Invader (4 page)

And in this apartment, far more extravagant than Tabini's own, one walked on such carpets. In the reception salon next to the entry, one looked out clear glass windows past priceless draperies, intricately figured in muted gold, to the same view that Tabini's apartment enjoyed next door: the tiled roofs of the historic Old City spread out below the hill, the blue range of the Bergid — scantly visible on this stormy evening, beneath gray and burdened clouds. Wind, rain-laden, breathed through the apartment from open windows and hidden vents alike. He'd transited climates as well as provinces, begun to feel summer was decidedly over, and, now, felt as if he'd skipped across months and come in on another spring, another world, a situation months, not days, removed.

The paidhi was a little giddy. Doing surprisingly well, considering. He wasn't sorry to have the tour. He'd grown not merely security conscious but security obsessive in recent days. He wanted to know the lay of the place, and whether there were outside doors, and whether a footfall echoing from one direction was surely a servant and from the other potentially an intruder.

"Are there other outside doors?" he asked. "Even scullery exits?"

"All external exits are to the foyer," Banichi said. "Very secure."

"There have been extensive revisions in the early part of this century," Saidin said. "You'll notice, however, that the stone and the wood matches exactly. Lord Sarosi did personal research to locate the old quarry, which presently supplies stone for other restorations within the Bu-javid, including the new west portico…"

The rest passed in increasing haze — the salon, the solarium, the bedrooms, the dining area. The staff, all women, so far as he saw, appeared and vanished discreetly, opened doors and closed them as the head of staff silently directed, turned on lights and turned them off again, whisked imaginary dust off a sideboard and straightened a tasseled damask runner — forty-nine additional and mostly invisible servants, a propitious number, Bren was sure, to remain, safeguarding the historic family premises and maintaining decorum in the face of human presence.

And everything spoke of a mathematical calculation underlying the decor — the eye learned to pick it out, down to the color and number of the dried flowers in the frequent and towering bouquets.

Every measure of the place was surely propitious for the lady's family, down to the circular
baji-naji
figure centered in the beautifully appointed formal dining area: Fortune and Chance, chaos in the center of the rigid number-governed design of the rooms.

The room began to spin about that center, and the paidhi, in his private, pain-edged haze, suddenly hoped to not faint on the antique carpet. He was by now only and exclusively interested in the guest bedchamber, and the bed they said would be his, next on the tour —

He walked in, behind the gracious madam Saidin, into a room of immense proportions, with silver satin bedclothes, gold coverlet, gilt bedstead supported by gilt heraldic beasts — a bed wide enough for him and half the Mospheiran Foreign Office. The modern coverlet, Saidin said, exactly duplicated one of the fifty-eighth century, which had been on the bed when the last family occupant of the bedchamber, a fifty-ninth century lord, had met an untimely and probably messy end.

The family had declined to use it thereafter, but the numbers of the place had been altered to remove the infelicitous influences — two bluewood cabinets of precisely calculated dimensions were the addition that, the paidhi could be sure, guaranteed the harmony of the occupant. The chief of staff would be delighted to provide the figures, should the paidhi desire.

Six
guest bedrooms, besides his own, each with its private bath; halls with doubtless felicitous arrangements of furnishings. He had no desire to question Atigeini judgment, and every desire to stay and prove the bed unhaunted, but the gentle majordomo was clearly proud of the next rooms, which she called, in her soft voice, "The most charming area of the house, lady Damiri's private residence," which she was sure the paidhi would find congenial to his work. Lady Damiri had, as an unprecedented favor, opened even her personal library and sitting rooms to her human guest — and he didn't find the will to deny Saidin, who might well have, in that stiff back and formal demeanor, concerns that a human guest would cast gnawed bones on the carpets and leave germs on the china.

Clearly he was going to be an inconvenience to the staff, genteel servants of a very highborn lady. And he wanted to begin with a good impression — knowing reports would be passed and that gossip would make the rounds if only inside the Atigeini family, in itself a security concern Banichi hadn't mentioned, but surely took into account. The last thing he wanted to do for his own safety was to alienate the staff.

