Destroyer

  The deck was silent meanwhile. Barb, at the wheel, kept clear of the business, watching with apprehension, decidedly.

  And then things went back to ordinary, the staff relaxing, Ilisidi enjoying the sunlight, hands on her cane, eyes shut.

  Toby cast Bren a worried look.

  “There are rules,” Bren said carefully, since Ilisidi herself understood more Mosphei’ than was at the present comfortable. “He’s doing very well. But he’s only eight.”

  Toby gave a deep breath, on edge, clearly, and perhaps recalling his time about the mainland shore, where people had been on holiday and relaxed, as relaxed as atevi staff could be. The whole picture of atevi manners had never been available to him, and was not, now. It might not seem Ilisidi had been understanding, even kindly, in her handling of a boy whose temper and self-command had just snapped, and snapped because he was a child who’d been snatched from a world of routine and order into a world that had grown very remote from him. But Ilisidi was not cruel. Two years ago, at six, Cajeiri had had no independence. Now he had begun to run certain things—being tall as a human adult and strong and dexterous enough to do things for himself. But on the earth—and under present circumstances—he was obliged to take fast, concentrated advice from his great-grandmother, and become very much more adult, for his own safety’s sake, overnight . . . not mentioning the fact his physical strength was enough to do serious damage.

  “This boy,” Bren said in a low voice, as they turned and leaned on the rail, “may be aiji within the week. He will have life and death in his hands. Indulgence is nowhere on his horizon.”

  “You think Tabini is really gone?”

  “I don’t know,” Bren said. “No one knows.” He moved the conversation back to the side of the boat and forward, under the white noise of the water, recalling atevi hearing. “She learned a great deal of our language on the voyage.”

  Understanding dawned. Toby nodded, gave him a look, then leaned beside him on the bow rail, the white froth rushing along below them.

  Long silence, then. Conversation on old memories, winter on the mountain, school days. Their mother’s cooking. The whereabouts of their father, who never ventured back into their lives, not even lately. That was a lost cause. They both knew that.

  The wind shifted, and Toby looked up at the sail, and quickly left to see to the trim. Bren thought of going with him, handling the boat just for a moment, but, again, Barb was back there, and they’d clearly worked out that smooth teamwork, Barb and Toby had. He chose not to interpose his own skills.

  A full day of such running, and half the night, and they’d work into the shoreline isles under cover of darkness. He might, extraneous thought, get off the boat without dealing with Barb, postponing all such dealings until he got back from the mainland—granting he would ever get back. He could duck below for an hour, get some sleep, and let his staff relax, more to the point, which they would not be able to do with emotional tension on the deck: they weren’t wired to ignore a situation that their nervous systems told them was unresolved between him and Barb. God knew there would be no violence, but their nerves, already taut, would resonate to every twitch and gesture and look, especially since he was sure by now Banichi also knew that was the Barb.

  And the last thing he wanted between him and Toby at this imminent parting was Barb. He didn’t want to go below, into the close dark. He thought he just ought to bed down as Ilisidi had done, on deck, wrap up in a blanket somewhere where no one would step on him. He could lie near the bow, and just listen to the water. That would be good. There was a decided nip in the air. But only enough to remind him the planet wasn’t temperature-regulated, not on a local scale.

  “Bren.”

  Barb. Barb had slipped up on him, masked by the rush of water, the very person he hadn’t wanted to deal with. He stared at her, frozen for the instant, caught between a desire not to deal with her civilly and the fact that he’d promised Toby peace.

  “Barb?”

  “I’m sorry about your mother. It was two years ago for me. I know it was only yesterday you heard. So I’m sorry.”

  “Accepted.”

  “You’re upset that you weren’t there. She accepted that.”

  “The hell she did. She never forgave me. She blamed me to her last breath because I wasn’t there. Let’s have the truth.”

  “She did that,” Barb conceded. “But it doesn’t mean she didn’t love you.”

  That hit to the quick, that love word, that sentiment humans needed, and atevi didn’t understand. He felt an angry sting in his eyes and turned his face to the wind, his eyes to the horizon, unwilling to have Barb come at him on that topic.

  “You know there were things she wanted in her life,” Barb said, unstoppable, “and that didn’t happen, and she’d have been disloyal to her hopes to ever give in. One of them was your father. She never would deal with him again. But she never stopped loving him.”

  “Not that I ever heard.” And didn’t want to hear. Barb had no business in their family business. But she’d been there, at a time when their mother might have confided things. He hadn’t.

  “She was stubborn,” Barb said, “just like you. She held on to her hopes and wouldn’t admit any other situation. Like you. Yes, of course she wanted you there. If she hadn’t, if she’d ever let you go, she’d have been letting you go in the emotional sense, and she wouldn’t ever do that. It was her kind of loyalty. Is that what you want to hear from me?”

  “It’s no good to tell you that I did what I could. You know me. I’m very limited in that regard.”

  “I accept it,” she said. “I’ve learned to accept it.”

  “Doesn’t matter.” He didn’t like the direction this was going, and wasn’t going to talk about love and devotion with Barb.

  “Maybe it doesn’t, to you,” she said. “But I think it does.”

  “Doesn’t, Barb. Leave it. Leave it alone.”

  “I couldn’t be her. I couldn’t live with you. That’s the truth.”

  That was the truth he wanted. He looked at her this time. The years and the sun had put little fine lines beside her eyes. She wasn’t a vapor-brained kid any more. “You learned the hard way.”

  “Did that.”

  “So let’s all try to get it right this time,” he said, while the wind blew at both of them, whipping hair and clothing. “For Toby’s sake. You and I used to be friends. It was better while we were friends, before we began talking about love and the future and the rest of it. Before we ever slept together, we had fun. We liked life. Anything in the middle is a long voyage ago for me. Let’s have it that way again. Can we do that? Because I’m telling you, I can’t accept anything else.”

  “Because you’re her son, and you don’t accept anything but what you choose to accept. I know that.”

  That was a hit below the belt.

  “I’m grateful you were there to help her. If you want thanks for that—thank you.”

  “It wasn’t hard.”

  “I’ve never understood why you did it. You had nothing in common that I could figure.”

  “She needed someone. So did I. She helped me see things. She helped me understand you.”

  That was worth a laugh. “She didn’t understand me. She never figured me out.”

  “She understood you much better than you think.”

  “Well, good. I’m glad. But take your sights off me, Barb. I swear to you, if you ever hurt Toby, I’ll be your enemy.”

  “I know that, too.”

  “Do you, now?” He discovered he didn’t trust her, hadn’t trusted her all these years, and might have been right after all. “Don’t mistake me, Barb. Don’t play games with this situation. You like stirring the pot, right. That’s fine. Don’t stir this one.”

  “I’ll tell you something. What I was looking for in you—I’ve found, in him.”

  Maybe she meant that to sting. Maybe he was supposed to be jealous of Toby. It badly missed its target, if that was the c
ase. He was only disgusted with her.

  “No games, Barb.”

  “None of yours, either, Bren. No more promises to me or him for what you can’t do.”

  “That—that, I’ve gotten wiser about.” She’d set him suddenly on the wrong foot, taken away the impetus.

  “I love him, Bren.”

  “You’d better.”

  “It’s not the glitter and champagne it was with you, showing up now and again for a fantasy night at a hotel. Toby’s a mug of hot tea in a cold morning, that’s what I think of when I think of him. He’s a week on the water, fishing. Just us. He’s happy. So am I.”

  Curious, that what she saw of Toby was the life he wanted at his own core, or thought he did, and the life he had, by scattered days that he treasured through the days of office and court. What she said she loved about Toby was his own daydream reality.

  But what she’d gotten from one Bren Cameron had been the hard security, the rush from this meeting to that, the contests of power, the secrecy, then a few stolen moments of the sequin-spangled glamor he’d thought she thrived on.

  And here she was, older, wearing denims, with her hair in windblown curls, her immaculate complexion getting little frown-lines from the sun.

  A mug of tea and a boat, was it? That was Toby, for sure. Ambitions had certainly changed.

  But so had his.

  “I wish you both three thousand years.” It was what atevi said. “I hope it’s all smooth sailing.”

  “Oh, not smooth sailing.” For a second he saw Barb laugh, honestly laugh, and those sun-lines were in evidence at the edges of her eyes. “We have our storms. But we sail through them. Always. We like the lightning.”

  “Then you take care of him,” he said, disarmed. “Enjoy things with him. Laugh like that.”

  “You mean that?”

  “Damned right I mean it.”

  She stood on her toes, suddenly kissed him on the cheek. He didn’t flinch, but he wondered whether Toby was, in fact, out of viewing perspective, back at the wheel. He didn’t kiss her back, just patted her arm.

  It was a decent test. Attraction toward Barb wasn’t anywhere in his reaction. Just worry for Toby.

  Jago had seen it, however, Jago not letting him out of her sight for a moment. Barb passed by her on her way aft, but Jago looked straight at him the while, then walked up and leaned on the rail beside him.

  “She was confirming a truce,” he said.

  “Indeed,” Jago said blandly.

  Damn Barb, he thought.

  “This is the channel,” Toby said, drawing a black line along a treacherous series of shoals. It was Naigi district. “Get in, get out. You can reach Cobo village from this beach, which is mostly sea-grass. The little bay is particularly nice for redfish.”

  Bren translated. Except about the redfish. They all—all but Cajeiri, who was fast asleep—huddled on deck in the dark, the chart secured behind a plastic cover with a faint glow underneath, and marked over with erasable pen.

  That Toby owned such a precise chart, lettered over in Mosphei’, had passed without comment from Ilisidi, but being related to the possessor of said contraband, Bren suffered a twinge of minor guilt under Ilisidi’s sideward glance.

  “My brother has fished illicitly, aiji-ma,” he admitted, while security looked over the situation and discussed the area.

  “He has not,” Ilisidi said with a wave of her hand.

  “He has our permission.”

  “One is grateful,” he said, bowing his head, and by then security had reached a favorable conclusion.

  “We can manage, nandiin,” Cenedi said. “We have a name, one Lord Geigi personally recommends.”

  “Then let us do it,” Ilisidi said sharply, slightly under-lit by the table as she leaned close for a look. “Tobynandi handles this boat very well. We have every confidence. Douse this light.”

  It went out.

  “They agree,” Bren said to Toby. “And you have the grant of a fishing license, and the right to this chart.”

  Toby cast him a second, questioning look, with a little quirk of impish humor. Toby knew . . . damn him, he’d known what he was challenging, bringing that chart out into plain view, and had known, too, that he’d get away with it.

  “Light off the starboard quarter,” Tano said.

  Bren looked. He couldn’t see it. Out in the open sea, there was every chance that light was some fishing boat, like themselves, only more honest. Or their naval escort, which had never come into view. But they could afford no chances.

  “If they’re atevi, they may well have seen us,” he said. “Toby, Barb, Tano’s seen a light out there, starboard quarter.”

  “Wind’s fair,” Toby said, and fair it was, bearing on the Brighter Days’ best sailing point. They could go in, or shy off.

  Shying off would only make it likelier they’d be spotted.

  “I still don’t see it,” Barb said, looking out into the dark.

  “Trust Tano’s eyes,” Bren said. “We have this chance to get ashore. Any dithering around about it only gives the opposition time and warning. We’d better use it. But, God, Toby, be careful getting out.”

  “I’m the model of caution,” Toby said. Damn him, he was enjoying this. It was like their days on the mountain. Beat you to the bottom, brother. Downhill on skis.

  No Jill, now. With the boat’s wheel in his hands and the west wind blowing, Toby was free, these days, freer than in years. And it showed. It youthened him by the hour.

