Destroyer (32 page)

Comforting, Bren thought to himself. He shifted onto his back and stared at the branches moving gently above his head, against a sky ragged with cloud. A wind was getting up, that line of cloud, perhaps, that they had seen at sea, now reaching the mainland. It might rain.

He heard the distant voices of Banichi’s conference, heard small rush of water flowing, and, nearer at hand, eight-year-old Cajeiri astonishing two teenagers with the account of how he had gone aboard an alien space-ship, and how their kyo had been extremely fond of Bindanda’s teacakes . . .

Far too much information to be scattering around the countryside. Information, in strictest sense, that should be classified. Information that he could use to his own advantage.

But it was late for that now. And as Cajeiri told it, the kyo, who could slag a space station with their weaponry, were in fact capable of reason. The boy had helped find that aspect of them. He was a hero in his own right, and was certainly basking in the admiration of his audience. Would he cheat the boy of that, with a request to keep it all quiet?

No, he would not.

He shut his eyes, still alive—he reminded himself—still alive after the shuttle ride, still alive after a very remarkable stretch of hours in which their only rest had been slow baking under the tarp, and slow freezing on blocks of ice, and a long ride on a very uncomfortable saddle, all in the fear of being shot or captured. The ground still felt as if it was moving under him, still with the thump and clack of the rails, or the thump and heave of the boat cutting through water, or the shuttle’s tires rolling rapidly down the pavement.

Just too damned much moving in the last few days. And too little real sleep. At the very edge of oblivion he forgot where he was, except he was down, and they’d landed, and the wind was moving, and atevi voices were around him. Jago was close by. And the mecheiti were ripping the leaves off trees.

He could trust that, he decided. The solid earth was reliable. He finally let go all defenses, and did sleep, deeply.

 

He waked by daylight, with people moving about, with breakfast cooking, an aroma of crisping meat. As sore as he had anticipated being, he took three more pills, then set himself to rights, straightened his by now disreputable queue, shaved the old-fashioned way—no servants to comb his hair, dress him, all the quick attentions that had started most of his days in recent years. He missed Narani and Bindanda—missed their society and their quick briefing on everything in the household. But he found something morally refreshing, being sore in very inconvenient places, sitting on a rock beside a gurgling spring.

Jago brought him hot tea, his one special attention, and dropped to her haunches in front of him.

“How are you this morning, Bren-ji?”

“Very well, really. Will we ride today?”

“We must, Bren-ji,” she said.

“If the dowager can do it, nadi-ji, I certainly have no cause to complain.”

Jago folded her arms across her knees and leaned close. “We have a plan, Bren-ji, a dangerous plan. The dowager wishes to inquire at Tirnamardi.”

Tatiseigi’s country estate, about half a day’s ride out of Heitisi, the cluster of medium-sized towns that was the economic center of the Atageini holdings. Dangerous didn’t begin to describe it. “I heard, last night.”

“There is a relatively safe approach,” Jago said, “through the hunting reserve, which is contiguous with this woods, which both Taiben and the Atageini manage.”

As the animals they hunted were in common, so certain territory overlapped, and game-chase became a matter of hazy rights and who protested—civilly, at least modestly civilly, recently. One hoped it persisted.

“From there,” Jago said in a low voice, “we may be able to reach our Guild.”

Oh,
now
it got dangerous.

“By phone?” he asked, doubting it.

“It would be far better, Bren-ji, if we were to go ourselves.”

He didn’t like it. She knew he didn’t like it. He reserved a thought to himself: If you go, I go, and he was sure they’d try to outmaneuver him unless he strictly forbade it.

“What do you think, Jago-ji? Is venturing to Shejidan a good idea?”

Jago looked at the ground, then at him. “We consider this a risk, and we have reservations as to whether to attempt Tirnamardi, or to bypass Atageini territory and keep within Taiben. The whole question is where Lord Tatiseigi stands in the current crisis. The dowager is firm in her notion. Cenedi has doubts, too.”

“Cajeiri will be at risk.”

A second hesitation. “Not from Lord Tatiseigi,” she said. “Nor, we think, would the dowager be. You, on the other hand, Bren-ji—”

“Have no particular favor in his sight. I know. I enjoy very little favor from the majority of the population of the mainland, at the moment, one would think.”

