Destroyer

by C. J. Cherryh

  Ilisidi rode forward, keeping her mecheita under tight rein, its uncapped tusks a hazard to everyone it might encounter, no respecter of elderly lords.

  “ ‘Sidi-ji,” the old man said, frowning into the rain. “It is you.”

  “It certainly is,” Ilisidi said sharply, “and a pretty mess the world is in, when your gates are shut and guarded by lethal devices, nandi. Is my rascal grandson here?”

  “No,” Tatiseigi said. “No. He has been, but he is not. But you are back from this gallivanting about the heavens. And is that half-grown boy my nephew?”

  “One offers deepest respect, great-uncle.” Cajeiri was doing very well controlling a restive and annoyed mecheita, which detested facing the lights and that rumbling engine. “Has there been news from my mother, great-uncle?”

  Very damned precocious, for eight. But then, Cajeiri had had his great-grandmother for a tutor non-stop for two years, and lost no time seizing the moral initiative.

  “No news,” Tatiseigi said shortly, and somewhat rudely. One was not strictly obliged to courtesy with a forward child, and the old man was being rained upon. “Come to the hall for questions. Come to the hall. The deluge is coming. You might ride with me, ’Sidi-ji.”

  “Too much effort to get down and get in and get out,” Ilisidi said. “These old bones prefer a short, painful ride. But a glass of brandy and supper would come very welcome when we arrive, not to mention a warm bath, Tati-ji.”

  “Then come ahead. Both are available. Is that the paidhi with you?”

  “It is, nandi,” Bren said for himself.

  “Instigator of this mess,” Tatiseigi muttered, like a curse, and turned away, headed for his car.

  So. It was certainly clear where he stood, and abundantly clear, too, the paidhi could stand out in the oncoming rain for all Tatiseigi cared, but at least Tatiseigi did not exclude him from the invitation . . . whatever his next intentions.

  “He is old,” Jago said, not that it moderated the old man’s discourtesy. The old had license, and some used that license freely.

  “He is justified,” Bren said in a low voice. “He is completely justified, as far as things on the ground go, Jago-ji. One fears there is no remedy for his opinion except our setting things back in place.”

  Not mentioning there was no particular reluctance to commit assassination under one’s own roof.

  Right now they had only Taiben’s advice, predicated on Taiben’s devotedly favorable opinion of the fallen regime. This . . . this would be the less pleasing side of the matter. Especially as regarded the paidhi-aiji and his influence.

  Tatiseigi had gotten in. The car awkwardly executed a turn, mangling a shrub in the process, and lumbered off down the road.

  “I wish to try to convince this gentleman, Jago-ji. I wonder if I can do it.”

  “Easier to move a mountain,” was Jago’s grim judgement. The man was notorious in the senate and elsewhere as the stiffest-necked, most hidebound lord in the west.

  “We shall get the truth from this lord at least,” he said. “And if it should be a hard truth, so much the better for my pursuing it here, under the dowager’s auspices. I doubt he will poison me in her company.”

  “One believes she would take strong offense,” Jago said, not at her happiest. “One hopes this is the case, Bren-ji.”

  “Be easy, nadi, no matter what he says to me. I shall be glad to hear anything the lord wants to say to me, no matter how insulting, no matter how wrong. How else shall I understand what people think?”

  “Indeed,” Jago muttered, not happy with the notion. “The same with his staff, nandi. We shall learn what we can, and politely tolerate what we would never tolerate. Shall we tell others of our Guild, if they ask, the things we have seen, the reasons for our actions?”

  It was worth not a moment of consideration. “Yes,” he said. It was what they had to do, ultimately, and the Guild on Tatiseigi’s staff would ask those who had dealt with them. The Guild in Shejidan would need to know, above all else, and they would gather information on a situation—they would constantly gather information, and it needed to be consistent at every level.

  They followed the car, no more rapidly than they had formerly ridden, and over the second hill the house itself came into view, lights gleaming through the rain.

