Inheritor (38 page)

He took a match, relit the candle. They'd delivered body blows, at least of those that had landed; and hadn't done each other visible damage, give or take dust on their clothes. The candle and the wan light from the window showed him Jase with hair flying loose, collar rumpled, a sullen look. He figured it had as well be a mirror of himself at the moment.

"We have to go to dinner tonight."

"In this wreckage?"

"
This
is a Historic Monument, Jasi-ji, and I suggest if she declares it's a palace on the moon you bow and agree that it's very fine and you're delighted to be here."

There was a long silence from the other side.

"Yes, sir," Jase said.

"I'm not
sir
."

"Oh, but I thought you'd taken that back. You are
sir
or you
aren't
in this business, so make up your mind!"

"Damn that talk. This is not your ship. You're supposed to be doing a job, you're not doing it, you damn near created a rift in the government and I brought you here to patch the holes, the
gaping
holes, in your knowledge of these people,
their
customs,
their
language, and
your
sensitivity to a vast, unmapped world of experience to which you're
blind
, Mr. Graham. I suggest you say thank you, put yourself back to rights, and don't expect
atevi
to do the job you volunteered for. They weren't born to understand
you
, they're on
their
planet, enjoying
their
lives quite nicely without your input, and I suggest if you approach atevi officials who owe
their
precious scant time to their own people, you do so politely, appreciate their efforts to understand you, they choose to make such efforts, or I'll see you out of here."

"Thank you," Jase said coldly.

"Thank you for waiting to blow up."

"Don't push me.
Don't
push me. You need my good will."

"Do I? You could have an accident. They'd send me another."

There was a small, shocked silence. Then: "You're an atevi official. Is that the way you think of yourself?"

"You don't question me, mister. When it comes to relations
with
the atevi, I
am
sir, to you, and you do as you're told. You and your rules-following. This is the time for it, this is the time in your whole life you'd
better
follow the damn rules, and
now
you want to do things your own way! What do I need to diagram for you? Where did you get the notion
you
know what in hell's going on? Or did I miss a revelation from God?"

A long, long silence, this time. Jase didn't look him in the eye. He stared at the floor, or at dust on his clothing, which he brushed off, at the light from the window, at anything in the world but him.

"I think we should go back to Shejidan," Jase said to the window. "This isn't going to help."

"Well, it's not quite convenient at the moment to go back. You asked for this, and you've got it. So be grateful."

"The hell! You've lied to me."

"In what particular?"

A silence. A silence that went on and on while Jase stared off into nowhere and fought for composure.

There was a small rap at the door.

"Nadi?" Bren asked, wishing the interruption had had better timing, to prevent the incident in the first place. He shouldn't have hit Jase. It hadn't helped. The man had lost his father. He was on a hair-trigger as it was. He'd chosen this particular time to bear down on the language, probably
because
of his father's death; and now he didn't know where he was: he was temporarily outside rational expression.

The door opened.

"Is there a difficulty, nadiin?" Banichi asked — Banichi, who was lodged next door, and, if there was anyone besides Ilisidi's chief of security, Cenedi, who was likely to have heard the entire episode, he'd about bet Banichi had the equipment in his baggage and would use it.

"No," he said. "Thank you, Banichi-ji. Is everyone settled? What's our schedule?"

"A light dinner at sunset. An early start, at sunrise."

"We'll be ready. Thank you, Banichi-ji."

"Nadi." The door closed.

"He heard us," Bren said quietly.

"I thought they took orders from
you
," Jase said in a surly tone.

"No. They don't. One of a great many things you don't know, isn't it?"

Another small silence.

"You
need
to know, Jase. You'd better learn. I'm trying to help you, dammit."

"I'm sorry," Jase said then. "I'm just —"

Jase didn't finish it. Neither did he. He waited.

"I am sorry," Jase repeated, in Ragi. "Nadi, I was overturned."

