Betrayer: Foreigner #12 (2 page)

The heat embraced the sore ribs and eased the pain. He could stay here, oh, indefinitely.

But he had left his bed because the thoughts that had started to circle through his head had not been conducive to rest.

And now back those thoughts came, the moment he shut his eyes.

It was not quite accurate to say he was the first human to visit Tanaja. In fact, he was, by an undetermined number of hours, the second. Barb, his ex-lover and currently his brother Toby’s partner, had shown up in his suite last night.

Barb had been kidnapped from Najida, where Toby still was.

Barb, by the grace of his host, had arrived here apparently unharmed.

She had arrived that way. She’d hit the floor hard last night. His bodyguard, specifically Tano, had had to stop her from a move that could have gotten them all shot—Machigi’s guards were on a hair trigger and were unused to emotional outbursts from excitable humans—and one hoped she was not concussed.

Barb had taken her situation pretty well, considering. She might not understand everything that was going on, but she had understood she was not in a friendly place and had shut up. She wasn’t conversant in the language. She’d been unable to communicate with anyone to any extent; and being Barb, she’d be vastly upset until she could talk to someone.

He had acquired, besides Barb, Veijico, a very young member of the Assassins’ Guild, who didn’t belong to him . . . in any number of senses. Veijico’s assigned lord was Tabini-aiji’s son Cajeiri, aged eight, who was back at Najida, presumably safe, presumably well, in the care of his great-grandmother, the aiji-dowager.

Which was where Veijico ought to be. But when Barb had been kidnapped, Veijico and her partner Lucasi had taken off in hot pursuit of the kidnappers—and Veijico had gotten herself caught by Machigi’s forces, right along with Barb.

Complicating matters—as if matters wanted more complication—Veijico’s equally young partner, Lucasi, another Guild Assassin, was armed and missing somewhere out in the wide rolling hills beyond Tanaja.

And one could only hope the kid didn’t shoot anybody in Taisigi territory while the diplomatic mission was in progress. Bren’s best current hope was that Lord Machigi’s men would be able to intercept the young man without getting shot or shooting him—which might not be easy, given Lucasi’s state of mind—or that Lucasi, in a sudden burst of mature judgement, would realize he was in over his head and take himself back to the safety of Targai, where he could get help and advice from senior Guild.

But rely on youthful ambition to do that sensible thing?

It hadn’t prevailed so far.

And now he had two houseguests cluttering up his diplomatic initiative.

Their host, Lord Machigi, might or might not have been responsible for kidnapping Barb in the first place. Machigi had very generously handed over Barb
and
Veijico when he arrived. But that was no promise of good will. Lord Machigi was certainly responsible for a good deal else, including assassinations and a widespread scheme to dominate the whole west coast.

And Bren Cameron, paidhi-aiji, translator and negotiator, was supposed to turn this all around.

What gave just a little leverage to the plan was, as the aiji-dowager suspected, the very strong possibility that Lord Machigi had
not
kidnapped Barb, had
not
installed a deadly mine on a public highway in Najida district, and was
not
behind the latest assassination attempt on him at Targai.

In fact, Lord Machigi had had his own problems—notably his neighbors, the Senji and the Dojisigi. Machigi was a young lord who had sprung onto the scene relatively recently, pushing the usurper, Murini of the Kadagidi, to power in Shejidan—and maintaining his power when Murini went down. All through that period he had refused to be respectful of the more senior lords of the Marid, who had just assassinated his predecessor; and now, far from assuming a quiet posture after Murini’s demise, Machigi had made independent moves to expand his territory to the long-desired West.

One had no idea how much of the ensuing mayhem in the southwestern corner of the continent was all Machigi’s action and how much was his neighbors’ trying to get ahead of the energetic young warlord they had unwittingly put in power.

It was highly likely that Guild had mined a public road and kidnapped a minor who was a civilian, two very illegal acts, according to the rules of the Assassins’ Guild, acts that would get both the perpetrators and the lord they served outlawed. The Guild leadership back in Shejidan was proposing to outlaw Machigi and any Guildsman who served him—a very bad situation for Machigi—on the assumption Machigi had ordered it.

