Текст книги "Deliverer"

A teacup suffered in the aftermath of the interview: Bren was very glad it was not one of the historic good ones, but the carpet in Lord Tatiseigi’s study certainly was a historic good one, and he had no idea how he had overset the cup, but there it lay, in pieces. He owed a great apology to Madam Saidin.

She looked at him curiously, then ordered it removed and a new one provided, while servants mopped and cleaned the carpet.

“I was distracted,” he confessed to Banichi and Jago, who had come to see what the stir was that had relocated him and his computer to the library and brought such a scurry of activity into the study. They both looked at him a second or two longer than need have been, so that he felt exposed and disturbed and realized he could not be not utterly honest in his answers.

“Tano and Algini have reached the coast, nandi,” Banichi said quietly, “and are heading out on the boat.”

“Excellent.” That was a certain relief, to know things were proceeding in that regard. To lay hands on Toby would at least let him trust that part of the universe was stable, if nothing else was.

“Is it worry for nand’ Toby that distracts you, Bren-ji?” Jago asked him, lingering after Banichi had left on his own business.

“Perhaps,” he said. “Worry for him. Worry for the boy.” No, dammit. She deserved the whole truth. “Worry for the packages Ogun-aiji has decided to drop across the landscapec one earnestly hopes you have not revealed to your Guild the existence of that equipment the ship-aijiin gave you.”

“No, Bren-ji,” Jago said, and that no patched another hole in his universe, the fact that he had been afraid to ask where, in the scheme of things, their loyalty had necessarily come down on the question of illicit human equipment—whether it would be loyalty to their Guild, which on an ordinary day trumped every loyalty they owned, even to the aiji above all—or whether they would give it to him and his office, which properly ought to regulate things that came from the heavens.

“This is a dangerous thing, to have such power to locate individuals,” he said. “It is worrisome. And it does not come without a great increase in orbiting satellites.” The servants arrived in his new refuge, with a fresh pot of tea, and a new cup, which they offered. “Thank you, nadiin-ji. One hopes to keep this one intact.”

“We understand,” Jago said, not about the cup.

“What we taught the boy when he was in our care,” he said when the servants had gone, “was not all he learned on the ship. His enthusiasm for innovation, for electronics—for all these things—he has brought with him. One did not fully grasp the extent of his ambition—or his researches, or his command of written ship-speak.

The more one attempts to restrain him into the model of—one assumes—an ordinary young gentleman, the more he resorts to strategems and technologies he learned on the ship. He has no concept of the planet, no understanding of the complexity of its systems, or its history. The War of the Landing means nothing to him.”

Jago shrugged and arched an eyebrow. “He will learn.”

“One wonders if Jaidiri-nadi—” This was Tabini’s new chief of staff, a sturdy, bright fellow. “—is up to the challenge he has. He cannot possibly understand what he is dealing with, or what the boy may think of.”

“Jaidiri and his partner,” Jago said, “have just had their own experience with the boy, in his escaping their watch. They were greatly embarrassed—and not to be caught twice, one thinks. They are not stupid men.”

“One would think not,” he agreed. No one could be stupid, who protected Tabini-aiji; but learning to anticipate what Cajeiri might be up to was another matter. They had had two years to experience the boy, Jaidiri and his team had not. They were Taibeni, and had, at least, some advantage of communication with Cajeiri’s young attendants, who they might hope would inform them of the boy’s truly dangerous notions; but one wondered if the new security team, considering southern Assassins, had remotely appreciated the difficulty the young gentleman posed.

“We have warned them,” Jago said ruefully. “Now, indeed, one hopes they do understand the problem. They have not to this hour set up their own surveillance within the apartment: that proposal is creating a disturbance with Madiri’s staff, who wishes them to use Cenedi’s arrangement, but the matter is under discussion.” Madiri was the caretaker of Ilisidi’s domain, doubtless Guild, and no one to be trifled with, nor was his immediate, and younger, staff.

“So argument exists.”

This prompted a laugh, a dark one. “Argument would be a mild word. Phone calls have flown between the Bu-javid and Tirnamardi.

Cenedi is sending a team back here to investigate what the new men wish to install.”

