Protector: Foreigner #14

by Cherryh, C. J.

“Nadiin-ji!” he exclaimed. Indeed, in the foyer he saw not just two, but all four of his bodyguards.

  In uniform. All of them. Antaro and Jegari, had traded the greens and browns of their clan, and went black-uniformed, black-ribboned, and armed. They carried pistols in holster, just like the other half of the team, Veijico and Lucasi; and just like any Guild anywhere.

  Now—they were real bodyguards.

  “Nandi,” Jegari said with a proper little bow, while Seidi, the major domo, stood in the background.

  “Are you to stay here now?” he asked, hoping that was the case. And: “You look tired.”

  “They are not entirely through the first level,” Lucasi said—Lucasi and Veijico, also brother and sister, like Antaro and Jegari, were years older; but it was Antaro and Jegari who ranked seniors, having been his since he came back to the world, even if they were only apprentices. “There are tests yet to pass, nandi, but we are all back to stay. The rest we can do in stages. From here on—they are no longer apprentices, and we shall race each other up the levels.”

  “We shall be sending in the written course work,” Veijico added. “We have a special dispensation, both to test outside the Guild headquarters, and for us to administer the tests. Your father ordered that. We shall be spending time in the Bujavid gym, in hours when you have your father’s aishid on premises, and on the firing range, the same. But otherwise we are intended to stay on premises, nandi. So we shall not leave you again.”

  “Well, one is very glad!” Cajeiri said. “Come in, come in!”

  He was used to Veijico and Lucasi having guns. There was a special locker in each of their two rooms, where those and other equipment stayed. But he was not used to Antaro and Jegari’s new appearance. He was used to them in ordinary clothing, like him, or lounging about in a variety of tee-shirts and casuals when they were entirely alone in the evening. Seeing them as somebody he had to obey instead of ordering—that was a little different thing, though he could not think of anyone better for him. They both seemed to have grown overnight, to have gotten bigger, and taller, and actually dangerous-looking. Like many Taibeni, they had a look, a little sharpness of face, that made a frown quite convincing.

  Now everybody had to realize they had authority. That was the point of it all.

  Now when they told somebody to move aside, they had better move and not argue.

  It also meant Lucasi and Veijico had real partners to back them up in case of trouble, and the four of them all together meant he had a real aishid, who would be with him all his life, more permanent than any marriage. How important that was, he had come to understand in the way Great-grandmother’s aishid and nand’ Bren’s aishid operated—and how his father’s aishid was desperately trying to operate, except they were all young.

  Trust? He had always had that for Antaro and Jegari, from the day they had met. Lucasi and Veijico were much newer in the house, and they had made a bad start, when they had thought they were above belonging to a child. But after they had acted out and gotten people hurt, and after Great-grandmother’s and nand’ Bren’s bodyguards had had their say, Lucasi and Veijico had come back with a deeply changed attitude and begged to stay.

  And he’d known, then, that they meant it. Just . . . known, somehow, at the bottom of his stomach. From that time on, trust had happened, which was very important. Best of all, they were really good, and they knew interesting things, and they were perfectly accepting of Antaro and Jegari now, saying that they were no fools, that their skills had been very high to start with, and that after a few years, being five years older or younger would not be that much, anyway.

  “We have yet to get our briefing from your father’s guard,” Veijico said.

  “Go,” he said, “And then tell me what you find out, nadiin-ji! No one ever tells me anything. There was a party last night, and a big Guild meeting about something. I think my grandfather is making trouble, and I want to know. It is important that I know. I have things also to tell you!”

  They had set down their baggage by the door of his suite. It was black leather bags, the same sort that all Guild carried and not for anyone else to touch. “We shall take this to our rooms,” Antaro said, and they did.

  Then they went out again, on their grown-up business.

  He was too excited now to go back to his homework—not knowing quite what to do with himself until they got back, and hoping more than anything that their having passed the tests might let him go places again—like to the library to pick out his own books, and maybe to visit mani and nand’ Bren.

  His birthday was coming; his guests were going to come; and now that his entire bodyguard had qualified to carry weapons, at least no one could turn up at the last moment saying he did not have professional guards.

  “When we all come back,” Veijico had said to him privately, the day they had gone to the Guild, “when we come back, Jeri-ji, we will be a whole aishid. We will be a weapon in your hands—a real one. You will have to be very careful what you ask us to do, because we will do what you ask us to.”

  That was the scariest thing anybody had ever said to him—scarier even than anything mani had said. He thought of that, standing alone in his sitting room, with heavy weapons probably in those bags. He could tell them to kill somebody.

  And they would.

  And maybe get shot doing it.

  Maybe die.

  Boji chittered at him from his cage, diverting him into the real moment. Boji rattled the cage door, and reached fingers through the convolute metal flowers of the cage.

  He felt a lot like Boji. Locked in. Kept.

  And all of a sudden he felt that he was getting a lot more cautious than he had used to be. A lot smarter. A lot more aware what could happen in the world. He was not sure he liked the changes the year was making in him. He was not sure he liked it at all.

