Destroyer

by C. J. Cherryh

  “If I were not with you,” he said—delicate, delicate, to probe an ateva’s man’chi too deeply—“would you now leave the dowager, Jago-ji?”

  “Unlikely that we would,” she said. “But what she is doing, Bren-ji, places the heir and all his aspirations in Lord Tatiseigi’s hands. That notion has to be reckoned with. If Tabini-aiji is alive, this risk is a serious consideration, and we are not able to prevent the dowager doing it.”

  He hadn’t quite seen through to that unhappy fact.

  “Tatiseigi has,” he developed her thought, “every personal interest in seeing Cajeiri sit in Shejidan.”

  “And that means he has proportionately less interest in seeing Tabini alive.”

  “God.” In Mosphei’. He loosened the wilted lace at his throat. “But his interests cannot involve alienating Cajeiri by attacking his father. That move the boy would never forgive.”

  “That would be one constraint on him, nandi—besides the operational difficulty of such a move, the fact that the camp opposing the aiji does not place any reliance on him, and, perhaps, whatever regard he holds for Lady Damiri. There is a complex of reasons. Also, Tabini would move to get Cajeiri back, if Tatiseigi were to take him in his charge, and Tabini-aiji with his guard is no small threat. If Lord Tatiseigi made a move to lay personal claim to the heir, then everyone would take sides. Violently.”

  The denouement of the machimi, the moment in the play where loyalties suddenly came crystal-clear, and atevi had to act.

  “Tatiseigi’s ambition is abated, not dead, Bren-ji. This is our thinking. He has always aspired to rule.”

  “And he cannot. If the tashrid would not elect the dowager, they would never elect him.”

  “The tashrid may have suffered changes in membership, during the present troubles.”

  “That is so.”

  “The boy, however, with him as regent—would have far less trouble being confirmed. If his father were dead, and Damiri being Atageini—Tatiseigi would indeed rise in importance. This move of the dowager’s, bringing us under his roof, is fraught with hazards.”

  “Do you think, Jago-ji, that the dowager herself might be in more danger than she thinks?”

  “Possibly.” A frown creased Jago’s brow. “Possibly so, Bren-ji. Sometimes, lacking certain instincts, you do see astonishingly clearly.”

  “Not lacking my own species’ instincts, I assure you, and this hazard is understandable. Can we not talk her out of it? Can you reason with Cenedi?”

  “Cenedi has tried to persuade her: he wishes to settle her in Taiben and then venture against the Kadigidi himself. Cenedi himself knows the risk, knows your man’chi. He would not blame us for withdrawing from this venture and trying to find Tabini. Nor, I think, would the dowager herself blame us.”

  It was an absolute wilderness, the forest of atevi emotions, atevi decisions, atevi snap judgements, all rooted in urges humans didn’t feel at that depth, at that intensity. “She is counting, is she not, Jago-ji, on the boy having a strong emotional force with his uncle?”

  “Counting very heavily on her own, one believes, nandi, considering the boy’s last emotional impact on his uncle was set in a wide expanse of concrete.”

  He was caught off guard. Laughed, a brief sneeze of laughter, despite the grimness of the situation. Tatiseigi was a notorious curmudgeon, who had suffered considerably from public amusement at the incident in question. And one did fear Tatiseigi would not find Cajeiri that much improved, not from his conservative point of view—a sober thought which instantly killed the laughter, and did nothing to form a rational conclusion. If Jago was perplexed, caught between two loyalties, he was caught in his own. He had their welfare at heart, and the boy’s. And Tabini’s, granted the aiji was still alive. And he had the whole outcome to consider, and the whole human-atevi-kyo problem to weigh into the equation.

  While Ilisidi, damn her, had always been an incredibly nervy, canny player in atevi politics, and he had no wish to undermine her best effort, if she could shock the fence-sitting lord into alliance. There he met his own division of common sense and emotion. She might be making a monumental mistake. Or a very smart move.

