Invader (25 page)

For
what
? For getting married? He wasn't in the mood.

He reached irritably for the television remote, flipped it on to find out what was on the news, and saw himself, sitting at the council table, heard himself, and knew that Mospheira could pick up that broadcast quite nicely — as the mainland regularly picked up whatever Mospheira let hit the airwaves.

There was footage of damage to something somewhere, but that wasn't bomb damage from Malguri; it seemed to be nothing more than a windstorm taking the roof off a local barn. A machimi play was on the next channel, a machimi he knew, a drama of inheritance and skullduggery, the resolution to which lay in two clans deciding they hated a third clan worse than they hated each other — very atevi, very logical. Lots of costumes, lots of battles.

Glassy-eyed and fading, he flipped back to the news, hoping to hear the weather, wishing for a cold front to alleviate what promised to be a still, muggy night.

The news anchor was saying something, this time without footage, about a parliamentary procedure recalling members of the Assassins' Guild to the city, a procedure which a spokesman for the Guild called an administrative election.

The hell, he thought, disquieted. They censored his mother's letter and Banichi was gone for a day and a night on administrative elections, while Cenedi said it was a crisis in the Guild? Jago also had a vote. And might be casting it.

And Banichi had said something about the Guild rejecting contracts on the paidhi. Disturbing thought. By how much, he wondered, had they voted down the contracts? And what would acceptance of those contracts have meant to Tabini's stability in office?

He found no comfort in the news. He could watch the play, which at least had color and movement. But the eyes were going and the mind had already gone or he wouldn't contemplate staying awake at all.

He was aware of dark, then, a suddenly dark room, and he must have slept — the television was showing a faint just-turned-off glow and a large man was standing in front of it.

"Banichi?" he asked faintly.

"One should never acknowledge being awake," Banichi said. "Delay gives one just that much more advantage."

"I have a house full of security," he objected. "And I haven't a gun any longer."

"Look in your dresser," Banichi said.

"You're joking." He wanted to go look, but he hadn't the strength to get up.

"No," Banichi said. "Good night, Bren-ji. Jago's back now, by the way. All's well."

"Can we talk, Banichi?"

"Talk of what, nadi?" Banichi had become a shadow in the doorway, in the dim light from some open door down the hall. But Banichi waited.

"About the election going on in your Guild, about what Cenedi found it his duty to warn me about — about what I suppose I'd better know since I've accepted another of Ilisidi's invitations."

"With suggestive grace, nadi. One
is
surprised."

"I like the old woman," he said shortly to a silhouette against the doorway, and well knew the word didn't mean
like
in the humanly emotional sense. "And there, of course, I have information I don't get here."

"Because you think the aiji-dowager is a salad and you value information from those most interested in disinforming you?"

He knew he should laugh. He didn't have it in him. It came out a weak moan, and his voice cracked. "Nadi, I think she's a breath of fresh air, you're a salad, yourself, and I'm collecting everything I can find that tells me how to make humans in the sky not fly down tomorrow morning in satellites and loot the Bu-javid treasures — I'm so damned tired, Banichi. Everybody wants my opinion and nobody wants to tell me a damned thing, how do I know she's disinforming me? Nothing else makes sense."

Banichi came and stood over him, throwing shadow like a blanket over him. "One has tried to protect you from too much distraction, nadi."

"Protect me less. Inform me more. I'm desperate, Banichi. I can't operate in an informational vacuum."

"Jago will take you to the country house at Taiben, at your request. It might be a safer place."

"Is there anything urgently the matter with where I am?"

That provoked a moment of troubling silence.

"Is there, Banichi?"

"Nand' paidhi, Deana Hanks has been sending other messages under your seal."

"Damn. Damn. — Damn." He shut his eyes. He was perilously close to unconsciousness. So tired. So very tired. "I don't mean to accuse, but I thought you had that stopped. What's she up to?"

"Nand' paidhi, she's in regular communication with certain of the tashrid. And we don't know how she got the seal, but she is using it."