  House: fortress, rather, not quite in the sense that Malguri was a fortress, of a much older origin; but the Atageini stronghold, Tirnamardi, was a white limestone sprawl of wings and towers, some of which might have snipers at the windows, in such anxious times. The building dated from the age of gunpowder, and even had a cannon or two about the premises, which, he had heard, still fired on festive occasions, and once in the last thirty years, in a territorial dispute with Taiben, making a point, if doing harm only to a tree or two.

  The old lord, disdaining modernity, had probably laid in a supply of cannonballs for the current crisis.

  The place showed yellow lights from ornate windows, lights that cast rectangles on formally pruned shrubbery and, yes, a cobblestone approach, which the mecheiti intensely disliked under their pads. They protested, and Cajeiri’s tended off toward the topiary hedge, intending to cross onto the clipped lawn. Jegari and Antaro rode between, and forestalled it quite deftly.

  The car pulled up ahead of them. The great double doors of the house opened wide, and servants poured out onto the steps carrying electric lanterns, no floodlights installed, nothing to scar that historic facade. Gas lights had been the rule here until ten years ago, and the lord had, ever so reluctantly, modernized, only because the gas pipes had gotten too old to be safe, and electrification had been, the deciding point, cheaper to install than new gas pipes.

  The lilies of the Atageini ran along the carved stone frame of the doorway atop those steps, tall, leafy stems in bas relief and graceful nodding blooms at the corners, fully defined. Lilies figured at intervals across the facade, and were—he had not noticed it—emblazoned on the black door of the car from which Tatiseigi emerged . . . parsimonious on technology, profligate with artists, so the reputation of the house was.

  Damiri’s ancestral home. But there was no news of her, the old man had said. Has been, but not. Like a will of the wisp, Tabini’s progress through the countryside.

  Servants hurried to take charge of the mecheiti, who had generally formed predatory intentions against the lush, low topiary hedge. After one mistake, the servants singled out the leader as, not Ilisidi’s, but Cenedi’s. Once they had that increasingly cantankerous mecheita adequately under control from the ground, it was time for all the riders to secure the reins and get down.

  Bren’s mecheita had its own ambitions toward the nearby hedge. He whacked it hard with his quirt. His blow might have been a stray breeze, the tug at the rein a mere nuisance. Its mind was set; it was dark, it was thundering and raining, the mecheiti knew they were stopping and there should be food in the offing. And with the servants starting to lead the herd off, if he did not get down before they led the leader away, he would be swept ignominiously away, unable to get down before they stopped at the stables, which was not the entry to Lord Tatiseigi’s house he wanted. He slipped his leg across the bow of the serpentine neck, grasped the saddle for safety, and slid down the towering side, holding onto the leathers as he went.

  He at least kept his footing on the wet cobbles. Annoyed, his mecheita swung its head back toward him with a dangerous pass of those formidable lower-jaw tusks, then, seeing the herd moving, ignored him for a stolen mouthful of carefully-pruned hedge on the way. He defended the foliage with a whack of the quirt, risking his life and swatting it twice. It moved on.

  Jago came hurrying back belatedly to rescue him from the responsibility, the house servants trying to shy other mecheiti off the hedges and only adding to the chaos. But the herd leader was clearly being quirted off into the dark, now. Bren got out of the path of two others, forced his legs to bear him, and felt Jago’s hand on his arm, firm and steady.

  Thunder echoe
d off the walls.

  “Dry lodgings,” Bren said breathlessly, attempting good cheer, but, God, he was done in. When he asked his limbs to walk, his knees and ankles were entirely unreliable under him. Too much sitting. Too much space travel. And earth’s gravity, reminding him what he did weigh.

  Ahead of them, Tatiseigi had gone up the lily-bordered steps with Ilisidi, into the warm electric lamp-light inside. Staff had followed. So had Cajeiri, and his two. He climbed, Banichi and the rest of his staff ahead of him, Jago steering him, where no one would notice.

  They were, thank God, shallow steps. He reached the top, followed the dowager and her bodyguard, and the three youngsters into a lighted foyer, so warm it stole his breath. The walls had a lily fresco that jogged a dazed memory hard—they were exactly, he realized, like the lilies of the Atageini in their apartment in the Bujavid. Lilies were prominent everywhere, in bronze on a cabinet, worked into the sconces, rendered in marble around the border of the floor. A visitor was to be aware at every instant under what roof he had come, and know how rich, how powerful this ancient clan was.

