Inheritor

by C. J. Cherryh

  Meanwhile he tried to catch Jago's eye, but she didn't look at him. On one level, probably not sensible, he feared he'd offended her last night by ducking out in such a hurry, or looked like a fool, or possibly he'd just amused or disappointed her.

  But on another level common sense told him that the little business between himself and Jago last night had had no time to resolve the deeper questions between them, and that he'd been very sensible to be out the door before it became something else under what amounted to the dowager's roof. At the very worst that might have happened, he could have gotten himself into an adventure he was neither emotionally nor personally quite sure of — and possibly she'd invited him I;… in for the simple reason they needed to keep him away i from information. Ironically that reassured him that his own security was involved in whatever was going on. To them he would commit his life without a question.

  Maybe they didn't know that.

  Maybe they didn't understand how he liked Jago, that dreadful word, and was attracted, he began to admit it; and did wonder certain things which could only be resolved by trying them.

  But last night hadn't been that time.

  He handed over his cup as the servants passed back through collecting them. He kept near Jase.

  Fact: they had a young atevi in detention in their midst, an uncertain situation on their hands with Ilisidi, and somebody had been rummaging about the hilltop last night in motorized transport of which there was no sign nor acknowledgement.

  So their lives just might be at some risk, not an uncommon situation in the last year but a situation that didn't need the additional complication of his distraction with Jago.

  He had caught Banichi for one fast question in the upstairs hall: "Is there a reason for this rush? What in hell was going on last night?" and Banichi had said, "None that I know, nothing I can say, but we're going with the dowager, nadi: what dare we say?"

  Banichi had been in an extreme hurry at the time. And Jago had been ahead of both of them. Banichi had only caught up to her in the downstairs hall and then they were out the door.

  Bren looked around now counting heads. Tano and Algini hadn't shown up yet, in the general flow of Ili-sidi's men outside. There were about twenty such men, in all, that he'd counted last night — doubtless a felicitous number, but one rarely saw all of Ilisidi's men on any occasion: the activity of communications and guard that surrounded her was the same as that around Tabini, and the number of them was just not something either Ilisidi or her guards freely unfolded to view.

  He did see that the boy from Dur had come out with them, no longer in handcuffs, just a silent presence in that foolish and very dangerous black clothing he'd chosen, and closely escorted by two guards.

  Presumably, in this outing, this proposed ride out to look at the countryside and to take the air, it was necessary that young Rejiri come along with them. That was very curious.

  But something had Tano and Algini not meeting them out here, not already outside, and that was also curious.

  Possibly Banichi had given them a job to do. A message to run down to the airport or, silly thought, up to Mogari-nai, which not only had the earth station that had monitored the space station for decades; but was the major link in a web of electronic communication.

  It had the earth station and also a set of dishes aimed all along the coast toward Mospheira, as Mospheira aimed a similar array toward the mainland.

  It was a nerve center, his security had informed him, which was run by the Messengers' Guild, which had not been outstandingly cooperative with him, or with Tabini.

  Jase said, in a fit of depression over his father and the party and his own situation, I'd like to go to the ocean. He'd said to himself, foolish as he was, why not go to Geigi's estate for a little fishing, and catch that fabled yellowtail? And maybe a little riding. The mechieti hadn't gone back to Malguri for the summer.

  So he'd gone to the dowager to see was she willing to back him up, with the notion she could teach Jase what he'd learned — and she'd said, well, of course it had made sense to come to the government reserve just across the bay rather than to go to Geigi's house asking hospitality — much more politically sound a move, Geigi could visit them here, by boat, an easy trip, the airport and van service lying just right on the water.

  The hell! Bren thought to himself. He'd not appreciated the vertical scale, when Ilisidi had said the government site practically overlooked the airport.

  He hadn't truly appreciated at all how close it was to Mogari-nai, whose situation atop high bluffs overlooking the sea he did know.

