Betrayer: Foreigner #12 (14 page)

“You ! Chairs for them! Be
useful!”

Veijico moved in an instant, and meanwhile nand’ Toby and Barb-daja both bowed very properly. Veijico had chairs under them as fast as possible, and they were able to sit down, nand’ Toby first.

“Well!” mani said. “We shall have a nice cup of tea. And
you,
boy!”

“Mani!” Cajeiri said, immediately standing forward.

“Inform nand’ Toby that we have heard from the paidhi-aiji, and he is faring very well, accommodated in lordly estate and courteously dealt with in Lord Machigi’s house.”

He translated that quickly. Nand’ Toby already knew something about that, from Barb-daja.

“Thank you,” Toby said in Ragi, with a little nod, and said flatly in Mosphei: “I want to know why she sent him there.”

“They are grateful for the news, mani, and hope to understand.”

“Pish! Let us anticipate their questions and do quick business, since the tea will arrive quickly. We are relatively confident Lord Machigi has become worried about his own survival and has found his neighbors plotting against him, thinking him young and in over his head in trouble with the aishidi’tat, all his plots having collapsed. The paidhi on his own initiative has extended an offer from us. Lord Machigi is considering it. Should Lord Machigi deal badly with the paidhi-aiji, he would not long survive our retaliation, and he knows it. And if he will not deal with us reasonably at all, it is not likely he will long survive his neighbors’ actions, especially since we would then File with the Guild. Lord Machigi is a brilliant young man, attempting to counter what is going on in the north of the Marid, but his operation on the west coast has been infiltrated, and he is in danger on two fronts. If his precarious situation becomes known to his subclans, his position will be substantially weakened, and he will not see the summer.”

Cajeiri drew a breath: mani grew very angry if anyone missed any of her spoken messages, but he did not know how to say all that in ship-speak. “Mani is answering fast before tea comes and nobody can talk. She’s pretty sure nand’ Bren is safe, because Lord Machigi is in bad trouble. His enemies in the Marid want to kill him because he’s very smart and they’re scared of him. The Guild was going to kill him, and Great-grandmother stopped that. And if he did anything to nand’ Bren, Great-grandmother would kill him.” He could not think of all the words he wanted. His ship-speak words were going away under pressure, even though he had been practicing with nand’ Toby, and that upset him. “Lord Machigi’s enemies have taken over what he’s doing here at Najida. His Marid allies want him dead. So he’s in trouble, and mani knows it. She sent nand’ Bren there to get Machigi out of the trouble he’s in, and then he’d better listen to her.”

He got it all out, in scrambled order, but he must have said it fairly right. Nand’ Toby listened, frowning a little, and slowly looked happier.

“One is very grateful, nand’ dowager,” nand’ Toby said in passable Ragi. “One is grateful for your patience.”

That made Great-grandmother happier. She set her hands on her cane and nodded back.

What mani had said made a sort of sense. And mani
was
getting phone calls from nand’ Bren.

And Machigi had gone from attacking them to sending Barb-daja and Veijico back. So maybe the other lords in the Marid were starting to worry about Machigi.

When one played chess with Great-grandmother, one really had to watch everything on the board.

He thought of questions. He was suddenly absolutely bubbling over with questions.

But just then the servants brought tea in, and everybody had to be quiet a while.

T
ano and Algini arrived back to the suite half a minute before Machigi’s guards showed up at the door as an escort to the conference with Machigi.

So there was no time for Tano and Algini to indicate what they had discussed, either with whom, or where, but it seemed highly unlikely that the arrival close at their backs was coincidence. They were probably, Bren thought, the same individuals Tano and Algini had been talking to.

Banichi and Jago elected to go with him as his own escort, their usual divison of labor, both armed, the same as the aggregation of Machigi’s guards around him—but they were outnumbered three to one.

