Protector

  Getting the balance back—settling the aishdi’tat at peace—that would let them deal with the problems Geigi had talked about in the heavens, which were no small matter in themselves.

  Deal with them before the aliens that had caused the Reunioners to be withdrawn in the first place showed up for a visit and for a look at this place where two species managed to get along . . .

  They had promised the kyo that was the case, and they had to demonstrate it. The kyo did not share a human or an atevi mindset, and agreement with the kyo, peace with the kyo, rode on things here being as advertised.

  “Meanwhile,” Jago said, “well that we all get some sleep, Bren-ji. Tomorrow we shall start to solve these things.”

  Solve things. He liked that notion.

  Saying so didn’t make them safer, or make the situation more secure. God, there were so many angles on what was going on, he didn’t know what to take hold of, or what to look at askance.

  He and Jago had their own methods of distraction, when they had a problem that, as Jago said, made a very poor pillow.

  And they were going to need all of them, to get any sleep tonight.

  4

  Morning brought Cajeiri his two servants, Eisi and Lieidi, stirring about in the suite. And Cajeiri’s head hurt.

  That could be the brandy. It was supposed to be really good brandy. It had not tasted that good. Like a cross between medicine and really rotten fruit.

  But he had only had half a glass of it. There had been a lot of glasses sitting about, and he had had to go entertain himself while his mother and great-grandmother went about the room chatting as if they were closest allies. He had seen adults, when they had to deal with something upsetting, have a whole glass at once. It was supposed to make them feel better about their problems, at least for the moment.

  So he had stolen a mostly-full glass and gone off behind a group of guests to drink it.

  If he had drunk a whole glass last night, he was sure his head might explode.

  “Are you well, young gentleman?” Eisi asked, standing by his bed.

  With one’s servants one could be entirely honest, and had a right to expect loyalty.

  “You are not to tell my parents,” he said, with his arm over his eyes, “but I drank a little brandy from a glass someone left and I am not feeling well this morning. One does not think it was poisoned.” That was always a worry, in a large company, but these were his father’s closest allies, and somebody had already drunk half of it and not died, or there would have been a commotion. “I only had half a glass.”

  “You should not be having brandy at all, young lord,” Eisi said. “Not for a number of years.”

  “One knows that,” he said. “But how long before this goes away?” An excruciating thought came to him. “Please do not tell my mother.”

  “Your mother, nandi, is having tea in the sitting room with your great-grandmother.”

  That. Gods. It was not good. “Please do not let either of them know I am sick.”

  “We can bring you something that will help,” Eisi said.

  “Please do not draw questions!”

  “I shall be extremely quiet about it, nandi.”

  Eisi went away for a while. Cajeiri heard the opening and closing of the distant door, hoped that Eisi would not get stopped and questioned, whatever he was doing. A long, miserable time later, he heard someone come back into the suite.

  Footsteps. Eisi turned up by his bedside with a small glass of fruit juice. “Drink this. It will help.”

  His stomach was far from certain it could even hold on to what it had. Or that it should. His head was sure it was a bad idea to move. But Eisi had risked everything getting him this remedy. He got up on one elbow.

  “It is salty,” Eisi forewarned him. “But it will help. Drink it all.”

  No punishment ever tasted good, and he was sure this was punishment. Salted fruit juice was awful, but not as awful as it sounded, and he actually had no trouble drinking the whole glass.

  Then he let his head down to the pillow to be miserable again.

  “Feed Boji, nadi-ji,” he asked Eisi. “I shall lie here a while.”

  “About half an hour,” Eisi said, “and you should feel significantly better, young gentleman.”

  “I hope so,” he said, and Eisi left and shut the bedroom door, leaving him in the dark, in his misery.

  His aishid, who ordinarily lived with him, in those rooms just outside his door, would tell him he had been an idiot to drink it . . . especially Lucasi and Veijico, Better yet, they would have told him that last night, before he did it. They would have told him the consequences. They were older, and probably knew about things like drinking. And they were qualified to carry guns, which was what Antaro and Jegari were trying to become. He so hoped Antaro and Jegari would not become all proper and forget how to laugh.

  But they had to—get qualified to carry guns, that was; not forget how to laugh. They were over at Guild Headquarters, taking tests to get an emergency qualification, not just to carry weapons, but a lot more that most Guild didn’t learn ’til they were much, much, older, because they were his aishid, and being the aiji’s son put him in more danger than most bodyguards had to deal with. He understood the necessity, miserable as it was, and worrisome as it was to have anybody but him telling Antaro and Jegari what to do.

  Before he’d gotten his aishid, he had had borrowed older Guild protecting him. High-ranking Guild—and they had not been able to prevent things happening. They could not even prevent him doing things he shouldn’t . . . like drinking that brandy last night.

  But the four he had now . . . they were good. They understood him and when they advised against doing something it was for good reasons, not just arbitrary adult reasons. Antaro and Jegari were only a little older than he was, but they had grown up hunting in the forests in Taiben, so they’d learned to shoot and hit a target and walk very softly a long time ago.

