Inheritor

by C. J. Cherryh

  Jase moved then, carefully, ducking his head, and stepped down into the shadow of a building, clinging to the van and evading the offered help of the servants. He stood there a moment, then sighted on the door and started walking.

  Bren walked with him, looking at the open, iron-bound doors; at the dim interior ahead of them and around them as they walked in.

  Malguri was the oldest fortress still functioning, he knew that. This place had a dusty, deserted look as if it hadn't quite been maintained on the same level as Malguri. Like Mogari-nai, it was supposedly from the Age of Exploration, younger than Malguri: it had supported the fort at Mogari-nai, when atevi had started trading around the Southern Rim, when East and West had made contact, when they'd gotten out on the seas in wooden ships and rival associations had shot at each other with cannon.

  But by what he was seeing he understood in a new light what Ilisidi had said to him when she proposed it, that Saduri wasn't on the regular tour circuit, and was not legally permitted to hikers — a security advantage, she said, which Malguri hadn't had.

  This fortress might not be as old as Malguri, but he wouldn't lay odds on the plumbing. That banner on the roof, too, said something about the way things were put together. No regular bracket for the staff. No regular provision for such a thing — he could imagine one of the dowager's 'young men' climbing up there to do it, out of the reckless enthusiasm and the loyalty they showed for Ilisidi.

  And for the sheer hell of it.

  Malguri's hall had been lively and full of interesting banners. This one —

  — had one of the ceiling beams lying crashed onto the floor at the rear of the hall. Workmen's scaffolding occupied that end, which, with no interior lighting and with only the light from the door, was brown with dust.

  Even Banichi and Jago stopped in some dismay.

  Where is the beach, indeed? Bren asked himself.

  What have I let us in for?

  "Nadi Bren." One of the dowager's servants came from a side hall, and said, with the usual calm of the dowager's servants, "Nadiin. One will guide you to your rooms."

  * * *

  CHAPTER 16

  « ^ »

  Down a long hall to the side, dust everywhere — but the dust on the stone floor showed a clear track of feet having passed this way recently. Like bread crumbs in the wilderness, Bren thought to himself as he and Jase, behind Ilisidi's man, climbed a short flight of stairs where Banichi, following them, surely had to duck his head.

  Jago had stayed behind in the downstairs, having something to do with Tano and Algini and the baggage in the second van, Bren thought.

  The stone of the stair treads was bowed, worn by the use of atevi feet — old. Older than the use of cannon, perhaps. He wasn't sure how long it took to wear away stone. The floor above was stone, which he had learned from Malguri meant a barrel vault beneath, in this age predating structural steel.

  The hall above had no windows, no light but what came from a lamp at the side of the stairs and what filtered up from the open door below. It was increasingly shadowy at the top of the stairs, pitch black down the hall, and the servant — if such he was: he looked very fit — opened the second door of a small row of doors, and showed them into a hole of a room, into which the thin stream of white daylight from a glassless window-slit showed the outlines of a bed and a table. The draft from that window was cool spring air. It moved languidly past them, doubtless to find the door downstairs.

  The servant struck a match and light flared in a golden glow on an atevi face, atevi hands, a candle on a rough (but recently dusted) table. A small vase stood next the candle with three prickly-looking flowers that looked to be from the hillside. The wick took fire, and illumined a rubble stone wall, a deeply shadowed but smallish room, bare timbers helping the masonry hold up a doubtless weary roof.

  "There are more candles," the servant said, and indicated a small wicker basket at the end of the same table. "And matches, nandiin. The dowager requests one have a caution of fire." The man presented him a small bundle of matches, neatly tied with ribbon. "One regrets that the inner halls are under restoration and not pleasant. Ordinarily, guests would be lodged there, but there are plenty of blankets. The accommodation is at the end of the hall and it does function. Please follow me."

  The paidhi sensed intense unhappiness in Jase's silence and chose not to touch it off with a question. "Down the hall, then," he said, as cheerfully as he could. Banichi was waiting in the doorway, and one wondered whether he had had any warning.

