Deceiver: Foreigner #11 (40 page)

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Authors: C. J. Cherryh

BOOK: Deceiver: Foreigner #11
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Lucasi stared at him, mouth slightly open. And the eyes tracked, locked.
“You cannot see it with
my
perspective,” Bren said, “but surely, nadi, you will have observed that the young lord, despite being the aiji’s son, is
not
traditional in his thinking.”
Something clicked. One thought so, at least. Lucasi’s face looked a peculiar shade.
“Think on it,” Bren said.
“Nandi,” Lucasi said, “give me the chance. You can. I will
not
fail you.”
At doing what? one wondered. Something had just ticked over, perhaps; but he wasn’t wired to feel it—he never let himself expect to be, even if he’d just tried to reason down an atevi line of thought.
But in this mass movement of forces, in the fall of Targai, in Geigi’s succession to the clan lordship, in the Edi accession to a lordship, and the maneuvering of that truck, a deliberate challenge from the Marid, if the boy was not lying—in all of this,
he
still had an objective.
Barb
was nowhere in the aiji’s plans, and not that consequential in Mospheira’s, or Shejidan’s, or even the Marid’s. She was a silly woman. Nobody who’d taken her could communicate with her, and that meant her value was only as a provocation. She was disposable, unless somebody knew what Toby was; and higher and higher up the chain of command, somebody might realize what they had, which would make two governments realize both she
and
Toby had become expendable—give or take the annoyance that would be to the paidhi-aiji.
And the paidhi’s not being a warlike office, neither was he on duty, once they had gotten Geigi into Targai, removed Pairuti, and taken
that
stronghold out of Machigi’s control. He was dismissed from usefulness, at the moment, and
he
had a promise he had made.
“You will obey my aishid,” he said, “on your life, Lucasi, from this point on. Where do you think they were going?”
“The main road. Southeast.”
Toward Taisigi territory.
“We had best move,” Banichi said, looking Bren’s way. “If you wish to pursue the lady’s kidnappers, nandi, best Jago and I go, best we move fast and get light transport from the aiji’s forces.”
That was sensible. That was the way it classically ought to work. Unlike the situation in which Lucasi had left his young lord, he was in a now-allied house, with two of his aishid left, and surrounded by the aiji’s forces, as safe as he would be in Najida.
But Banichi and Jago alone—to take on the Marid, and add themselves to the list of the young fool’s mistakes?
“Take some of the aiji’s forces with you,” he said.
“We cannot, Bren-ji,” Banichi said, and the
cannot
was the word meaning
are not of sufficient rank.
“Then can
I
?” he asked, and Banichi’s face betrayed a little reluctance to answer.
“Can I?” he asked again, and Banichi said: “Officially, yes, Bren-ji.”
“Find out from their officer how many I can detach.”
“You must go with the party,” Banichi said, “to have that authority, and that is not advisable, Bren-ji.”
“Not advisable
is spread thickly over this entire situation, Banichi-ji,” he said. “We will take the bus, and a good number of the aiji’s men, if we can arrange that. Speed is of some use. We do
not
want to enter Taisigi territory.”
“Nandi,” Banichi said, and turned and went out to the hall. Lucasi bowed deeply and, at Banichi’s nod, left with him.
Which left Jago standing there with, by now, Tano and Algini, Jago with a profoundly unhappy look.
“I have promised nand’ Toby,” Bren said. “Jago-ji, we bring Barb back for
him.
For no other reason.”
She seemed to find something ironically amusing in that, God knew what. “Understood, Bren-ji.”
In a moment Banichi came back from the hall with one handsign for his partners.
Even Bren could read that one. It said, “Ten. Affirmative.”
19
 