  He hadn't appreciated the involvement of Dur, either, and its proximity to the illicit radio traffic in the north — saying that Dur was near the site was like saying Mospheira was. When you were on the coast there were islands, and nothing was that unreachably far from anywhere else if you wanted to derive trouble from it.

  He hadn't expected the boy from Dur to show up last night.

  But neither had Ilisidi — at least — if she had, she'd pretended well.

  Traffic in the night — that his own security had expected, or not been overly dismayed by, so either it was routine and it was kitchen supplies coming up for some surprise banquet tomorrow, or it was something that lay within their man'chi — and that came down to very few items.

  Knowing Ilisidi's general penchant for intrigue, however, either they were being gotten out for the day so that the cooking aromas wouldn't betray the surprise, or something was damn sure going on. He looked out past the crowd at a vast rolling grassland, gravelly ground with tough clumps of vegetation that grew in what might be quite a fragile ecology, up here on the ocean bluffs.

  One of those national hunting reserves, to look at it. Atevi wouldn't eat commercially produced meat. There were immense tracts where no one built, no rail crossed, no one disturbed the land.

  Perimeter alarms. Electronic fences. This place.

  Had they ever notified the boy's parents, Bren asked himself, shortening his focus to the crowd ahead. Had anyone who might worry any idea the boy was with them?

  He doubted it, the way he began to be concerned that there was something specifically afoot that had taken away Tano and Algini. From the steps, a head count turned up fourteen of Ilisidi's young men besides his small party.

  He had brought in his luggage the gun he very illegally owned — under Treaty law that forbade the paidhi to carry a weapon, a gun that was Tabini's gift — and Banichi's. He hadn't dared leave it in the apartment with uncle Tatiseigi staying there; finding that in the bureau drawer would have sent the old man through the highly ornate ceiling. But he had tucked it into his baggage for safe-keeping, knowing his luggage never had to go through a security check. He'd never believed he'd need it on this outing and now he wished he dared go back inside to get it from his luggage, not that he knew what he'd want it for, but everybody else but himself and Jase, the boy from Dur, and the dowager herself, was armed.

  Wind battered them, sweeping off the sea, across heights broken not even by a fence. Jase was cold, clearly, shoulders hunched, hands in pockets. The wind whipped his hair. He looked up and scowled into the gusts with the cheerfulness with which he might gaze into an enemy's face.

  As a snort and a squall broke out from around the corner of the building.

  Mechieti.

  The huge, black creatures came around the corner, high-shouldered, massive in the forequarters.

  Mechieti, the riding beasts that had carried atevi across the continent, that had carried them into war and on their explorations. Mechieti were vegetarian, mostly. But Jase stepped back up on the porch steps, and he thought about his own safety for the space of a heartbeat before pride made him stand his ground. They were a herd into which only their regular riders walked with assurance. Ilisidi's men started sorting the throng out, as the riders, three in number, who had brought the herd around to the steps added to the company of Ilisidi's men.

  "You'll have the same mechieta as last time, I
think," he said to Jase, who was glum and apprehensive of the whole affair. "Watch the nose. Remember?" Those blunt teeth on the lower jaw, the length of a human hand, could kill a man quite messily, or knock a novice stupidly flat on his back if he was fool enough to press down on the nose of an animal that regularly rooted up its food.

  He counted himself still fortunate to have survived his own initial mistake with the beasts unscarred, and he had warned Jase half a year ago: those rooting tusks were blunt-capped to protect potential riders from being disemboweled in their ordinary herd behavior.

  And if they fought, and this band had, a different kind of cap, war-brass, went on those tusks to make them sharp as knives.

  "Nand' paidhi." One of Ilisidi's young men came to the steps to take charge of Jase, specifically. "Please come with me. Follow closely."

  "Remember to keep your foot back," Bren called after him. Some mechieti learned that feet were in reach of a bite. Jase's mount the last time had come close to succeeding; and he never gave odds that his own twice-upon-a-time mount, Nokhada (his own, by generous gift of the dowager) would disdain such a nasty trick.

