Текст книги "Protector "

“Take-holds,” Artur said. “Good!” Artur seemed a lot happier with that idea.

Irene had not said much. She had agreed, but she was scared. She always was, of new things. But she was going to try.

She was not going to get hurt. He had his mind made up on that.

He just wished he could convince Irene, who probably was not going to get a lot of sleep tonight.

She had said, when they had walked back to the room, “The table was so pretty. Everything was so pretty.”

She had even eaten the pâté, and never complained, though after they had gotten back to the room, she had gone looking for the little medical kit in her baggage, saying her stomach hurt.

She had tried so hard. But Irene always had.

Now she leaned with her chin on the windowsill and watched the lightning and listened to the thunder, only flinching at the loudest thunderclaps. “It’s real,” she said. “Pictures aren’t enough. They just aren’t enough.”

13

Bren dressed in his roughest clothes the next morning—his valets had packed a good outdoor coat for him, and had anticipated a country venue might require it. They had assured him through the usual servant-to-servant whispering that that would be perfectly fine for breakfast—that the guests would be in their ship-style clothing.

His aishid prepared in their own way, but their preparations were less about wardrobe than armament, in case, and in communication with the house security station. The word was, throughout the system, it was a fair morning with a light, nippy breeze, and there was nothing changed in the security stance.

Jase turned up, alone, but cheerful, in his blue station fatigues and an insulated brown coat. “Kaplan and Polano beg off. I gave them the chance. They said if anything did go amiss, they’d need rescue themselves. They said better take two more who know what they’re doing.”

“Not nervous, are you?”

“Not as long as I ride with the kids,” Jase said. “You do as you please, friend.”

“I’m perfectly content with that.”

They all met downstairs, in the dining hall, the breakfast room being for intimate gatherings. Ilisidi and Tatiseigi had turned out in riding clothes, while Cajeiri wore a sturdy black twill coat, and Jase and the youngsters from the station all wore their own comfort-wear, with jackets.

It was a quick light breakfast and out and around to the mecheita pens, where a rumbling low complaint said the grooms were letting their charges know they were indeed going to work this morning. The sky was clear blue, and the air was chill—it was not quite to the stage of breath frosting, but it was close, and the mecheiti were in high spirits.

A party of their size meant saddling just about every mecheita, and while it ordinarily meant more control, with more of the herd under rein, with novice children in the group, they needed a serious rider to handle the herd leader, and whatever constellation of fractious competitors the herd’s current composition afforded them. In days past it would have been Ilisidi riding foremost, with Cenedi and Nawari right beside her, hellbent for anything the terrain offered.

But that wasn’t Ilisidi’s choice today. Tatiseigi, who was of an unguessable age, likewise declined, and while one could have ultimate faith in the dowager’s skilled hand, one worried.

Not to mention worrying about his own lately unpracticed self. And Jase.

A groom brought the herd leader out to the pen, and Tatiseigi gave the order for two grooms to take the lead, which was, in Bren’s opinion, the best arrangement.

Other mecheiti came out, under saddle. Ilisidi and Tatiseigi and their bodyguards went into the pen to mount up—they had no trouble to get their mounts to extend a leg and allow an easy mount, but Ilisidi accepted a little help from Cenedi at the last. Tatiseigi managed on his own, on what Bren rather suspected was a retired herd-leader, a mecheita with a conspicuous raking scar on his rump.

And from that lofty vantage Ilisidi and Tatiseigi called Cajeiri over, and introduced him to a fine-looking ten-year-old, a rusty black, with a red tassel on the bridle ring and a ring of red enamel on each of the bright brass tusk-caps.

This was Jeichido, no question, and Cajeiri looked uncharacteristically nervous and excited—quite, quite happy, and emoting just a shade too much around a high-bred mecheita. Ilisidi gave a quiet, “Tut, tut, tut,” that meant calm down, pay attention, as if she were talking to the mecheita.