  I could not steal away downstairs today and catch the train, could I? I did that when it was just Jegari and Antaro and me—we three could do that.

  But now Lucasi and Veijico would get in trouble. Now everyone is Guild, and we cannot go back, can we? We cannot sneak out and catch the train, we cannot even sneak down to the library—not because I would get in trouble, but because they would get in trouble.

  And they would do it, if I asked.

  But I cannot ask them. Can I?

  Damn it.

  He was caught. He did not want to grow up. Not yet. He wanted to be a boy. He wanted to slip away the way they had on the starship, and go places where he could still play games.

  But there were no places like that on this floor. And any other floor of the Bujavid was not safe.

  The world had gotten serious and stayed that way. His guests were going to say, “Come on, Jeri, let’s go . . .”

  And he’d have to say no, it probably wasn’t safe . . .

  Because his stupid grandfather had made things worse just when they could have really gotten better.

  Maybe, he thought, I can think of something.

  And: I can still get my way. I just have to be smarter about it.

  My associates are coming down here. I have to be good until then. I have to follow all the rules and do my homework and be so good even my mother will be happy.

  And once my guests get here, then there has to be something to show them when they come. They have never seen the ocean. They have never seen trees and grass. They have never seen a sunrise. I had to describe it all for them.

  I have to show them everything. I have to show them the best things, so we have something to talk about, and they will want to come back.

  I would like them to come back. I would like them to be here when I grow up. I would like to have people like nand’ Bren, who have no clan, and owe nothing to anybody else. Just to me.

  8

  Morning brought mail and a last cup of tea to follow the paidhi-aiji’s solitary
breakfast. The apartment was very quiet now—not that Geigi had ever made a lot of noise as a houseguest, but the sense of lordly presence in the place was gone.

  So was Geigi’s company at breakfast, the distraction of his cheerful conversation on completely idle but interesting topics. That part had been pleasant.

  The shuttle was well on its way, safely clear of the atmosphere. Geigi was headed home, and the complex affairs and troubles of the space station had become just a little less intimately connected to the problems of the continent.

  That was, over all, a good thing.

  So was the quiet, in which he could, at last, think without interruption. They were not necessarily pleasant thoughts, regarding the problem of the Ajuri, and the imminent legislative session with its necessary committee meetings, and committee politics. And there was going to be a question of what he was going to do with guests whose parents had an agenda—

  But those were questions he could sidestep. The parents weren’t coming. Wouldn’t be allowed to come. Just deal with the children as children, don’t let anyone get hurt, and translate for them—Cajeiri’s ship-speak had to be a little rusty after a year—and he was sure he’d be drawn in for all the tours and the festivities, to be sure the guests had a good time.

  Of all jobs he had ahead of him—that one might actually have some real enjoyment in it.

  Give or take a boy who’d already been arrested by station security.

  But that was, he said to himself, possibly Cajeiri’s influence.

  He could handle it. Absolutely.

  And Geigi by now, thank goodness, understood their earthbound worries, and the security issues his bodyguard would have explained by now. The paidhi-aiji’s security could protect the kids; the parents were Geigi’s problem.

  He had his own share of loose ends to tie up.

  The tribal bill. The cell phone bill. He had to arrange meetings, formal and informal, talk to the right people, have his arguments in order, and get done what had to be done before the next shuttle landed and brought him kids who might, on first seeing a flat horizon, heave up their breakfasts.

  The cell phone bill was certain to raise eyebrows. Explaining why he’d pulled his support from it, and would in fact veto it—technically, Tabini still granted him that ability, where it regarded human tech—that was going to be the problem with that one. He didn’t want to dust off the veto power. He really didn’t. He wanted the atevi to vote it down.

  The tribal bill was far from a sure thing, and potentially could blow up. Problems regarding the status of the tribal peoples had hung fire since the War of the Landing, which had displaced the Edi and Gan peoples from the island of Mospheira, and settled them in two separate coastal areas. They—quite reasonably, in his opinion—wanted full membership in the aishidi’tat, and even with the favorable report of the two Associations nearest the tribal lands, they still had some old prejudices to deal with. The most bitterly opposed, the Marid, was going to vote for the measure: Ilisidi had accomplished that miracle. The southwest coast, Geigi’s district, was going to vote for it; the northern Coastal Association, where the Gan lived, had Dur’s backing, and that vote was assured.

  He just had to budge, principally, the six very small hill clans who sat between Shejidan and the Marid, who had made their living partly from agriculture and hunting, partly from trading, and who, as much as they felt that being ancestrally native to the mainland made them superior to the tribal peoples, believed that the new trade agreement between Ilisidi and the Marid was going to kill off their trade with the Marid, and therefore they wanted the tribal bill to fail—so as to make Ilisidi’s trade agreement fall through.

  He had an answer for that one, if he could get them to stop shouting and listen. The Marid was going to develop an economy that would flow uphill to them. And the same benefits would be available to them, if they would stop spending all their resources on the Assassins’ Guild and allow the Scholars’ Guild to operate in their districts—which could be said of the Marid as well. Too many of the atevi clans were still mired in their rural past and needed the world perspective that came with education. That part, however, he very much doubted he was going to mention in this session. Several new rail stations, with a favor given their local products by Sarini Province, however, might be an inducement.

