Invader (17 page)

"Aiji-ma." He did have the appointment. Jago had told him. It took effort to get up. He made his awkward bow, and Cenedi showed him toward the door —"Nand' paidhi," Cenedi said, when they reached the front hall, "take care. There are more fools loose."

"Is it a specific threat?"

"I can't name names."

"Forgive me." He didn't know the inner workings of the Guild.

Cenedi shrugged, avoiding his eyes. "My profession allows no debts, nand' paidhi. Understand. Ask Banichi."

"I haven't seen him."

"Not unrelated."

"Guild business?"

"That might be."

"Is he in danger?"

They'd reached the door, and two more of Ilisidi's security were on duty there; men he knew, men he'd hunted with, ridden with.

"Never worry about us," Cenedi said. "I can only say that fools have moved — several are dead fools — and there are voices in our Guild who speak for the paidhi. Contracts have been proposed, and voted down. I've spoken more already than I should. Ask Banichi. Or Jago.
They're
within your
man'chi
."

"I'm very grateful for your concern, nand' Cenedi."

"In all matters," Cenedi said, "I take instruction from the aiji-dowager. Understand this. A favor given weighs nothing in my Guild. But if the paidhi were to come to grief in Shejidan
not
by the dowager's express order, certain of the Guild would sue to take personal contract."

"Nadi, I am vastly moved to think so."

"Do you understand, nand' paidhi, the burden you've placed on 'Sidi-ji?"

"I can't," he said. "I can't possibly, nadi, but I can't refrain from it — because she's essential to the peace. Capable of ruling the Association, I've no doubt. But her place in these events is greater than that. Which you and I both know — and I can't tell her that, nadi. I want to, in so many words. But she'd toss me right out her door. Deservedly — for my impudence."

"'Sidi-ji knows her own measure," Cenedi said. "And her value. She defends herself very well. Come. I'll walk you down to neutral ground, nadi."

"Where," he asked Jago sharply, when Jago picked him up after the committee hearings downstairs, "where, nadi, is Banichi?"

"At the moment?"

"Jago-ji, don't put me off. Cenedi says there's trouble. A matter before the Guild. That I should ask you and Banichi. — Is that where Banichi is?"

"Banichi is involved in Guild business," Jago said, the first that she'd actually admitted.

"About me?"

"It might be."

"Is that reason to worry?"

"It's reason to worry," Jago said.

"So why can't you tell me?"

"Not to worry you, nadi."

"You'll have noticed," he said, "that I
am
worried. I think I have reason to worry. Is he in danger?"

Jago didn't answer. They'd reached the door, and Jago spoke on the pocket-corn to Tano, inside, asking him to open.

Bren
said quietly, standing by Jago's side, "The dowager knew Barb had broken with me."

And, casting that stone into the pool, he gave Jago something of her own to worry about. She did. She cast him a frowning glance.

"How, do you suppose?" he asked as Tano opened the door.

Jago didn't answer. They walked in, and servants wanted to take his coat. "Nadiin," he said to the servants, "I'll just pick up my work. I'm on my way down to my office."

"Nadi," Jago reproved him.

'To my office," he said. He'd never gone against Jago. But he'd never had Jago give him an order not regarding his performance of his job.

"No," Jago said, "nadi. I can't have you do this."

"Where am I supposed to get work done?"

"One has this rather extensive apartment, nand' paidhi, which I might remind the paidhi includes ample rooms and resources."

He was halfway stunned — was dismayed at his situation, Jago making him out an ingrate, or in the wrong, or somehow at odds with reasonable behavior. There was so damned much — so damned much to do: there were papers to write, there were positional statements to prepare…

There were, Cenedi had warned him, serious matters before the Assassins' Guild, in which Jago had warned him Banichi was occupied.