  But at the bottom of the stack, on the scale at which they operated, he had no right to choose personal safety. He was a resource, a resource of information and defense for the fallen regime, one it could no more afford to lose than it could afford to lose Ilisidi or Cajeiri, if Tabini himself was alive. But in order to be useful, he had to be active and get the information public in the most credible way. He had his own reputation to restore, and if he could not defend their mission and its outcome to one fairly civilized old man under Ilisidi’s influence, he stood precious little chance of persuading the rest of the continent.

  “One cannot hide in the bushes,” he said. “We did not come back from space to do that, Jago-ji. One has no real idea how to find Tabini. One rather thinks he may find us if we can make just a modest amount of noise and if Atageini territory is open to him. And the things that Tabini did that were right, that were essential—that succeeded—these things have to be vindicated to the public at large, do they not, Jago-ji? If I were to separate from Ilisidi, I, as much as you, need to go to Shejidan. I need to speak to your Guild, and to the legislature. I need to give people the information I have. I have to defend Tabini’s decisions for everyone to hear. Words, Jago, words are my whole defense. Words stand a chance of changing minds. I have to gain what respect I can recover, starting, one supposes, with this very influential lord.”

  A moment of silence, then, Jago’s gold gaze steady and honest. “You are not necessarily wrong, Bren-ji.”

  “Good.”

  “So,” Jago said, “our way from here—”

  “Lies through Atageini territory,” Bren said. “So our intent may have diverged ever so slightly from the dowager’s, but our path logically does not.”

  “One concurs, Bren-ji,” Jago said. “I shall tell Banichi.”

  She did not go back to the conference. She went and sat apart from that gathering, on a rock, arms on her knees, waiting. In a little time Banichi came and squatted near her.

  Bren continued fussing with his lace and dusting his boots. The conference at the fireside broke up, and the young people, who had been settled in their own conspiracy over near the mecheiti, began to look for saddles. Cajeiri was limping a little this morning. He didn’t complain overmuch about it, doggedly maintaining his dignity, one suspected, particularly in front of the two older youngsters, who were inured to the saddle, and who had likely never in their lives felt this particular pain.

  Ilisidi had to be helped up to her feet, but she walked and stood, somehow, shaking off assistance, and ordered Nawari to saddle her mecheita.

  Bren figured he had best go see to his own gear. He thought he could tell which mecheita he had ridden yesterday, and which was its tack, and no one else objected to his selection of gear. Tano and Algini left consultations and hurried to help him. He decided he was very grateful for that, having disgraced himself last evening, and having no wish to contest the creature’s tusks, as sore as he already was.

  Meanwhile the small side conference between Banichi and Jago had broken up fairly inconspicuously, as Banichi and Jago sought their own tack and Banichi found the means to talk to Tano and Algini.

  And did the dowager take note that there had been a planning session of his own staff, or did Cenedi possibly miss it? Bren took the rein from Tano. He gritted his teeth and got into the saddle, with Algini’s help.

  Pain was bearable, if it was familiar pain. It would pass in an hour or so, even without the painkiller to hasten the hour. A little gentle riding would bring its own numbness.

  Their direction was the same direction they had been tending yesterday. Cajeiri and Deiso’s two teenagers all rode together now, the ranger youngsters riding with considerable skill, compelling their mecheiti to ignore their ordinary order, likely with their parents’ beasts, and stay near Cajeiri, an argument
that occasionally annoyed the rest of the column, but they had their way and stayed.

  For his own part, he was very glad to be somewhat behind, and to have his mecheita bored and quiescent. He rode quietly in line, seeing Banichi and Jago conferring with Cenedi up ahead, a conversation undoubtedly being overheard by the dowager. There might be close questions, or implied close questions from Cenedi, about the private conference, and Banichi might even answer them fairly honestly, since their intentions, while somewhat separate, lay in the same direction. It was safer to have Cenedi well-acquainted with their notions and their logic.