It was one thing for a lord to be Filed upon by someone in particular, like a rival; that meant a small number of the filer’s Assassins might go out with Guild-granted license to take him out.

It was quite another for a lord to have himself and all his bodyguard as well as the perpetrators of the offense outlawed by the Guild; that meant that any and every Guildsman alive, of any house whatsoever, was directed to execute the offenders
and
the lord who had directed them—on a priority above any other assignment in their local district.

The aiji-dowager, on the other hand, had judged Machigi had
not
been responsible for either act. She was trying to get the Guild action stopped, no mean feat, so that her emissary, namely Bren Cameron, could talk to Machigi.

In point of fact, the actions at Najida were as obvious as a bloody handprint left on somebody’s front door—too damned obvious, too clumsy, and too many violations all at once, a score of handprints laid all over Machigi’s operations in the West. Somebody had gone overboard in his attempts to get Machigi in hot water.

And who would both be that reckless of the welfare of the public on the west coast and be likely to profit from Machigi’s demise?

There was a short list, comprising the four other lords of the Marid, particularly the two in the north: Senji and Dojisigi.

But even
that
was not the scariest prospect. The disjointed character of the several attacks argued for a lack of central authority, several groups operating at once.

Letting the Guild Council proceed with a declaration of outlawry might have solved the Machigi problem quite nicely—and permanently—except that one of the two likeliest lords behind the trouble would immediately move into the power vacuum, filling the space Machigi had created in the cosmos.

And of those two, neither would be strong enough to keep any sort of peace, even inside the Marid. One would quickly assassinate the other, successors would rise up, the south would split from the north—again. The whole region would be in ferment—again. And whoever was temporarily in command of the Marid might attack the west coast, trying to snatch the power that Machigi had almost had; or he or she might just start a general war with everybody in reach, including, possibly, Tabini-aiji and the rest of the continent.

The whole matter trembled on the edge of chaos, right at a time when the continent was just settling down from the last Marid-sponsored event.

Peace was the least likely outcome once the five clans of the Marid spiraled into a power struggle.

As it had recently, reaching even into the midlands of the aishidi’tat and causing death and upset right into the capital.

So here he sat, Bren Cameron, paidhi-aiji, up to his neck in hot water again . . . on a diplomatic mission without precise instructions, in a spur-of-the-moment move . . . because the aiji-dowager had seen things about to go to hell and proposed to save Machigi, of all people on the planet, from imminent outlawry and assassination.

Would Machigi be grateful if she succeeded?

Machigi was suspicious of gifts from outside. Who wouldn’t be?

But Machigi was curious. Curiosity drove the young warlord, perhaps even more than ambition. And he had never seen a human. Those were two things Bren had on his side.

And besides the company of an unofficial sister-in-law ex-lover, a stray junior Guildswoman with a death wish, and a busload of much more senior Guild armed with explosives out in the driveway—none of which he counted as assets—he had his own aishid with him, his four-person senior Guild bodyguard, experienced in delicate situations, and
that
was the best asset he held. His bodyguard were still armed and still in contact with that busload of the aiji’s finest outside; and both those facts were reassuring about Machigi’s mood of the moment.

His bodyguard had gotten him in here safely. They had made all the right moves. They had talked their way in. They had kept the situation from blowing up, despite a Filing of Intent by Tabini-aiji against Machigi personally.

He hoped that everybody was getting a little deserved rest at this hour.

Not quite so, however. He heard a footstep in the hall, in this back end of the suite where no stray household servant of Machigi’s should come at this early hour. He froze. Listened.

It cost him a few seconds of doubt, wondering if perhaps he should get out of the tub or, conversely, sink under the surface and pretend not to be here.

A glimmer of gold eyes appeared with a substantial shadow in that doorway, in just the hint of features: Banichi, senior of his bodyguards, wearing his black uniform pants and nothing more. Black-skinned, gold-eyed like all atevi, and head and shoulders taller than a tall human, he filled whatever space he was in.

“One is very sorry to have waked you, ’Nichi-ji,” Bren said. “Go back to bed. One is just soaking in the heat.”

“Breakfast will arrive within the hour,” Banichi said. “We have just had a notification from staff. One might advise you eat last night’s bread this morning, Bren-ji, if you have any concern for its safety.”

“One takes it then that Lord Machigi does not expect me for breakfast?”

Banichi walked entirely into the bath and stopped, arms folded, a looming shadow. “One rather believes the lord may be consulting with his advisors this morning,” Banichi said quietly. It was a dead certainty the place was bugged and that every word they spoke was being listened to and parsed for hidden meaning. He had been too long in atevi politics to have any doubt of that at all.

Would their host take offense about his staff’s caution with the breakfast? Hardly an uncommon worry in an atevi household—and it was no secret at all that humans reacted adversely to the alkaloids atevi quite relished in a sauce. Thus far the local kitchen had been quite careful not to poison him, and one was certain staff had talked to staff and reminded Machigi’s people of the problem.

But who knew which cook was on duty at this hour?

Still—a hot breakfast—tea. He really wanted hot tea.

And, alas, no meeting. Machigi was, as Banichi surmised, very likely doing business of some kind this morning. One only hoped his host was not preparing to eliminate the bus from the driveway.

But that, like all other aggressive acts, such as doing in his guest, would have been safer done last night, in the dark.

“We do need to make our several phone calls,” Bren said. “As soon as it is some decent hour, and when I have contact, I shall hope to get clearance from Lord Machigi.”

“Yes,” Banichi said, and that was all. Excluding any meeting with Machigi himself, there were two very urgent items of business on their day’s agenda.

First on the list was calling someone who could get those Guild deliberations officially suspended before the Assassins’ Guild laid down a formal declaration of outlawry on paper; that would require
another
meeting to rescind, and meanwhile Machigi would be in imminent danger.

Second was calling on Tabini-aiji, head of the aishidi’tat, the Western Association, to rescind his own Filing of Intent with the same Guild, and table the current assassination order
he
had out against Lord Machigi, binding on any one of the men on that bus in the driveway. The two items were unrelated. The Guild Council action was because of infractions of Guild rules, of which Machigi might actually be innocent. Tabini’s Filing was in general annoyance with Machigi’s existence and a reasonable conviction that Machigi had been behind various assassinations and attempted assassinations, of which he probably was
not
innocent.

As far as communication with Tabini’s local agents to be patient—the Guild on the bus had been under Banichi’s orders, as senior of the paidhi-aiji’s bodyguard. The need to restrain those very dangerous agents from upsetting the situation was why the paidhi-aiji had set out on the bus in the first place. His presence had put Banichi in command of the aiji’s men, the paidhi-aiji being a court official—yesterday.

Now, however, with him and his bodyguard off that bus and up here, command had reverted to the seniormost of Tabini’s people, and that could be no secret. Tabini’s officer was a sensible man, but the situation out there in the driveway remained a very delicate one. The wrong move, the wrong information, somebody’s assumption, or just some suspicious movement of, say, the gardener or a delivery truck near that bus—and the whole district could blow up.

District, hell. They could have a continent-wide war on their hands if he didn’t get those two phone calls through fairly soon, and he had counted on being able to talk directly to Machigi about that problem this morning.

So Machigi’s failure to invite him to breakfast had become a complication in his day. They had to get permission via Machigi’s staff and hope somebody was willing to go high enough to get a yes.

Beyond that—beyond that—the paidhi had some urgent thinking to do . . . involving how far to go with Machigi and how much to promise to keep Machigi interested in talking.

He had had Machigi’s attention yesterday. But Machigi was a young man. His interest could collapse without notice. Advisors could get to him and persuade him the dowager’s proposals were not in his interest.