Deceiver

  “A panicked decision—with the young gentleman missing?”

  “Perhaps,” Banichi said. “That would be a generous interpretation. But panic has not been characteristic of their misdeeds in the Guild. They are separated from their own clan. They have done a desperate thing. The answer to that question I posed, nandi, will say a lot. Did they themselves ask nand’ Toby for help?”

  “Perhaps Toby can remember that,” Bren said, laying a hand on the door.

  “Tell him, nand’ Bren,” Cajeiri said fervently, “tell him we are sorry. It is our fault. It is at least our fault that brought this on.”

  It was a great deal for a young aristocrat to say. And a great burden for a young boy to carry—in what might be a great deal of confusion to come, over the next number of hours. “Come in with me,” Bren said. “You may be able to say so yourself. But do not say more than that, young gentleman. He may not remember that Barb-daja is missing.”

  “Yes,” Cajeiri said firmly. “Yes, nand’ Bren. One wishes to see him. One wishes very much.”

  A pair of servants rose and bowed as Bren brought Cajeiri into the suite, and stood aside as Bren, with Cajeiri, entered the bedroom, along with Banichi and the two Taibeni youngsters.

  Toby’s eyes were shut. Two others of the house servants attended him, and retreated as Bren moved a chair closer to the bed and sat down, Cajeiri standing next to him.

  “Brother. Toby,” Bren said quietly, laying a hand on Toby’s shoulder. There was a tube draining the wound, running down off the side of the bed. A saline drip. “Toby. It’s Bren.”

  Eyelids twitched, just slightly.

  “I think he hears you,” Cajeiri said.

  “One is certain he does,” Bren said, and squeezed Toby’s hand. “Brother, don’t panic. It’s going to hurt like hell if you twitch. You’re in Najida. In your bedroom. I’m here. So is Cajeiri. You’re going to be all right.”

  Blink.

  A grimace. “Barb.”

  Well, then he knew. “Toby, it’s Bren, here. We’ve got a problem. Come on. Wake up. Talk to me. I know it’s an effort. I know it hurts.”

  Toby’s eyes slitted open, just ever so slightly. “I’m hearing you. Where’s Barb?”

  Bren tightened his grip on Toby’s hand. “Alive, we’re pretty sure, but she’s not here, and good people are out looking. Just stay still. We’ll get her back. I don’t know how yet, but don’t panic yet, either. When this sort of thing happens, it’s usually a political move. It’ll play itself out in politics, and we’re good at that game. We’re better than they are. Believe me.”

  Toby didn’t say anything for a moment. But he was tracking. His lips clamped down to a straight seam. The eyes stayed aware and fixed on the ceiling a moment, then on him, and on Cajeiri.

  “You got him back,” Toby mumbled. “Good.” He started to lift his head, and Bren put a hand on his brow and stopped that.

  “Stay put. You’re full of tubes.”

  “Have I got all my pieces?”

  “Far as appears to me.” He rested his hand on Toby’s arm, which appeared undamaged. “What happened? What in hell were you doing out there?”

  Vague frown. “I remember—something popped. Hurt. Barb couldn’t lift me. I said run and get help. She ran. And at the turn up the walk, this guy, total shadow—Guild, maybe—he just grabbed her up, gone so fast—so fast I couldn’t see. Just nothing there. People were shooting. I remember thinking—don’t hit Barb—”

  Toby’s self-control faltered. Bren squeezed his hand. “We’ll take care of it. We just have to do this the careful way. We’re already calling in reinforcements. They’ll want to get her out of the territory fast, likely going all the way to the Marid, before they send us any demands, if that’s who’s got her, and we think it is.”

  “What are my chances of getting out of this bed and being useful?”

  “In the next twenty-four hours, zero. Our people are throwing a wide net, interdicting the port and the airport at Separti and Dalaigi, checking every plane and ship and truck and tracking it. Standard, during an incident. This isn’t a private problem. The aiji-dowager has been on the phone with her grandson. Believe it. We are not alone out here. Shejidan knows what happened, and they’re on it.”