  Inside, under the many-shadowed lights of the chandelier, there were the necessary greetings, Ilisidi to their host, the formal presentation of her great-grandson—and a scowl on Tatiseigi’s face as he looked over the two young people attending the heir, young people not, evidently, to his taste.

  “Taibeni,” he said.

  “In man’chi to the young lord, nandi,” Ilisidi said sharply—if she and Tatiseigi had had fur, it would have bristled. “And under my protection.”

  “They will stay with the young lord,” Tatiseigi said, “and only under those conditions, is it clear, nephew?”

  “Yes, great-uncle.”

  None of them were fit for polite company, except the two Taibeni, who were at least clean. As for the rest of them, no amount of small fussing could order their clothing into anything like good grace. They, and their baggage, were dripping onto the marble. There were the traces of the dirty, oily truck, of fishy ice, of slobbering mecheiti, sweat, stove soot, forest leaves, and God knew what else, all tracked into this immaculate hall, along with mud from the rain. But Tatiseigi’s mood had been, for him, warm, even cordial—until he spotted the two Taibeni. Encouraging, Bren said to himself, and noted that there was, unlike their bodyguards’ martial look in this hall, no sign of weapons among the staff, some of which were uniformed Guild. House servants had arrived, too, looking at them from the inside stairs, sizing up the job in some dismay, one might imagine, though nothing showed on their faces.

  “We shall accept responsibility for these young people,” Ilisidi said. “But we stand in need of baths. Baths, Tati-ji. Even before brandy. Before supper. One does hope there will be supper.”

  “By all means.” Appearing a little mollified, Tatiseigi made a movement of his hand. A servant ran up the marble stairs at high speed. There would be hot water only if the boilers were up. In places of this age, predating the human presence on the planet, boilers were the standard, and they did not operate at all hours. One would assume that if there was hot water, it would go first to the dowager.

  Maids among the servants made deep bows, ready to escort the dowager and, odd woman in their party, Jago, upstairs.

  “Young gentleman,” Tatiseigi said to Cajeiri, “you will use my own bath.” A signal honor, to a close kinsman, and with a slight disgust: “With your Taibeni. The rest of you, there is a bath backstairs.”

  That, in Bren’s ears, certainly said where he belonged, in the mudroom, the bath the house would use coming in from the hunt. And Jago, who had matter-offactly started to join the dowager in retreat, did not. She came back to him, and with Banichi, Tano, and Algini, formed part of a very unkempt and undigestible lump in the center of the immaculate foyer.

  Tatiseigi scowled, and Bren gave a polite, measured bow—his staff knew. His staff understood it was not a case of saying the hell with it and taking the insult and the bath, which might or might not have hot water. He had to stand his ground or lose, here in the hall.

  Jago, however, was not the only one of the women to stop. The dowager fixed the old reprobate with a chill glance.

  “Ah,” Tatiseigi said, as if he were the most forgetful old man in the world. “Yes. The paidhi.”

  “The Lord of the Heavens, Tati-ji, has prevented a swarm of foreigners from the far heavens descending on us in fully justified rage, a situation which we shall discuss in far greater detail over brandy. He has urgent business in the capital. But he has stopped here to pay you particular courtesy.”

  Lord Tatiseigi turned a glance in his direction, a very prickly sort of glance, and it was time to follow the dowager’s statement in his own hall with a blithe and extremely courteous deference.

  “With great appreciation, nandi,” Bren said, “for the good will of your lordship, under threat from the Kadigidi, which I am certain you disdain. One is particularly sensible that certain persons would hold the paidhi’s presence here as a statement of defiance, and certainly you run a risk, to open your doors to me. But I have every confidence the lord of the Atageini sets his own policy.”

  Tatiseigi’s nostrils flared. A deep breath, a calculation in old, canny eyes. I know your infernal tricks, those eyes informed him. I know your flattery. My behavior will be my own, too.

  But the respect was at least some face-saving to a lord who had, doubtless before his staff frequently, and loudly, cursed the paidhi and his human influence for years. Tatiseigi was so incredibly conservative and famously kabiu that the Kadigidi and the rebels in Shejidan themselves would hesitate to move against this house, a pillar of atevi culture, a bulwark against the very changes the rebellion publicly decried and wished to undo.

