Inheritor

by C. J. Cherryh

  Jase tried. It was difficult for him, but he tried.

  And at this speed there wasn't a tendency for the herd to form into hierarchical order: individual mechieti dipped heads unexpectedly, snatched bits of green. Which scared Jase when it happened.

  "Relax."

  Jase's hands were, in fact, white-knuckled, and Jase's mouth was a thin, straight line as Jarani took a snap at another mechieta moving up on them from the rear. That mechieta nipped back, and Jarani bumped Nokhada in sheer surprise.

  The boy from Dur drew close, or his mechieta did: he was clearly another non-rider. He appeared to have notions what to do, but he wasn't winning the argument; and his mechieta shied into Banichi's, who gave it a head toss that was audible on impact.

  "I'm sorry, nandi, I'm sorry."

  "Rein!" Banichi said, and the boy tried, to the inconvenience of all around him as he mis-signaled and sent the well-trained creature off to the side.

  He was better than that, Bren thought, with perhaps too much pride; but he patted Nokhada's hard shoulder and quietly gave Jase instruction what to do with the rein and with his feet.

  And his spine. "Sit easy — easier than that," he said. "Dammit, Jase — try to fall off!"

  Jase looked at him as if he'd misunderstood.

  "Try," he said syllable by syllable, "to fall off. You can't. You're balanced. Relax, dammit. Rock. Sway. Do it!"

  Jase sucked in a breath and let go his death-grip on the saddle. And leaned a little one way, and then the other. And gave another deep breath.

  Banichi, damn him, crooked an easy leg across the saddle front, watched the performance, and grinned.

  "Better," Banichi said. There was nothing in the entire universe that Banichi, who stood solid and square as a wall, could not do, and do gracefully. And Banichi laughed, waved his riding crop at the boy from Dur. "You listen to the paidhi, nadi. Sit like a living creature, not like a load of baggage."

  Then — then for some reason unannounced — the pace increased.

  And increased, until mechieti were moving together, almost in unison, stride for stride. Bren looked back as the old fortress fell behind them.

  He saw, from the angle they'd achieved in their riding away, the back of the building and vans parked there, maybe six, seven of them.

  Damn, he thought. He shortened his focus to Jago riding close behind him, and knew she knew and no one was talking. They were headed upslope, now, up the general pitch of the rolling, fragile sod, on which a little brush grew, but not much, and never a tree. They were out here in an area reminiscent of riding the ridge at Malguri, climbing, and climbing.

  He thought of the bluffs that overlooked the sea, and the installation of Mogari-nai that sat atop them.

  He thought of the boundary out there beyond the horizon, that invisible demarcation of sea and air that marked where Mospheira began. They were moving toward it. He didn't think by the direction they were going they'd come in view of it. But they would come close.

  And the speed and smoothness with which the mechieti traveled even walking in this grassy, open land was something he'd never felt in the rough land around Malguri. It was wonderful, a traveling pace that let even Jase find his sense of the rhythm in the movement. The boy from Dur gave up holding on and rode easily in the saddle.

  And slowly, inexorably, predictibly, Nokhada lengthened stride and came closer and closer to Ilisidi and Cenedi. Banichi and Jago moved with him, up through the herd.

  There was never a word said. Ilisidi, a competition rider, rode with that easy grace that put them all to shame, and Babsidi's long strides challenged all of them that followed her, reminding them that Babsidi was quality, from his finely shaped head to his powerful rump. No one got ahead of Babsidi. And Nokhada's joy was dampened only by the presence of Cenedi's mechieta, her chief rival, who always had a rider, an entitlement of some kind Bren had never figured out. Unridden, Nokhada hung back and caused no trouble; with him aboard, she aspired, that was all, she aspired to the front line — and made her rider feel guilty that he was so seldom there.

  But he had no idea, absolutely no idea what drove her, or whether she'd been glad to see him when she recognized him after an absence or whether her fierce mechieta heart just saw justification for raising hell. He patted her shoulder. It got a flick of the ears; but no understanding of her. He said to himself he had to arrange to ride more often, somehow.