So it was through silver-washed doors to the absent lady's private sitting rooms, a library with floor to ceiling shelves, a very fine book collection with an emphasis, he saw, on horticulture; and then, across the hall, a small, tile-floored solarium with a view of, again, the city and the mountains. Beautifully carved, windowed doors opened onto a balcony about which Banichi and Jago didn't look at all pleased — a balcony designed, Bren was sure, long before high-powered rifles had entered the repertoire of the Assassins' Guild.

Such thoughts swam leisurely through the paidhi's wavering brain, along with a sharp longing for his comfortable, quiet little garden apartment, and a fevered consideration of the lady of the apartment with her library of books on flowers — but, sadly, not a garden accessible to her —

He should recommend his lower-level garden to Damiri. She afforded him her hospitality. He could show her a charming place in the lower halls she'd likely never visited in her rich and security-insulated life.

In that thought the paidhi was growing entirely fuzzy-minded, and he really had rather sit down than go on to tour the breakfast room. He was certain, all credit to Banichi and Jago, that he had the very best and most secure guest room for himself. He was completely satisfied with the historic bed. He thought the library and the private solarium delightful. He couldn't bear a detailed tour of the other wonders he was sure abounded, which on another day he might have a keen interest as well as the fortitude to see.

There was a chair at the door of the solarium. He sat down in it with his heart pounding and mentally measured the distance back to the bedroom. He wasn't sure he could make it.

"Nadi Bren?" Jago asked as their guide hesitated.

"A fine chair," he breathed, and patted its brocade arm. "A very fine chair. Very comfortable. I'll be very pleased to work in this room. Please — convey my profound thanks to lady Damiri for allowing me this very kind — this very — extraordinary hospitality. I very much regret her inconvenience. But I can't —" He wasn't doing well with words at the moment. "I can't — manage any formality tonight. Please convey to Tabini-aiji my intention — to be in my office tomorrow. It's just that, tonight — I'd like my computer. And my bed. And a phone."

"We're both to stay here, nadi," Banichi said. "In these apartments. Guarding you. We'll carry your messages." They all towered above him, a black wall of efficiency and implacable hospitality that seemed to cut off the daylight. "Tano will occupy the security station and the small suite at the front door. He's already moving in — he has arrived with your suitcase. Your belongings will be in the drawers. Algini will join him in the security station, as soon as he's back from the hospital — we estimate, within a day or two."

"Not serious, I hope ..."

"Cuts and contusions. Perfectly fine."

"I'm very glad." His head was going around. He rested his chin on his fist, elbow on the arm of the chair, to fix a center of rotation in the environment, somewhere around Jago's figure. "I was very glad — very glad you came to the airport. Thank you. I wouldn't —"— wouldn't have trusted, was the expression that leaped to mind. He wasn't censoring quickly enough. He'd made himself a maze of syntax. "— wouldn't have had such confidence in strangers."

Damn, he wasn't sure how that parsed, either. He might just have insulted Saidin and the whole staff. He couldn't remember the front end of his own sentence.

"No difficulty at all," Banichi said. "Jago and I will establish ourselves in the red and the blue rooms, nearest your own, if that's agreeable."

"Of course." He didn't know how Banichi stayed on his feet: Banichi was walking wounded himself, limping slightly all through their tour about the apartment, but Banichi went on functioning, because that was the kind of man Banichi was, while the paidhi —

"Nadi Bren?"

The room went quite around. And around. He shut his eyes a second, until it stopped, and he drew a shaky breath. "Nadiin," he said, determined to settle some details — what was going on, and why the extraordinary security, "is there anything else you can tell me about my situation? Is there a threat, a difficulty, a matter under debate?"

"All three," Jago said.

"Regarding the ship over our heads?"

"Among other small matters," Banichi said. "I regret, Tabini-aiji
must
see you as soon as possible, nand' paid-hi. I know you'd rather be in bed, but these are our orders. I'll explain your exhaustion and your inconvenience, and perhaps he'll come here."

"What small matters?
What
matters? I haven't had any news since I left."