  “The paidhi,” Tatiseigi said. “The white rooms, nand’ paidhi. Appropriate, one may say. There is a bath.”

  White being the paidhi’s color. The neutral. The houseless. The impartial interpreter and advisor.

  Bren bowed, slightly more deeply than courtesy dictated. The old man’s bitter insult was strangely comforting. Tatiseigi was angry with him. Tatiseigi had never been pleased with him, not from the beginning. And he argued, and made the dowager make a personal intervention for his welcome here . . . politics, politics. And a certain level of forthright detestation of him and the Taibeni. Whatever the strength of that old bond between Tatiseigi and the dowager, it still held; humans were still despised in this household, and on that frank detestation his safety seemed more likely. Treachery did not wear such evident resentment.

  A manservant turned up to direct them up the stairs and deal with details, and Banichi and Tano and Algini went with him up the stairs, Jago going ahead of them to resume company with the dowager and the maidservant. Cajeiri and his young friends walked behind the dowager, accompanied by another young man, and with them, far in the lead, a old man who might be one of Tatiseigi’s bodyguard, but not wearing Guild leather, or carrying evident weapons.

  Not the most cordial welcome, as it had evolved, but the room was lordly and the bath was glorious, fit for ten atevi at once. The manservant turned certain taps and went elsewhere to open up other lines in the antiquated system. Soon the pipe gurgled, then gave forth an explosion of air, then an abundant flow of cold, then warm, but never quite hot water gushing in with considerable force, hot water either piped in from another boiler or stolen from the distant heating system, or put at a secondary priority to the dowager’s and Cajeiri’s baths, as some of these older houses could arrange. Whatever the water-source, it was warm, it was clean, there was soap, and the flow from the two gold-plated faucets was capable of filling such a huge bath in short order.

  Within the time it took them to shake the worst of the dirt off onto the tiles, it had become a very deep bath, sufficient for a human to float and for the all gentlemen of his staff to get in at once, no formalities, no objections, no precedences here.

  He was ineffably glad to be rid of the clothes he had worn since the hotel, garments whi
ch he surrendered to the servants with apology. Bruises showed in amazing number on his pale skin, polka dots from head to foot. It took a truly bad bruise to show on his atevi companions, but there were a few that did, not to mention small cuts and scrapes.

  He scrubbed the dirt he could see, slipped off the tile seat that ran the circumference of the tub, and ducked his head completely underwater, surfaced in bliss and used the provided soap to work up a thick lather. His hair and body felt as if he had picked up passengers. If there were, he cast them adrift. A good deal of scrubbing finally got the lingering smell of fish off his hands . . . he swore he’d imagined it, since the train, but now he was absolutely convinced it was gone from him and from his companions, replaced by the strong herbal scent of old-fashioned handmade soap. He scrubbed days of dirt from under his nails, and ducked under to rinse, hair streaming about his shoulders, until lack of air made him surface.

  “Good,” Banichi said. “You have not drowned.”

  “Clean,” he said with a sigh. Banichi at the moment was white-haired and spotted with lather, and bent under the water to rinse, sending islands of froth scudding on the waves Tano and Algini raised.

  There was no deep conversation, none, what with the lord’s sharp-eared servants popping into and out of the room, carrying this, bringing that, soap, towels, lotions, every excuse and a hundred trips into the suite. But they needed no conversation. Exhaustion ruled. His staff had been as long out of the saddle as he had in their long voyage, they were surely as sore as he was, and, given their profession, they’d been at a level of tension and alertness he could only imagine for the last number of days. That alertness was still not quite abated, the quick reaction, the dart of attention to a suspicious noise in the bedroom. It was notable that, in Tatiseigi’s oh, so proper house, his staff hadn’t allowed the house servants to come near their weapons or their personal baggage, which sat defiantly, not in the master bedroom, but piled in the corner of the bath with them, in a dry spot on the tiles, tides from the filled tub occasionally washing near it, despite repeated indignant assurances from the staff that the baggage would be perfectly safe and untouched in the bedroom.