Betrayer: Foreigner #12 (15 page)

He got Machigi’s attention, a face-on stare; he noted that movement in the tail of his vision. But he stared tranquilly out the window.

“Why?” Machigi asked. “Are you saying she wants to overthrow her grandson?”

“No.” He wished he were surer of that statement.

“To start a war in the Marid?”

He answered calmly, he hoped not insolently, and still stared into the sunlight: “When has there
not
been bloodfeud within the Marid, nandi? If this situation exposes it—better to know your enemies. No. Your internal trouble is not even the lord of the Dojisigi. It is the Guild who fled here, Guild who urged you and the other lords of the Marid to back Murini.”

“You say! Who said there
are
such persons?”

“Who died in your household today, nandi?”

“Insolent bastard!”

“Elements of the Guild were in the action that seated Murini in Shejidan. When he fell, and these people were driven out of the aishidi’tat, they brought with them their old attachments—some of them to the northern Kadagidi, some of them to other northern clans. They have found nests of refuge here, but one would by no means depend on their man’chi.”

A long silence. A dangerous silence.

“This is, of course,” Bren said, “a guess. But that you are alive is a testament to the skill of your bodyguard. Their man’chi to you one does not question.”

“Insolent wretch. Who are
you
to judge?”

“You have asked me, nandi, to give you such service as I have given the aiji in Shejidan and the aiji-dowager. My advice. My observations, as directly, as bluntly, as honestly as I can frame them, lest there be any mistake. You were one that put Murini in power. It gave you one thing—distraction of the other clans to problems in the north. You reached for the West. You all but had it. And then Tabini-aiji overthrew Murini and took his office back. Worse, the Guild who had backed Murini came
here,
Guild whose man’chi is
not
to the Marid. Guild who have broken with the Guild in Shejidan. Tell me, nandi, where
their
man’chi will lie. Not with you. Not with any lord of the Marid. This is a problem to you. Here one can only guess, but you are alive, and your bodyguard, with you from
before
Murini, has kept you alive. Now the aiji-dowager, whose information is much more thorough than mine, has moved suddenly to keep you alive. You are valuable to her, nandi. Having been in your presence, one can say one can understand the aiji-dowager’s reasoning.”

“Three times insolent! You do not sit in judgment of me, paidhi!”

“Nor does one in any wise presume to do so. I merely observe that the aiji-dowager is no fool.”

Silence. He didn’t look at Machigi. He stood still, not to bend, and not to provoke the man further.

Machigi snapped: “Should we be impressed by her good opinion?”

“No, nandi. But you should not throw it away. Examine her reasons. You have asked me to speak for you and to use my offices. Ask your own sensibilities was it wise to admit these fugitive Guild back into the Marid. It was an honorable act, perhaps, but not to your benefit, surely. Murini is dead. To whom is their man’chi now? Is anyone certain it was ever to Murini?”

The silence resumed. Persisted a while. Then Machigi said, out of utter stillness, not a move, not a breath that slipped control: “My mother’s brother died this morning.”

God, who was Machigi referring to? Who in Machigi’s clan had married in?

His mother. His mother’s generation. Machigi himself was the son of Ardami, son of Sagimi—both Taisigi from way back.

But his mother—

His mother. Bren racked his brain to have it right. Mada, it was. Mada, a woman out of the far weaker Farai clan in Senji. They were not Dojisigi, the usual troublemakers—but allied to the Dojisigi, and they had for a hundred years been a thorn in Senji’s side because of it.

The Farai were the same clan that had been sitting in
his
apartment in Shejidan and claiming they were heroes of the counterrevolution and Tabini’s return to power.

Emblematic of which, they had camped in the paidhi-aiji’s apartment, which they claimed by inheritance, clinging to their claim of heroic action on the aiji’s behalf, talking peace while snuggling right next door to the aiji’s own back wall.

“Farai,” Bren said. It was all he dared say. Life and death trembled on a young man’s temper.

Again that lengthy silence. Then Machigi said, quietly: “That is the
Tropic Sun
putting out into the bay, do you see?”

One did see, a middling-sized ship leaving a slight wake on the sun-reflecting harbor. “The freighter. Yes, nandi.”