  Possibly Banichi was thinking, You fool, Bren-ji. But Banichi gave no hint at all in his mildly pleasant expression. It might be more comfortable than a rooftop in the much warmer peninsula. Might be. Marginally.

  And this was the vacation spot he'd chosen.

  The putative servant took several candles from the basket and lit the first from the lighted candle on the table, then carried it outside and lit another, which, as they all stood watching, doubtless with separate thoughts of the situation, the servant set in a wall-sconce.

  "Nand' Banichi, your room, and nand' Jago's," the servant said, lit a candle and set it by that door to relieve the darkness of this tunnel; and so they went; the room for Tano and Algini was next.

  On the other side of this hall, although there were doors, as best the paidhi could judge the geometry of the building he'd seen from outside there were no windows: the rooms they were not using must be little more than stone coffins with no source of light but the candle, rooms dependent on mortar imperfections or God knew what for ventilation. He supposed, since he had challenged Ilisidi to challenge Jase, they were lucky not to be lodged on that side of the hall.

  And the euphemistically named accommodation? The servant opened the door on a room with cold spring daylight showing through a hole in the stone floor. With the stack of towels. And a dipper and bucket.

  The servant explained, for Jase's benefit. The paidhi well understood. He wasn't sure Jase quite believed it was the toilet.

  The one at Malguri had had indoor heat. This didn't. It had an updraft.

  Malguri had had glass windows. Fireplaces in palatial suites, however old the plumbing. The distinction between Historical Site and Oldest Continuously Occupied Site began to come through to him with a great deal more clarity.

  Jase hadn't said a word. He was probably in shock, and walked along tamely as they all retraced their steps, the supposed servant in the lead, back down the candlelit hall toward their room — their — singular room.

  Their — singular — room, which to his memory had one — singular — and not very wide — bed.

  It was not polite for a guest to complain of accommodations. It was just not done. One assumed one's host knew exactly what her guests were being put into, and one smiled and made no complaint.

  He'd said trustingly to Ilisidi, in a private meeting in her luxurious study, in the Bu-javid apartment she maintained, "Aiji-ma, Jase doesn't understand atevi. You taught me. And I daren't go so far from the capital as Malguri. Might I impose on you, aiji-ma, to linger a little at Taiben this season? Perhaps to go over to the seashore and show Jase-paidhi the land as it was? I've promised him the sea. I've undertaken to provide him that — and your help would be best of all, aiji-ma."

  There'd been one of those silences.

  "What happened to 'Sidi-ji?' " Ilisidi had asked with a quirk of her age-seamed lips and a lift of a brow, meaning why didn't he use that familiar, intimate address he'd a number of times dared with her.

  "I think," he'd said, knowing he was fencing with a very dangerous opponent, at a very unsettled time in the aiji's court, "I thought I should show some decency of address in such an outrageous request of your time, nand' dowager."

  And Ilisidi had said, after an apparent moment of thought, one thin knuckle under a still-firm though wrinkled chin: "I think — I think that if you want the seashore, nadi, why, we should go to the seashore. Why not Saduri?"

  He hadn't thought it was a site
open to the public. He'd foolishly said so.

  And: "We are not the public," Ilisidi had said, in that aristocratic mode that could move mountains.

  So here they were. Tano, Jago, and Algini, with a number of putative servants, came up the steps at the end of the hall with a fairly light load of baggage.

  "The rest of the baggage is going to be stored downstairs," Jago said cheerfully.

  Bren didn't feel cheerful. Tano looked bewildered, and Bren didn't dare look at Jase, just depressed the iron latch on his door to let their personal luggage in.

  "Is there a key for this door, nadi?" he asked Ilisidi's servant.

  "No, nand' paidhi. That room has no lock. But one assures you, the entire perimeter of this site is very closely guarded, so one may be confident all the same."