  But he was excited. He had looked forward to a ride during this trip as his own enjoyment, far more than any fishing trip, and he was prepared to enjoy it if he could keep Jase from mortal injury. He was anxious to find Nokhada and renew acquaintances, and, thinking he'd spotted her, he went a little into the herd and whistled.

  "Nokhada!" he called out, as riders called to their mounts. "Hada, hada, hada!"

  The head turned, an eye observed, and with the surly inevitability of a landslide the neck followed, the body turned, and the whole beast moved — checked for a moment by another moving mountain.

  Then, with an ill-tempered squeal that thundered against the eardrums, Nokhada did remember him and shoved her way through the others with such energy that one of Ilisidi's men had to pull his mechieta back to avoid a fight.

  Prudence might have said to go for the steps. He stood his ground and Nokhada shoved and butted him in the chest, smelled him over and then rubbed her poll against his shoulder, prompting a human who'd been laid out flat and stunned once to step to the side and jerk smartly on the single rein to get that huge, tusked, and devoted head out of the way of his face.

  The head came up, which indeed would have knocked him a body-length away if not sent him to the hospital, and then as the whole herd shifted, he was in danger of being squeezed between Nokhada and Cenedi's mount. He instantly lifted his riding crop, putting it end-on between Nokhada's shoulder and the oncoming mass. The steel-centered, braided leather crop stood the impact and shied the two apart again: it was a trick he'd learned his last trip out, it worked; and he jerked on the long, loose rein, which had one end fastened on Nokhada's jaw-piece and the other end slip-tied to a ring on the saddle, to get Nokhada to lower her body for a mount-up in the bawling chaos that was their setting-forth.

  They were working out an agreement, he and she, or he was getting better at it. Nokhada extended a foreleg, and the other side of that getting better at it was his speed in tugging the rein's slipknot free of the restraining ring, getting hold of the saddle and being ready when Nokhada heaved upward with a powerful snap that pitched her rider up with the same force.

  The stopping of said force allowed the rider, at apogee, to subside into the saddle if the rider had aimed himself appropriately at the seat and not to the side.

  He had. Jase — was making the mount he'd made when he'd begun, being boosted up and into the saddle of a standing animal. Banichi was up; so was Jago, and the boy, last, who made a mount like Jase's, and made a wild snatch after the rein.

  At that point Nokhada made an unsignaled full about turn and used that momentary inattention to get more rein and start her way toward the front of the column.

  Ilisidi was on the steps, and came down to her mechieta, Babsidi, who held sole possession of the area around him: mechiet'-aiji, herd-leader. Babsidi came to the steps, and at a genteel tap of Ilisidi's riding crop extended a leg as Ilisidi tucked her cane into a holster made for it and stepped aboard, coordinating her step and Babsidi's rise with a grandeur no machimi actor he had ever seen achieved. This was a rider. This was the rider of this animal, for all the years of his dominance over the herd and hers over her followers. This was real; and a human found his breath stuck in his throat as Ilisidi brought Babsidi about, every other mechieta following and adjusting position, and tons of muscle moving as one creature.

  Bren took tight grip on the single rein and held Nokhada hard from advancing, twisting her head as much as her long neck permitted. He pulled her full about and let her straighten out. He could see Jase, whose mechieta Jarani was one of the lower-rank mechieti, a quieter beast which wouldn't put him to a contest for the lead and which wouldn't lose him, either; the boy from Dur had a similarly quiet beast, so he trusted. But Cenedi's mechieta, who was second in the herd, and Nokhada, who thought she should be, were the two principle difficulties in the whole herd. Cenedi, used to being by Ilisidi, stayed with her. But Nokhada, if ridden, would try to get next to Babs if it killed her rider. He kept a tight rein.

  Jase struggled just to keep his balance. He'd been chancy half a year ago and he seemed no abler at balance in the saddle after half a year on the world's surface. He held on with both hands; and Bren reined Nokhada in that direction, able to do so, and, he admitted it, showing off and fiercely proud of it.