  A momentary silence while Toby absorbed that. “Barb’s not that important on their scale, is she? She’s going to fall through the cracks of what’s going on here. She’s not that important to anybody but me.”

  “She’s gotten important to the whole aishidi’tat. The attack was an attack on the aiji. He’ll take it damned personally.”

  “That doesn’t make her exactly safe, does it?”

  “Safer. It’s a test of wills and capabilities. Frankly, they probably mistook you for me, hoped they’d killed you, and didn’t have enough people on the grounds to make sure of anything. They had a chance to take Barb, and they’re sure any human here is connected to me somehow. But they’ll find out fast she can’t speak Ragi. That will mean she’s useless to them here, but valuable enough to send on to their home district. Which is exactly what we’re going to try to stop them from doing. Listen. I have one other question for you, and don’t take this amiss. Why were you out there? Why did you go outside? This is an important question.”

  “The kid was lost. They said—”

  “What ‘they,’ Toby? This is important. Was it your own idea, going out there? Or did they ask you to help search?”

  “The kid’s guard—said he’d gone to the boat. I—thought—I thought—I didn’t think—enough. I thought—they don’t know the dockside. I thought—”

  “They lied,” Cajeiri said in ship-speak. “They lied, nand’ Toby. It was my fault. I was mad at them. I deliberately lost them in the hall. And they went to you and lied. I was downstairs!”

  “Downstairs,” Toby said, growing a little muzzy. “They said—the boat. I couldn’t understand the rest. Too many words.”

  “It was my fault.” Cajeiri looked thoroughly upset, and blurted out in Ragi: “You are not to die, nandi! My great-grandmother will get a plane and send you to the hospital if need be! You are not to die!”

  Toby looked entirely confused. He hadn’t followed that last, likely.

  “You’re under orders,” Bren said, “to lie here, do what you’re told, and relax, that’s what he just said. I know rest is a ridiculous suggestion at this point, but I’ve personally got a list of people to contact. And if you don’t stay flat and take orders, Barb’s going to let me hear about it when she does get back.” Deep breath. He set his hand on Toby’s. “She will get back, Toby. Hear me?”

  “Double swear?”

  Kid stuff, between them. “Double swear, brother. You mind your doctor’s orders. And don’t make trouble. Got it?”

  “Got it,” Toby said. His eyes drifted shut. Gone. Out cold, or verging on it. He still had the anaesthetic in his system. Bren got up and steered Cajeiri out into the other room, then out into the hall, where their separate bodyguard waited.

  “Best go back to your room, young gentleman. Or better yet, to your great-grandmother’s suite. Things are not safe.”

  “One wishes to do something, nandi!” Cajeiri said, and gave a deep bow. “They are my aishid! I could not manage them! I am at fault!”

  At fault, for failing with two damned crazed fools on a mission to be heroes. There was no word for that in Ragi, but that seemed the sum of it. Cajeiri was not faultless, but he was, for God’s sake, a kid who’d finally, once in his life, obeyed his instructions to stay in the house. And after all he’d been through—

  Leaving this kid unassigned and going out that door was a guaranteed way to make this boy at least think about doing something stupid.

  “I am about to make a request, young gentleman, a very serious request of you.”

  “What is it?” Cajeiri asked,bluntly as Mosphei’ could phrase it. Young eyes gazed at him in desperate earnest.

  “This: that while I am gone, and I may be gone some
time, on a mission with nand’ Geigi—you must take charge with my staff and take care of nand’ Toby. Help nand’ Toby even with getting a cup of water to drink, and translate what he says for the staff, because he cannot speak for himself. Stay with him. Speak for him. And keep your ears open to danger and report to Cenedi or your great-grandmother anything you think out of the ordinary about the house. We have Baiji. They have Barb-daja. The Marid would like to get their hands on Baiji before he says everything he knows . . . certainly before what he knows can be entered into a legal record. And I intend to find out what that might be . . . before the people who have Barb-daja, whoever they are, ask for a trade. Can I rely on you, young gentleman?”