  Bren rather expected Banichi or Jago to say something caustic about that situation. But by that example, and their silence, he wondered whether their rooms had locks.

  One servant took his and Jase's baggage in. Jago handed him his computer, which was not going to find a recharge socket in this building, but which he on no account allowed to remain outside his immediate guard, especially in a premises occupied by uncle Tati-seigi. That servant left. He walked in, Jase walked in, and he shut the door, leaving them in the white daylight from the window and the golden glow from the candle, which had by a whisper of a flame survived that gust from the closing door.

  "Nadi," Jase began with, he thought, remarkable restraint, "what are they doing? Why are we here?"

  "Well," he said, and tried to think of words Jase knew.

  "I," Jase began again, this time in his own language. He was clearly now fighting for breath — and probably falling down that interlinguistic interface again.

  Bren said sharply, "I'm sorry."

  "Where is the ocean, nadi?"

  "Clearly not here. Let me explain."

  "In my language! Please!"

  He'd said that in Ragi. Which said Jase was at least getting the reflexes under control.

  "Five fast minutes, then, in Mosphei'. You remember how dangerous I said Tatiseigi was? — Well, the aiji-dowager is the focus of every anti-Tabini dissident in the country. She has the legitimacy Tatiseigi doesn't. Except for the legislature voting the other way after her husband died, she could have been aiji. Except for them voting for her grandson after her son died, she could have been aiji. She could step in tomorrow without the country falling apart, and she's the only one who'd avoid an unthinkable bloodbath, but she's also —" One was never sure a room lacked bugs. And was always playing for an audience. "She's also fair and honorable. She's been exceedingly moral in all her dealings with the welfare of the Association. It would have been a lot easier for her to have raised a civil war against her grandson. But she didn't, and I'm alive to say so. So keep objections to a minimum. And for God's sake don't make any objections to her. I asked her to show you atevi life as it was before humans came!"

  "This is it, then, this falling-down ruin?"

  "You listen to me, Jase."

  Jase shoved him, hard, and he grabbed Jase's coat to prevent a swing at him.

  "I've been listening to you," Jase said, trying to free himself, and shoved again.

  "You're being stupid, stupid is what you're being! Stand still!"

  Jase clawed at his hand and he let go. And they stood and stared at each other, Jase panting for breath, himself very much on the verge of hitting him, someone, anyone.

  "All right," Jase said. "All right, I'll go along with this. I'll play your rules, your game, let's just keep smiling."

  "Let me explain, before we switch languages again. If you insult this woman, you could have a war. If you insult this woman you could be killed. I am not exaggerating. We are dealing with cultural differences here. We are dealing with people who don't owe anything to whatever code of ethics lies in our mutual past. So whatever happens, you get a grip on that temper, Mr. Graham. You get a grip on it or I'll suggest to our staff they feed you some tea that'll have you throwing up your guts for three days and ship you back to the apartment before you say something to kill several million people! Do I make myself clear?"

  "No guts yourself?"

  "No brains, Mr. Graham? If I hit you, and I'm tempted, God! I'm tempted; they'll see the bruises — which I'd rather not, for your reputation and future —"

  Jase swung. Bren didn't even think about doing it — he hit Jase hard. Jase grabbed his coat, Bren blocked a punch with one arm, hit Jase in the gut, and had to block another punch.

  They hit the table together, holding on to each other. The candle fell, they both overbalanced and went down, and Bren writhed his way to his knees, blind, angry, and being hit by an idiot he wanted to kill. Before he got a grip on Jase, Jase got a grip on him, and they knelt there on the floor like two total fools, each with a deathgrip on the other's coat, sleeve, arm, shoulder, whatever.

  "Get up," he said. "We've put the damn candle out. Are you trying to burn the building down?"

  "Damn you."

  He shook at Jase. Jase was braced. They were that way for several more breaths.

  "Are they going to walk in and find us like this?" he asked Jase. "Get up!"