  “Scoundrel,” Bren said under his breath, sure that Toby heard him, since Toby gave him a grin.

  He found a grin of his own in reply, thinking, damn, if we die, we die moving, don’t we, not sitting still and letting our lives fade out?

  Deep breath, as Toby steered them for the unseen coast, and the wind sang in the rigging.

  That boat out there, if it had seen them, might be radioing someone in a better position to cut them off. They could only hope it was one of Shawn’s, though Shawn’s people were supposed to be doing something slightly noisy to the south, running a navy vessel into forbidden waters near Geigi’s estate, and running out again as if they’d dropped someone off.

  It wasn’t a very sophisticated ruse, that feint by sea. But the other side would have to spend energy reacting to it. The opposition had to expect something, with the starship in dock and the shuttle down. He only hoped nobody got killed making it look real.

  The coast was a dim line on the horizon by sundown, a sunset that reflected off a layer of cloud at their backs. That cloud went iron gray as the sun slipped away, and left them running an iron-gray sea on sail alone, that rocky coast bisected by their bow.

  “Piece of cake,” Toby called it. Bren eyed the rollers that came in there and broke on rocks and wished they could have done this by daylight.

  They had their runabout, a light shell of a thing with, Toby swore, enough motor to handle the surf inbound, if not out. But a buoyancy rating for humans was not the same as a rating for that number of atevi. The boat could handle at most three of them at a time, and that meant getting a number of them ashore first, with weapons, to be sure they could land the rest, and one person continually fighting that surf back and forth with the boat.

  “I can get it in and out,” Barb said, “and I’m light.”

  It was the best, the logical choice, granted she could handle the boat, and Toby didn’t object. Bren just bit his lip and waited, watching, as the rocks and the surf became quite distinct in what was now a panoramic view of the coast.

  There were no lights ashore. They showed none. They brought the sails down, fired up the engine, brought the boat up close to the stern ladder, and Barb went down to take the tiller, taking a heavy extra fuel can Toby let down to her.

  Banichi and Jago opted to be first in, first to take up position on that shore, to guard the rest of them coming in. And they had life-jackets that they’d have to hold to: they were far too small for atevi. “Take care,” Bren wished them
, “take great care, nadiin-ji.”

  Baggage and armament filled up whatever room they had left. The little boat motor purred quietly into action and Bren went to the side rail and watched, lip caught in his teeth the entire time the little boat washed in with the surf and let out two people he desperately cared about.

  Toby worked the engine to keep them in position—they didn’t drop anchor, just kept a visual fix.

  The little boat came back through the surf, rode through light as a shell, with fair expertise. Bren heaved a sigh of relief. Cenedi committed his two juniormost, Toby had another tank filled, traded the empty, and off they went, another lengthy passage. A light crossed the sky, in the distance, a plane, but far from them.

  Barb came back, and another exchange of fuel tanks. Then Tano and Algini went with her.

  Bren gripped the rail and watched until they were safely ashore, paced, and realized he was pacing. The next load was more supply.

  Bren went to stand by Toby. Just to stand there for a while. “Goes without saying,” he said. “But shouldn’t go unsaid, how much I owe you.”

  “Wouldn’t have missed this for the world,” Toby said, and they stood there a while more, spending the agonizing wait content in each other’s company, in idiot remarks about the weather.

  “Where are you going next?” Toby asked him.

  “Don’t know,” he said. “Depends on what we find. We have names, people we may be able to rely on.”

  “You be damned careful about it,” Toby said.

  “Oh, yes,” he said, and heaved a pent breath.

  Two more of Cenedi’s men went the long, slow trip.

  “Wish I could go in with you,” Toby said out of a long silence.

  “I’m glad you’re going back,” he said, “and, brother?”

  “Yes?”

  “Go home. I’ll phone when I can. Don’t hang around this coast to watch. When they know where we got in, they’ll be over this place like gnats on jam.”

  “And where I am, they’ll think that’s where you got in.”