“That ship is bound north, to the railhead north of Najidami Bay, all the way around the south coast. Your plan would make all that traffic move by rail. That ship is not stout enough nor fast enough to venture the seas of your eastern trade. The dowager’s plan would not make that shipowner happy.”

“One could propose things that might do so. Trade with Separti Township.”

“We trade there now.”

“And the southern isle.”

‘We trade there now.”

“But the southern isle would by then be receiving goods from the eastern ports. That ship would prosper, nandi.”

“So, paidhi.” Machigi turned, frowning, facing him. “You have brought papers. More of your promises?”

He had all but forgotten the folders he had tucked under his arm. He turned and gave a slight bow in courtesy. “Specifics of place and resources, aiji-ma.”

The respectful,
personal
grant of loyalty. He tried it out now in cold blood, deliberately, consciously, a matter of politics. But it bothered him, having said it. He had never in all the world thought he would ever use that title to any but Tabini and Tabini’s house.

He’d thought it wouldn’t bother him. A human could lie about his loyalties. But the word damned near stuck in his throat.

And resounded off atevi nerves. It had to shock Banichi and Jago. It was downright humiliating for him, hurtful to do to them, and it necessarily dragged them into his declaration.

It resounded off Machigi’s nerves, too, of whatever moral quality they were, now that Machigi had decided against killing the lot of them.

“Tea,” Machigi said suddenly. That was an atevi social response to far, far too much emotion in the air. One needed to quiet down and restore a balance that had been, for the last half minute, careening too wildly to one side and another.
“Staff!”
Machigi snapped suddenly, which argued that they had been relatively isolated for the last while: staff had to be summoned from a comparative distance.

Worth noting. Machigi had let only his personal bodyguard in on this conference, so long as it was possible it could blow up into shooting, one supposed. Now that it had not, Machigi was apparently ready to talk in a different mode, in a more polite frame of mind.

“You need not be burdened with your documents,” Machigi observed as doors opened and staff came in. “If you wish to deliver them to me, staff will take them. We shall read them later.”

“Indeed, yes, aiji-ma.” He slipped, deliberately, into the intimate-with-authority mode.

“You have specifics, you say?”

Bren gave an affirmative bow. “Early specifics. But I believe accurate ones.”

“You work very quickly, nand’ paidhi. Of course—there has been absolutely no confirmation from Najida.”

“If we have any favorable wind, aiji-ma, best catch it and keep the ship moving in a good direction.”

Machigi snapped his fingers and indicated the papers, which Bren handed to the servant who responded.

“Tea,” Machigi said to the servants, “nadiin.”

No softening -ji. No intimacy with any of his staff. That was downright shocking—or Machigi was in a hellish bad humor with staff. In Najida, even in Shejidan, staff would certainly take it that way, but Machigi gave no outward indication of it at the moment, which meant he covered his emotions very well when he wanted to. He mildly gestured toward the chair grouping near the tall windows, and they walked that way and sat down opposite one another, with the windows on Bren’s right hand and on Machigi’s left, to wait for tea.

The light cast a gloss on Machigi’s dark face, and made the old scar more evident. The eyes were deep gold and deep-set, with that epicanthic fold some southerners had. It gave them a fierce, unsettlingly predatory look.

And Machigi surveyed him in silence, taking in human features in the same way, likely—since, excepting Barb, and excepting television and photographs, he had never seen one.

There was a lot to learn about each other, Bren thought, quietly folding and slipping his few notes into his inner coat pocket. A lot to learn on both sides. Machigi gave him reason to be comfortable, even complacent.

Here was a youth in near-absolute power. Perhaps in the way of youth, he was touchy about his prerogatives and a shade wary of intimacy, feeling a need to set staff at some distance, lest anyone presume, or lose their fear of him. Or there just
was
no attachment.

One had no information of any woman in the picture, either, nor even, now, any close relatives except the newly deceased uncle: Machigi was a survivor of bloody years in the Marid and several skirmishes with Tabini-aiji and the aiji-dowager.

He was alone. Angry. And alive.

While he himself had just made an emotional commitment to this man that left him entirely uneasy, as if the whole world had broken up in moving bits, and he didn’t know what situation he was going to be in when—
when
he went back to Ilisidi.