  "Let go."

  "No way in hell."

  "Truce. Let go."

  He didn't let go. He started to get up, Jase started to get up, and they got up leaning on each other, still holding on to each other, managing a slow, mistrustful disengagement.

  Fool, he said to himself. He wasn't surprised. He wasn't happy, either, as he trusted Jase's common sense enough to pick up the candles, the extinguished one in the holder and the entire basket of them that had been overset.

  He took a match, relit the candle. They'd delivered body blows, at least of those that had landed; and hadn't done each other visible damage, give or take dust on their clothes. The candle and the wan light from the window showed him Jase with hair flying loose, collar rumpled, a sullen look. He figured it had as well be a mirror of himself at the moment.

  "We have to go to dinner tonight."

  "In this wreckage?"

  "This is a Historic Monument, Jasi-ji, and I suggest if she declares it's a palace on the moon you bow and agree that it's very fine and you're delighted to be here."

  There was a long silence from the other side.

  "Yes, sir," Jase said.

  "I'm not sir."

  "Oh, but I thought you'd taken that back. You are sir or you aren't in this business, so make up your mind!"

  "Damn that talk. This is not your ship. You're supposed to be doing a job, you're not doing it, you damn near created a rift in the government and I brought you here to patch the holes, the gaping holes, in your knowledge of these people, their customs, their language, and your sensitivity to a vast, unmapped world of experience to which you're blind, Mr. Graham. I suggest you say thank you, put yourself back to rights, and don't expect atevi to do the job you volunteered for. They weren't born to understand you, they're on their planet, enjoying their lives quite nicely without your input, and I suggest if you approach atevi officials who owe their precious scant time to their own people, you do so politely, appreciate their efforts to understand you, they choose to make such efforts, or I'll see you out of here."

  "Thank you," Jase said coldly.

  "Thank you for waiting to blow up."

  "Don't push me. Don't push me. You need my good will."

  "Do I? You could have an accident. They'd send me another."

  There was a small, shocked silence. Then: "You're an atevi official. Is that the way you think of yourself?"

  "You don't question me, mister. When it comes to relations with the atevi, I am sir, to you, and you do as you're told. You and your rules-following. This is the time for it, this is the time in your whole life you'd better follow the damn rules, and now you want to do things your own way! What do I need to diagram for you? Where did you get the notion you know what in hell's going on? Or did I miss a revelation from God?"
r />   A long, long silence, this time. Jase didn't look him in the eye. He stared at the floor, or at dust on his clothing, which he brushed off, at the light from the window, at anything in the world but him.

  "I think we should go back to Shejidan," Jase said to the window. "This isn't going to help."

  "Well, it's not quite convenient at the moment to go back. You asked for this, and you've got it. So be grateful."

  "The hell! You've lied to me."

  "In what particular?"

  A silence. A silence that went on and on while Jase stared off into nowhere and fought for composure.

  There was a small rap at the door.

  "Nadi?" Bren asked, wishing the interruption had had better timing, to prevent the incident in the first place. He shouldn't have hit Jase. It hadn't helped. The man had lost his father. He was on a hair-trigger as it was. He'd chosen this particular time to bear down on the language, probably because of his father's death; and now he didn't know where he was: he was temporarily outside rational expression.

  The door opened.

  "Is there a difficulty, nadiin?" Banichi asked — Banichi, who was lodged next door, and, if there was anyone besides Ilisidi's chief of security, Cenedi, who was likely to have heard the entire episode, he'd about bet Banichi had the equipment in his baggage and would use it.

  "No," he said. "Thank you, Banichi-ji. Is everyone settled? What's our schedule?"

  "A light dinner at sunset. An early start, at sunrise."

  "We'll be ready. Thank you, Banichi-ji."

  "Nadi." The door closed.

  "He heard us," Bren said quietly.

  "I thought they took orders from you," Jase said in a surly tone.

  "No. They don't. One of a great many things you don't know, isn't it?"