“Jaidiri is new to his rank,” he observed in some alarm. “And at odds with Cenedi?”

“There is rancor in several households,” Jago said, glancing down, and up again. “Various man’chiin are vying for positions within the aiji’s household. The aiji would, by his will, choose only Taibeni, if he were deaf to objections. The aiji-dowager would wish him to choose at least two from the East. The Atageini of course want a foothold within his guard. The Ajuri are pressing for Ajuri clan to serve at least on domestic staff, and also to have a post with the young gentleman.”

He hadn’t realized that little Ajuri clan had their bid in. He knew that others, notably in the midlands and even in the west, were trying to get members at least into domestic staff. Where clan members were in service, information necessarily flowed, and domestic voices, however discreet and respectful, could still insert a judicious opinion or two into the aiji’s ear. Such influence was beyond a valuable resource: it was reassurance for the several clans who had been attempting to straddle the political fence during Murini’s takeover, a redemption for them—and a damned great security risk for Tabini if he let certain clans into his immediate staff—or onto his son’s or his wife’s. But conversely, he didn’t want to alienate them and make those fence-sitting clans consider other self-protective actions, either.

“More to the point,” Jago said in a very quiet voice, “The Easterners who serve the aiji-dowager are not well-disposed toward the Ajuri, a historical issue, relating to numerous insults, and have no good feeling about the Atageini’s competence to participate in the dowager’s level of security, this on recent experience. In particular, this opinion has profoundly insulted the Atageini staff, and there is now personal rancor between the major domo and the young gentleman’s two assigned guards, from among the Atageini—who are not welcomed by the Taibeni youngsters, either.

Now that Taibeni are guarding the aiji himself and have begun giving orders in the household, the ferment has markedly increased, and one perceives the Atageini guards are attempting to politic with Madiri’s staff.”

He had felt a certain strain there: he had put it down to the extreme exertion of recent days and the stress the aiji’s new staff must place on security. He had not, however, twigged to the strain of the caretaker staff and the dowager’s own security against the intrusion. The Easterners must not relax their guard during the dowager’s absence: that was a given—and they had to contend with a new power structure around Tabini and a formative one around the heir—not to mention, one supposed, the presence of Lady Damiri, who was Atageini-born and had suddenly ambitious Ajuri relatives, bringing along staff members of those two clans. It was not a pretty situation– amusing on one level, but posing a security risk in the diversion of attention and the slowdown of communication; and if Cenedi, who never left the dowager unattended, was coming back here to see to the matter, the tension must be epic—tastefully managed as far as outside visitors were concerned, but absolutely epic.

Under said circumstances, the aiji had to be particularly upset at his son’s faring about the halls without escort—the Taibeni youths hardly counted—which only pointed up the inability of the wrangling staff to manage one eight-year-old boy. The boy had found the security lax enough to let him get past it. That was not pretty, either, and likely furnished ammunition to the anti-Taibeni staff against the aiji’s guards.

“Banichi,” Jago informed him, “has ventured to attempt to mediate within the household, and it was then that Cenedi decided to return, at least long enough to communicate directly with Madiri.”

Meaning a call had likely gone from Banichi to Cenedi, with or without the aiji’s knowledge, telling him to get here—leaving the dowager at Tirnamardi, something Cenedi would be very reluctant to do. “A disturbing situation. One hopes Banichi has not gotten himself entangled.” Meaning his whole household, which was encamped in an Atageini apartment.

“He hopes the same,” she said. “But it is by no means easy to balance political considerations with security considerations—there are no nonpolitical choices of Guild to serve in the aiji’s personal guard, under these circumstances, and certain influences are fighting hard for position—not even to mention the recent events within the Guild.”

That Jago even alluded to that meant that there was a serious question in that quarter. And “serious” with the Guild meant serious. “Is there any chance the household is already compromised?”

“That is Banichi’s great worry, nandi. You stand in an Atageini house, guarded by a staff more affiliated with Tabini-aiji; the aiji is guesting in an Eastern house, bringing in Padi Valley staff to guard his son and balance the Taibeni influence, not to mention the Ajuri setting up a fuss about the Taibeni. Ilisidi is hosted in the Padi Valley, conducting politics within the recent borderland of the disturbance, while applicants from her province in the East are dividing their efforts to gain her attention, and scurrying back and forth between her staff here and closer influences, like Cenedi, in her immediate entourage. The Easterners have delayed their flight home. And the dowager and Lord Tatiseigi hosted the new lord of the Kadagidi at a banquet last night.”