And worse, ultimately he was going to have to go back to Tabini to explain his reasoning in offering this young troublemaker the whole east coast of the continent,
and
a ticket to the space station.

Machigi didn’t talk while they waited for the tea. He didn’t. Their respective bodyguards had repositioned themselves. And the serving staff, after what seemed an interminable interval, came back with tea. Serving it took time. Drinking it took much more time.

He could not be comfortable in the situation. He could not even be comfortable with Banichi and Jago staring at his back wondering what in hell else a human was capable of doing, seeing what he had already done.

And he dared not show anything he felt.

Click! went Machigi’s empty teacup onto the side table.

Bren set his down with a softer click and settled his mind to business.

“So, paidhi,” Machigi said, “now that the aiji-dowager has made us a target of all the rest of the Marid—what is your advice?”

“That you take her offer, aiji-ma. One greatly doubts her offer has changed your enemies’ plans from what they always were. One surmises you were aware when you made strong early moves to exert influence outside the Marid that you were going to disturb your neighbors. There is no evidence you consulted either of your northern neighbors in your moves on the west coast. The two southern clans will have acquiesced, since they follow your lead. One observes you offered young Baiji the hand of Tiajo-daja, a daughter of Badissuni’s line over in the Dojisigin Marid. One has no idea whether Badissuni’s house attempted to get a ride aboard your plan—you backed it. But one doubts you would have let that marriage go forward.”

Machigi rested his elbow on the chair arm, chin on his fist, gold eyes focused entirely on his. “Go on. We are amused.”

“They were too busy with their own problems to interfere further in your moves to take the west coast. And Tabini-aiji’s driving Murini out was more inconvenient to them than to you. Events kept your
Marid
enemies off balance. They fortified themselves against any retaliation from Shejidan; they plotted to get inside Tabini-aiji’s defenses. My own arrival on the coast was not quite unrelated—your kinsmen the Farai had appropriated my residence in the Bujavid, giving me little choice but retreat to my estate. One hesitates to attribute to them the foresight to know I would go to the west coast as a result of their holding my apartment, but it is not impossible. I can assure you I had no orders from Shejidan in going to Najida, no advance knowledge at all regarding your dealings here. I walked into—dare I say,
your
operation at Kajiminda?—entirely by chance. I somehow doubt you expected, either, that Guild within that operation would attempt my life.”

Machigi opened that fist, a brief, dismissive gesture. And smiled. The eyes did not.

“So,” Bren said. “You did not know then, but do know now, that the aiji’s son is at Najida. That was planned by no one, least of all his father or his great-grandmother. But it did heighten the impact of that attack. The successive attacks. It brought the aiji-dowager in. And it brought Geigi home from the space station. It exposed your operation, it brought Baiji down, and it brought the Edi into the conflict. One can imagine you did
not
authorize that attack.”

“The attack was unauthorized,” Machigi said. “And information was limited. Your people had the phones tapped from the moment
you
arrived on the peninsula.”

“Indeed,” Bren said. The wiretapping was news to him. “And might one suppose you did not authorize the attack on Najida?”

“Go on,” Machigi said.

“The Guild operating in the vicinity of Kajiminda then flagrantly violated Guild policy and laid the bloody knife at your door. In their theory, neither the dowager nor the Guild would wait to ask questions.”

“Go on,” Machigi said again, increasingly darkly, and Bren kept going:

“The Farai are too small to swing the entire Marid by the tail. The Farai lord has kept the Senji lord at arm’s length by courting the Dojisigi; and one strongly suspects it was the Dojisigi who set them at the same tactic inside the Bujavid, to gain information about Tabini-aiji’s movements. You were to be eliminated, which would benefit the Dojisigi lord and the Senji. And it would be a race then to see whether the Farai tried actually to deal with Tabini-aiji and ally with your successor in the Taisigin Marid, thus getting the better of the Dojisigi
and
the Senji, or whether the Dojisigi would simply squash them overnight and
then
make a move to install their
own
candidate in the lordship in Tanaja. The fact the Dojisigi had offered a daughter to meddle in your plans for Baiji indicates they were already taking aim at you.”