  Jase was not happy.

  "If I die on this ride," Jase said, "I hope you can handle the manuals."

  "You won't die. — Foot! Watch it."

  Jase tucked it out of convenient reach of Jarani, who, frustrated in his aim, sidled over and bared teeth at Nokhada.

  Nokhada ripped upward with the tusks at Jarani's shoulder, who returned the favor half-heartedly, and for a moment there was a sort-out all around them; but Jarani gave ground and ducked and bobbed his head as mechieti would who'd just been outmuscled by one of their kind.

  "Damn it!" Jase said, shaken and mistakenly trying to prevent that head movement.

  Meanwhile Banichi and Jago had moved to be near both of them, their security in a cluster of Ilisidi's young men.

  "Where's Tano and Algini?" he asked finally, having something like privacy in the squalling confusion.

  "On duty," was all Banichi said, meaning ask no further.

  So presumably they were staying behind to guard the gear, or the premises, or were catching sleep in preparation for going on a round the clock alternation with Banichi and Jago.

  Which sometimes happened. And from which he might take warning. All hell might break loose here before they got back — and their leaving might be a ploy to get the paidhiin to safety. They might have learned something from the boy that Banichi wasn't saying.

  Ilisidi started them moving, not at a walk, but at least not at a breakneck run, toward the gap in the low fence by which the vans had come in. At that moderate pace Nokhada had no difficulty reaching the front; but even with Jase and the boy from Dur trailing them there was no chance of losing them. Putting a prisoner or a guest atop an associated mechieta was the best way in the world to guarantee that individual stayed in sight and placed himself wherever the herd-status of that particular mechieta encouraged it to travel. You couldn't leave unridden ones behind, either; they'd follow at the expense of any structure that confined them, breaking down rails or battering through gates, and injuring themselves if they couldn't.

  Man'chi. In its most primitive evocation.

  At Malguri he'd seen his first primitive model of the behavior and as a human being achieved his first gut-level understanding, with Nokhada under him battling to keep up, risking life and limb — primal need that had roused enough primal fear of falling and enough personal response to that ton of desperate muscle and bone carrying him at a frantic pace that he'd had no trouble feeling the emotional pitch. His heart still beat harder when he recalled that first chase. He'd been damned glad to have caught up to Ilisidi an
d not to have broken his neck; all through that long ride he'd been glad to catch up to Ilisidi, and he'd learned to think, gut-level, of the niche Nokhada wanted as the safest place he could be without even realizing the mechanics of what was going on in either the mechieta or in him: the mechieta going to its leader and the primate finding a safe limb, thank you, both at the same destination.

  They still had some unridden mechieti with them today; but they were carrying equipment, canvas bundles.

  What's that for? he asked himself.

  But he had no answer, and didn't figure the paidhi was going to find out from his own security, not without bringing him into play, where his security didn't want him to be.

  So they maintained his ignorance for his protection and Jase's, he feared. And they held their sedate gait, good enough riders to keep Jarani and Nokhada together, by urging Jarani and getting in Nokhada's path, while he was getting good enough at least that he wouldn't let Nokhada have the piece of Jarani's hide that Nokhada, by her little tensions and shiftings under his legs, wanted. The single rein always seemed to him small restraint to the mountain of an animal she was, but taps of the riding crop for some reason distracted her from mayhem, possibly because earlier in her life an ateva arm had wielded it, or just that she paid attention to her rider naturally.

  And he was getting better at doing it at the precise instant it had most effect, too, which he had discovered to be right before she started to do something overt. That required a rider reading those little muscle twitches and the set of her ears and tapping her hard enough to get her attention.

  Jase, however, who had ridden once, from the landing site to Taiben, was clinging with both hands to the saddle, not doing much with the rein, which was a good thing. He bumped about like a sack of laundry, and was probably annoying hell out of Jarani.

  But this was the man who found a window-seat on an airplane a challenge to his sense of balance.

  "Relax the spine," he said to Jase. "You won't fall. Relax."