  Among other dreams.

  The mind could grow quiet, watching that motion, hearing the noise of mechieti at that comfortable pace all about them. Watching that horizon. Watching the shadows that had been in front of them slowly, slowly overtake them until the sun beat down on their heads.

  Then Ilisidi took the group to a slower pace, and to a stop. Jase caught up to him for the first time in over an hour, and Jase had done it — had stayed on, had even, with encouragement from the riding crop and his feet and the rein, gotten Jarani to move through the crowd.

  "Good for you," Bren said as they sat on the hard-breathing mechieti. "How are you doing?"

  "Alive," Jase said, and seemed to be in pain.

  Jago and Banichi moved up close. Meanwhile two of the men had slid down and were getting one of the mechieti to kneel, to let them reach the pack it carried.

  "Do we go back now?" Jase asked.

  "Not yet," Banichi said; and the men hastily getting into the pack had come out with a bag of sandwiches, which they passed about, beginning with the dowager.

  They ate the sandwiches, and the mechieti under them grazed the sparse vegetation, and wandered as they grazed, taking them in whatever direction or association the mechieti chose. They never got down. Canteens were an ordinary part of their equipment, and they drank. After that, the men afoot adjusted the canvas on the one pack they'd gotten into, remounted, and Ilisidi started moving again.

  Not back toward the fortress, but dead ahead as they'd been bearing.

  They'd started at dawn, they were going on past noon — they weren't going to be back by dark, that became clear as they kept going.

  But now that Jase failed to besiege him with questions he began to have questions of his own, no longer where they were going: that was, he suspected almost beyond question, eventually, Mogari-nai.

  Why should they be going there? Considering the contingent of vans that had moved in behind them, coupled with Tano's and Algini's absence, he had a notion, too, of that answer: that Tabini-aiji was not pleased with the establishment at Mogari-nai, or the Messengers' Guild.

  Dared the aiji take on a Guild, and what would happen if he did? The Astronomers had fallen from highest of all the Guilds when they'd misinterpreted the Foreign Star, when the ship had appeared in the heavens the first time and slowly built the station. In the time when the Astronomers had predicted the future, they had entirely failed to know the nature of their universe, and they had fallen.

  Possibly the Messengers had failed to know the nature of their universe, and the aiji had resolved to see that his messages flowed accurately. But to take on the Messengers when the political situation was so difficult and so fraught with trouble, with Direiso urging his overthrow and Hanks and her radio broadcasting to atevi small aircraft.

  Yet there it was, if he thought about it. The radio.. Another communications problem: another problem^ that could be laid right in the Messengers' laps. Radio traffic was a problem of which the Messengers were in charge, which Mogari-nai could have heard, especially situated where they were, near the coast.

  If there were difficulty with one Guild, what other Guilds would stand by the aiji most firmly? What Guilds had stood most firmly by the aiji? The Mathematicians — and the Assassins.

  Direiso had benefit in that illicit radio. She would stand by the Messengers, if they were turning a blind eye to the problem.

  The government had potential difficulties up here. And Banichi and Jago weren't saying a thing.

  Maybe it was Ilisidi's orders. He had the sudden sinking feeling Ilisidi had found
their vacation a fine excuse to be out here, and the paidhiin might be superfluous to her intentions to visit Mogari-nai.

  Certainly Jase was.

  But dammit, there were things he needed to know too. And he was going to find out, if they could just shake loose some answers.

  * * *

  CHAPTER 19

  « ^ »

  It was a long, long ride at a fair clip after that. Nokhada disliked eating dust and fought to get forward, which Bren fought to prevent, not wishing to leave Jase alone, even if the spacing necessary to the mechieti for their sheer body size made conversation difficult.

  That meant that the strangers to Ilisidi's company all rode in a knot that strung out at times, but never broke entirely apart so long as Bren kept a tight rein on Nokhada, who eventually seemed to resign herself to the notion that due to some failure of ambition or temporary insanity on her rider's part they were not going to dash forward and attempt to occupy the same space as Cenedi's mechieta — for maybe this little while.

