Protector: Foreigner #14

by Cherryh, C. J.

  Bren did not even glance at Ilisidi as Cajeiri left. Ilisidi knew exactly what he had done and he knew she knew he knew, and suspected there had been no message from Damiri whatsoever. Ilisidi might well make her displeasure known in some minor way, over the next several days. Bren paid that prospect no heed, smiled and bowed in all courtesy to the lord of Calrunaidi. “One is very pleased to make your acquaintance, nandi. The aiji-dowager speaks very highly of you.”

  “Delighted, nand’ paidhi.”

  Conversation then rapidly went from, “Will you be in the city long?” all the way to “If you find yourself in need on the East Coast, nand’ paidhi, consider my house open to you.”

  So it was not a bad meeting at all . . . give or take Ilisidi’s grip on his arm as he left the conversation, and a whispered, “Paidhi, do not meddle.”

  “Forgive me, aiji-ma.” He was not in the least penitent.

  Her firm grip headed him in Damiri’s general direction. As good as walking into a war zone.

  “One advises against a meeting with the consort tonight, aiji-ma.”

  “Nonsense. This is my granddaughter-in-law. What could possibly be amiss?”

  The hell! he thought. If his bodyguard were present even the aiji-dowager would not take advantage as she was doing. But he dared not object as Ilisidi steered them straight into hostile waters. Cajeiri was in conversation with his mother, receiving some instruction when they arrived. Cajeiri shot them a very dismayed look.

  “Granddaughter-in-law,” Ilisidi said smoothly. “The festivity is a complete success. We heartily compliment you.”

  There was scant warmth in Damiri’s eyes when she said, “My husband’s staff deserves all the compliments for the evening, of course. You may recall my own staff is no longer in the city.”

  Ilisidi stood, both hands on her cane. “Yet you are the hostess,” she said, and with a thump of the cane. “And you have been admirable. —Let us say something long unsaid, Granddaughter-in-law, which we should have said long ago. We applaud your choice to remain with my grandson. We support you in doing so. And we entirely understand your reasoning.”

  “Nand’ dowager, it is a clan matter.”

  “So was your marriage,” Ilisidi said sharply, thank God in a low tone of voice. “Age grants us some perspective on these things, and since our chances for conversation have been limited in recent days, Granddaughter-in-law, bear with us: we are moderately private in this noisy crowd. I freely admit, I counseled my grandson against taking an Ajuri consort. I knew the peace between Ajuri and Atageini would be temporary . . .”

  God, Bren thought. There was no way to stop the aiji-dowager once the aiji-dowager had decided to say something. At least the buzz in the room had not quieted: no one had appeared to notice the exchange.

  “We were keenly aware of your opposition, nand’ dowager.”

  Ilisidi tipped her head back a little, giving Damiri, who was much the taller, a somewhat oblique look. “I was opposed to the union and strongly opposed to the formal marriage. Granddaughter-in-law, I am rarely wrong. But you have astonished me. You have grown far beyond what subtlety Ajuri could ever have taught you. You have qualities I attribute to your Atageini blood. My grandson chose very well, and I freely admit it.”

  “Do you?” Damiri’s glance was steel-hard. “Your approval is some years late in coming.”

  “Whether or not we can ever be allies is questionable. But one would prefer alliance.”

  There was still the general buzz and motion of a crowded room about them. Their voices had remained low. Bren stood there with his heart racing, he, the diplomat, frozen in dismay, and not seeing a damned thing he could do to divert the train wreck. Tabini was the only recourse, and Tabini was not looking this way.

  “Alliance?” Damiri said stiffly. “Alliance with you, nandi, is dangerous for an Ajuri. What do you want that I can give? —Because I am well assured this is not an act of generosity.”

  “Peace,” Ilisidi said firmly. “Peace in my grandson’s household and my great-grandson’s life. Peace in which my great-grandson can enjoy having a sister.”

  “You have never called on me,” Damiri said. “Ever. Only on your grandson.”

  “You have never invited me,” Ilisidi said sharply.

