Deceiver: Foreigner #11 (33 page)

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Authors: C. J. Cherryh

BOOK: Deceiver: Foreigner #11
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“No. No, nandi. We have accepted the aiji-dowager’s offer. We do accept it!”
One did not detect sufficient humility in a young, arrogant brat who had grown into an adult, arrogant fool.
“You do not half understand,” Bren said, “the situation in which you now find yourself. There are names I now know that I have not seen on the other list, or on this. A member of my household, my brother of the same parentage, was
shot
tonight, by someone possibly believing he was shooting at me. A member of his household has been kidnapped by persons who themselves are likely to be shot if the aiji’s power over this coast survives—while the inhabitants of this coast and all the rest of the continent are entirely determined to shoot them on sight. So the fools who have attacked my household are in great danger. And the lord who sent them is in much greater danger. The Guild is involved. Are you following this? Are you understanding, finally, that your Marid allies do not want you to survive to tell us everything you know—that, in fact, they will be quite interested in killing you—partly in case you have
not
yet told us all you know, and for another reason—simply because you have become such a great embarrassment to their side. They will blot you from the face of the earth . . . an absolute, extravagant
failure
of their plans to marry their way into your house so that
then
they could kill you and inherit your post! Have you really understood that, this far? Do you believe it?”
Lips stammered: “One believes it, nand’ paidhi.”
“So believe this: very few people care about your survival tonight. I have never asked my aishid to eliminate a man, but you and the mess you have created are fast approaching the limit of my patience, Baiji nephew of my ally.”
Hatred stared back at him. Anger. And fear. “My uncle—”
“Your uncle will not preserve you in the face of the dowager’s anger. Or mine. Oh, I am indeed your enemy, Baiji-nadi. I have very many who consider
me
their enemy—of whom I can be tolerant, since I look to change their minds. But I have
two
that I consider my enemies in the world right now. The Marid aiji who directed this attack is one. And the other? Before I met you, and listened to you argue your case, I would have said there was only one.”
Baiji was not the swiftest. Parsing that took a moment, and he screwed up his face and protested, “Nandi, you surely cannot equate me with—”
Bren got to his feet. “You protect Machigi of the Taisigin Marid with your silence and you protect his plans by your reluctance to admit your own part in the whole business.”
“I had none! I was an innocent bystander!”
“Do not mistake me! I shall walk out of this room and leave others to persuade you to tell me—not the first truths that occur to you, but the deepest of the truths you own about this affair and those you even imagine! Do we understand each other? Who else in this district is helping Machigi? Who are his associates?”
“I have told you everything, nandi! I have written it down in those papers—”
Baiji started to get up and Banichi slammed him right back down.
“I have no doubt these papers are as carefully crafted as those letters of yours in my office upstairs. I have seen your answers. And the effrontery of your writing a letter to the aiji under these circumstances tells me I am dealing with someone too convinced of his own cleverness to
ever
believe he can be brought down permanently. You are down here laying plans for a future in which you hope to deceive everyone all over again and protect your remaining places of influence. You are so very clever, are you not?”
No answer. No answer became sullen defiance, more than Baiji had yet shown.
“Now I believe you,” Bren said. “Now you show me your real face, and not a pretty one. You had your own plan for the future of this coast. Tell me
how
you planned to stay alive, granting you had the least inkling that you were bedding down with very dangerous people.
Who
was the support you counted on? There was someone else, was there not?”
Baiji sweated. His face was a curious shade. He towered over Bren, but Bren had the all but overwhelming desire to seize him by the throat and strangle him.
“There was someone who supported you,” Bren said, “and one doubts this moral support was among the Edi. Who were your other recourses?”
“I—”
So, Bren thought—he was right. And considering Baiji’s natural resources, ones he owned by birthright, there were not that many.
“This person should have been at the top of the list, should he not?”
Baiji did not well conceal his discomfort.
Baiji stared at him. Just stared, grimly saying nothing, but sweating.
“Jago-ji,” he said, looking to the side, “you and I will go inform nand’ Geigi we have no more doubts. It would be well, nadi,” he added, addressing Baiji, “for you to dress. One believes you will get no more sleep tonight.”
“Do not leave me with him!” Baiji cried, with a glance upward at Banichi. “Nand’ paidhi!”
“Banichi-ji, would you ever harm this person?”
Banichi smiled darkly. “Never against your orders, nandi.”
“So,” he said, silently collected Baiji’s documents, then left by the door Jago opened, and headed upstairs.
Upstairs was not calm, despite the hour that should have seen only the household assembling for breakfast.
There was a small turmoil, a little gathering of the staff at the front door—a gathering in which Cenedi himself was involved.
Jago said, quietly, in communication with operations. “The Grandmother of Najida has just arrived, Bren-ji. She asks to speak with the aiji-dowager. Cenedi is agreeing.”
Ramaso was involved at the doors, and spotting them, cast a worried and querying look Bren’s way. Bren signed yes, and Ramaso ordered the doors opened, which admitted a small crowd of persons into their secure hall.
The Grandmother of Najida it was, indeed, a little out of breath, and flanked by two of her older men. Others crowded about. Bren made his way in that direction, walked up to the situation quietly, and gave a little bow.
The Edi were, at depth, a matriarchy, when it came to negotiation. They were fortunate to have the dowager accessible—and in no wise was the paidhi-aiji going to intrude into that arrangement.
“Please accept the hospitality of this house, honored Grandmother,” he murmured with a little bow, and heaved a deep sigh of relief as Cenedi showed the lady on toward Ilisidi’s suite . . . and one problem, at least, landed on someone else’s desk.
He
wanted
to go sit by Toby, continually to reassure himself the only kin he owned—excepting a no-contact father somewhere on Mospheira—was still breathing at this hour. He wanted to stay there for days, until Toby was better, and he could get Toby onto his boat, call in a continental navy escort, and get Toby the hell home.
But Shejidan’s largest train station had less traffic than Najida estate at this hour, he thought glumly. The Edi were not going to be happy to have failed in their guarantees—and fail, they had, conspicuously . . . which was probably why the Grandmother had come up here personally to speak to the dowager, if the dowager had not called her here in the first place.
Tano and Algini and Geigi’s four bodyguards were still over in Kajiminda, meanwhile, relying on Edi to hold the perimeters if another attack came, and he, at Najida, was about to pass an order to
all
Guild components under his control and Geigi’s to come back to undertake a mission eastward—and that was going to leave the Edi in Kajiminda on their own, against God knew what. Kajiminda would be completely exposed, Najida considerably weakened. He was not a tactical thinker. Banichi and Jago were.
“Are we doing rational things, Jago-ji? One intends to pull all Guild from Kajiminda. One sees no alternative.”
Jago’s face was calm and unworried and he suddenly knew his was not. “Cenedi advises us,” she said quietly, “that the dowager has indeed contacted Tabini-aiji. He is apparently sending Guild in some numbers, Bren-ji, to be under Cenedi’s management. The dowager is going to make this situation clear to the Edi.”
That was
not
going to make the Edi happy. But the Edi, dammit, had just failed them, and knew it. The whole ground underfoot had shifted, neither he nor his team had had significant sleep, and decisions had to be made—which Ilisidi had been making for them, left and right.
Calls to the aiji for some reinforcement—routine. But
in some numbers?
Alarm bells rang. He had left Ilisidi in charge of Najida, with the implements to make secure calls. And Ilisidi had an agenda that, par for Ilisidi, ran solely on Ilisidi’s opinion. The Grandmother of Najida, with her agenda, had been dealing with a past master. So had he. Dammit.
Likely the Grandmother of Najida didn’t know yet that there were Ragi foreigners coming into the district. That was what she had come here to learn . . . probably at Ilisidi’s pre-dawn summons.
And somehow—he was not going into that room for anything—Ilisidi and the Grandmother of Najida were going to have a meeting with reality and necessity and consider the rearrangement of power on the lower west coast. God knew, there were already Marid foreigners here. The Grandmother of Najida had
not
been able to deal with them alone.
The aishidi’tat could.
The Grandmother of the Edi was then going to have to explain those facts to her people.
Not to mention what Geigi was yet to find out—which he would lay odds Geigi was learning in bits and pieces.
He knew the name Baiji had not given them. He was sure of it even before Jago said, quietly, relaying it from Banichi, “Pairuti of the Maschi, Bren-ji. Banichi is getting it in writing.”
14
 