"The hasdrawad and the tashrid. The ship. Nand' Deana."

The hasdrawad and the tashrid he could guess. They were in emergency session. He'd understood he could postpone his speech to them by at least the term of his illness. The ship. That was a given. He knew that was why his presence and his ability to translate was so vital to the aiji. Touchy, the Foreign Office had said of the course of events with it. But —

"The aiji has not held audience with this Hanks person," Jago said. "He has not regarded this substitution as legitimate."

"But," Banichi said, "certain individuals have indeed approached Hanks-paidhi. Tabini wishes to talk to you about this situation as soon as possible. Within the
hour
, if you can possibly manage it."

He'd thought he hadn't the strength to get up. He'd thought he'd no reserves left.

But the thought of Hanks occupying his office, holding meetings, as Banichi hinted, with God-knew-whom on her own, making her own accommodations on questions he'd resisted, resisting what he'd already settled — in the middle of
this
crisis —

It
wasn't
a phone-call solution. He needed to know what had happened between Hanks and Tabini before he dropped angry phone calls to Mospheira into the mix.

"I absolutely need to talk to Tabini," he said. "Now. I'll go there." The room might still be going around, but he had a sudden sense of what he had to focus on.

Like the apparition in the heavens — which put the entire Treaty in doubt.

Like a woman who'd consistently scored low on culture and psychology, who'd survived the academic committee winnowing process and gotten an appointment as paidhi-designate solely because she had high-ranking, narrow-interest support in the State Department — and a high-level finagle, he was sure of it, had landed her in a damned bad situation for novices.

"I'll advise the aiji," Banichi said.

«
^
»

T
abini's apartment,
literally next door and centermost of the seven historic residences on this floor, was no strange territory: a young paidhi and an equally young aiji, both of them suddenly appointed to office with the demise of Tabini's father and the abrupt resignation of Wilson-paidhi — in private, where no politics intervened, he and Tabini laughed and held discussions far more easily than certain powers on either side of the strait might like to think. They were both sports enthusiasts — he skied and Tabini hunted; both single men in high-stress jobs — but he had Barb and Tabini had Damiri for refuge, and they compared notes.

They'd met in Tabini's apartment times uncounted. Scant days ago they'd been on vacation together, hunting in the hills at Tabini's country house at Taiben — where, in technical contravention of Treaty law, which forbade a human on the mainland carrying any sort of weapon under any excuse, Tabini had been teaching him target shooting. In the evenings they'd sat on the hearth ledge in that rural and peaceful house, looking forward to tomorrow and exchanging grandiose hopes for the future of human-atevi relations: a joint space program; trade city contact between their species, from the modest beginning of student computer exchanges —

Now, with their respective armed security drinking tea and socializing quietly in the foyer, the two of them took to the small salon aside from the entry of Tabini's residence — not a room he'd been in before, but Tabini had taken one look at him and ordered the little salon opened, so that, Tabini had said, the paidhi needn't walk another step.

It was a cozy chamber needing only a single servant, slight, bookish Eidi, who was probably a licensed assassin and undoubtedly senior security, himself — Bren had always suspected so — to pour tea and serve the traditional bittersweet wafers.

"Thank you for coming," Tabini said, protocols aside, and in the same moment Damiri herself turned up in the doorway.

"Nand' paidhi," Damiri said, offering a hand, and Bren began to struggle back to his feet, the very least of courtesy he owed his hostess and Tabini's official guest.

"No, no, please, stay seated, nand' paidhi. I'm so pleased you accepted my invitation. Has Saidin made you comfortable?"

"Quite, nai-ma. Thank you ever so much. I'm overwhelmed at such courtesy."

"An honor," she said, offering her hand, and taking it, he stayed entirely on his guard — at social disadvantage, of course, because he hadn't gotten up; which left her free to be gracious. The lady whom Tabini approved — the atevi expression — was neither ingenue nor scatterwit, and
she
defined the meeting,
she
spoke for herself, and not coincidentally for the Atigeini, whose consent or lack of it in the hospitality he had not a clue.