He had to redirect his thinking. Three-quarters of the way to sleep, he had to come back, ask himself why Taiben, and where Hanks got a seal.

"Came with it," he said, "a damn forgery. Mospheira could have managed it."

"One hesitated to malign your office. That thought did occur to us. Equally possible, of course, that the forgery was created by our esteemed lords of the tashrid. And I don't say we haven't intercepted these messages before sending them on. They're some of them — quite egregiously misphrased."

"Dangerously?"

"She asked the lord of Korami province for a pregnant calendar."

Pregnant calendar and urgent meeting. He began to laugh, and sanity gave way; he laughed until the tape hurt.

"I take it that's not code?"

"Oh, God, oh, God."

"Are you all right, Bren-ji?”

He gradually caught his breath. "I'm very fine, thank you, Banichi. God, that's wonderful."

"Other mistakes are simply grammatical. And she speaks very bluntly."

"Never would believe you needed the polish." Humor fell away to memories of Deana after the exams, Deana in a sullen temper.

"We are keeping a log. We can do this — since it's our language under assault."

He laughed quietly, reassured in Banichi's good-humored confidences that things couldn't be so bad, that they could still joke across species lines, and he was fading fast, too fast to remember to question Banichi about the weather report, before, between flutters of tired eyelids, he found Banichi had ebbed out of the room, quiet as the rest of the shadows.

He hoped it would rain again and relieve the heat, which seemed excessive this evening, or it was the padding he was obliged to put around him.

Still, he was sleepy, and he didn't want to move — Banichi was all right, Banichi was watching, and if he waited patiently there was, he discovered, a very slight and promising breeze circulating through the apartment, from open windows, he supposed, perfumed with flowers he remembered —

But that was Malguri, was it not? Or his garden.

He shut his eyes again, having found a position that didn't hurt, and when he felt the breeze he saw the hillsides of Malguri, he saw the riders on tall mecheiti.

He felt Nokhada striding under him, saw the rocks passing under them —

The ominous shadow of a plane crossing the mountainside…

"Look out," he thought he said, jerking about to see, and feared falling bombs.

But after that he was riding again, feeling the rhythm of a living, thinking creature under him, feeling the damp cold wind.

He wanted to be there.

In a dream one could go back to that hillside.

In a dream one could find his room again, with the glass-eyed beast staring at him from the wall.

And his lake, of the ghost-passengers and the bells that tolled with no hand touching them.

That was what he wanted to save. That and the cliffs, and the wi'itkitiin — and Nokhada, that wicked creature. He wanted to go out riding again, wanted to be in the hills, just himself and that damn mecheita, who'd knocked him flat, jarred his teeth loose, and several times nearly killed him — wanted to see the obnoxious beast, for reasons of God-knew-what. He even wondered, in this dream, if he'd saved up enough in his bank account, and if he could get the funds converted into atevi draft, and if it was honorable of the aiji-dowager to sell Nokhada away from Malguri.

But then, still in this dream, which turned melancholy and productive of estrangements, he realized the mecheiti had their own order of things, and that he couldn't take Nokhada from the herd, the flock, the — whatever mecheiti had, that atevi also had, among themselves. Nokhada belonged there. A human didn't. Nokhada didn't understand love. Nokhada understood a tidal pull a human didn't, couldn't, wouldn't ever have.

In his dream he almost understood it, as a force pulling him toward association, weak word for the strongest thing atevi felt. In his dream he almost discovered what that was. He was walking in the hills, and he watched the mecheiti travel across the land, watched ancient banners flutter and flap with the color of the old machimi plays, and saw the association of lords as driven by what he could almost feel.

In this dream he saw the land and he felt human emotions toward it. He supposed he couldn't help it. His need to feel what atevi felt was a part of that human emotion, and more than suspect.