He had never been particularly acceptable to this very conservative lord, who disliked human influence and all modern intrusions.

“There is misperception, perhaps.”

Loyally put. He did not think, however, that he had yet reached the foundations of Jago’s thinking.

“Do you, personally, think that Tabini-aiji is dead?” he asked.

“We have had no proof,” she said, and that was a delicate, revelatory matter: they had seen no proof they accepted, and therefore had no emotional disconnection of man’chi. They were, she and Banichi, still functioning as if their highest man’chi of all was intact, and that opinion would color all others, affect all other decisions, define all other logic—whether to go to the Guild, whether to bend every effort to empower Ilisidi, whether to agree to this mission entering Tatiseigi’s lands.

“If I were not with you,” he said—delicate, delicate, to probe an ateva’s man’chi too deeply—“would you now leave the dowager, Jago-ji?”

“Unlikely that we would,” she said. “But what she is doing, Bren-ji, places the heir and all his aspirations in Lord Tatiseigi’s hands. That notion has to be reckoned with. If Tabini-aiji is alive, this risk is a serious consideration, and we are not able to prevent the dowager doing it.”

He hadn’t quite seen through to that unhappy fact.

“Tatiseigi has,” he developed her thought, “every personal interest in seeing Cajeiri sit in Shejidan.”

“And that means he has proportionately less interest in seeing Tabini alive.”

“God.” In Mosphei’. He loosened the wilted lace at his throat. “But his interests cannot involve alienating Cajeiri by attacking his father. That move the boy would never forgive.”

“That would be one constraint on him, nandi—besides the operational difficulty of such a move, the fact that the camp opposing the aiji does not place any reliance on him, and, perhaps, whatever regard he holds for Lady Damiri. There is a complex of reasons. Also, Tabini would move to get Cajeiri back, if Tatiseigi were to take him in his charge, and Tabini-aiji with his guard is no small threat. If Lord Tatiseigi made a move to lay personal claim to the heir, then everyone would take sides. Violently.”

The denouement of the machimi, the moment in the play where loyalties suddenly came crystal-clear, and atevi had to act.

“Tatiseigi’s ambition is abated, not dead, Bren-ji. This is our thinking. He has always aspired to rule.”

“And he cannot. If the tashrid would not elect the dowager, they would never elect him.”

“The tashrid may have suffered changes in membership, during the present troubles.”

“That is so.”

“The boy, however, with him as regent—would have far less trouble being confirmed. If his father were dead, and Damiri being Atageini—Tatiseigi would indeed rise in importance. This move of the dowager’s, bringing us under his roof, is fraught with hazards.”

“Do you think, Jago-ji, that the dowager herself might be in more danger than she thinks?”

“Possibly.” A frown creased Jago’s brow. “Possibly so, Bren-ji. Sometimes, lacking certain instincts, you do see astonishingly clearly.”

“Not lacking my own species’ instincts, I assure you, and this hazard is understandable. Can we not talk her out of it? Can you reason with Cenedi?”

“Cenedi has tried to persuade her: he wishes to settle her in Taiben and then venture against the Kadigidi himself. Cenedi himself knows the risk, knows your man’chi. He would not blame us for withdrawing from this venture and trying to find Tabini. Nor, I think, would the dowager herself blame us.”

It was an absolute wilderness, the forest of atevi emotions, atevi decisions, atevi snap judgements, all rooted in urges humans didn’t feel at that depth, at that intensity. “She is counting, is she not, Jago-ji, on the boy having a strong emotional force with his uncle?”

“Counting very heavily on her own, one believes, nandi, considering the boy’s last emotional impact on his uncle was set in a wide expanse of concrete.”

He was caught off guard. Laughed, a brief sneeze of laughter, despite the grimness of the situation. Tatiseigi was a notorious curmudgeon, who had suffered considerably from public amusement at the incident in question. And one did fear Tatiseigi would not find Cajeiri that much improved, not from his conservative point of view—a sober thought which instantly killed the laughter, and did nothing to form a rational conclusion. If Jago was perplexed, caught between two loyalties, he was caught in his own. He had their welfare at heart, and the boy’s. And Tabini’s, granted the aiji was still alive. And he had the whole outcome to consider, and the whole human-atevi-kyo problem to weigh into the equation.