"Upset," he said automatically and bit his lip. "Overturned, too, with reason. Jasi-ji. I know that. Can we recover our common sense?"

"Nadi," Jase said, "I wish to see the ocean. Will it be possible?"

"Nadi, you're very forward to keep asking me. If I were atevi I should be offended. Learn that."

A small hesitation. A breath. "Nadi, I take your information, but you are not atevi and I wish very much to know and not be surprised."

"I'll try to find out," Bren said. "There are things I don't understand." He hesitated to say so, but there were very quiet alarm bells ringing in the subconscious. "Observe a little caution. This is in excess of the conditions I expected. We
are
possibly in danger, nadi. One wonders if we have quite left behind the events in the city."

"Is this part of the lesson?"

Layers, upon layers, upon layers. "No," he said. "It isn't."

"Are you lying to me right now?"

"No," Bren said. "And of course, if I were, I would say I wasn't. But I'm not. I've turned us over to Tabini's grandmother, and I don't know what the truth is. The aiji thought us safe to be here. But I am, however mildly, concerned at the conditions. I can't say why I'm concerned. I just would expect — somewhat more comfort than we have here, more evidence that someone had some idea of the conditions here
before
the aiji-dowager took guests here." He wasn't sure Jase followed that. But there was something ticking over at the back of his brain now that he was no longer focusing on Jase's potential for explosion. That feeling of unease said that the dowager had security concerns, very reasonable security concerns, as did they. As did Mogari-nai, some distance away across the plain, which one would expect would be a very sensitive area; and they weren't seeing the security level at this place he had expected.

"Can you ask Banichi?"

"Within his man'chi, yes."

"Qualified yes."

"Always. It always is." It was the truth he gave Jase, and the answer was one that struck deep at what was human and what was atevi. He understood Banichi's priorities and took no offense at them. He wasn't in the mood to explain. He wasn't in the mood now to doubt his own security.

Just the dowager's.

Not a cheerful thought.

"Can you ask them what the schedule is?" Jase persisted.

"We were just told what the schedule is."

"For tomorrow, I mean."

He turned and fixed Jase with a glum stare. "I'll tell you a basic truth of atevi, nadi. If there were no real need for you to know that, yes, you could go, or I could go, and ask anyone around us. But because there
is
some question of good will here, and since that's why you need to know, no, it wouldn't be prudent to ask. Never make your hosts lie to you, Jasi-ji. Once that starts, you don't know what to believe."

"They're not lying?" Clearly Jase was not convinced.

"Not yet, I think. Not likely. But I haven't seen Cenedi. I haven't seen the dowager. I haven't seen anything but one servant, and our own security."

"What does that tell you?"

"Nadi, in response to your far too blunt question, it tells me either that people are busy because we've come here on short notice and quite clearly they've had to move even food up this hill to have anything on hand — or — there's something going on and they're too polite to offer us the possibility of a question."

"Meaning
what
?"

"Again too blunt, nadi." He was determined to push, in coldly correct, even kindly atevi fashion, to see whether Jase was capable of holding his temper. "But in response to your question, and in hopes your next question will be more moderate, they may avoid our presence rather than put themselves in the position of lying or us in the position of needing to be polite." He changed languages. "A new word for you:
naigoch'lmi
. It means feigned good will."

"
Naigoch'imi
. Is that what we're dealing with?"

"We? Now it's
we
? A moment ago you wanted to kill me."

"I wanted the
truth
, dammit. And I still don't know if this includes you."

"Is that the way they get the truth on the ship? With fists?"

A silence. Several small breaths. "I won't apologize, Bren."

"Fine."

Back into the ship's language. "Friendship wouldn't have hurt, you know. From the beginning, friendship wouldn't have hurt."

Now
Jase wanted to talk. He'd had enough from his brother. And he wasn't in the mood for sentiment, dammit, he'd turned it off between him and Jase at the beginning.

"Frankly," he said with coldness that amazed himself, "I don't know that you've ever offered any such thing. Not since we first spoke on the radio before you came down here. You were bright, interested, pleasant. But since you landed, since then —"

"I tried!"