  It was just handling weapons in public places, Lucasi and Veijico said, that took special training . . . and they could pass. He was sure they could. And they would be back soon. Very soon.

  But not soon enough. He sighed and wondered how long it had been since he’d had Eisi’s medicine, and how long before his head stopped hurting.

  Veijico and Lucasi were older, but not that old. They were real Guild, though, and his father had assigned them to him, when he had been in the middle of the trouble over in Najida. They were good. They had had a reputation in the Guild for being too independent, too stubborn, and too reckless. He had overheard that from his great-grandmother and Cenedi. They had had problems. They had gotten in a lot of trouble, over on the coast.

  But Banichi and Cenedi had gotten hold of them and they had reformed. They had been downright arrogant, and thought themselves too good to be assigned to guard a boy. But they had changed their minds, after everything, and they had sworn man’chi to him and meant it. He so wished he had had them to stop him last night. They might have done reckless things, themselves, but he was very sure they would have stopped him from drinking the brandy.

  And he was so glad they were not here to see him this morning, even if he did wish they were all here now.

  Last night—when he had had that very bad notion to try the brandy—because it was supposed to make one calm and happy—

  Last night had been gruesome. Most of it, anyway. Mother and Great-grandmother had made peace. Officially. But not really. They had put on a show for politics and they were having tea this morning, and he was glad they could at least agree to do that. But it did not mean they were going to get along, and that his mother was going to forget she was upset.

  He wished they really could get together, but Mother and Great-grandmother, his mani, were just too different. And worst of all, their quarrel mostly was about him, and things he just could not change. Mother was jealo
us of Great-grandmother. His parents had sent him off to Great-grandmother right before the troubles started in Shejidan, and there was no fixing it now. He had been with his Great-grandmother, up in the space station, and then on the starship, and he had been with her all the way, when they had met the kyo and gotten the Reunioners off their station and all—it had taken them two whole years, most of it just traveling, but he’d been learning all the time from Great-grandmother, and he couldn’t help it if, sometimes, he turned to her first.

  But his parents had had a terrible time, while he and mani had been in space. Murini of the Kadagidi had gotten together a conspiracy and shot up his parents’ apartment and killed innocent people there, and in Taiben, where his parents really were; and his parents had had to get away into the woods and the mountains and move from place to place with people hunting them. That was what his father and mother had been through.

  And when he and Great-grandmother had gotten back, the whole world was in a mess, and Great-grandmother and nand’ Bren had gone down anyway—they had gotten to Uncle Tatiseigi and started an uprising against Murini. And his father and mother had come in, and they had gone to Shejidan, with the people cheering them all the way. It had felt very good, then.

  Except his mother was very jealous of Great-grandmother, because he had come back older and smarter, and knowing how to do things, and she had not taught him. Great-grandmother had. Great-grandmother was powerful. Great-grandmother did whatever she wanted. And people cheered for Great-grandmother, and for Father—but maybe not so much for his mother, and he did not know what to do to patch things. He knew what he knew. He knew that what Great-grandmother had taught him was the proper way.

  It probably had not helped that he and his father and his mother had had to live all together in Great-grandmother’s apartment with Great-grandmother’s guard and Great-grandmother’s staff until they could take all Murini’s things out of their proper apartment and rebuild and repaint it, top to bottom, for security reasons.

  It had not helped, too, that Grandfather showed up, and Aunt Geidaro, who had once been married to, of all people, Murini’s cousin—who had had nothing to do with the coup, since he was dead; but still, Father had sent her home. Maybe Mother had not favored that. And then there was Grandfather—

  Grandfather had pitched a fit, when they finally got into their own apartment. He had shown up at the door when it was just him at home—with the servants and his aishid—and Grandfather had wanted in, really wanted in, and Cajeiri had locked himself into his room—that had been scary. Grandfather had acted crazy. And he had not wanted Grandfather in the house.

  Father had had his own fit when he got home, and banished Grandfather from the capital and banished all Mother’s staff, every one of them, from her bodyguard to the maid who had been her nurse when she was a baby—that last had been the one he would have stuck at, himself, but he understood. It was the people closest to you the longest who could be really efficient spies, and could turn and kill you and everybody if you were wrong about their man’chi. She had become a security risk, and so she had to go, and that was probably the person his mother missed the most. That was the person who had been with his mother when he was born, but who would not be there for this new baby. His mother was upset about that.

  His father said his mother would be less excitable once the baby came. He hoped so. His mother wanted him when he was absent and wanted rid of him when he was there; and that was the way things were, three and four times a day.

  It had been the worst when all of them together were trying to live in mani’s apartment, and when mani’s rules were what the staff followed.

  He had so hoped his mother would calm down when they got their own apartment back.

  But mani was right. Mani always said: that there was no way to change somebody else’s mind, that that person had to change, and that they had to want to change, and the older they were, the less chance they were ever going to change, so there was no good expecting it to happen some morning for no particular reason.

  That sort of summed the numbers up. No matter which order you added numbers, they always added the same. Mani said that, too: if you ever thought you would get a different answer from the same numbers—you were wrong, that was all.