“The Kadagidi.” Murini’s own clan, which had attempted to disavow Murini in his fall from power. And the very clan that had been shelling Tatiseigi’s estate. They held a dinner party? Good God. “With the aiji’s knowledge, Jago-ji?”

“Very possibly,” Jago said. “It may be the particular reason for her sudden choice to sojourn at Tirnamardi, precisely to reestablish ties with that clan and forestall a Kadagidi approach to the Atageini alone, or worse, forestalling the Kadagidi from continuing rancor and another attack on Lord Tatiseigi—who does not view the Kadagidi favorably at the moment, new leadership or not. You see how it is, Bren-ji, and why this is a very inconvenient time to have Cenedi separated from the dowager’s guard over a spat between factions. He will have sharp words for the dowager’s caretaker, one fears, and sharp words for the young gentleman.”

“One can see why,” Bren said, and it was a difficult call, where to apply sympathy—to Ilisidi’s caretaking staff, who viewed their standards as under assault, housing the aiji’s very modernized staff, or to the aiji’s newly-constituted Taibeni bodyguard, who had come under political attack from every quarter but Taiben, and whose young senior, Jaidiri, had just made one glaring mistake, in relying on Cajeiri to stay behind family doors like any other atevi youngster.

It was not a happy situation, and both sides owned a certain amount of fault in the general disturbance. So, indeed, did Cajeiri for exploiting it, but anger was in the ascendant there, too, one had seen that: anger, boredom, and a passion for things that had once been allowed and were never going to be allowed again.

“It is an entirely unfortunate situation, Bren-ji,” Jago said. “One protects the paidhi-aiji. This is the most we can do.”

She looked so tired. He said, quietly, “If we can rely on Madam Saidin for my present safety and comfort, Jago-ji, one wishes you personally do so, and take a little luxury for yourself. You and Banichi—indeed, Tano and Algini, too, have rested far too little in far too long. Efficiency, Jago-ji. Efficiency surely depends on rest.

And will we not encourage Madam Saidin’s staff to feel trusted, if we trust them?”

She cast him a troubled look. “There have been changes at every level of the Bu-javid, Bren-ji. Your staff needs to know what these changes are, where they are, and who is now attached to whom.

Our return, aside from the aiji’s, is one stone into an already troubled pond.”

Not alone the new people, but the new alliances were in question.

Under what doors the connecting threads now ran was a mystery even to his staff. His staff was consequently pursuing everything, reweaving the informational web that had once been second nature to them—before they had spent two years and more in space and gotten entirely out of the loop. The fact they had lost their residence to an interloping southern clan, of all things, the Farai, who could not be dislodged, or whom the aiji did not dare dislodge, considering the instability in the South—was a disturbing situation, and one they viewed with indignation.

“I do promise,” he said, “to keep a certain prudence in my own contacts, and I solemnly swear I shall in no wise attempt to elude my senior staff, not even for a party.”

A grin, a decided broad grin from Jago.

“And nand’ Cajeiri is no longer within your personal responsibililty,” he added pointedly. “It is impossible for you to track him or to be responsible—or even to feel you should have known where he was.”

“True,” she acknowledged, and let go a little breath. “One has acknowledged it, indeed, Bren-ji, but the habit is strong.”

“Relay the same to Banichi. He has hardly stopped moving long enough for me to speak to him.”

The smile reappeared, though subdued. “He has had certain responsibilities outside the house, Bren-ji. But those will soon cease.”

“May one ask?” If it was Guild business, the answer would be no, she could not say. If it was the aiji’s– “He has pursued certain inquiries regarding the aiji’s recent staff, approaching those who would not divulge privileged information to Jaidiri. Jaidiri was too proud, too confident when he arrived, too prone to consult only his own associates and this offended certain persons. This is changing. Jaidiri has now requested assistance, and is making respectful contact with those persons of the service staff.

