Conspirator

  Barb’s eyes had gotten considerably brighter. He got up and pulled the cord again, and when the maidservant outside appeared: “Barb-daja would like to go shopping. Kindly take Barb-daja to the market. Just let her buy what she wants on the estate account. