Betrayer: Foreigner #12 (18 page)

So Jegari went out, Antaro went to the bath, and he went back into the sitting room where Veijico was.

Veijico stood up, properly and politely, finding herself the object of his attention. That, in itself, was an improvement. She looked very tired, and thinner, and just worn down.

“One is very sorry to hear your partner is still missing, nadi,” he said.

A quiet little bow. “Thank you, nandi. One is gratified by your expression.”

A textbook answer, mani would call it.

“Did you want to come back to us?” he asked.

“If nand’ Bren had wished it, nandi, one would have stayed there. They needed me. But they sent me with Barb-daja. Now I am here. If you wish me to leave—”

“Are you sorry to be here, nadi?”

She bowed her head. “One regrets the difficulties, nandi.”

“You left without calling the security office.”

“We saw the kidnappers, nandi. We chased them to stop them.” She bit her lip. Then said nothing at all.

But
he
knew he had called out to stop the kidnappers. And she did not offer that excuse to him.

That was way better behavior than he had seen.

“You followed my order,” he said.

She gave a little nod, a bow, and said: “We ignored procedures, you being both a minor, forgive me, nandi, and a civilian. One is aware we did not exercise mature judgement.”

“Did Banichi tell you that, nadi?”

“Algini-nadi did, nandi,” she said. Algini was the grimmest of Lord Bren’s bodyguard, and not the one Cajeiri would personally like to have reprimand him. He could imagine Algini, who said very little, might have said exactly those words and made every one of them sting.

He was sorry for her. But he did not forget that she had been rude to Jegari and Antaro, and if he said he was sorry, she might move back in and start running things again, and telling
him
how to behave, and ignoring all his orders except the one she absolutely should not have obeyed.

She obeyed orders, he thought uncomfortably, the same way he obeyed orders—he picked the ones he liked and managed not to be there in any official way to hear the others.

So off she and Lucasi had gone to be important and do the big thing, getting Barb-daja back, because they knew they had just made a huge mistake in putting Barb-daja and nand’ Toby in danger.

He had less sympathy for her and her partner when he thought about that.

And about her attitude toward Jegari and Antaro.

And then suddenly, in the middle of remembering all the reasons he had been angry with her, it struck him what he was feeling, right in the middle of his stomach. He discovered the reason she made him nervous, and the
reason
he was just a little scared of her and never really believed she was going to do what he told her.

“You have no man’chi here,” he said to her, right out in the open. “You were never
mine,
not from the time you came here. Maybe your man’chi is to my father, nadi, but it never was to me.”

There was a lengthy silence after that, and Veijico did not look him in the eyes. She had clasped her hands behind her, and her head stayed a little bowed.

“Is
your man’chi to my father?” he asked.

A lengthy silence, and she never looked up. She was thinking about that, he thought, or the answer was no, and she was not telling him what she was thinking.

So he did what mani did. He did not give her an answer. He waited.

And waited.

“Nandi,” she said quietly, long after that silence had become uncomfortable. “One is only just realizing—”

He might get the rest of it if he he shut up and let her figure out her sentence. So he did, and she still was not looking at him.

“We thought we might be brought into your father’s service,” she said eventually. “But that proved not the case. We were left asi-man’chi.” That was to say, on their own family man’chi to each other, no one else’s. “We did not feel at ease here. We did not find a place.”

“Because I am a child? Or because you do not really have man’chi to my father, either?”

“We began to have, to him,” Veijico said in a low voice. “We thought we might. We wanted to, nandi. But he gave us away. And we tried. But we found none here. We had no idea—”

It was hard to wait. He was entirely upset with what she was saying. But she was getting the words to the surface, finally. And on mani’s example, he just waited, no matter how uncomfortable it was or how long it took. And when she understood that was how it was, she began to answer him.

“We had no idea, nandi, what was wrong here. We did not find a place. We tried. But we—”

Another lengthy silence. He still let it continue.

Veijico cleared her throat. “Nandi, one has no idea of the man’chi in this entire household. We came here willing to join this household. But it seems to us—”

Third silence.

“It seems to us, nandi,” Veijico said, looking up once, if briefly, “that
your
man’chi is not to your father the aiji but to the aiji-dowager. And to nand’ Bren. And even to persons up on the station.”

He took in his breath.
He
had no such idea. “I shall be aiji,” he said angrily. “And I shall
have
no man’chi.”

“But now you
do,
young lord. Or you seem to.”

“Well, there is nothing wrong with it, nadi! Nor are you in authority over me! We are two months short of a felicitous year!”

“One is trying to explain, young lord. Not to offend you.”

Second deep breath. “Do explain, then.”

There was another long silence. And Veijico still stood looking generally elsewhere.

“We understood you would be a child,” Veijico said. “And we were prepared for that. That you have a student regard for the aiji-dowager—is expected. But your regard for nand’ Bren . . . We were not prepared for that, in coming here.”

“Nand’ Bren is a very important man! My father trusts him! Mani trusts him! And I trust him!”

“I have just spent time with nand’ Bren and his aishid in Tanaja, nandi. I do not say I understand him, but one respects his patience and his consideration with one he need not have regarded. He has placed me very much in his debt. One understands, now, your estimation of his advice.”

“So does my great-grandmother regard his advice,” he retorted. But there, he had had an outburst of anger, and he had let her stray right off the track. And: never suggest the direction of your thoughts, mani had told him, and never suggest how to please you, if you want to know the truth from someone. So he said: “Finish what you were telling me.”

The room went very quiet for several moments. “Just that—we were not prepared for this household, nandi.”

She was getting away from him. He had let her get off the track, and she was not coming back to it.

“That is not all of it,” he said. And he realized that she had never yet looked him quite in the eye. “Look at me. If you want to be here, do not lie to me.”