  The dowager did not comment on the matter. Bren watched, unable to hear those quiet voices above the general movement of the mecheiti. It was a peaceful ride, a quiet ride, few people speaking even to immediate companions, and it was only belatedly that he realized the oldest rider and the youngest children were no longer with them. The whistles from elsewhere in the woods continued, fewer in number, but perfectly audible.

  Toward afternoon: “We are inside Atageini lands now,” Jago rode back to tell him.

  He had noticed an upright stone a moment ago. He had learned to pay attention to anomalies, even when he had no idea what they might be.

  And he had not heard a whistle in at least an hour.

  “One remarks a certain silence here,” he said to her.

  “The rangers will not signal near this boundary,” Jago said. “Atageini hunters cross here. None recently, by the look of things.”

  “Does that indicate, nadi-ji, that the Atageini avoid crossing into Taiben?”

  “It is worth remarking, nandi. We have no word of any hostilities, however, and none of any intrusions.”

  “Inform my ignorance, Jago-ji. What do you think it would it mean?”

  “Possibly that Lord Tatiseigi wishes no incident with Taiben in these perilous times. Possibly he wishes none of his hunters be caught and questioned by the Taibeni, which might give away too much of his intentions and his position, even if his intention is to stay neutral. And possibly some installation hereabouts has frightened the game away and there is nothing to bring hunters here.”

  “Electronic surveillance?”

  “We have picked up a signal.”

  The subtler elements of Guild technology, which he was sure some of their staff carried, and the nastier elements of Guild actions possible on the border they were crossing. Wires. Traps. Not likely to stop others of the same Guild, but enough to slow them down.

  He had noted Cenedi had traded mounts with Ilisidi this morning, taking the more fractious herd-leader for himself. Banichi had also pushed his mecheita up ahead of Ilisidi’s, he and Cenedi riding first and second in the column the last few minutes, a small indication of worry. Theirs were very experienced eyes, apt to spot specific things even a ranger might not, and that the mecheiti might sense, but not know the danger.

  He himself knew entirely too much about such devices, and their more lethal adjuncts, which were ordinarily deployed in secure places in Shejidan. One scarcely expected them to be placed out here in the depths of the woods, where roaming animals might trip them too often, with bloody result, not to mention the provocation it posed against Taiben.

  And it was not without significance, he was sure, that Jago stayed closer by him now, with Tano and Algini staying very close behind him. Ever since they had passed that stone, their progress had acquired the caution of Guild very much on the alert.

  The woods thinned, and there was open land visible, beyond the screen of trees. They were still within forest, riding that ridge of low hills, Bren recalled from his railroad-building days, which was the nebulous boundary between Taiben and the Atageini.

  Soon, sure enough, they exited the woods onto open meadow, and took a downward pitch, now firmly within Atageini territory and evidently free of monitoring or threat. From the broad slope of the high meadow, they could see a village, an Atageini village, far down and across extensive grassland, past winding brown hedgerows, into cultivated fields gold with ripened crops or dead brown with harvested stubble. A little haze overlay equally grassy hills beyond.

  It all had a quaint look, as many small villages did, hereabouts, little places nestled in sheltered nooks, not all of them to this day using electric lights. One saw no electric lines in this province, no more than in Taiben: installations like the monitoring equipment they suspected back there had to be battery-powered. The siting of the railroad right of way had been a particularly bitter controversy here, and in Taiben, and the train when it did go through had been slowed by Atageini insistence that the tracks, where allowed, should follow old farm-to-market routes. It meant a curving, inefficient progress that prevented trains going as fast through Atageini territory as they ran elsewhere . . . and they ran not at all through Taiben, except on the very border. He knew the whole untidy history. He had had to mediate a dispute on the junction of two regional rail lines that had, finally, finally gotten Atageini permission to lay track to that set of villages.

  No sign of the disputed rail from their vantage. Only isolated copses of woods and rolling meadow, intermittent with plowed fields, until it grew too dark even for atevi eyes to be sure there were no traps.

  Then they settled down for another camp, and, daringly, a hot cup of tea, a hot bowl of soup.

  And another dose of analgesic.