  Ilisidi, meanwhile, ignored them to hold consultation with the armed young men who took her orders, and one or the other would fall back to the rear guard. Bren kept glancing at the horizons, asking himself what was going on. There was no recourse to the pocket corns, nothing to indicate any problem. But something had changed.

  There was a wicked, angry streak in this woman, not just in a human opinion but in two species' ways of looking at it. Ilisidi had been genial at the dinner last night; that was the velvet over the steel. Ilisidi was the gracious lady, the lame old woman — and the aristocrat, lord of her scaffold-supported hall. She'd arranged that crystal-laden table simply because it was difficult, and because her staff, too, did the impossible at her whim.

  This morning she'd ceased to make things difficult for her staff and, astride Babsidi, whose four strong legs carried her with more speed, agility and strength than any man alive, she began to make things difficult for them. It was her way of saying to the world, he began to think, Those who follow me have to follow at disadvantage and difficulty. It was the condition of her life. She was not aiji. But those who served her treated her wishes as if she were.

  And to the powers around Tabini she said, When you who rejected me as aiji suddenly want my help, damn you all, you'll bleed for it.

  So the aiji's security (along with the paidhiin, who were excused from the normal considerations of man'chi and courtesies due, but not from the suffering part of it) didn't get full information from her, either: they were simply supposed to follow in blind obedience whenever fortune and chance, those devils of Tabini's designs, put his agents temporarily under her instructions.

  That was one way Bren summed it up, having seen it in operation at Malguri and again in the Padi Valley.

  Or possibly it was nothing of retribution on Tabini at all.

  Perhaps it was just the native style of the old-fashioned, unabashed atevi autocrat she was — as old-fashioned in some ways as the fortress of Malguri off in the east — to make them follow her only under her terms.

  As if, ateva to the core, she proved the direction not only of the man'chi of the mechieti she lent them, but that of the men she led.

  Bren reasoned his way to that precarious point, while slowly stretching muscles he only used when he skied and when he rode, and bruising points of contact he only contacted when he rode. He'd asked for it. He'd asked for it for good reasons, but he'd forgotten how badly one could ache after a ride with Ilisidi.

  There was, however, the suffering of the boy from Dur, who now rode with inexpert desperation and, being taller, leaned more, with a more committed center of gravity.

  The boy from Dur fell off, and fortunately held to the harness on his way down.

  The dowager kept going, as Bren reined in, as the boy's mechieta tried to keep going, as Banichi and one of Ilisidi's men reined in and Jago went on with Jase, who had no success stopping Janari at all: if the herd was going, Jase was going.

  "Bren!" Jase called back in alarm, as if he were being kidnapped.

  The boy from Dur meanwhile proved that one of atevi weight and from a standing start (or from upside down with one foot still in the bend of the mechieta's neck and the other on the hither side of the beast, while hanging onto the saddle straps) could not leap or even crawl back into the saddle. To a likely devotee of television machimi, it was surely an embarrassment.

  "I'd get off," Banichi said dryly, as he, Bren, and Ilisidi's man Haduni all watched from mechieta-back. "I'd make him kneel and get up from the ground."

  One suspected if anyone could do the television trick, Banichi might, but the boy from Dur gave up his foothold on the mechieta's neck and hopped to the ground, whereupon the mechieta decided he was through for the day and decided to wander off.

  The boy was clearly mortified, took a swat with the riding crop while holding to the rein and the mechieta bolted, jerking the rein from the boy's hand and flinging him flat.

  Haduni rode after the mechieta, which was on its way to join the herd.

  The boy nursed a sore palm and bowed and bowed again.

  "I'm sorry, nandi. I'm very sorry."

  "Shouldn't have hit him," Banichi said. "That's for running."

  "Yes, nadi." The boy, a lord's son, bowed, clearly in pain.

  Meanwhile Haduni had caught the mechieta and brought it toward them.

  Banichi tapped a strap on his mechieta's saddle. "Hold and tuck up," Banichi said, and that was something Bren had seen in the machimi, too. For the short distance they had to go, the boy held to the saddle strap while Banichi swung to the other side and counterbalanced, and they met Ilisidi's man and the recovered mechieta.