Tano and Algini had given them no sign that things were going badly—at least that Bren had caught. More, Banichi and Jago had eased off indefinably—they didn’t
feel
quite as tense as they had been on the last outing.

But Bren obediently wore the vest, considering what had just gone on in the building. Things inside Machigi’s perimeters were not necessarily safe at the moment. And Banichi and Jago might have relaxed a little toward Machigi’s guards, but not toward the premises. They were on alert as they went, watching everything.

There was no sign of damage in the halls—at least none in the pale, elaborately decorated stairways and corridors they walked. Whatever had gone on with the gunfire and the explosion, it had gone on in some deeper recess, probably in the service corridors, which were guaranteed to exist everywhere in an atevi structure. But there was not one other soul to be seen, not a servant, not a resident.
That
said something. The place seemed under lockdown, the servants entirely invisible . . . or keeping to their quarters.

There were black-uniformed Guild, however, abundant in the lower hall: twenty or thirty besides the four with them. The odds were getting impossible—if there was trouble.

Down that last stairway and into the hall. They were the object of universal attention.

There goes the meddling human who caused this mess, he could imagine these Guildsmen thinking. There goes the foreigner.

They passed between the magnificent pillars and through the open door of the audience hall. There was still no hint of any violence that had gone on—no hint except the extraordinary number of guards that quietly folded into the space behind them. The place was vacant. They walked across the reception hall and up to the doors of the map room, escorted by the original two of Machigi’s Guild and Banichi and Jago, but two more guards stood at those doors. They opened and let him and his escort in. The others, one was glad to see, all stayed outside in the audience hall.

Machigi waited standing, a shadow against the white sky in the windows. Machigi turned toward them, and that light made him all silhouette, expressionless.

While the same light showed Machigi the paidhi’s face, no question, an examination that would discover any weakness.

“Nand’ paidhi,” Machigi said by way of greeting, and Bren gave the requisite bow.

“Nandi,” Bren said. “One rejoices to see you well.” Even close up, he couldn’t see how Machigi’s face reacted, if at all. “One has spoken to the aiji-dowager on your behalf and received favorable replies.”

It was pretty damned sure Machigi—and possibly the whole Marid, given the goings-on in the household—was well-informed on that phone call.

But still there was no help from that blank, black shadow, not even the grace of a profile, just a silhouetted, head-on statue.

“The aiji-dowager,” Machigi said, “has created us a great deal of trouble in sending you here.”

Machigi might be featureless black. But an inner light shone brightly enough on the landscape: it was the challenge the aiji-dowager had deliberately posed to a young and fractious warlord in sending him here, and that phone call had made it clear to both sides.

He hadn’t seen it in its entirety. He hadn’t the hard-wiring to
feel
how it had played in alevi senses. Possibly everyone else had felt the undercurrents—from Banichi and Jago down to young Veijico, though in the latter case, he somewhat doubted it.

Machigi had begun to read his own situation, probably when the first advisement came in that the paidhi-aiji, in a bright red and black bus, the Ragi colors, had crossed the fuzzy but lethal boundary, accompanied by enough Guild to give the district hell if any weapon threatened that bus.

And Machigi would have just figured out that not all the forces operating in his district were under his command.

The dowager had read the situation, put two and two together after Barb’s kidnapping, and figured that the second-tolast thing a ruler of the Marid would want at this juncture was Barb-daja being kidnapped—the last thing of all being Barb-daja noisily carried across his lands toward his capital in full view and witness of everybody.

Ergo—and bet that the dowager had been morally certain of it—Machigi had
not
ordered Barb’s kidnapping.

Ergo, someone else had.

Ergo, that someone else would
not
be one of the paidhi’s associates and not one of Tabini-aiji’s, not one of the dowager’s, not the Guild itself, and not one of any other lord of the western coast.

Ergo, the responsible party was somebody inside the Marid.