  Cajeiri’s eyes were huge. “Yes!” he said. “We shall do that!”

  “Then go get a pillow and a blanket, and you may have that chair by nand’ Toby’s bedside. I am going downstairs,” he said quietly to Banichi, “the moment I have paid my respects to the dowager, if she is awake. I am going to talk to Baiji about one particular detail. Personally.”

  Banichi looked entirely, grimly satisfied with that proposal. “Jago is coming,” Banichi said. “She will meet us downstairs.”

  “Good,” he said, and made one side trip.

  He led the way up the hall and received news from the servant attending the door that the aiji-dowager was still awake, but on the phone, and had given strict instructions to admit no one.

  One could easily imagine who in Shejidan the aiji-dowager might be calling at this hour of the night, probably not for the first time, and one had, he assured the servant, no desire to intervene in that conversation.

  “Advise the aiji-dowager, when she appears, that the young gentleman is in attendance on nand’ Toby, with his bodyguard attending, at my request. Do not bother her otherwise.”

  With which he headed straight down the stairs with Banichi. Jago was waiting at the bottom of the steps, and silently fell in with them. Doubtless she had had a briefing from Banichi, and knew at least the essentials. She was also carrying a sidearm in plain sight.

  It was dawn. He had had no sleep. But sleep was very far from his mind as he reached Baiji’s guarded door.

  “You may take a small rest nadi-ji,” he said to Ilisidi’s man, with whom they had shared many a journey in the last three years. “Go take a cup of tea if you wish. About a quarter of an hour should suffice.”

  “Nandi,” the young man said, and left Baiji to him and Banichi and Jago.

  Banichi opened the door on a darkened room. Baiji was peacefully sleeping, snoring away.

  Until Banichi turned on the lights.

  Baiji struggled bolt upright, blinking in alarm and tangled in the blankets.

  There was, in the white glare of electric lights, the bed, a table, one chair, a scattered lot of paper, and writing implements—of which Baiji had made some further use, by the evidence of the papers.

  Bren drew back the chair, sat down, gathered the papers into three stacks that seemed indicated by position, sat down with no reference at all to Baiji, and flipped through the first stack.

  Baiji said not a thing to him, only sat on the edge of the bed.

  The first stack—excepting one stray paper Bren incorporated into the third stack, a list of names—was a lengthy letter full of courtesies and blandishments, addressed to Geigi.

  Bren laid it aside, remarking, “This one will do you little good. Geigi is quite resolved in the opinion he has of you. One hopes you have produced something of greater value than the last lot of paper you gave me.”

  “Nandi, I—What does this mean? Is it daylight?”

  “It is dawn and someone, attempting an assassination in this house, has kidnapped my brother’s lady. It may mean they hope to exchange a member of my household for you. Do you wonder why these attackers would be so concerned for your freedom? Would the reason for that concern possibly lie within these papers? Or have you been that honest with us? One doubts it.”

  Baiji struggled to his feet, dragging the blanket about his ample middle. Banichi set a hand on his shoulder and shoved him right back down to sit on the bed. Jago took up her station in front of the door, hand on sidearm.

  Bren hardly looked at the man, being at the moment occupied in the second stack of paper. Freeing two sheets which represented the opening of a letter to Tabini, full of blandishments and assurances, he crumpled them in his fist.

  “Useless. The aiji will not be your ally against his grandmother. Be grateful. I have just saved you from offending him. You are a fool.”

  “Nandi!”

  The third stack, the further list, contained all unremarkable names, names he would expect to be there, many of which duplicated the prior list. He swung the chair around with a scrape of wood on stone.

  “You do not truly intend to be a fool, do you, Baiji-nadi? You surely do not entertain the notion that your arguments against my keeping you here will be heard by the aiji, the aiji-dowager, or—least of all—by your uncle. The aiji-dowager has offered you your sole escape. Surely you do not plan to reject it.”

  “No. No, nandi. We have accepted the aiji-dowager’s offer. We do accept it!”

  One did not detect sufficient humility in a young, arrogant brat who had grown into an adult, arrogant fool.

  “You do not half understand,” Bren said, “the situation in which you now find yourself. There are names I now know that I have not seen on the other list, or on this. A member of my household, my brother of the same parentage, was shot tonight, by someone possibly believing he was shooting at me. A member of his household has been kidnapped by persons who themselves are likely to be shot if the aiji’s power over this coast survives—while the inhabitants of this coast and all the rest of the continent are entirely determined to shoot them on sight. So the fools who have attacked my household are in great danger. And the lord who sent them is in much greater danger. The Guild is involved. Are you following this? Are you understanding, finally, that your Marid allies do not want you to survive to tell us everything you know—that, in fact, they will be quite interested in killing you—partly in case you have not yet told us all you know, and for another reason—simply because you have become such a great embarrassment to their side. They will blot you from the face of the earth . . . an absolute, extravagant failure of their plans to marry their way into your house so that then they could kill you and inherit your post! Have you really understood that, this far? Do you believe it?”

  Lips stammered: “One believes it, nand’ paidhi.”

  “So believe this: very few people care about your survival tonight. I have never asked my aishid to eliminate a man, but you and the mess you have created are fast approaching the limit of my patience, Baiji nephew of my ally.”

  Hatred stared back at him. Anger. And fear. “My uncle—”

  “Your uncle will not preserve you in the face of the dowager’s anger. Or mine. Oh, I am indeed your enemy, Baiji-nadi. I have very many who consider me their enemy—of whom I can be tolerant, since I look to change their minds. But I have two that I consider my enemies in the world right now. The Marid aiji who directed this attack is one. And the other? Before I met you, and listened to you argue your case, I would have said there was only one.”

  Baiji was not the swiftest. Parsing that took a moment, and he screwed up his face and protested, “Nandi, you surely cannot equate me with—”

  Bren got to his feet. “You protect Machigi of the Taisigin Marid with your silence and you protect his plans by your reluctance to admit your own part in the whole business.”

  “I had none! I was an innocent bystander!”

  “Do not mistake me! I shall walk out of this room and leave others to persuade you to tell me—not the first truths that occur to you, but the deepest of the truths you own about this affair and those you even imagine! Do we understand each other? Who else in this district is helping Machigi? Who are his associates?”

  “I have told you everything, nandi! I have written it down in
those papers—”

  Baiji started to get up and Banichi slammed him right back down.

  “I have no doubt these papers are as carefully crafted as those letters of yours in my office upstairs. I have seen your answers. And the effrontery of your writing a letter to the aiji under these circumstances tells me I am dealing with someone too convinced of his own cleverness to ever believe he can be brought down permanently. You are down here laying plans for a future in which you hope to deceive everyone all over again and protect your remaining places of influence. You are so very clever, are you not?”

  No answer. No answer became sullen defiance, more than Baiji had yet shown.

  “Now I believe you,” Bren said. “Now you show me your real face, and not a pretty one. You had your own plan for the future of this coast. Tell me how you planned to stay alive, granting you had the least inkling that you were bedding down with very dangerous people. Who was the support you counted on? There was someone else, was there not?”

  Baiji sweated. His face was a curious shade. He towered over Bren, but Bren had the all but overwhelming desire to seize him by the throat and strangle him.

  “There was someone who supported you,” Bren said, “and one doubts this moral support was among the Edi. Who were your other recourses?”

  “I—”

  So, Bren thought—he was right. And considering Baiji’s natural resources, ones he owned by birthright, there were not that many.

  “This person should have been at the top of the list, should he not?”

  Baiji did not well conceal his discomfort.

  Baiji stared at him. Just stared, grimly saying nothing, but sweating.

  “Jago-ji,” he said, looking to the side, “you and I will go inform nand’ Geigi we have no more doubts. It would be well, nadi,” he added, addressing Baiji, “for you to dress. One believes you will get no more sleep tonight.”

  “Do not leave me with him!” Baiji cried, with a glance upward at Banichi. “Nand’ paidhi!”

  “Banichi-ji, would you ever harm this person?”