The young gentleman calmed himself, took the single rein, made a spring for the mounting loop set high on the animal’s shoulder, and with his left toe in the assisting fold of leather, he was up, rein and quirt in hand, the first leg over, and the second foot settling comfortably into the curve of the mecheita’s nape. Jeichido fidgeted a few steps, then swung neatly about at a light tap of the quirt. Antaro and Jegari were up.

“Good luck to us,” Jase muttered, then.

It was their turn. The junior grooms were kind, and afforded them the mounting block, with two grooms to steady the mecheiti, who were not likely to regard an unskilled demand for the extended leg. His aishid needed no such help, and that was six more of them safely in the saddle.

That left the children, and three quiet, older mecheiti, sleepy-looking animals—there were four younger spares and a new foal milling about the pen at loose ends, making trouble, occasioning a threatening head shake from Tatiseigi’s mount and a warning from the junior grooms. But these were the oldest in the herd. They’d follow the herd leaders at whatever pace they could muster, to the ends of the earth, but they wasted none of their energy. The first stood with eyes half-shut as the grooms first lifted Artur up, and then led up a mecheita for Irene.

The herd-leader, however, had gotten wind of odd-smelling small strangers, and was circling under taps of the groom’s quirt, wanting to get closer, chuffing and blowing, sloping hindquarters aquiver with impatience. He—it happened to be a male—let out a moaning rumble, a threat, a warning. They very much needed to get this lot out of the pen and moving on this cool morning.

Irene looked at the herd-leader, who had been put into another frustrated circle, and with a slip of her foot on the first step of the mounting block, she recovered her balance. Then she froze, with a look of terror on her face.

“Come on, Reny,” Gene called out. “Move! You can do it!”

She came unfrozen. She settled her balance on the block, faltered her way up another step onto the top of the block, dropping the rein as she caught her balance. The groom handily caught it as it fell and gave it back, folded the same hand about the quirt and shoved her upward without any preamble. Irene grabbed the saddle back, not the mounting strap, missed the toehold, and as the mecheita took a step forward, she lost contact with the mounting block and hung there, dropping the quirt. Bren loosed his rein and shifted his quirt, deciding to ride alongside and tell Irene to go back upstairs and ask Cajeiri’s servants for a cup of tea.

But she had hold of the front ring instead of the quirt, and she started hauling herself upward. The groom caught a flailing foot in his hand and lifted. Irene landed belly down, managed to drag her right leg over the saddle back and, as the groom tried to keep the old mecheita still, Irene hauled herself upright, grabbed the ring, dragged her left foot into its proper place in the curve of the neck and, panting, took the quirt a second groom put back into her hand.

“Loop around your wrist,” Bren said in ship-speak. “Are you all right?”

“Yes, sir,” she said. She gave her head a shake, getting the hair out of her eyes. “Yes, sir!”

Bren worried. She looked very, very small up there, and looked terrified as the old mecheita moved in response to the shifting of the rest of the herd, but she had made it.

Meanwhile Gene had tried to go up Cajeiri’s way, didn’t quite have the reach, but two grooms had just swept him up and put him into the saddle as if he weighed nothing at all. Gene awkwardly sorted out reins and quirt as the mecheita, let at liberty, turned and came alongside Irene’s, giving it a casual butt of a tusked jaw.

“Hold on,” Jase said. Gene had acted as if he had an idea what he was doing, the grooms had let the mecheita go, and there was a butt and a head flung back, the two old girls in a momentary fuss, brass tusks flashing, but there was no great fire in it. Algini rode in and settled the situation with a little flick of the quirt.

The head groom then let the leader move toward the gate, the herd-leader’s rivals shouldered their way after him, and a junior groom opened that broad gate and rode it outward as it swung. The herd-leader exited, ready to stretch out and run, and the entire pen emptied out in rough order of herd rank, except the one youngster trying to keep up with its mother and scrambling with amazing shifts through the towering crowd. The impetus of the herd slowed fast—the three lead riders got them all to a sedate pace.

