Deceiver: Foreigner #11 (12 page)

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Authors: C. J. Cherryh

BOOK: Deceiver: Foreigner #11
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Geigi looked at him with a directness and emotion rare in his class
and
his kind. “One will never forget this gesture, Bren-ji. One will not forget this extraordinary respect.”
“To a greatly valued associate, in a relationship which has stood many, many tests, Geigi-ji. I have the utmost trust in your wisdom and your honesty. Our mutual connections to the aiji and to the aiji-dowager can do a great deal to stabilize this district—at a time when, we both know, in events in the heavens, stability of the aishidi’tat is absolutely critical.”
“There was a time you had great reason to distrust Kajiminda; and there was a time
I
had a Marid wife, and there was a time when I myself trod the outskirts of the aiji’s good will. And yet you have consistently trusted me, Bren-ji. You bewilder me.”
“I have trusted you despite those things. And still do, Geigi-ji.” He added, in Mosphei’, which they had not used: “Humans are crazy like that.”
“Crazy,” Geigi echoed him, “means so many things. Now I am an aging lord, with my estate in disarray.
Why
have you trusted me? You cannot think favors buy favor when clan is involved. You know us far better than that, and you are above all no fool, Bren-ji.”
He smiled. “A few months ago some would have called me a fool to stand by Tabini-aiji. The odds were everywhere against him. I have this most irrational pleasure in your company and this perfectly rational trust in your judgement. You could have declared yourself aiji, in the heavens. And yet you did not, did you, Geigi-ji?”
“I love my comforts too much to be aiji. It is a
very
uncomfortable office.”
“You see? You saved the whole aishidi’tat, Geigi-ji. Had Tabini actually been lost—you would have held fast. And that proposition has no doubt.”
“Ha! If I had been put to it, I would have found an aiji and named him.”
“And the world, I have every confidence, would have listened. Your power is inconvenienced, but not at all in ruins. You are held in greatest respect, not alone among atevi.”
“You are very generous, Bren-ji.”
“I am accurate. Why do you suppose the aiji-dowager favors you?”
“Ha!” Geigi laughed outright. “What was between me and ’Sidi-ji certainly does not apply in your case, Bren-ji.”
“Then say we both favor her, and we both know that if we were irrelevant she would not bother with us, and if either one of us merited her disapproval, neither of us would breathe the air.
She
is our ultimate judge, Geigi-ji!”
A laugh, silent, and thoughtful. “’Sidi-ji. Yes.” A flicker of the eyes. “There is ’Sidi-ji. If she does not yet call me a fool, then I suppose I may indeed weather this.”
“You shall. One insists on it!”
“She came. With the young lord.”
“The young lord came to visit me.
She
came to see to him. Likewise my brother and his lady, who were visiting when this whole untoward situation presented itself.”
“Shall I see them all, then? I have longed to meet your brother!”
“My brother and Barb-daja will come up to dinner, very likely, which I assure you will be extravagant in your honor. One has given those orders.” He had, in fact, ordered every local delicacy Geigi would have missed all these years. “The actual accommodations I fear are cramped: Najida is a small estate, and my bodyguard now lodges in the library, and my brother and his lady stay on their boat in the harbor.”
“One trusts my nephew is by no means honored with a suite, under such circumstances!”
“Nandi, we have lodged him in a servant’s room in the basement, where there are no windows.”
“Good!” Geigi said, taking a sip of the new drink that had turned up under his hand. “I shall be extremely grateful to stay under your roof tonight, Bren-ji, myself and my staff. We may have no little work to do at Kajiminda, but I am indeed feeling fortified, hearing how things are taken care of.”
“One delights to hear it.”
“The young lord, whom I saw so briefly last year—the boy must be approaching his fortunate birthday.”
“In two months,” Bren said. Nine, following the unnameable eighth, was a very felicitous birthday, and at times they had despaired of Cajeiri ever reaching that happy year. “He has grown in very many ways, Geigi-ji, even in the months since you saw him. He has lately become quite the young gentleman, with encouraging signs of keen judgement.”
5
 