The perpetrators had run their trail of misdeeds right across Machigi’s district, figuring on hot pursuit and maybe figuring that Machigi would attack that pursuit—thus getting Machigi to attack the dowager’s forces. That would have set matters boiling!

They had committed an extravagance of illegal acts over on the coast, figuring Machigi would be blamed for them and would be assassinated; but that had not worked due to Tabini-aiji’s preoccupation with the center of the aishidi’tat. But it accumulated a record.

So if Machigi fell—what effect would that have on Marid politics?

A sudden power vacuum, destabilizing the Taisigi Association, the whole south of the leadership of the Marid.

Who stood to profit from that?

The northernmost pair of Machigi’s four neighbors, while the southern two would find their lives in danger.

A few days ago Machigi had been lord of the Marid, master of all his plans and schemes to widen his power, and now—he had just had to take protective measures inside his own staff and eliminate some of his historic ties. Bet on it. If those gunshots had not been mere window-dressing for the negotiator, Machigi had just, real-world, eliminated ties inside his staff, probably to the Dojisigi. Maybe to the Senji.

If
that was so.

Had Machigi made that choice? Or had his bodyguard—being aware of Guild proceedings?

Thoughts jumped like lightning. The body went on to bow ceremoniously, acknowledging Machigi’s challenge. “One confesses to being still largely uninformed, nandi. But one is at least pleased to have conveyed the dowager’s favorable response. One can say—”

“We are
not
pleased!” Machigi snapped at him. “Convey
that
to her.”

“Yes,” Bren said simply. Yes was decidedly the safest answer. And it was an interesting response. Machigi was mad. So whether he was right or wrong about what he thought had happened, Machigi wasn’t happy about what had happened.

And
that
said he was probably right, and Machigi had suddenly found himself fighting for his life.

Machigi turned his back and took a few strides toward the windows, looking—a gesture in itself, looking down on his city, his harbor, his private ocean. Anger was in the taut line of his shoulders. Nobody moved for the moment, and one had time to consider the vulnerability of that pose. Two fast moves on the part of the paidhi’s guard, and Machigi would die and the head of his bodyguard would die—followed, of course, by the paidhi and his guard, and then by his guard upstairs.

Machigi outright dared him to try it. Wondered, perhaps, if that was the aishidi’tat’s intention.

But getting rid of Machigi was, one surmised, not the
dowager’s
intention. It might be Machigi’s neighbors’ intention. But he was sure it was not Ilisidi’s.

He walked forward quietly, with a little flick of his fingers that told Banichi and Jago to stay where they were. He was increasingly sure of his reading of the situation now, and he came to stand beside Machigi, also gazing outward over the harbor, making himself part of Machigi’s scene, equally vulnerable.

“This is a fair prospect, nandi. And your enemies are
not
in possession of it.”

“My enemies, ”
Machigi echoed him darkly, “number many more than my neighbors.”

“You should not count the aiji-dowager among those enemies, nandi. She has taken quite a different view of your existence.”

“Why should she do so? Where is
her
advantage in these dealings?”

Not a plain question—and one that challenged a human to make one ateva understand another.
Not
the least subtle atevi, either.

But Machigi was in a situation; and Machigi was asking. Machigi
wanted
to believe there was a way to get the upper hand.

“The aiji-dowager, nandi, has always maintained independence, even from her grandson. She is a traditionalist when it comes to the land, but
not
a traditionalist when it comes to an unprofitable feud.” He spoke quietly, still looking outward, not intruding so much as a glance into Machigi’s private agitation. “Being an Easterner, she has power and influence unaffected by the moods of the central district. She works outside the aishidi’tat, a position she has very carefully crafted over the years since the legislature saw fit
not
to make her aiji—and would never make her aiji. She has survived her husband, her son, and now sees her grandson in power, but she is no longer young, and you have offered her a chance that may not come again: a chance to settle the situation she had wanted to settle in the very beginning of the aishidi’tat. You will
be
aiji of the Marid, in this plan of hers.”