Banichi has provided a more auspicious beginning and has pursued those reconnections, and the security questions.”

No wonder Banichi seemed to be burning the candle at either end. Tabini-aiji might outright have drafted him back into his service; but hadn’t. And in some sense of debt and common-sense efficiency, Banichi was doing as much for the aiji as could be done from within the paidhi’s household. He must be doing a fair job of knocking heads together, by what Jago reported. Jaidiri was a proud young man. And Banichi must have had serious words with him about the heir’s escape.

“One understands, Jago-ji,” Bren said. “But rest. Do rest. And get Banichi to rest.”

And with that parting shot, he took his leave, headed back to his reports and his papers in his study.

He had supper with his security staff that evening—Banichi, whether on his advice or not, finally took the time for a leisurely dinner, and that pleased him.

And when he had gone to bed, Jago came into the room, and undressed and settled in with him, very welcome company.

“We have had a message couriered from Tano, Bren-ji,” she said, as she settled. “They have report of a possible sighting. They will not communicate with us again until they have gotten nand’ Toby back to the harbor.”

“Excellent,” he said with a deep sigh, and rolled over and put his arms around her, his head against her shoulder. Her hands moved.

He enjoyed an interlude of very pleasant forgetfulness, of quite reckless abandon—the sort of luxury two years in space had afforded them. Their two-year plethora of safe and secure nights had gone. Very few nights since had been safe, and fewer had been private, and they both took advantage of this one, until he quite slipped away from all awareness.

He was deep in a peaceful sleep when the light unceremoniously flared overhead. He flailed his way half-upright, and saw Jago on her feet.

“The heir is missing, nandi,” she said straightway.

“Missing.” His heart thudded. A midnight trip to the library?

“Banichi?”

“On his way to the aiji’s residence,” Jago said, and grabbed her shirt from the chair.

“This is too much.” He rolled out of bed and snatched up his clothes—he could be useful, he thought. He and his staff had experience tracking the young miscreant. Two years of experience.

And the aiji’s residence was their destination: he needed clean clothes. He found them himself, in the bureau and the closet, and dressed as fast as he could pull them on.

Midnight excursions. Where?

God, had the rascal decided to leave the Bu-javid? Go down the hill to the hotel, where his escort’s relatives stayed?

Decided to go find his great-grandmother—all because he was in disgrace with his parents?

“One only hopes he has not gone down to the hotel,” he said, and added, “or the train station.”

Jago shot him a look at that last, and zipped her jacket shut. She came immediately to help him with his necktie. That froth of lace could not be left dangling, not if the building were afire– “He might have gone to the Atageini,” he said, on a breath expelled as she finished a hasty, expert knot. “Is there word from Banichi?”

“No,” Jago said. She had the com in her ear. And was buckling on her sidearm. By now there was a light outside the door, the whole household waked by their stirring about.

“Let us go,” he said, trying to still his frantic heartbeats, while every instinct he had said go straight down to the train station, to the cars that came and went in the night, supplying the Bu-javid, carrying away its unwanted elements. But that was not where protocol dictated. That was not the source of information. Things had best go in order. The train station had its own guards. And a train could be stopped with a phone call. The thing was to find the boy quietly, and not publicize the latest escapade to the national news services. “Let us find Banichi, Jago-ji.”

Bodyguards clustered about the aiji’s outside door—Taibeni, the lot of them assembled, and grimly unwilling to let anyone else in, if the door had not opened from inside. Banichi, in contact with Jago, met them there, with two of Cenedi’s men– and Banichi’s face was completely grim as he nodded a signal to go aside for a moment, beside an ornate table and a mirror.

“Antaro was found unconscious on the lower level of the servant stairs,” Banichi said, “and Jegari is not found at all.”

“God.” That in Mosphei’, under this roof. “The aiji?”

“Safe,” Banichi said. “The aiji’s staff was caught entirely unaware, Bren-ji.”

“But how could they be?” It might be a Guild question. But it was incomprehensible to him. “Who could get in? What lower level, nadi-ji?”