In this dream he sat down on a hillside, and his Beast walked up to him, still angry about its murder, but curious about the intrusion on the hill. It wanted part of his lunch, which he'd brought in a paper bag, and he shared it. The Beast, black and surly, heaved itself down with a sigh and ate half a sandwich, which it pinned down with a heavy forepaw and devoured with gusto. He supposed he was in danger from it. But it seemed content to sit by him and snarl at the land in general, as if it had some longstanding grudge, or some long-standing watch to keep over the fortress that sat on its hill below them. The sky was blue, but pale, making you think of heat, or new-blown glass. Anything might come from it. Maybe that was what die Beast watched for.

Wi'itkitiin launched themselves from the rocks. And far, far below, an atevi in black came walking, climbing up among the rocks, alone. He thought it was Jago, but he couldn't prove it from this distance.

The Beast watched, head on paws, snarling now and again, because it would, that was all. And no matter how long the figure below climbed, it came no nearer, and no matter how anxious he became, he was afraid to get up and go down to it, because he knew his Beast would follow and hunt both of them. It was safe while he kept it fed. As long as sandwiches came from that mysterious place in dreams from which all necessities emerged. The figure below was safe as long as it followed the unspoken Rules of this dream, which demanded it make no progress.

So was he. That was what he was doing here. He did a lot of dangerous things. But he wasn't going anywhere. He was stuck on this hillside, overlooking things he couldn't have. And the sky was free to rain havoc. The sun was shining now, but it wouldn't in a few hours. The sun was the only thing that did progress, the only thing that was free to move — except his Beast, and it was waiting.

«
^
»

T
he last thing
he wanted in the morning on waking was a phone call, especially one from Hanks, before he'd so much as sat down to breakfast. Saidin notified him that Tano had notified her, and he asked for tea, went to the phone in the lady's small office, and took the call.

"This is Bren Cameron. Go ahead."

"
I
take it you're the one playing pranks with the phone, you son of a bitch
."

For some things the nerves in the morning wanted preparation. And his weren't steady yet, nor was his diplomatic filter in full function.

"Deana, let me tell you, you've got a choice. You can be civil and get a briefing on what's going on, or you can sit it out until everything's beyond your useful input. Make a career choice."

"I'm not solving your problem for you! I'm here by Departmental mandate, I take everything that's happened including the damn phone as something you know about and something you arranged, and you listen to me, Mr. Cameron. You can hang yourself, you can work yourself in deeper and deeper, or you can listen to somebody."

"I'm listening, Deana." Past a certain point temper gave way to a slow simmer in which he could accept information, and he didn't give a particular damn about his source. "Give me your read on the situation. I'm listening with bated breath."

"
Son of a bitch
!" They were speaking Mosphei', Deana's choice from the moment he'd picked up the phone. "
You're going to hear from more than me, mister. I heard your speech. I heard the whole damned sales job
.

You go off to the interior and hold secret meetings, you sell out to the atevi overlord that wanted
you
back, and threatened my life to get it
—"

"Sorry about that. But you weren't invited. You're playing with fire, Deana. This isn't our justice system. The aiji is well within his rights to remove a disturbance of the peace —"

"You —"

"You shut
up
, Deana, and get it figured this
isn't
Mospheira, it's not going to be Mospheira, and I don't care what you think your civil rights are on Mospheira, these people know their law, it works for them for reasons we don't have the biological systems to understand, far less come here and criticize. If
you
don't know what you're asking for when you go against atevi authority, I assure you, you don't belong here."

"Oh, and you do. You're working real hard at belonging, and damned right they moved heaven and earth to get you back, you'll give them anything they want. I heard your speech, I heard every damned word of it. I get the news. You want a list of the regulations you've broken?"

"I'm fairly well aware of them."

"
Our internal politics, our policy disputes, all out waving in the wind
—
that's not just against policy, Mr. Cameron, that's against the law! You've incited atevi to act against our government
—"

"Never against our government. Against your political backers, maybe."

"
Don't you talk about
my
political backers. Let's talk about yours, let's talk about selling out, Mr. Cameron
."