  “I am inviting you,” Damiri retorted in the exact same tone. “Tomorrow, morning tea.”

  “Perfectly acceptable,” Ilisidi snapped. The dowager, in fact, had never accepted invitations from those of inferior rank or junior years. Tonight she had solicited such invitations at dinner, and now as good as asked for another, far harder come by. The tones involved, hers and Damiri’s, were steel on steel.

  But that was the way of these two; and the lords of the aishidi’tat, when they made war or peace, did so for policy and in consideration of clan loyalties. A second try at harmony, in changed circumstances, could well work. Bren just held his breath and courted invisibility.

  “Our division is well-known,” Ilisidi said. “Come, leave the young gentleman to the paidhi’s very competent care and walk about with me. Let us lay these rumors of division and amaze your guests, who think they know us so well.”

  “Ha,” Damiri said, and off they went, a tall, young, and extremely pregnant woman side by side with a diminutive grandmother with a cane. They walked slowly, Atageini green and white and Ragi black and red, moving through the crowd, pausing to speak to this and that person.

  Bren cast a look at Tabini, who had stopped talking to Geigi and gazed at a Situation that was bound to have its final act sooner or later in private—likely with both women in his sitting room.

  Bren drew a deep breath then, and exchanged a look with Cajeiri. “Well, young gentleman?”

  “Do you think they really are making peace, nand’ Bren?”

  “They are both very smart,” Bren said. The show out there was the focus of Tabini’s attention, and Calrunaidi’s; and Tatiseigi’s, and Geigi’s. It was an Event. It was going to make the news, no question, like Damiri’s wearing Atageini colors—two pieces of news that would probably overshadow Geigi’s return to the station.

  That part would suit Geigi. A blowup between the dowager and the consort would not.

  “My great-grandmother wants something,” Cajeiri said.

  “One is very certain she does,” Bren said uncomfortably. “One only hopes they both want the same thing.”

  “I am on my own right now,” Cajeiri said, stolid-faced as any adult, then volunteered. “Not just for the party. My bodyguard is away at the Guild for days and days. Antaro and Jegari are getting certified.”

  “For weapons, nandi?”

  A nod. “I have two servants, now, all my own. And my tutor. I wish I could come stay with you, nandi. I am so bored. And the place is very quiet at night.”

  “When will your aishid be back?”

  “A day or so, they said.” A pause. “My father is too busy and my mother is very uncomfortable. And I hope I am going to get my party. Please see to it, nandi.”

  “One wishes one could help, young gentleman. One very much wishes it. Why are they advancing your bodyguard’s certification? Do you know?”

  “My father did it. Antaro and Jegari know about guns, of course.” A shrug. “They have hunted since they were little, in Taiben. But Lucasi and Veijico say they have to have a certificate to have guns in public places. And to use Guild equipment.”

  “That is so,” Bren said. “So no one is staying in your suite with you?”

  “Just Boji.”

  Boji was small, black, and furry, and lived in a large cage in the boy’s room.

  It was unfamiliar solitude for a young boy, particularly a boy who, in his life, had traveled on a starship, dealt with aliens, been kidnapped by his father’s enemies, nearly run down at sea, and habitually went armed with a slingshot—which was probably in his pocket even
here. The empty rooms must be particularly unnerving for a boy who, in the last year and in part because of his tendency to collect adventures, had acquired an aishid of his own, four bodyguards dedicated to keeping him safe in every moment of his life.

  “And how is Boji?”

  “Very well, nandi! I am training him to be without his cage sometimes.”

  “Excellent.” The women had made half the circuit of the room. And unfortunately, he could not afford to be a babysitter at the expense of the Marid treaty. He spied, finally, a committee head he urgently needed to talk to. “One has to speak to this gentleman a moment. Will you be well for a moment, young sir? Will you stand right here?”

  Cajeiri gave a two-shouldered shrug, a little grin and a wink. “Oh, with no trouble, nandi. There are no kidnappers here. And if they come back arguing, I shall have to go with my mother.”