“Staff is suspect. Cenedi has arrived in the midst of the search, and he has entered the aiji’s drawing room, but the dowager’s motives are in some question in certain quarters and the Taibeni security does not want him near the aiji. Weapons are at issue. And there is within the servant passages, Bren-ji, a door which leads down to a private escape, two floors below.”

“Good God,” he said, hardly able to get a word out. He felt literally sick at his stomach. “She would never attack Cajeiri, of all people.” Even granted, in atevi politics, the aiji-dowager might remotely, conceivably, have motives against her grandson, her great-grandson was already hers.

And a Taibeni struck down? Was it window dressing? His just-sleeping brain was skipping all over the map. Had Taibeni Ragi made some move against a half-Atageini heir—of their own blood?

“We concur,” Banichi said, regarding Ilisidi’s lack of motive. “But the aiji’s staff has cast suspicion in a wide circle, even to the paidhi’s household.”

Us? Bren wondered, in utter shock. Me?

“Outrageous!” Jago said, with a hand on her sidearm.

“We are officially believed innocent,” Banichi said, with a nod toward the shut and guarded door, behind which the aiji and Cenedi were in conference. “Sensible conclusion, considering we, of all possible suspects, have nowhere to put the young gentleman. The Bu-javid, meanwhile, is in lockdown.”

Lockdown was one of those ship-words his staff had appropriated.

“The train station as well, nadi?”

“Trains are being stopped and searched, nandi.”

Trains were not all that left the Bu-javid, meanwhile. Nor was there any way to look into every apartment in the Bu-javid. Ancient rights. Ancient prerogatives.

And meanwhile the heir was in mortal danger, and the damned Taibeni, hot to prove their own competency, were pointing fingers at his apartment—an Atageini apartment, to boot.

“ ’Nichi-ji, please gain access for us. We will see the aiji.”

“Yes,” Banichi said, and was off like a shot, while Jago stayed by him, glowering at everyone but Cenedi’s men—there were Taibeni, there were several just arrived Bren didn’t know, and he didn’t trust any of them, not at this moment. If violence had gone after the aiji’s family, his own household might be a logical next target, and his bodyguard was literally scattered from here to the coast.

Jago stood her watch close at his side, a looming and baleful presence.

Certain looks came back at them, too, from the aiji’s Taibeni guard. If no less than the aiji-dowager was suspect in some eyes, much more so must be anyone housed with Tatiseigi, who had his own ambitions for the boy—but he refused to doubt Madam Saidin and her people, down the hall, absolutely refused. His own immediate and reasonable suspicion was Tatiseigi’s neighbors the Kadagidi, Murini’s clan—the source of all the recent troubles—and Tatiseigi’s recent guests, at the estate.

Had the dinner party been only a diversion, a means of turning suspicion for what they intended? Had they gotten into staff somehow—God, even in the Atageini Guildsmen the boy’s great-uncle had lent for his defense? The Kadagidi clan, unfortunately, was centuries interwoven with Tatiseigi’s, by kinship and favors given.

And that historical fact could have suspicion falling on Cajeiri’s own mother, Lady Damiri herself, and particularly her maids, who were right under Tabini’s roof at the moment. The maids and staff that attended Damiri indeed might have a motive if the name of the game was another overthrow of the aiji her husband, this time with the half-Atageini heir firmly in their own hands.

And never leave out the Taibeni themselves—who hated the Atageini. Tabini’s bodyguard were new men, Taibeni, like Cajeiri’s young staff, but, no, one of that clan had been left lying unconscious in a passageway. Taibeni kidnappers would not have injured her and left her there, surely not, nor would her brother Jegari, under any reasonable circumstances, have betrayed his young lord—he just could not believe it of the boy. The aiji’s new guard, Jaidiri and his men, might turn into prime suspects—but never those two youngsters, not unless there was some completely hidden connection that no research had turned up, some man’chi undetected, that caught even atevi completely unawares– God help them all, he thought; they might well be on the verge of a second coup, this time to set up a regency for the underage heir, or possibly to dispose of an heir with unwelcome blood connections: either was possible, and there were all too many people in the aishidi’tat who wished the paidhi dead right along with the current administration.

He could not think about that. That danger was not even a consideration in the need to get the facts straight and most urgent of all, to find the boy and get him back.