More silence. But she did look at him—she had to look down at him—everybody did. But he folded his arms and stared right back up at her, with his father’s look. He had practiced it.

“You are a remarkable boy,” she said.

“I shall be aiji,” he repeated. “And my bodyguard has to be
mine.”

“That it must, nandi.”

“So
can
you be?”

Again that glance to the side. She was going to dodge the question. And then she looked back, straight at him. “When we came here, when we came here, nandi, we found no connections. This household—is full of directions that made no sense. They are strong directions. There is nand’ Bren. Lord Geigi. Your great-grandmother, not least. Cenedi. Banichi. They are not unified, though they cooperate. And we seemed most apt to fall under Cenedi’s orders, but if we connected with house systems, your great-grandmother was in charge; and nand’ Bren runs the household, with Banichi. And then there is Ramaso-nadi. And then the Edi, who are foreigners. And agreements that by all we can tell run counter to your father the aiji. Then nand’ Toby is here, and
he
has connections to the Presidenta of Mospheira. All, all are very powerful interests, and one has no idea how they intersect. So we did not know what was happening or what orders we might get or what effect they might have. We tried to succeed for you. But we had no clear sense of whose orders we were following.”

“Is that an excuse for ignoring me when I was going downstairs, or not knowing where I was?”

She did not look away this time. “It is not. One offers no excuse, nandi. We sensed you were annoyed with us, we sensed you wanted us to obey you; it was within the house, everything was safe—and we thought we would not lose you. Perhaps you wanted us to lose you. We did. And then we realized we had made a serious mistake, and we feared that you might have gone outside to shake us. It
was
our mistake, we knew we had fault in what happened, we tried to redeem it, and it only got worse.”

He understood how
that
was. He had been in that situation far too often.

But she was an adult. Did adults get into that kind of mess?

And then it was as if a puzzle-piece clicked into place.

“You should have come back to
me. I
was out there on the porch. You should have come back to
me.
But you had no man’chi. Not to me. Not to my great-grandmother. Not even to my father! Had you?”

She did not flinch. “No. At that point, we were without man’chi. We had no idea what to do, then, but we were lost, and we had no clear sense what we were to do. One is grateful to the paidhi-aiji. To him. To his aishid. After everything that had happened . . . one felt, with his aishid—one felt at
home.
Even in that place, one felt s
afe
. One understands his quality. I know my estimation weighs nothing in this house. But I am sure now you are associated with one person whose direction is impeccable.”

“Nand’ Bren, you mean.”

“Yes, nandi. Nand’ Bren.”

“But not my great-grandmother.”

“One does not understand her, nandi. But one does not expect to understand a person of her quality. It is enough to understand that nand’ Bren follows her.”

“He
cannot take you! I would be very surprised if he would, and you should not ask him!”

“No, nandi. One would by no means expect it. One is very junior to that aishid. We would have no place there. And we were assigned here, Lucasi and I, and one hopes—one hopes to find a place with your household, in spite of all we have done. One hopes Lucasi can find his way back. But if he does not—I would do all I can to find another partner, for the balance. If one were permitted.”

She was upset. He was upset with her being upset, for different reasons. And mani told him never talk when he was upset.

So he did not. He walked away a few steps and looked back at greater distance.

“If you stay, you will not behave badly toward Antaro and Jegari.”

“No, nandi. They have deserved your respect. I clearly have not.”

“You will always be second to them. They have always been with me. They
are
in my man’chi, and they have never done anything I did not approve.”

“One accepts that, nandi. I have skills, and I can teach them. I can bring them to Guild rank, nandi, in your service, and I will do that. I am older. At my best, I have mature judgment, which I would endeavor to use in your service, and I would do so wholeheartedly, if you will give me that chance. One asks. One asks, knowing one has not performed well. One would be honored to form a team with Jegari and Antaro.”

It was his decision. It was maybe the biggest decision he had ever had to make. And it was going to be even harder to undo if he was wrong.

“You will listen to Cenedi and Banichi, both, nadi, and you will
not
do another such thing as slip around my orders!”

“I entirely agree, nandi.”

So. She had answered everything. He had run out of questions. “Then you will be here,” he said. “Your baggage is still in the room.” He started to walk out and leave her to whatever she had to do to move back in. But there was one thing he ought to say, that he wanted to say, and he stopped and gave a little nod of the head. “One hopes they find Lucasi safe, Vejiconadi. One very much hopes he will also come back.”

“Nandi,” she said faintly. “Thank you for your expression.”

A
whole night’s sleep. Without nearly as much pain to wake him every time he tried to move.

Bren waked both with the astonished realization he was not in significant pain and the vague impression of hearing someone of his bodyguard stirring about. Which meant it was probably just before dawn.

A tentative wriggle of the shoulders and turn of the head produced one little residual crackle, but no lockup and no pain.

Odd. He hadn’t known his back was exacerbating the ribs. But it had been. The shoulders could relax. So now the back could. And the chest almost could.

The whole business came of being blown down flat on his shoulders, Bren decided. The impact of the bullet from the front, the lump on the back of his skull—that cursed small gilded chair which had both broken his fall and gotten in the way of it—

And he was convinced now, even without the evidence of the x-rays, that he was only bent, not broken. It made him feel better, if only in morale. He’d taken worse falls in his misspent youth. He’d fallen down a ski slope no few times. He didn’t bounce as well nowadays. But he was starting to get the better of this.

If he lived to get out of Tanaja.

That thought sent him toward the edge of the bed. He needed to get to work. People depended on him. His aishid did.

He hadn’t quite made it upright when Jago came through the door, whisked it shut at her back, turned on the lights and whispered, with a worried expression: