Deceiver

by C. J. Cherryh

  “But you did know what Mospheira was up to.”

  “Nothing not well-known now.”

  “The Marid may not think so. You’re just a bit more fluent than makes me comfortable, brother. Unguessed talents.” That Toby had never outright told him how fluent he was getting—that bothered him; but Toby worked for Shawn, the President of Mospheira, the way he himself had once worked for Shawn in the State Department, and there were secrets and secrets in government employ.

  “It’s getting better,” Toby said lightly. “I haven’t been around people talking before. I’m starting to pick out words. Figure out others.”

  “I still can’t put a sentence together,” Barb said. “Toby’s far braver about that. But we absorb things. I’m picking up a lot about the boat from the work crews.”

  “Well, you just be careful going down there, and get the hell away from dock if you don’t like the look of what’s headed your way. Even if you just get nervous. Stand off from shore and be ready to get out to the middle of the bay if you don’t like the feel of things at any time you’re down there. Better a little inconvenience than a mistake the other way.”

  “Got it,” Toby said, and by then Banichi and Jago were coming back, carrying rifles, and with their outdoor jackets on—bulletproof and heavy as sin.

  No surprise to Toby or Barb, who were used to Guild working gear. Bren saw them all out the door.

  “Kindly go straight to the room and stay there, nandi,” Jago said.

  “I shall,” he promised her. “Immediately.”

  And he walked straight in that direction the moment the front door shut.

  His two personal staff, Koharu and Supani, weren’t long arriving in his suite, a characteristic knock on the outermost door. Staff in the hall would have reported he was retiring, and his valets showed up almost before he’d gotten his own coat off.

  He handed the garment in question to Supani, who hung it on a hanger, and that on a hook on the door: the coat would go away with them and come back refreshed and pressed by morning. Likewise the shirt and trousers and the ribbon that tied his queue, which he finger-combed out. He automatically sat down and let Koharu apply a brush to his past-the-shoulder hair.

  Felt good. Took away tensions of the day.

  Pop-pop-pop from outside. From down the hill.

  Gunfire. He leapt up, headed for the other room and the door. Supani chased him down with a dressing gown and insisted on helping him.

  “Tano and Algini!” he said, and Koharu understood and ran, outpacing him as he made the hall along with four of Ilisidi’s men and Cenedi himself, Cenedi giving directions as more of that company showed up from the lower hall.

  Bren reached the library, where Tano and Algini still sat at stations and the two assigned to Cajeiri hovered by. “Get to the young gentleman!” Bren snapped, and those two went, leaving him room to reach Tano and Algini in the cramped quarters.

  “Movement, nandi, down by the dock,” Tano said, “and up by the house.”

  He didn’t distract them with questions: Algini was talking in code, probably to Banichi and Jago, maybe to units disposed about the grounds, and Tano’s eyes never left his screens.

  “Sector 14 now,” Tano said into his own microphone.

  Whether intruders were incoming or outgoing in sector 14 one had no idea, but it was too near the downhill walkway. Bren hovered and kept quiet. He could see that blinking sector for himself, some distance off the walkway where Banichi and Jago would be.

  He didn’t know who had been firing, except the one from Ilisidi’s young men on the roof. He hoped it was Banichi and Jago taking a few shots at intruders and not the other way around. He hoped Toby and Barb kept their heads down. They hadn’t had time for it to be just Banichi and Jago on the return.

  “Somebody should check the boats,” he muttered.

  “Someone is doing that, Bren-ji,” Tano said. “Both boats. And our own perimeter.” His eyes never left the screens. “It may be diversion. We have called the village and set them on alert.”

  Damn, he thought. The aiji’s men hadn’t cleared out all the problem. They’d gotten Kajiminda cleaned up, they’d gone after the lot down in Separti Township, but very possibly people had gotten out of Separti. Some might have escaped by sea, and some might have headed overland, to take the long land route to the Marid. Some might not have left at all, but gone to set up bases in the wild lands, the hunting reserves, between the coastal villages of Sarini Province and the Maschi territory . . . bases that could continue to be a problem until hunted down.