T
here was a lot going on. Even nand’ Toby knew it, and asked, or seemed to, what was happening outside.
“I’ll find out, nandi,” Cajeiri said, and sent Jegari out with orders to ask questions and eavesdrop.
Jegari came back. Cajeiri went out into the sitting room to hear the report, and Antaro came with him.
“Nandi, they are getting the bus ready. Nand’ Geigi is going to deal with Maschi clan and nand’ Bren is going with him, mostly because nand’ Bren can bring senior Guild into it—besides your father’s name.”
The machimi plays were bloodily full of such instances where one lord replaced another the hard way. And mani had seen to it that he was acquainted with very many machimi.
But lord Geigi had a place on the space station. Was he going to tie himself down to live in the country like Great-uncle Tatiseigi?
Besides, the Maschi were such a little clan: most people, asked to name clans, would have trouble thinking of them, except for Lord Geigi, who was famous.
He had grown up with Gene and Artur and nand’ Bren and he had been able to predict what they would do, when he was on the ship in space. But mani had always said, and it had made him mad at the time—that when he was among atevi, he would find things making sense to him in an emotional way. He would understand things.
He certainly understood more today than he had yesterday. He could feel the directions of man’chi, and it made things clear in his mind. He was very sure that there was nothing queasy about Lord Geigi, and that there was a question about the man’chi of the Maschi lord. That lord should have shown up in person here at Najida, especially with Lord Geigi here. He certainly should have sent someone.
And he could feel the direction of the Marid, too. That took no more reading of man’chi than it did to look at clouds and say there would be a storm. There were storm clouds aplenty when one read Great-grandmother. Great-grandmother was not about to go back East without having things her way, he was absolutely sure of it—it was not mani’s habit to leave a fight, and this was a fight that had cost her one of her young men.
Besides, she was on the hunt for something political—he could not quite understand what, and certainly the surface of it had to do with the Edi, but he thought it also had to do with his father and old history, and he was relatively sure it was tangled up with the Marid, with whom he knew mani had an old quarrel. He knew mani’s moods, and he knew when she was up to something. He had felt the currents moving when his father was here and mani and his father were fighting. He had felt then that mani wanted something and mani had talked his father into it, which meant his father had been halfway agreeing with her before the argument ever started. They just shouted at each other because they always shouted at each other over little things, not the big ones.
And now Lord Geigi was in the middle of it, and so was nand’ Bren’s house, and now nand’ Toby had gotten hurt, and Barb-daja was a hostage. So it could be a really, really big fight, once it started rolling, bigger than anything since they had taken Shejidan and thrown Murini out of power. He had been at Tirnamardi, with Great-uncle, when things had blown up left and right and there had been a lot of shooting.

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