  Of course the scamp would find his own way. He had been doing that all his life. And Cajeiri absolutely had the priorities straight. Bren went off to intercept the head of Transport, and the head of the Commerce Committee walked up to join the conversation.

  The talk became intense, and substantive, and encouragingly productive.

  When he looked for the boy again, he found no sign of him. He did see that the aiji-dowager and Damiri had gone their separate ways, busy about the fringes of the room, and that conversation, which had hushed progressively as the two went about the room, had resumed.

  Tabini-aiji, however, looked his direction, gave a little nod, and that was an immediate command appearance.

  He went. And bowed. “One is currently looking for your son, aiji-ma, and one is just a little concerned.”

  “His servants took him to bed a moment ago,” Tabini said. “He is quite safe.”

  “One is relieved.” He let go a breath. “One should not have left him. Even here.”

  “Oh, he has been on his own all evening. And he could not have gotten out the door unremarked,” Tabini added with a little wry humor. “My whole staff has their instructions. My son has entirely understood the current difficulty, and he has stayed very well within bounds.” A sharpening of focus, and a frown. “My grandmother. Did she plan that?”

  That the aiji had to ask him what Ilisidi was thinking . . .

  “One does not believe so, no, aiji-ma. One believes she was quite taken by surprise, reacting to your honored wife’s choice of colors this evening.”

  “It was Damiri’s choice,” Tabini said somberly. “Her father has left her none. But these are not easy days in the household.”

  “One well understands, aiji-ma.”

  “Have you heard anything in the room?”

  “Nothing regarding that matter, aiji-ma.”

  “Come aside a moment.”

  “Aiji-ma.” He followed Tabini to the far side of the room, through the door and into the deserted dining hall, tracked, at a slight remove, by Tabini’s bodyguards.

  Servants, working at polishing the table, withdrew quickly. Two of Tabini’s bodyguards went across the room and shut those doors. The other two, from outside, shut the dining room doors. The likelihood of eavesdroppers on the aiji’s conversation outside this room had been very scant: nobody crowded in on Tabini without a clear signal to do so. But clearly there was something else, something that could not risk report. And they were in as much privacy as could be had.

  “They have put a public patch on the matter,” Tabini said quietly. “But be aware Damiri is entirely uneasy, and unreconciled. She does not trust my grandmother, and I worry for my son’s impression of the situation. You talked to him. Was he upset by it?”

  “Not discernibly, aiji-ma.”

  “Were you warned?”

  “Aiji-ma, I had no forewarning.”

  “She planned it,” Tabini said, with utter conviction.

  “Aiji-ma, one would tend to agree she had intended some discussion on the Ajuri matter—which I think it may have been. But she had not planned it tonight. Not that I know.”

  “Damiri has said—” Tabini drew a careful breath and let it go. “You well know, paidhi, that Damiri has lost one child to my grandmother, and she has requested me to promise not to put this next one in my grandmother’s hands for any reason of security. She has bluntly said, this very evening, and I quote, ‘I am forced to choose my uncle. I have your grandmother on one side and her lovers on the other. They control my son and now they are the only relatives I have. I shall never concede my daughter to them.’”

  “Aiji-ma.” What could one say? Damiri had lost her son’s man’chi through no fault of hers. The separation had broken the bond, when Tabini had sent Cajeiri away to space for protection. He had bonded to his great-grandmother. Intensely so. And he felt deeply sorry for Damiri.

  But not sorry enough to take her side over Tabini’s, and not sorry enough to regret his own part in bringing up Cajeiri. The boy was alive. And he might not be, if he had stayed with his parents through the coup. If they had had a child in tow, they might themselves not have survived the constant moving and the hiding in wilderness conditions.

  And, damn it all, if Damiri had never slipped into her father’s orbit last year, however briefly, and if Damiri had been less openly antagonistic toward Ilisidi once Ilisidi brought the boy back—

  “Damiri declares,” Tabini said, with a muscle standing out in his jaw, “that she still has man’chi to Ajuri clan. But that she has no man’chi now to her father. She says she will take the lordship of Ajuri herself, before she settles to be Tatiseigi’s tributary.”