Bren, carried through the gate in the initial rush, looked back at the youngsters at the rear, made sure they had all made it. Cajeiri and his aishid pulled aside from the leaders, likely trying to wait for his young guests, but stopping began to entail a discussion with Jeichido. The boy was managing at least to hold his position, but only just. Jeichido was having none of it, and he began to let Jeichido move up again, but Jegari peeled off and rode back to the rear, a lad who’d grown up riding and who had no trouble violating the herd order, even on a strange mecheita.

So Jegari was going to ride with the kids.

Good, Bren thought, took a deep breath and relaxed as the mecheiti, denied a mad dash, swung into their traveling stride. They swept along beside the house and across the drive to the end of the low inner hedge. Beyond that was pasturage damp from the rains, so wide and rolling a range the limiting hedges were out of sight.

On grass, the pace stretched out and became as smooth as silk, and Bren relaxed. His aishid was with him. Jase was. The air was brisk, the sky was brilliant, and, God, it felt good to ride again, even if it was not his Nokhada—he felt a pang of longing for that troublesome but excellent beast, whom he’d not seen since he’d gone into space. He didn’t know this one’s name, nor did it greatly matter this morning, just that she was not an ambitious sort. Behind Tatiseigi’s bodyguard was perfectly fine for him and for Jase, and Banichi and the others were on his right.

He looked back from time to time, double-checking on the youngsters with Jegari—he saw Irene laughing, riding beside Gene’s mecheita with no trouble. A little into the ride, after a little argument to the side of the group, Cajeiri and Jeichido finally came to an understanding about dropping back in the order, and Cajeiri and Antaro and the older pair of his guards held back to ride with his guests for a bit. That lasted maybe a quarter of an hour. Then those three gradually drifted forward in the order. They stopped to talk to him and Jase, while Jeichido wanted to keep going, and that sparked another little exchange, which disturbed all the mecheiti around them.

“This mecheita is determined, nandiin,” Cajeiri laughed. “Great-uncle said she will need work.”

“She is very fine,” Bren said, and Cajeiri held Jeichido steady about that long before she wanted to break forward again. He held her long enough to make the point, then waved and was off again, forward, up to his great-grandmother.

Ilisidi seemed to be enjoying herself at least as much as Cajeiri. She had walked with a cane as long as Bren had known her, but in the saddle, it always had been a different story. He had seen her, on Babsidi, take rocky hillsides that challenged her young men—worse, he had been on a mecheita who wanted to follow her. She was laughing, talking to her great-grandson, and so was Lord Tatiseigi—those who knew them only in the Bujavid would be amazed. But he was not. Open country was where Ilisidi had always been happy, far removed from the Bujavid and as removed from politics as Ilisidi ever was.

Today, everything was entirely as she had arranged it to be, Tatiseigi was happy, Tatiseigi had given the boy the earnest of the gift shehad arranged for him—the continuance of the line of mecheiti she had ridden to national legend.

And if her great-grandson’s happiness entailed three human children—he wasn’t that sure she hadn’t had a hand in their getting down here, too. Geigi did nothing that displeased her: if she wanted those three to come down, he’d make certain it happened.

One had to wonder, however at her reasonsfor that decision. Happiness? Possibly, but one got onto very shaky ground, assuming Ilisidi made any choice based on grandmotherly softness.

That the boy had had no atevi contacts at all who were children—that had not been her choosing. Her goal had been to keep him alive. That was first. Giving him a childhood? Not even a factor.

But when the boy went out and made his own associations among the humans, she also hadn’t fought it. Ever. She was a master chess player. Had she suspected even then the possibilities in such an association?

Silly question.

