would secure private alliance."

  "Do you know so?" Jago asked, echoing the former query.

  "Say that messages have flown thick and fast between Ajresi and Tatiseigi of the Atageini, and I think that Badissuni is the topic." Banichi finished off his tea. "Dead, I say. Before the snow falls, if Tatiseigi doesn't join Direiso — and Tabini-aiji is too wise to provoke that."

  Saidin was in the doorway, and Banichi said that. Bren's heart gave a thump.

  But it did tell him — Saidin was Damiri's; and Damiri was Tabini's; as Banichi and Jago were. Conspiracy was thick around them. Warfare was going on. One just didn't see lines of cavalry and blazing buildings.

  And hoped one wouldn't.

  The first order of business after breakfast was, Bren decided, to deal with Jase. The staff said Jase was sleeping; and sleeping through breakfast he accepted.

  Jase waking after he'd left and receiving still more information through the staff was a different problem, very like the situation Jase had been presented by Yolanda Mercheson, in point of fact; and that could only add to his distress.

  He knocked on Jase's door. And had no answer.