  Then the two men gave the boy a very quick lesson on how to get the mechieta's attention with a tug on the rein, where to touch the crop to get it to kneel, how fast to get his foot into the stirrup, and how to use the animal's momentum to settle on, with what tension of the rein. It was familiar stuff. And it was a good lesson, which the boy from Dur seemed to take very gratefully.

  "Very much better, nandi," Ilisidi's man said.

  "You have a chance," was Banichi's judgment, and they set off at a brisk clip toward the rest, who were now over the horizon of a land that didn't look all that rolling. But it was. And the dowager, Jago, Jase, and the rest were as invisible as if they'd sunk into the sparse, gravel-set vegetation.

  It wasn't the only time they had to stop for the boy from Dur, whose mortification was complete when, at one such crisis, the mechieta led him a chase, body-length by body-length, as it grazed on the fine spring growth and the boy would almost lay hands on it only to have it move on.

  There was laughter.

  "Someone should help him, nadi," Jase said, as if suggesting he should do it; but Bren shook his head. "They laugh. If they meant ill, they wouldn't. If the boy laughed it would be graceless and impudent."

  "Why?"

  "Because, nadi, it would signal his mastery of the matter." The mechieta eluded the boy another body-length, and the boy this time made a sprint for it. The mechieta, almost caught by surprise, bolted, and the boy went sprawling, clutching his leg. There was laughter at that, too, but fainter, and one of the men got down to see to the boy and another chased down the errant mechieta.

  "Good try, boy," the dowager said. "Bad timing."

  The boy, clearly in pain, bowed. "Thank you, nand' dowager." And limped over to the mechieta the man brought back for him. He properly had it kneel, had it hold the posture, the lesson of his last fall, and got on with dignity.

  "Good," Ilisidi said shortly, and Bren guessed there was — if not devotion forming in a young atevi heart, for atevi reasons: man'chi would determine that — at least a knowledge that respect could be won from her.

  As good as a ribbon, that was. A badge of honor.

  "Nandi," the boy said, and bowed with a modern conservatism, not going so far as the arm-waving extravagance of the riders of such beasts on the television. He managed not to look foolish.
<
br />   From Jase there was silence. If they were lucky, Bren said to himself, there was deep thought going on.

  Midafternoon. There was one break for, as the atevi put it, necessity, at which they all dismounted (it was Banichi's comment that in less civilized days they didn't dismount at all) and went aside with two spades from the packs, men to one side of a small rise, women to the other.

  "Nadi," Jase said in a faint, unhappy voice, "I can't do this."

  "You'll be terribly sorry in a few hours if you don't," Bren said with no remorse at all, and Jase reconsidered his options and went and did what he had to do.

  He came back happier. Embarrassed, but happier. They rejoined the dowager and Jago, the mechieti having waited quite happily without a boy chasing them. Babsidi came to the dowager's whistle, and riders sorted the rest out.

  The boy from Dur and Jase were the last up, but they managed on their own.

  Definitely better, Bren said to himself, safe and lord of all he saw, from Nokhada's lofty back; and Babsidi started moving, which meant Nokhada had to try to catch him.

  He let Nokhada win for a while. Jase was doing well enough back there, and was not slowing them down.

  At no time yet had they hit an all-out run: they had mechieti carrying the packs, and that, he began to realize, was the primary reason. But the pace they did strike ate up the ground.

  They were going west. And they reached a point that the sun burned into their eyes, and still the mechieti kept that steady gait.

  He had shut his eyes to save them pain from the light when a hitch in Nokhada's rhythm warned him of change ahead, and his eyes flashed open as they topped a low roll of the land.

  The horizon had shortened. The land fell away here into golden haze.

  The sea stretched out in front of them hardly closer than they'd seen from the plane. Rocky hills across a wide bay were only haze. An island in blued grays rose from the golden sheet of water.

  The mechieti stopped as Babsidi stopped, on the rim of the land.

  "That's Dur!" the boy said, and added meekly, in courtesy, "nand' dowager."