What Jase had said, what Geigi had said, about the factions shaping up in the human half of that equation—did one lay any bet at all that Ilisidi hadn’t heard, from Geigi, the entire business, and that Ilisidi hadn’t made up her own mind that, while her great-grandson had had to come down to the world and deal with atevi and let atevi instincts shape his reactions—he should not give up his direct links to the powers in the heavens either?

When it came to atevi in the heavens, Ilisidi, who stood for the traditional—was hell-bent on being sure atevi were well-informed and in charge.

It wasn’t cynicism that made him absolutely certain Ilisidi had had all the reports on the politics involved in her grandson’s guests, or that she had had a hand in getting them down here. It was experience.

Their course took them far, far beyond sight of the house, but still within the hedges, in a pasturage so wide that, where one saw a hedge, it was only on one side. There was no road here, only grass. There was no disturbance in the world.

Until the lead mecheiti stopped, cold, head up, and the foremost dipped their heads and snuffed the ground.

Every mecheita in the herd jolted to a stop. Ranks closed. Bren looked back to check on the youngsters. They were all still in the saddle, their sensible mounts quiet, alert but not jostling each other.

“Track,” Jago said, as Banichi talked, probably with Cenedi, short-range. “Mecheita. It was made since the rain. We advised the camp this morning—perhaps a little late—to keep their riders in camp.”

One didn’t want two herds encountering, not with new riders in the group. The lead mecheiti all had their heads up, nostrils working, hindquarters stretched, and one, the herd-second, actually raised up a little on her hind legs, the long neck giving her a view of all the grassland about. She came down, backing and turning under the rein and taps of the quirt.

The herd-leader gave out a moan that shocked the air. Every mecheita in the herd was head-up, alert, heads all facing toward the same point on the horizon. They had mayhem in mind, no question.

Ilisidi however, extended her quirt and swept a calm gesture as she suggested a turn. Tatiseigi ordered the head riders, and they argued their mecheiti into a sharp change of direction, back toward the estate road.

“Not trouble, is it?” Jase asked.

“No, nandi,” Tano said. “There is a track going south, one of the Taibeni early this morning, one is informed, and the herd-leader has caught the scent. The aiji-dowager wants us to veer off from the camp, and not let the herd-leader believe we are letting him follow that track. He owns this range, and is very willing to prove it.”

The herd-leader was arguing strongly about the direction change, fighting the rein and the taps of the quirt. The groom was struggling to control the animal, and Ilisidi, who had used to ride in competitions, was probably struggling, too, to restrain her advice to the man.

The leader, however, was unsettling the herd. Herd-second was still spoiling for a fight, looking in the forbidden direction and making that moaning threat. Bren’s mecheita had gone to a looser gait, ready to jump at the least indication the leader was going, trying to move forward in the order. Jeichido was giving Cajeiri an argument, close to slipping control, and suddenly came close to the front. Ilisidi turned her mecheita about and shouldered Jeichido hard. There was a flare-up, a flash of brass tusk-caps as heads swung, but Jeichido’s attack missed. Ilisidi had spun full about and come up on Jeichido’s flank. Jeichido realized it and whirled around to protect herself.

Ilisidi popped the quirt right across Jeichido’s nose. Jeichido shied off, haunches dropped, which could propel the mecheiti into fight or flight. Cajeiri reined hard and used his own quirt to take her away from Ilisidi.

The boy had stayed on and stopped her. Thank God. Cajeiri had a high-powered mecheita under him, and while she wouldn’t break past the herd-leader, she seemed to have taken it in her head that she could move forward.

She wasn’t doing that while Ilisidi was riding the mecheita in front of her.

“One apologizes, mani!” Cajeiri called back, keeping Jeichido circling to distract her.

“Best we turn back to the stables,” Ilisidi called out. “They will be unsettled, now, and we have our young guests to consider. We have had exercise enough.”

Tatiseigi gave the order, and the grooms reined back on a wide U, not retracing their path, but headed in the direction of the house. There was a little excess energy in the herd since the flare-up, the leader still protesting with shakes and turns of his head. It needed steady effort from the foremost riders to keep the pace slow and the direction unchallenged.