  My God. “Can she muster support to do that, aiji-ma?”

  “Possibly. I think it has one motive. She views it would set her on a more equal footing with my grandmother.”

  Clan lord or not—it was not likely lordship of Ajuri was going to set anybody equal to Ilisidi. But he didn’t say that.

  “Will you back her in that, aiji-ma?”

  The muscle jumped. Twice. “Ajuri swallows virtue. That her father killed his brother-of-a-different-mother to get the lordship, one is all but certain. How the late lord himself got the lordship was also tainted. My wife wants to be lord of Ajuri—in her father’s place—and no, it is not a good idea, and not something I support, or will even tolerate, while she brings up my daughter—even if, in every other way, it would solve the threat Ajuri poses.” Tabini folded his arms, leaned back against the massive dining table. “I have a problem, paidhi. She is too proud to be Tatiseigi’s niece, in Atageini clan, even were he to make her his heir—which might happen, and which I would accept. She feels no kinship with them. Would she consent to become Ragi?” That was Tabini’s clan; and Ilisidi’s clan only by marriage and the bond of a son born in it. “I have invited her to take those colors. She is, I think, struggling with that idea. She cannot seem to attach.” Attach in the clan sense. In the atevi emotional sense. In the husband-and-wife sense. A human had no idea, except to say that Damiri was not at home among Ragi, didn’t feel it, couldn’t get her mind into her husband’s clan—

  —And that said something disturbing about the tension in that marriage.

  “A human cannot offer advice here.”

  “I do not court advice, paidhi. I know exactly where I am, and where she is. But your bodyguard outranks all but my grandmother’s, and they are back there right now discussing how to manage a situation I have created.”

  A slight hesitation on that unusually personal I.

  “Your bodyguard, aiji-ma?” Bren guessed.

  “My bodyguard—and my wife. Ajuri poses a more serious threat than one might think: I have been directly briefed, and my bodyguard has not. That is only one of our problems. Then there is this: if my wife does not recognize the increasingly grim situation with Ajuri, and is naive in her thinking, then she is too stupid to be my wife. If she does know it, and is attempting to involve herself in this clan’s longstanding
politics, it can lead to much worse places—danger to her, naturally—danger to the aishidi’tat itself from her associations within that clan, and temptations to actions which are—what is the human expression? On the slippery slope?”

  “One understands.”

  “I do not believe she would harm her own son to set her daughter in his place. And she knows our son is too stubborn to change his man’chi. But she has possession of another Ragi child, the one she is carrying. And this is what I have told my grandmother’s bodyguard, and indirectly, yours. You need to know. My grandmother may well know. In fact I am sure she knows. This approach of my grandmother this evening was not in ignorance of the situation. Hence its troubling timing.”

  “I understand.” Not one understands, the formal, rote answer that equaled yes, sir. But I understand. I am hearing and agreeing. And he did understand. Far too much to be comfortable at all. “I am at your orders, aiji-ma. They take precedence over hers . . . though I shall try, by your leave, to find a course where both work.”

  “You have that skill. Use it. About certain things, your aishid will brief you. Know there may be a time my son may resort to you on his own. Do not refuse him. Put him immediately within your security perimeter.”

  “I shall, without fail, aiji-ma.”

  “There may be a time I send him,” Tabini said further. “That will signal a far more serious situation.”

  “Aiji-ma. We will defend him with all our resources.”

  “I have no doubt of it,” Tabini said, “and that is all I can say until events prove the outcome.” He himself opened the door into the reception hall. They quietly reentered, past the two bodyguards. Numerous eyes turned their way, and Bren took his cue from Tabini and smiled, as if it was some light, pleasant business.

  Far from it.

  Tabini moved off to speak to another partisan.

  Deep breath. Keep smiling.

  He presented courtesies to a lord of the mountain districts, and to the Chairman of Finance.