T
he house was looking different, bare, the way it looked when mani was packing to change residences.
Which was somewhat true. They had all moved to the basement, starting with transporting nand’ Toby downstairs. Staff got one of the tall, paneled screens from the sitting room and padded it all about with sheets and pillows, and then used it to carry nand’ Toby down the steps, himself gently tied to the screen—Cajeiri had watched the process, dutiful to his promise to nand’ Bren, and thought it scary, especially where the stairs turned, but they made it safely. Nand’ Toby was not supposed to walk and he was not supposed to be excited, and that process did not violate either, because mani’s physician, who supervised, had given nand’ Toby a good dose of sedative for the procedure. Cajeiri thought it a very good thing, and he was very glad they had not dropped him.
And next came the job of moving mani downstairs.
And since the physician had promised to stay with nand’ Toby for the next hour or so, Cajeiri took Jegari and Antaro and went to help move Great-grandmother.
Mani was not enthusiastic about going. In fact she vowed she was not going until trouble was proven to be on its way, or possibly until after trouble arrived. So all the servants were allowed to do was to get together Great-grandmother’s wardrobe and take that down. It was expensive, and bulky, and it all had to be safely hung.
So that went down, boxes handed from servant to servant, because it would have been indecent for mani’s garments to be displayed on their way. They would be taken into storage, and they would be unpacked, and readied for wear . . .
Granted mani ever consented to go down the stairs at all, which not even Cenedi could persuade her to do, yet.
“You truly should, mani,” Cajeiri said very cautiously.
“Hush!” mani said. And that was that. Cajeiri felt his ear smart even across the room.
So he took himself and Antaro and Jegari out into the hall again to see the stairs clogged with downbound packets of mani’s baggage.
Immediately after those, of course, all the historic pieces in all the rooms had to go down—and then all the spare storerooms were filled, so the servants had to move out all the food, boxes, and jars and sacks of it, from other storerooms and take that up into the kitchen upstairs and the kitchen downstairs, so one aisle of each was filled with supplies clear to the rafters, and canisters were set on the cabinets and the second and third stoves in the main kitchens. It was an impressive lot of food. There certainly seemed no danger of them starving.
Then the most fragile porcelains and the hangings had to go downstairs into all the storage they had just cleared. So did all the handmade draperies, which had to be taken down, and the hand-knotted carpets, which had to be rolled up, exposing the stone and wood flooring that one never saw except around the edges: it was a whole new Najida. There was one manufactured carpet, in the dining hall, which staff said just had to take its chances. But every one of the porcelains had to be individually padded up in pillows—there were a lot of those—and bedded down with the folded hangings. The ancient tea set had to go down, specially: it had a box of lacquered wood.
And then the historic furniture in the sitting room had to go down. Ramaso was really, really clever at telling how to stack it like a puzzle, and with padding between surfaces, so it took up far less space than seemed likely.
Everybody had a cold lunch: Great-grandmother readily agreed that that would do for her; but Cook said he was working on hot soup for supper, along with more cold bread and some pickle: it would be an odd kind of supper, but Cajeiri personally hoped they would all get to eat it in peace and that nand’ Bren and nand’ Geigi would be back in the morning, and most of all that his father’s Guild would sort things out and kick the Marid troublemakers clear back to their own towns. He had seen enough of people shooting up places in his life: he was out of all curiosity how that went. He hoped if people were going to be shot at that his father’s men did all the shooting, this time, and that nobody from Great-grandmother’s guard got involved, and most of all that if there was going to be more shooting on Najida grounds, they did all the shooting far out beyond the gardens, where nothing that belonged to nand’ Bren would get broken.
He wished at the same time that they would find nand’ Toby’s lady Barb, and that she would not be dead out there somewhere in the fields around the house.
That was the worst thought, and not fortunate at all, so he tried not to think it, even if Great-grandmother called it stupid superstition to believe that thinking about a bad thing could make it happen.
Think about bad things so you
keep
them from happening, mani would say.
Well, he was thinking about quite a few bad things. He had been thinking about them all day, and he was very tired by the time he went back to watching over nand’ Toby. His bodyguard was tired, too, though all of them were trying not to show it.
Then the walls shook. There was a deep boom from somewhere outside.
He looked at Jegari and Antaro, who had jumped to their feet.
“What is that?” Toby asked, and tried to sit up. Cajeiri moved to stop him.
“I don’t know,” he said in ship-speak. “It’s all right.”
But it wasn’t. It was high time for mani to get downstairs, was what.
“Gari-ji, stay with him,” he said. And: “Taro, come with me.”
 
They had the bus for transport—thanks to their number. Bren would have preferred something a shade less conspicuous than that ruby red bus with shiny new paint. But they had more than ten of the aiji’s men, at the last: his aishid had talked to Hanari, who was the senior of Tabini-aiji’s forces on site, and Hanari, who could perhaps have vetoed the whole idea, or wanted to confirm it with Tabini, did no such thing. He assigned ten of his force to go with them
on
that rolling target and they brought aboard communications and a classified lot of other gear.
Sixteen of the aiji’s men were staying with Geigi, to augment his small staff, and meanwhile the subclan had sent a representative up to Targai to offer its assistance, since
all
the Guild serving the Maschi had either died in the firefight or vanished toward what border one could guess.
“We have uncovered a sorry mess here, Bren-ji,” Geigi said, at the steps of the bus as they were loading. “And one understands the need for haste, and one understands why you have involved yourself, but you are already injured. Take greatest care.”
“One hopes to.” Bren earnestly did hope to. And he hoped to stay out of any firefight. But one understood the technicalities of why he had to be with the team. With him on the bus, the responsibility was his, and it was not the aiji taking action. It was the paidhi-aiji moving on a personal grievance, which, with his presence in the field of action, did not
require
the formality of a Filing of Intent with the Guild. Filing that paper would have taken hours—and if granted, it would expose his household to a legitimate counter from the Marid. With Barb in the hands of kidnappers, it was still the rule of hot pursuit, and they could even cross a border region without breaking the law. So yes, he understood that part.
He didn’t understand what they were going to do once they ran down the kidnappers, which, the more they delayed getting underway, the more likely would not happen on Maschi land. That part was still a little hazy.
But he had a nape of the neck suspicion that the aiji, well aware what was going on, was going to politick hard with the Guild to act on the aiji’s personal Filing against Machigi—a campaign that would gather urgent moral force once some Marid agent actually took a shot at the paidhi-aiji. He might have to cross that border on personal privilege. He was taking with him Guild who had a very different reason for crossing that border, and a very different target.
It was so good to be of service.
“You take most extreme care, Geigi-ji. And should this not work out auspiciously—”
“Say no such thing, Bren-ji! But be sure that I am your ally in this and I shall bend every influence I have to secure your holdings coastward as well as my own. These rascals have annoyed us long enough!”
Geigi’s influence, on earth and in the heavens, was no mean commodity, and Geigi’s wit and persuasion and the extent of his connections were nothing at all to disparage. Bren bowed in deep courtesy as the bus engine started up. “My estimable ally. One will not forget this. And keep that waistcoat on, Geigi-ji, at all hours, one begs you! Stay safe!”
He wore his own bulletproof vest. He was so damnably sore and bruised he could hardly make the first atevi-scale step onto the bus, and had to have Geigi push him up from behind. At the next step, he had Jago’s help from above, and he got into his seat with the thought that, God, it hurt, and it was going to be a very long and bumpy bus ride. He had a folded silk scarf between his ribs and the vest at the sorest spot. The skin was not broken, and he was relatively sure the ribs were not broken. The general support the vest afforded was welcome enough, but its weight was scaled to atevi strength, it was hot, his head hurt from the fall—he’d hit a chair on his way down, he was relatively sure of it, he was dizzy, and it was a moment after he sat down before he could get his breath just from the climb into the bus.

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