“Just as well we go back,” Bren said, watching as Cajeiri reined Jeichido all the way around to go back to his guests—who had had, surely, a momentary fright.

“Indeed,” Jago said, but her voice was uncharacteristically distracted, and when he glanced at her, he caught her, just for a moment, staring off toward Banichi.

“Wasit Taibeni, Jago-ji?” Bren asked.

“Yes,” she said. “Of that we are certain. But Cenedi has ordered us back.”

Caution? Bren asked himself. Communications were at a minimum. They were not sending details abroad. But the space within the hedges suddenly seemed less safe than a moment ago.

•   •   •

“Are you all right?” was the first thing Gene asked as Cajeiri rode close and came about. “Is your great-grandmother all right, nandi?”

“Oh, mani is verywell!” Cajeiri was a little embarrassed to have lost control of Jeichido so that mani had had to step in, but Jeichido did not know him, and was testing whether she could get her way. He was not as good as Antaro or Jegari, even, and far from as good as mani or Great-uncle. He hoped his guests had not thought him a fool.

“What was it?” Artur asked. “What was it, nandi, on the ground?”

“A smell. One of the Taibeni, the riders from beside the bus. One had been out here in the pastures, and possibly Uncle’s mecheiti have been smelling them for days, even from as far away as they are. The herd-leader caught the scent and he was ready to lead the herd over to that camp and show them this is hispasture.”

“Would they fight, nandi?”

“The Taibeni mecheiti would probably tend to run, unless their riders turned them around. But only enemies would do that. We are quite safe. Uncle’s staff told the camp we were going to be out riding this morning, and they were not supposed to be out on patrol. But evidently somebody was out early, after the rain. Are youall right, nadiin-ji?”

“It was scary,” Artur said.

“They managed very well,” Jegari said, who had been with them. “They held on and made no bad moves.”

“She is a very nice mecheita,” Irene said, patting the mecheita so slightly it probably never felt it. “All the others were upset, and she just stood there.”

Irene’s was a very old mecheita, with white hairs around her nose, but Irene was happy with her.

And no one had fallen off when the herd stopped.

“Excellent,” he said. Jeichido was starting to shift about under him, wanting to move. “We are on our way back. It will be long enough riding, by the time we get there. I shall see you at the house.” Jeichido swung about on her own, took a step, and he put her one full circle in the opposite direction to have it clear he was in charge. Then he took her quietly back up the line, restraining her urge to run—if she did, it would start everybody trying to run, considering they were heading toward the stables now. He had no desire to end a very good day by having Irene or Artur take a fall.

And he hoped he looked very impressive and recovered a little good opinion after the situation with mani. It might be more impressive to his guests to let Jeichido take out running. But it was, at the moment, mani and Great-uncle he wanted to impress. He rode Jeichido at a steady pace all the way to her place near the head of the column, put her exactly where he wanted her to be, and dared take a glance at mani, who just nodded, approving.

So did Great-uncle.

That was almost as good as a fast race home. He had redeemed himself. And he kept that same traveling-pace, with his bodyguards behind him and Great-uncle beside him, all the way to the house.

They crossed the drive, went down the walk beside the house. The younger grooms had the gate open, and the senior grooms rode through the gate in single file, the head groom first, on the herd-leader, and one after the other.

It was a challenge. He was determined to get Jeichido inside, exactly in her proper order, and with no breaking and rushing, and he kept his weight even and his feet still, except just a little tap, which he had begun to understand was enough with Jeichido.

Then they had to stand and keep their mecheiti from milling about, while Cenedi and Nawari slid down and helped mani get down—mani made her mecheiti drop a shoulder, and got down much more ably than he expected she could after that ride. One of the junior grooms handed her her cane as Great-uncle’s senior bodyguard assisted him.