  How many Guild agents might the Marid have deployed in the district? Unfortunately, a lot, if one counted any Guild who had been supporting Murini . . . who might have headed down to the Marid as a way to escape retribution.

  He really, really didn’t like that line of reasoning. He stood very still, just watching the retreat of intrusion in a series of lit-up squares. Which could be a real retreat, or simply designed to divert attention from something breaching their perimeter elsewhere.

  He stood still so long his arm, leaning on Tano’s chair, began to tire, and his eyes, focused on those screens, to dry out from want of blinking. He shifted position slightly and did blink.

  The Guild’s actions were like that. Patient waiting, interspersed with a few moments of adrenaline.

  They were back to the patient waiting. Which was almost as bad as the adrenaline.

  “Are our people safe?” he asked.

  “All reporting, Bren-ji.”

  Our people included his brother, Barb, and the two people he loved most in the world.

  And the fact Tano and Algini were sitting there dead calm and completely unemotional meant only that they were on the job and not sparing a thought to personal relationships with anybody. They continued nonstop observing, listening and, with small key-clicks, aiming sensors and communicating with various people about the grounds . . . all of whom were evidently reporting in or responding in some fashion.

  Bren waited for another length of time before saying, very quietly, without inflection: “If it is safer for Banichi and Jago to bring their wards back to the house tonight, we shall certainly find room.”

  “It may indeed be safer,” Algini said, and plied keys, a series of fast clicks. He said then: “They agree.”

  The next while, extricating two valuable and highly visible targets, namely two pale-skinned humans, from a difficult position on the lower walk—that took some time, and Bren stood and listened for part of it.

  But then he decided he could be of somewhat more use than that, so he went out to the hall, and asked Ramaso, who had appointed himself to hall duty during the disturbance, to make ready two beds belowstairs.

  “Indeed,” Ramaso said. “Please delay them with hospitality upstairs, nandi, and there will be space for them as fast as possible.”

  “One doubts they will sleep immediately,” he said, and turned to find Antaro and Nawari both, one an emissary from Cajeiri and one from Ilisidi, and then Lord Geigi himself coming out into the hall, to find out what was going on. Lord Geigi, like him, was in his night-robe, but not, like him, with his hair undone. Bren felt a little heat touch his face, a little embarrassment at that, and so surely must Ramaso, but there were more important things afoot than a little impropriety. “Geigi-ji,” he said. “What a welcome we have given you!”

  “My staff informs me your brother and his lady are turning back.”

  “Indeed. It seems safer.”

  “It must,” Geigi said. “Infelicity on the Marid and all its houses! No one will sleep for hours, and my fool of a nephew should not be the exception. Let your staff inform him I shall speak to him directly after breakfast and that the activities of his associates tonight have placed me in no good mood toward him! I would deal with him tonight, except I want my wits about me!”

  The middle door opened. Cajeiri turned up, putting his head out. “Are we safe, nand’ Bren?”

  “At the moment we appear
to be, young gentleman. Go back to bed.”

  Cajeiri likewise was in a night-robe, and barefoot, with his hair streaming over his shoulders.

  And Ilisidi’s door opened. Cenedi himself arrived, in boots and trousers, and with braid intact, and obviously wanted answers.

  “Nand’ Toby and Barb-daja are coming back to the house tonight, Cenedi-ji.” Which was stupid to say: of course Cenedi knew that part of it already. Guild in protection of their lord were never out of touch with the rest of their number. What Cenedi didn’t know was the arrangement he had just ordered in the household. “We are lodging them downstairs. If the dowager would wish a quieting cup of tea in the study, we might arrange that.” It came to him that, besides his study, which he needed for his own urgent business in straightening this mess out, they did have the sitting room they could convert to sleeping quarters.

  But that had its own necessary function in the house, the meeting place, the only place besides the dining room that could accommodate them all; and the dining room was just—not the place one discussed business. Impossible, he thought distractedly. And any room downstairs was bigger than the cabin Barb and Toby shared on the boat.

  Two beds, he had told Ramaso. Were they going to think he was making a statement?