  Bribery? Bet on it. It was a time-honored tradition.

  Meanwhile . . .

  Meanwhile the mail arrived, brought in by Narani. Jeladi, arriving through the door Narani held open, brought him tea, and both silently vanished.

  Lord Machigi’s was the most conspicuous message cylinder. Machigi, in his capital at Tanaja, declared he was writing simultaneously to him, the aiji-dowager—and to the Physicians’ Guild, who had asked access to all districts of the Marid, in another of those many-sided deals.

  Machigi pointedly reminded them that he could not give any other guild the access and assurances they wanted until the Assassins’ Guild had gotten the lords of Senji and Dojisigi to come under his authority. Since those clans had wanted to assassinate him, Machigi understandably and reasonably wanted that to happen. Soon.

  He wrote: One entirely understands this reasonable position. The paidhi’s office will explain the urgency to the parties in question.

  That was going to have to be his answer to a lot of queries for the next while. The Assassins’ Guild was mopping up its own splinter group in the two districts, and trying to figure out who was a loyal and proper member of their own guild and who was one of Murini’s leftovers—that took some investigation, or there was the possibility of a lethal injustice, the sort of thing that could set back the operation and dry up sources of information. It was not easy to untangle the division that had been building in the Guild for, apparently, decades, before it found expression in an overt move for power. It was particularly not easy since the Assassins’ Guild kept every family secret in the aishidi’tat in its workings, and the rule of secrecy, reticence, clan loyalties, and personal honor were all involved. They were the legal system, the lawyers and the judges, the spies, the keepers of personal and state secrets, and they were experts at covering and uncovering tracks.

  That was one worry.

  Then there was, in a cylinder from the director of his clerical office an advisement that the Tribal Peoples bill had been diverted to the Committee on Finance.

  Finance? Damn!

  That was a conservative committee. He knew Tatiseigi hadn’t done it. Surely Tatiseigi hadn’t engineered it.

  That meant the aiji-dowager urgently had some meetings to organize and some favors to call in. There was nothing, frustratingly nothing, a human could do to aid the bill in that particular committee. Humans were not popular among the conservatives, where the tribal peoples found hardly more welcome, and that meant the aiji-dowager and Tatiseigi had that situation entirely in their hands. They had to get it recommended out of that committee, or it stalled and died.

  And the trade agreement with Machigi would likely die with it.

  The second letter was a well-timed letter from young Dur regarding plans to integrate the barter-economy of the Gan state with Dur—and by extension, with the rest of the country—via setting up, not a bank, which the Gan would not trust, but an exchange, where both barter and use of coinage could go on side by side. This brilliant plan would be under the auspices of the Treasurers’ Guild . . . assuming the tribal bill passed. The theory was that, while goods were comforting in an exchange, the convenience of currency would win out.

  Not coincidental, that timing. Well done, Reijiri, Bren thought. That item would be extremely useful, in the dowager’s hands, especially now: the Committee on Finance supported the Treasurers’ Guild.

  It occurred to him, too, that Lady Adsi, of the Marid Trade Office, might have some useful suggestions on that problem. The Marid had its own difficulties trading with three local currencies, plus barter, and
conducting commerce with the rest of the aishidi’tat.

  Time being of the essence, he penned a small note to that effect, rolled both letters together, slipped them into one of his white message cylinders and took it directly to Narani to be couriered to the dowager wherever she was at the moment.

  Satisfied that he’d done all he could on that front, he returned to his office and three letters from companies seeking a recommendation to Mospheira. He still handled trade cases, mostly by routing them to the appropriate office on the island. He attached notes for his clerical office, and turned to the final cylinder, one in a style he knew well: Ramaso, his major domo at Najida.

  Ramaso reported on the construction on the estate, on the road improvement, and on the arrangements for a village wedding he had promised to occur at the estate if they could get the new dining room, hall and sitting room in order fast enough. And the news was good, very good indeed. The work would be completed on time. The wedding was going to happen. That lent cheerfulness to the day.

  Ramaso reported as well on the order for wine and food, for his approval.

  Granted. It made him particularly happy to keep that promise.

  And finally Ramaso wrote that the framework for the new wing was not only up, the paneling was being shaped and carved in situ, and stonemasons were at work.

  Excellent news. All of it.

  He answered Ramaso, and in the same train of thought, thinking of his last visit to Najida and a particularly painful, several-day cross-country trek in court-dress footwear, he dashed off an order to a shop on Mospheira. He imported his boots, by preference, from an old-fashioned bootmaker up by Mount Adams. He requested another three pairs of boots, one for indoors, one for court . . . and one of them the stoutest hiking boots possible. With a metal shank.

  After that, he was at leisure to draft routine letters to several of the guilds, official letters to certain legislators regarding personal meetings. . . .

  He was actually glad to be back to the routine of his office, even with the tension over the vital tribal bill.