He himself, not confident he could get Jeichido to drop her shoulder, had gotten up the Taibeni way, with a jump, but that was probably not the best way to start with one of Great-uncle’s stable, and it might have given Jeichido ideas she could get her way. He tapped her shoulder with the quirt, now, repeatedly, and after a little hesitation, she extended her leg, letting him swing down.

He wanted to take her into the stable himself, and work with her. But he had his guests to see to. He handed the reins to a junior groom, and thought if he could manage it he would come out to the stables later, and maybe have a little time with her.

But getting the mecheiti unburdened and into the stable had to go fairly quickly, for safety, and it was, each mecheita handed off in order, and the herd-leader led into the stable to be quieted with a little reward of grain. The leaders were all clear, following him of their own accord. All around him riders were getting down, and he went to be sure his guests knew to get clear and get out.

Nand’ Bren and Banichi and Jago were with them, he saw, helping them get down; and mani and Great-uncle were safe, over by the small gate people used leaving the stableyard. He just ducked through the rails, and waited for his guests beside the gate.

Within the pens, only the grooms were moving about now. Mecheiti, still under saddle, were mostly interested in the grain waiting for them, all threat forgotten.

“Well managed,” Uncle Tatiseigi said. “Well-managed, Nephew.” Great-uncle and mani went on to talk to Jase-aiji and nand’ Bren.

And his guests came out, last, windblown, happy and a little out of breath.

“That was good,” Gene said in Ragi.

“Was it, nadiin-ji?” he asked. He hoped it was. “Rene-ji?”

“It was—” She lapsed into ship-speak. “I did it! I did it and I didn’t fall off, did I?”

“Told you,” Gene said.

“I want to do it again,” Irene said.

“I’m sore,” Artur said. “But it was good. It’s so weird. You really wonder what they’re thinking.”

“Your great-grandmother can really ride,” Gene said. “That was something! Were they going to fight?”

“Jeichido was going to move up past her,” Cajeiri said in Ragi. “They try that. But mani is faster. And smarter.”

“Wow,” Artur said. “Jegari said they can run. I wish they ran.”

Cajeiri had to laugh. “Oh, they can run, Arti-ji. They can run. We were all working to keep them just walking.” They had begun, after the others, to walk back to the house. “Hot baths, now. Or we shall all hurt tomorrow.” Antaro and Jegari were with him, and Lucasi and Veijico had stopped to wait for them, at the entry to the house.

“Nandi,” Lucasi said somberly, and nodded to the side of the door. Cajeiri stepped aside. So did his guests. And by Lucasi’s expression, whatever it was, was not good.

“Nandi,” Lucasi said, “your grandfather has just been assassinated.”

“Who?” he asked. Then: “Did my father do it?” He hoped not. He hoped his parents were managing to make peace while he was out of the way and not causing any trouble.

But if his father had just killed his mother’s father—

“Rumor has not had time to reach us,” Lucasi said. “We got this as we tapped into house base. One is not certain if Cenedi himself knows, yet. Jegari and Antaro are trying to learn details.”

Manicould have arranged it, Cajeiri thought, and Cenedi would certainly know.

Nand’ Bren had passed them, on his way into the house. Several of mani’s young men had lingered outside, watching them,Cajeiri thought, or maybe also getting the news.

He did not want to be looked at. He gathered up his guests and his aishid and brought them inside, then back into the nook under the adjacent stairs, trying to figure out what happened next in the world, and how to deal with his guests.

“Is something wrong?” Gene asked, and in Ragi: “What is it, nandi?”

“My grandfather is dead.” He did not want to alarm them. But they were going to find out. “Assassinated. Just now.”

They looked shocked. He was shocked, too, he decided. He was not exactly sorry, because his grandfather had threatened him, and his father, and scared him so he never wanted to see him again. But he was shocked, shaken, for some reason he could not quite understand.

“That’s terrible,” Artur said faintly. “We’re sorry.”

“One regrets,” Gene said in Ragi.