Banichi had gone into the drawing room where the aiji was.

He came out again. “Come,” he said, and brought them both with him into the study, where Tabini and Damiri stood with Cenedi.

Both were engaged with Jaidiri and Madiri in very heated conversation. The nature of it all Bren could not immediately figure, except, from Jaidiri’s side, it regarded incompetence, a designation which one feared meant the dowager’s domestic staff.

Madiri looked as if he had something caught in his throat and wanted to spit it.

“The dowager knows no such thing,” Cenedi said strongly, “nor has she any knowledge. She is in the air at this moment, on her way here to answer her grandson’s questions in person– if we can get clearance for her plane to land.”

The latter with a burning glance at Jaidiri.

“She will have it,” Tabini said with a dismissive motion of his hand.

“Aiji-ma,” Jaidiri began in protest, and Cenedi cut him off short.

“We have three planes aloft that took off before anyone ever shut down the airport, gods less fortunate! We have trains moving, we had simple trucks coming and going for the better part of an hour before we had a report, let alone put up barriers. I have had time to get here on a scheduled flight, and what other trucks have now gone to outlying airports or train stations? No one knows!”

“That is being answered,” Banichi said somberly, as Tabini glowered and Damiri simply paced the floor, her arms folded and her lips pressed to a thin line.

“Aiji-ma,” Jago said quietly, arriving inside, and bowed, and came close, bowing again. “The young gentleman’s escort, Jegari, has just phoned from the airport. He lost contact with the kidnappers there.

He hoped he could stop them taking off, but two of the three planes had left the ground before he reached the airport security office, the third shortly after. There was no stopping them, aiji-ma. They are in the air.”

Damn, Bren thought. From there—south? It was a disaster.

“The Guild has grounded all other flights, aiji-ma,” Jago said.

“Too damned late,” Damiri said, from behind Tabini’s chair, the first words she’d uttered.

“The boy followed them?” Tabini asked sharply. “How?”

“One is given to understand,” Jago said, “that he escaped at the airport. He has not reported the identity of any aircraft. Guild is questioning him at this moment, aiji-ma.”

“The airport and these planes leaving may have been a diversion,” Jaidiri said from the side of the room. “They may have deliberately let the Taibeni boy escape, to give out that news.”

Jago had her own electronics, was into the information flow within the staff, clearly, and still listening with one ear, her finger pressing that unit close. “The boy jumped from a moving truck.

Cajeiri is now alone with these people and unconscious, as Jegari last saw. He observed their truck go toward the freight depot as he was trying to reach an office.” A pause as she, and by his look, Banichi, both listened to what was apparently an ongoing account.

“The boy said he knew the men, aiji-ma. He had seen them in the apartment, as the dowager’s guests—”

“Caiti,” Cenedi said sharply.

“Easterners,” Jaidiri muttered, as Cenedi’s back stiffened.

“The aiji-dowager is approaching the city,” Cenedi retorted, “and has no part in this. Her relations with Caiti are not close. Where was your staff, nadi?”

A sore point, clearly. “Men of yours as well, nadi.”

“Drugged,” Banichi said shortly. “The heir’s entire guard, nadiin.”

“Except the young attendants,” Jaidiri muttered.

“And who carried away my son?” Damiri asked sharply. “Who, on this staff, nadiin, drugged Guild security? And why is no one preventing that plane from landing in the south!”

The silence persisted a few beats. Nobody knew the first. Nobody had the resources for the second. Nothing outflew an airliner.

Ground resources in the south were scarce—not nonexistent: scarce, and difficult to contact in a secure mode.

“Banichi, Cenedi-nadi,” Tabini said, and beckoned them close.

“Nand’ paidhi.” Tabini beckoned to him.

He had not expected it. He went, and he bowed, and knelt down by Tabini’s chair, in intimate hearing. And what the aiji’s guard thought of this conference one could only imagine: the man must be seething.

But then Tabini said, “Jaidiri-nadi,” and beckoned that man to join them. Jaidiri did so, a stiff, disapproving presence.

“The culprits are likeliest Eastern,” Tabini said, “and our position is that we will not negotiate with them in whatever they demand.