While Ilisidi, damn her, had always been an incredibly nervy, canny player in atevi politics, and he had no wish to undermine her best effort, if she could shock the fence-sitting lord into alliance. There he met his own division of common sense and emotion. She might be making a monumental mistake. Or a very smart move.

But at the bottom of the stack, on the scale at which they operated, he had no right to choose personal safety. He was a resource, a resource of information and defense for the fallen regime, one it could no more afford to lose than it could afford to lose Ilisidi or Cajeiri, if Tabini himself was alive. But in order to be useful, he had to be active and get the information public in the most credible way. He had his own reputation to restore, and if he could not defend their mission and its outcome to one fairly civilized old man under Ilisidi’s influence, he stood precious little chance of persuading the rest of the continent.

“One cannot hide in the bushes,” he said. “We did not come back from space to do that, Jago-ji. One has no real idea how to find Tabini. One rather thinks he may find us if we can make just a modest amount of noise and if Atageini territory is open to him. And the things that Tabini did that were right, that were essential—that succeeded—these things have to be vindicated to the public at large, do they not, Jago-ji? If I were to separate from Ilisidi, I, as much as you, need to go to Shejidan. I need to speak to your Guild, and to the legislature. I need to give people the information I have. I have to defend Tabini’s decisions for everyone to hear. Words, Jago, words are my whole defense. Words stand a chance of changing minds. I have to gain what respect I can recover, starting, one supposes, with this very influential lord.”

A moment of silence, then, Jago’s gold gaze steady and honest. “You are not necessarily wrong, Bren-ji.”

“Good.”

“So,” Jago said, “our way from here—”

“Lies through Atageini territory,” Bren said. “So our intent may have diverged ever so slightly from the dowager’s, but our path logically does not.”

“One concurs, Bren-ji,” Jago said. “I shall tell Banichi.”

She did not go back to the conference. She went and sat apart from that gathering, on a rock, arms on her knees, waiting. In a little time Banichi came and squatted near her.

Bren continued fussing with his lace and dusting his boots. The conference at the fireside broke up, and the young people, who had been settled in their own conspiracy over near the mecheiti, began to look for saddles. Cajeiri was limping a little this morning. He didn’t complain overmuch about it, doggedly maintaining his dignity, one suspected, particularly in front of the two older youngsters, who were inured to the saddle, and who had likely never in their lives felt this particular pain.

Ilisidi had to be helped up to her feet, but she walked and stood, somehow, shaking off assistance, and ordered Nawari to saddle her mecheita.

Bren figured he had best go see to his own gear. He thought he could tell which mecheita he had ridden yesterday, and which was its tack, and no one else objected to his selection of gear. Tano and Algini left consultations and hurried to help him. He decided he was very grateful for that, having disgraced himself last evening, and having no wish to contest the creature’s tusks, as sore as he already was.

Meanwhile the small side conference between Banichi and Jago had broken up fairly inconspicuously, as Banichi and Jago sought their own tack and Banichi found the means to talk to Tano and Algini.

And did the dowager take note that there had been a planning session of his own staff, or did Cenedi possibly miss it? Bren took the rein from Tano. He gritted his teeth and got into the saddle, with Algini’s help.

Pain was bearable, if it was familiar pain. It would pass in an hour or so, even without the painkiller to hasten the hour. A little gentle riding would bring its own numbness.

Their direction was the same direction they had been tending yesterday. Cajeiri and Deiso’s two teenagers all rode together now, the ranger youngsters riding with considerable skill, compelling their mecheiti to ignore their ordinary order, likely with their parents’ beasts, and stay near Cajeiri, an argument that occasionally annoyed the rest of the column, but they had their way and stayed.

For his own part, he was very glad to be somewhat behind, and to have his mecheita bored and quiescent. He rode quietly in line, seeing Banichi and Jago conferring with Cenedi up ahead, a conversation undoubtedly being overheard by the dowager. There might be close questions, or implied close questions from Cenedi, about the private conference, and Banichi might even answer them fairly honestly, since their intentions, while somewhat separate, lay in the same direction. It was safer to have Cenedi well-acquainted with their notions and their logic.