There was a man dead, last night, an otherwise decent man, by all the information he had on the subject; he'd had a long morning, a trying, tedious meeting rehearsing details and eventualities that only meant more letters to write; a towering lot of letters to write and no staff he could rely on for clerical work, the paidhi never having had the need for a staff because very few people had to consult the paidhi — who had been very safe in a minor office in a minor job in the Bu-javid doing very routine things and scanning trade manifests and long-range social concerns, before a human ship decided to pull up at the human station and multiply his mail by a thousandfold and his avenues of contact by the same, with no —
no
— proportionate increase in his resources. He saw no way over the stack of paper, he'd gotten three new jobs during the meeting with Associational lords who were asking questions all of which he could answer, but not without being sure of the numerical felicities of the situations they described. He was feeling desperate as it was, and all of a sudden he saw his whole job circumscribed by Jago, and Cenedi, and Banichi, and Tano, and assassins and their precautions, and no means to
do
the things he needed to do — the mail and the messages alone were stacked up to —

"I am very sorry," Jago said quietly, "and I offer the paidhi all respect, but I cannot permit him in an unsecured area."

He'd done rather well in an unsecured area this morning, he thought. He'd gotten through the breakfast with llisidi with a sense of actual accomplishment, in that he thought he might have made some progress toward reason with the other side of the shadow-government that doubtless inspired his would-be assassins, a power that kept a cohesion of political forces that opposed the aiji scarcely in check — lately in open rebellion, but currently in check. Waiting. Dangerous. But, dammit, he'd drunk the dowager's tea. They got —

— along.

Human interface again. The emotional trap. Cenedi'd sucked him right into it. He didn't
think
atevi knew what they were doing.

But if any did understand, llisidi and Tabini were the likeliest.

"Forgive me," he said to Jago, and patched
that
interface. But he'd crashed on that reflection, plunged right into that hollow spot that existed in the atevi-human relationship, the one that couldn't ever work, and it took a second, it just took a second not to be angry, or hurt, or desperate, or to feel like a prisoner hemmed in at every turn.

"Bren-ji?"

Tano was standing there, too, not knowing how to read what was going on; Jago was embarrassed, he was sure, and Jago would walk over glass to protect him. Jago would even make him angry to protect him. It was daunting to have that kind of duty attached to you. It was hard, when one was frustrated and desperately afraid one couldn't handle the job, to be worth someone like Jago.

"One's been a fool," he said, calm again. "I know I've resources. I apologize profoundly."

"I was perhaps rude," Jago said.

"No. Jago, just — no."

"All the same…"

"Jago — it comes of
liking
people, that's all."

He surely puzzled Tano. He puzzled Jago, too, in a different way, because Jago had met the human notion of
liking
as an emotion. Banichi had, too, and still protested he wasn't, as the atevi verb had it, a dinner course.

"Still, one feels betrayed," Jago said. "Is that so, Bren-ji?"

"One
feels
betrayed," he said, "and knows it's damned nonsense. Tano, nadi-ji, you've been through the mail. What's the nature of it? Are there things anyone else can possibly handle?"

"I have a summary," Tano said. "Most are officials, most are anxious, a few angry, a few quite confused. One could, if the paidhi wished, find staff to prepare replies, nand' paidhi. Perhaps even in the household there are such resources. I can, too, go to your office and bring back necessary materials."

He'd embarrassed himself thoroughly. His staff was well ahead of the game, trying their best, and he was, he realized, in pain from the tape about his ribs, from long sitting, from long speeches, impossible demands on his mental capacity, and utter exhaustion. "Tano-ji, please do. My seal, a number of message cylinders. I'm very grateful. I need a phone, a television — Jago, is it possible to have a television without offending the harmony of this historic house?"

"One can arrange such things," Jago said, "I've been advised that the paidhi may bring in whatever he needs, only so long as we protect the walls and woodwork."

A courteous, well-lined gilt-and-tapestry prison. One with his favorite people and every convenience. But at Malguri, equally concerned for the historic walls, they'd let him ride, and hunt, and he'd had fear of the staff, but no anxiety about where their reports of him were going, as he did here — every smiling one of the women either analyzing him, watching him, or holding secret communication, he was sure, with Damiri. And one of whom, Ilisidi had let him know this morning, was feeding information to someone who talked to Tabini's rivals and enemies, among whom one had to count Ilisidi and her staff.