  So he doubted mani and Mother were really making peace, not in the party last night and not in the sitting room over tea.

  He heard the sitting room door open and close again as he was lying there. He heard footsteps go from the hall to the foyer. And he heard the outer door open and shut.

  Then, farther away, he heard his mother’s door shut. Hard.

  He heaved a deep, deep sigh, with his stomach still upset.

  Lord Geigi was going away to space again. He was sad about that. He was going to miss Geigi. Geigi was fun. And Geigi had brought his letters from the station. All his letters from his associates on the ship. And Geigi had spoken up for him and his father had agreed to have his associates come down for his birthday. He would be grateful for that for all his life.

  He just had to be really, really good for the next number of days, and not make his mother mad, and he would get his birthday—if nobody started a war and if nobody found out about the brandy he was so stupid as to have drunk last night.

  He would have his guests, all his associates from the ship, that he had not seen in a whole year, his eighth, which was not a lucky number, and not a lucky year. One did not celebrate it, mani had said.

  But this year, his ninth, was supposed to be very fortunate, because it was three threes of years.

  Oh, he wanted that year to start, because a lot of bad things really had happened in his eighth, his infelicitous year, which was two sets of two sets of twos, and just awful. He was still scared his mother was going to try to stop his party happening—his mother did not favor nand’ Bren, or any human. His mother blamed nand’ Bren’s advice for his having been sent to mani in the first place, and she was appalled at human influences on him. That was what she called it: appalled. She had said he was going to grow up abnormal. That he should not have human associates,

  But she had said that months ago, when she and his father were fighting. And his father had said that if they had not had nand’ Bren and Jase-paidhi and Yolanda-paidhi, up on the station, the whole world would have been in trouble.

  And his mother had shouted back that if they had not had them advising them, Murini never could have had his coup and they would not have been living in the woods in the winter.

  His father had had the last word. His father had said what was the truth: that the heavens were wider than the earth and that if they had not had nand’ Bren and the rest advising them, they would have been sitting on the earth with the space station totally in the hands of the worst sort of humans . . . who had had their own coup going, except for nand’ Bren and Jase-paidhi.

  His father was right about that. But things had just gotten quiet again. The walls in mani’s apartment were just thick enough to prevent one hearing the end of arguments, and he had no idea what his mother had said then. She at least had never called him abnormal again.

  Sometimes during that beyond infelicitous eighth year he had just had to do something to get his mind off the problems. He had gotten in trouble a few times, but he had not stolen the train to go to Najida.

  He had just gotten on it.

  He had stolen the boat, though.

  Well, he had borrowed it.

  Or it had run off with him. But nand’ Bren had made that right, and paid the fisherman. He was sorry about that. He was glad nand’ Bren had fixed it.

  But he had been on exceptionally good behavior since he had gotten back from the coast. He had come to realize that he was very close to his birthday.

  And he had his letters, now. And his father’s promise. He was reformed, now. He really was. He was going to be nine and do better. And he would get smarter. . . .
>
  He was so stupid to have stolen that brandy last night.

  Now he was at the mercy of Eisi and Lieidi, who had a sort of man’chi to him, but they were not entirely his, the way his bodyguards were.

  He hoped they would not tell his parents.

  He hoped, hoped, hoped nobody took his birthday away.

  5

  The train was in open country now, the city left behind. Bren had been over this route so often he knew every turn of the track, every bump and swerve of the red-curtained car.

  He was a little anxious in the outing—he was always a little anxious about well-publicized moves in this last year. He and Geigi were both high-value targets, and the business Jago had handed him last night . . .

  That was more than a little worrisome, but it was one not apt to become acute overnight. Their enemies had taken a hammering down in the Marid, they were still being hunted out of holes down there, and it would take them time to reorganize and replot. They might even reform, depending on how the local man’chi sorted out.

  Dealing with atevi was not dealing with humans. The sense of attachment, man’chi, that one could call loyalty, but which was so much more fundamental to the atevi instinct—was the emotion that held clans and associations together. Man’chi was as intense as human love and just as subject to twists and turns, but man’chi was a network of attachments, not a simple one-on-one. Sometimes, when the configuration of alliances changed, people changed. One could always hope a reconfiguration of possibilities and objectives could allow some who had been enemies to reinvent themselves—and have it stick.

  It did happen. It was why atevi had feuds, but didn’t often nurse grudges, and had no trouble shifting politics when situations changed.

  The problems Geigi had handed him out on the peninsula . . . problems involving Geigi’s estate . . . those he could certainly deal with. He had a good major domo at Najida, Ramaso, who had connections to the tribal people of the area, and he trusted he had established a very good relationship in that district, with his handling of recent events. Geigi, sitting across from him on the red velvet seat, sipping a little fruit-flavored tea, was heading back to space—from a world much better than the world he had landed on—and Geigi remained their ally in the sky, a powerful deterrent to complete idiocy on earth. That situation too, and the knowledge certain people had earned Geigi’s wrath, might reconfigure a few alliances.