I
t would have been far, far more fun to be on the new bus looking out the windows and trying out all the interesting features.
But Great-grandmother had nipped that notion before Cajeiri had even laid his plans.
“Nand’ Bren will deal better with his neighbor without a distraction present. They have distressing matters to discuss.” Great-grandmother meant about Baiji-nadi being locked in the basement and them being shot at and almost killed. He could tell nand’ Geigi a thing or two about
that,
first-hand.
But probably that would be pert. That was his great-grandmother’s word for it, when he got beyond himself.
So his information was not welcome on the bus.
And there was
nothing
to do
,
at present, since they were all locked in the house, nothing that was really interesting, because he could not draw back the slingshota to its full stretch, not without risking ricochets that would hit nand’ Bren’s woodwork, which had already had enough damage from bullets.
So he grew bored with that, and even when he gave turns with the slingshota to his bodyguard, his aishid—they could get no real practice at it in such limited circumstances.
They all wanted to go out into the garden, where they could really let fly—but the doors were kept locked, even when there were village workmen repairing the portico out there (one could hear the hammering all morning.)
He so wanted to be on the bus. But he was forbidden even to meet the bus when it came back. Great-grandmother had thought of that, too, and had forbidden him before he could even think of it. “These two lords have serious business underway, almost certainly. You are not to meet the bus when it arrives. Dignitaries from the village will be arriving to meet Lord Geigi when he gets here and, mind, you are
not
to enter into an indecorous competition for attention on Lord Bren’s doorstep, young gentleman. You will make yourself politely invisible and do your homework.”
Gruesome. His current homework was court language verbs. Which was not too exciting.
But his father’s visit loomed large in recent memory and it was clear to him he was very lucky to be left here in nand’ Bren’s house, instead of being packed back to Shejidan and his tutor. Sitting in his father’s apartment while his Ajuri clan aunt was visiting and while his Atageini clan great-uncle was living just down the hall—that would be awful. Not to mention that his mother would be upset with him for the mischief he had been in, and if his Ajuri grandfather heard about the train and the boat, through his aunt, he would have his
grandfather
fussing about his supervision and demanding more guards, too, possibly even demanding to install some of
Ajuri
clan with him, which was just too grim to think about. Even if he thought he and his aishid could get the better of anybody Ajuri clan had, it was just too many guards, and more guards just got harder and harder to deal with.
He understood his situation. He understood the threat hanging over him. He had to behave here, and learn his court verbs beyond any mistake, or he would be back in the Bujavid with grown-up guards at every corner.
So after a little while he grew entirely bored with the slingshota and the circumstances they had, and took his aishid back to their suite to think about what they
could
do in the house. Lucasi and Veijico being still new to his service, they were getting used to things, though they really
were
Guild, unlike Antaro and Jegari. They were brother and sister like Antaro and Jegari, and everybody older said they were very good . . . but.
There was always that
but . . .
with Lucasi and Veijico.
The
but
that did not let them find out everything they wanted to from senior Guild.
But
. . . that made Cenedi look grim when he talked about them.
But . . .
that made Banichi and Jago sigh and talk together in very low voices.
If Lucasi and Veijico had been younger (they were felicitous nineteen and the year after) people would probably call them what they called him: precocious—which was a way of admiring somebody while calling him a pest. Precocious. Pert. Sometimes, even toward him, they were stuck-up; and they were far too inclined to tell Antaro and Jegari they were wrong about something, even about how they sat and how they stood at attention, even when Antaro and Jegari were not allowed to wear a Guild uniform yet. It was just a pest, their know-it-all manner, and it made him mad, but Antaro said, with a sigh, when he mentioned it: “We need to learn, nandi.”
It really was true: having two real Guild in his aishid meant Jegari and Antaro were learning things around the clock now, not just going out for a few hours to the Guild hall. Even he could see a change in how they stood and just the way their eyes tracked—which was probably really good. Jegari and Antaro seemed glad to talk about Guild stuff with Lucasi and Veijico, even if the newcomers
were
snotty about it—snotty was one of Gene’s words, up on the ship, or the space station, now, where Gene lived; and it was a good word for those two. Snotty.
And full of themselves. That was another of Gene’s expressions.
The fact was, though, they were
smart,
they knew they were smart, and they were short of patience with other people, which was going to get them in trouble if they were not just very careful. He was just a year short of nine and
he
could see it on the horizon . . . but not Veijico and Lucasi, oh, no, they were far too smart to take personal criticism from somebody who was infelicitous eight.
Well,
he
knew they were not smarter than Banichi and Jago and Cenedi, or Tano and Algini—and Cenedi and Algini in particular had no long patience with fools. Algini had been very high up in the Guild before he sort of retired from that job, and one could just see Algini’s eyes looking right at Lucasi’s back in a not-very-good way.
“We did not authorize them to ask!” he had almost blurted out on one occasion, when those two had repeated a request to which Banichi had said no. He had witnessed that second request, and Algini had looked mad. But they were his aishid, and he was responsible for anything they did, so he had only said, later, “You made Algini mad, nadiin-ji.”
“We report to your father, nandi,” Veijico had said quite smoothly and with a shrug. “Not to them.”
“You will not disrespect them!” he had shot back, very sharply, and that had backed them up just a bit. “And if you do it again, nadiin,
I
shall report to my father!”
That had set them back for at least an hour.
The thing was, there was a fairly fine dividing line between precocious and
fool . . .
he knew that better than most, having crossed that line a few times and having had to hear Great-grandmother tell him where that line was in great detail, interspersed with: “Tell
me
where you made mistakes, boy. Go think!”
Maybe the Guild instructors had told Lucasi and Veijico that exact same thing a few times, too, but Lucasi and Veijico were never going to listen to Guild instructors the way he knew to listen to Great-grandmother—who had used to thump him on the same ear so often he swore it was larger than the other. Great-grandmother probably still made his
father
think of ear-thumping: she was that fierce.
But clearly the Guild instructors had not set the proper fear in Lucasi and Veijico, and by the way they carried themselves, maybe they had lacked a great-grandmother, up in the high mountains, where they came from.
Maybe, he thought, he should maneuver those two afoul of his great-grandmother and sit back and watch the outcome. That would be interesting. But he was not sure he would ever get them back if they did. So he kept that in reserve.
And thus far he was managing things. At least today Lucasi and Veijico seemed to be showing a little improvement, and being much more polite to everybody all morning. So maybe his threat yesterday had worked. He hated being mad at people. It was like the business with the slingshota.
They
were so sure they would never miss that they thought they could shoot it in the garden hall, never mind the woodwork. Never mind Ramaso would scold them all and
he
would get in trouble for it.
And never mind Lucasi had stolen five teacakes from the kitchen this morning, when they had no need to steal at all: Lucasi had rather steal because, he said, it kept him sharp—never mind that some servant might get in trouble for the miscount. It was not Lucasi’s habit, to think of things like that. Great-grandmother would thwack his ear for not thinking about it—if she knew it. But tattling to her was hardly grown-up.

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