He felt, in the aftermath of that realization this morning, somewhat shaky in returning to the apartment. And lost. Jago and Tano, at least, wouldn't betray him. Last of all, they'd betray his…

Trust
. Which didn't, dammit, exist for an outsider among atevi. He wasn't in their
man'chi
, their
group
, beyond loyalty, all the way over to identity, except as he was Tabini's…

Property.

He felt a crashing, plummeting depression, then: one of those glum moods that came of too much vaulting back and forth between the cultures.

Or too much medication. He couldn't afford any medications with depressive side effects, not doing what he did, and whenever he was on medication he distrusted such mood swings. God, he didn't need this on top of the workload he'd been handed.

"Nadi, go do those things," Jago said to Tano, and Tano agreed and quietly left, while he unfastened the cuff tab that secured his coat sleeve and began to try to get out of his coat, since he wasn't, after all, going anywhere.

He wanted to go sit down and not think and not deal with his well-meaning guards for a moment. But he ought to be making a couple of critical phone calls.

He
ought
to go look at his medical records and find out what he was taking, and make absolutely sure it was only antibiotics. He let Jago help him off with his coat, which she did very carefully.

"I'm terribly embarrassed," he said. Sometimes it seemed to be the only way to make cross-species amends. "Forgive me, Jago-ji. I'm tired. My ribs hurt."

She eased his coat sleeve free. Easy to evade her eyes, easy to glance down when she stood so much taller.

But not when she touched his good shoulder and wanted his attention.

"The distress is ours," Jago said. That plural again. The group. The collective to which he was always biologically external.

He'd been inside at Malguri, briefly. Inside, in all senses, the one glimpse he'd ever had of what he couldn't have, couldn't
be
. That was what Ilisidi and Cenedi had touched.

Barb had fairly well finished the human attachment he had, but he couldn't replace it with Jago or Banichi.

Certainly not much of an emotional life, he had to admit. Clearly Barb had found it pretty thin fare, enough that Paul Saarinson had looked to her like a far better bet. Barb had gotten the signals: youth ending, the rest of her life starting — at twenty-whatever, five? — and no prospect of his coming home, not only soon, but ever — because he valued the job, he valued things he couldn't talk about to her.

He valued relationships he couldn't have, with atevi he couldn't talk to, either, but at least — at least he was where he could do some good, with knowledge that could do some good, and people who at least wanted to listen to him.

He gave a sigh, that was what his emotional storm was worth, now it had found its real and honest grounds: he hadn't any right to Barb's life, he'd gone into the job with his eyes open, and he was tolerably well armored, once he got his sense of perspective adjusted

So he could ask Jago for his computer and for access to the Bu-javid phone system, and sit down at the security station desk, which had the same relation to this foyer as Tabini's small sitting-room, next door. It was a comfortable little nook, with the phone, and, God, stacks and stacks of little unrolled message scrolls, all flattened with the ornate lead weights atevi kept for such troublesome but traditional duty.

Six stacks of message scrolls, sorted, he imagined glumly, into categories of criticality — assassination threats, suicide threats, committee complaints, school project requests; God, he didn't know, but he felt acutely sorry for his outburst in Tano's vicinity. The man was doing his absolute damnedest on a job he wasn't even trained to do, and without staff. He could explain to Jago, who'd at least gotten used to the paidhi's occasional frayed nerves, and to Banichi, who'd likely ask him what he wanted done about the sky falling; but poor Tano just sat and handled things, and the paidhi thanked his efforts by throwing a fit.

He set up his computer on the desk, with Jago's patient help, made the phone connection and let computers talk to each other for a moment until his call and its authorizations had rung through the Bu-javid board, the provincial board, the Mospheiran entry board, the Capitol board, and all the way to the Foreign Office.

Then:

"This is Bren Cameron," he said, and a voice on the other end said:

"Mr. Cameron, the Foreign Secretary is very anxious to talk to you. Please hold."

Another sigh. Damned right me Foreign Secretary was anxious to talk to him.

"Quite," he said, and hardly a breath later, had the Secretary himself.

"Bren. Bren, this is Shawn. Are you all right?"