  Beside the little stove, Keimi and his remaining people announced their intention of going back in the morning, back to Taiben land, back to organize a second meeting with Ilisidi once she left this territory and proceeded northward to gather support there, as she intended to do.

  And, in the conversation that followed supper and tea, there were statements of gratitude, hopes for their success, concerns for their welfare. It was all the Taibeni could offer at this point: Taiben rangers were persona non grata where they were, already. The district had a long, long history of cross-border forays and, before the aishidi’tat, of outright warfare.

  So they would be commiting themselves to Ilisidi’s plan in the morning. Bren found himself a flat place where no one would tread on him and went to bed early, absolutely exhausted. Traps, wires, old feuds . . . he had reached that stage of exhaustion and compliance when even terror for his life and the world’s welfare were no barrier to sleep, deep as a pit and dreamless, so far as he could remember.

  He lifted his head, startled, when he heard stirring about, when daylight was at least faintly discernible to human eyes. His head objected to the sudden elevation. His eyes wanted to shut. He wanted to drop back down to the uncompromising ground and lie there another day, perhaps a week. An experimental movement of one leg convinced him that the saddle was, oh, no, not going to be comfortable today at all.

  But staff had more important things on their minds this morning than playing servant to him. The Taibeni were to leave them. He levered himself up on his hands and knees, and got up, brushing off the clothes that by now were truly showing signs of wear. He had loosened his queue. He rebraided and tied it. He had neglected to take his boots off, and now he was sorry for it, but he limped about a sluggish morning routine, trying to make himself look as presentable as possible—the dignity of a lord was a protection to his staff, and he did as much as he could for himself, shaving, picking small bits of detritus off his coat, the effects of sleeping under a tree that shed.

  “How are you this morning, Bren-ji?” Jago brought him a cup of tea from the Taibeni stove, abundantly steaming in the morning chill.

  “Awake,” he said, fumbling with the analgesic. Human-specific. He had no help for his companions. “Minimally awake, Jago-ji.” She had been with him long enough to know he never, ever waked as she did, full of energy, whether or not it was daylight—he wondered where she got the moral strength, this morning. He wondered, too, that they had heated the stove, but it was bitterly chill this morning, and he supposed it would cool rapidly for packing.

  Beyond anything, he was grateful for the hot tea, and washed down a nutrient bar and h
is pills. The knees were not quite so bad as yesterday. The seat was, if possible, worse.

  He was so muzzy-headed with early waking and breakfast he failed to realize when the stove was packed up, failed to see the preparations for separate departure going on apace, but he saw Keimi and his people were saddling up, going.

  So Cajeiri was losing his two companions, Deiso’s youngsters. He saw looks being exchanged, saw a glum unhappiness in Cajeiri’s countenance, as the boy stood with hands locked behind him, watching the separation of baggage.

  The two young people kept looking back at him, too, while packing and beginning to saddle up. They spoke together. And Cajeiri never stopped gazing at them, with a dejection in his whole bearing that bespoke more than a childish disappointment.

  The young woman took a hesitant step toward Cajeiri, away, then went back to her father and mother, and bent in a profound bow.

  “We wish to go with the young aiji,” the girl said distressedly. Not I, we. “We have to, father.”

  The father was clearly distressed. So was his partner, and the uncle. But he said something Bren could not hear, and spoke to the girl, and then went and spoke to his son. So did the others of the family.

  Then the two came back to Cajeiri and bowed, choosing to go with him, evidently, with parental permission, the girl and then the boy extending their hands to his, emotions brimming over in the moment so that eavesdropping on them seemed all but indecent.

  Dared one think—?

  Because a curious thing was proceeding. Cajeiri gripped their hands one after the other, and bit his lip fiercely, and looked as moved as it was possible for a reserved young lad to be in public.

  Man’chi. That emotion. That binding force, that sense of other-self. What had almost been broken was made whole all in an instant: it was a choice of directions and attachments, and there wasn’t a damned thing a father or a mother with safety concerns or a great-grandmother with her own plans could do about it.