  “The dowager will take tea,” Cenedi said, “but will not receive visitors tonight, nandi.”

  “Mandi-ji.” Bren snared a passing servant, who skidded to a fast halt. “Tea for the dowager. Tea for any guest who wants it.”

  “I shall take some myself,” Geigi said, “with teacakes, should there be any at this hour, nadi.”

  “So would we like teacakes,” Cajeiri said. “My staff would, too.”

  Where a boy Cajeiri’s size proposed to put more food after that supper, God only knew. “See to it,” Bren said to the servant, and as Samandri took out at all decorous speed: “Cenedi-ji, can your people supply security to the front door while we open it for Banichi and Jago?”

  “We are already in position, nandi. And they are on their way.”

  “Of course.” He found himself exhausted. “Forgive me, nadi-ji.”

  “We are glad the paidhi has an accurate sense of these things,” Cenedi said diplomatically. “I shall see to the front door myself,” he added, “being in the vicinity. By your leave, nandi.”

  “Please do,” he said. The others had gone back to their rooms. It was his job, as the lingering visible civilian, to get himself out of the hall and back out of the Guild’s way. The one moment that might provoke renewed attack, were there any enemy still in position, would be a door opening, and their guard needed no distractions in protecting them from more dings in the woodwork.

  So he went back to the library, where Tano and Algini reported Banichi and Jago were now at the portico, and then that they were coming in. He watched the lights that indicated the opening and then the safe shutting of the front door, he heard the thump of the bar going into place, and headed back out into the hall again.

  Banichi and Jago looked unruffled. Barb and Toby, in their company, were dirty and disheveled, their boating whites scuffed and bearing traces of dirt and evergreen. It was likely Banichi and Jago had landed on them, or thrown them into the bushes with a force they would have considered only adequate.

  “Well, here we are again,” Toby said with a shaky laugh, “like bad pennies. Sorry about that, brother.”

  “Just thank God you made it—and thank God I sent Banichi and Jago with you! Who fired?” The last he asked in Ragi, and Jago said:

  “We did, nandi. We had a security alert, and a sure target. The dowager’s men are searching the grounds. They will report. We stayed with our principals.”

  “One is profoundly grateful,” he said. “Are you all right?” Jago was nursing a stitched-up wound from the last fracas. And one didn’t ask Guild to admit to injuries in outsider hearing, but Barb and Toby were not exactly outsiders, and Jago nodded with, he thought, honesty.

  “One remains a little sore,” she said, “nandi. But their return fire was not accurate.”

  “It might have been, without you. Thank you. Thank you profoundly, nadiin-ji.”

  “Thank you,” Toby added in Ragi, on his own behalf, with a correct little bow, and Barb echoed, in fairly bad Ragi, but with the correct addition of a third—consciously or not, “Thank you two, and Bren.”

  “Indeed,” Banichi said, returning the bow.

  “Go where you need to go,” Bren said. There was debriefing yet to do, and two of Cenedi’s men had come into the hall. “Rest. We are guarded, here.”

  Banichi smiled, a little amused at him, but he frankly didn’t care. He was tired, his guard was tired, and Barb and Toby had just been through enough to keep them awake the rest of the night. Servants had shown up. He said to them: “I shall see nand’ Toby and Barb-daja in my study while staff prepares their bath. Send another pot of calmative tea to my office. And brandy. They will surely wish to sit a moment.”

  “Nandi.” Two servants sped on different missions, and Banichi and Jago had headed for the library/security station. Bren directed Barb and Toby to his office door, opened it, and brought them inside.

  They took chairs, gratefully but cautiously. “I’m afraid we’ll get dirt on the carpet,” Toby said. “Let alone the upholstery. Is my backside clean?”

  “Honorable dirt,” Bren said, a rough translation of the Ragi proverb. “The staff will gladly clean it, and the chairs are tougher than they look. There’s a bath downstairs. They’re setting up. I’ve ordered a sedative tea. It’s fairly strong. Harmless to us. And a very good thing at times. Add a shot of brandy and you won’t wake til morning.”