"And I have a job to do, which means hammering words into your head, like it or not — no, I'm not always pleasant. I can't be!
You
were a teacher — I'm not. So I do the best I can, even in the intervals when you had the luxury to be annoyed at me."

"So I've learned. I have learned."

"So you've worked at it. Good for you. You've also gotten mad. But I didn't have the luxury to be mad, no matter what you said, no matter what you did. So I've taken it. I've taken anything you wanted to hand out, because I know my way around, I have the fluency, and I'm used to being the diplomat in touchy situations. — But friends, no.
A friend
would have met me halfway. A
friend
would have advanced some understanding that I'm crowding teaching you into the spaces where — never mind my leisure time — the spaces where I was getting
sleep
, nadi. Friendship wasn't in the requirements, I haven't asked it and I damn sure haven't gotten it!"

"You don't give me a chance."

"It was your choice, from the first day you landed. You weren't pleased with me or anyone else. You've made no secret of it. You never have trusted me. Why are we talking about it now? What do you want from me?"

"I expected…" Jase stopped, a need for words, or just a shaky breath. "Things were not what you promised from the moment we landed!"

(Hanks yelling, Don't trust them! The whole plain afire. Atevi armed to the teeth and clear evidence of an armed conflict.)

"You had some reason to think that, I'll grant."

"And they're not what you said
here
!" Jase flung a gesture about him, at the stones, the situation. "Every time I trust you! Every damned
time
I trust you, Bren, something blows up in my face! You're the one that keeps the peace between your people and the atevi — but your people aren't speaking to you, have you noticed that?"

"You've trusted me once to come down," he said restrainedly, "and once to come here. At no other time have I asked you —"

"Oh, it's
believe
me,
trust
me, I
know what I'm doing
, every time I draw a breath, Bren! I trusted you into that damn party. I trusted you into that interview. Well, where in hell is the ocean?"

"You'll have to trust me again."

"I believed you enough to come down here! Do you know how many parachutes, Bren? Did you notice how many parachutes? The first chute
failed
, Bren!"

Jase outright ran out of breath. And seemed to want something in reply. He saw Jase's eyes fixed on him as they'd not steadied on anything in the chaos of the trip up.

"I know," he said. "I
saw
that. I'm glad you made it. I'm personally glad you made it. If that needs to be said."

"Personally glad."

"I wouldn't have wanted you to die."

"That's kind of you."

"What do I need to do? Name it for me. What would satisfy you?"

"An expression. Have an expression on your face. Tell me the truth for once."

The remark about his lack of expression stung: it was probably true. But it clarified the source of objections, too. "I've tried," he said with labored patience,

"to teach you a language and a way of dealing with this world. And you ignore my lessons. Your repeated insistence on questions I've pointedly ignored is rude in atevi eyes, and on such points of misunderstanding with atevi we began a war that killed a great many people.
Do
you understand that?"

"Then cure my misunderstanding. Why in hell are we on this hilltop, in this place?"

"For a good time. Which we will have. Relax."

"What are we down to?
Trust
me?
Trust
me, one more time?"

"Yes!"

"God." Jase ran a hand through his hair and walked to the window. Stark daylight painted him in white as he stood there staring out. And as he stood straight, as if he'd seen the devil. "There are mechieti out there!"

Atevi riding animals. Jase had had that experience on his first hour on the planet.

"Doing what, nadi?" he asked Jase.

"Eating the grass. Inside the wall."

"That's fine," Bren said. "They're the dowager's."

"What does she need them for?"

"Getting down to the sea, maybe."

"I'm not riding!"

"I think you'll do what she says," Bren said calmly. "Whatever it is. She's a lord far higher than I am. And this is, in all important senses, her land."

"Bren —" Jase turned, became a shadow against the white light of outdoors. There was a moment of silence. Then: "All right. All right. Whatever you say."