  “I wished I’d had my gun,” Toby said, “which is, of course, down on the boat.”

  “Well, well, but you’re on the mainland, where professionals handle that sort of thing,” Bren said. “Unfortunately it means professionals on the other side, too.”

  “That’s certainly a downside,” Barb laughed. She moved to brush back her hair and she was shaking. She looked at her hand as if it were a foreign object and made it into a fist, resting on the chair. “I guess the other side isn’t through trying, is it?”

  In that moment he forgave Barb a lot. He looked at the two of them, his quasi-ex and his brother, and saw a pair . . . not the woman he’d have picked for Toby, but then, Barb lent Toby just enough of her predatory selfish streak to keep him from flinging himself on grenades and Toby lent Barb enough of his sense of stability and loyalty to keep her better side in the ascendant. Toby the rock. Toby the damned self-sacrificing fool. Barb wanted somebody who’d always be there—even if she had to follow him in and out of irregular harbors under fire, as it appeared: this the woman who’d lived for nightclubs and fancy gowns.

  “Good for both of you,” he said, and meant it fervently.

  “Just so damned glad you sent Banichi and Jago.”

  “I assure you, you and whoever else went with you would have been under watch the whole route down to the boat, but you don’t have my skills at falling flat in the dirt on cue.”

  “I’ll be faster at it, after this,” Toby said. “Banichi shoved me flat. I think I’ll remember that fact tomorrow morning.”

  Bren laughed, well familiar with that sensation, which involved the relocation of every vertebra in one’s neck and back, not to mention the meeting with the ground.

  And just then a knock at the door heralded the servant with the tea service, the very historic tea service—the others must be elsewhere disposed—the cups of which Toby and Barb took with dirty fingers, ever so carefully.

  “This is beautiful,” Barb said, looking carefully at the cup. Barb had an eye for assessing things. “But my hands are shaking.”

  “They won’t, in a moment. Thirteenth century, that service. Best the house has.—Thank you, nadi,” he said to the servant. “Please wait.” And took his own sip of tea. “Your boat will be safe. Someone is checking out both the boats, yours and mine, just to be sure
.”

  “So grateful,” Toby murmured. “You think of everything, brother.”

  “I have no few brains working on problems for me,” he said. “So I don’t have to be brilliant.”

  “I never appreciated a house like this,” Toby said. “I’m starting to understand it. In all senses. It’s not all tea and cookies, is it?”

  “It’s a village of its own,” he said. “It defends itself pretty well, and we all take care of each other. Staff smuggled most every stick of furniture and set of china, even whole carpets, out of my Bujavid apartment when the Bujavid was being taken over. They got it on trains right under the opposition’s noses and had it and key staff members collected here at Najida before Murini’s people knew they were missing. And some of my staff, Murini’s people would particularly have liked to lay hands on, but they weren’t about to come in here to get them . . . Najida being part of Najida Peninsula, which is part of the west coast, which is Edi territory, Murini didn’t want his agents cracking that egg, for fear of what might hatch and raise holy hell. But you know that, Frozen Dessert.”

  “Even the Marid,” Toby said, “was scared to take on your staff.”

  “I think so. They’d organized. That was everything. Favor Ramaso for that. Ramaso and his connections. No small advantage to me, in all this.”

  One cup gone, and Barb stifled a yawn. “Oh, my God. I’m sorry, Bren.”

  “That’s the intent,” Bren said. The sedative was hitting his system, too, and he set the precious cup aside on the desk. The attending servant, part of the furniture until that moment, instantly collected it, collected Barb’s, and Toby finished his in a last swallow and handed the cup over.

  “Nadi,” Bren said, delaying the servant a moment, and gave him the incidental instruction to inform Geigi’s nephew that his uncle was annoyed as hell and would talk to him in the morning.

  “So we’re downstairs,” Toby said.

  “Two of the youngest servants will have given you their quarters,” Bren said. He could guess the names. “There’s the servants’ bath, down there, servant’s kitchen, where you may find snacks at any time of night—but just ask the staff. They’ll be happier to provide it for you on a tray.”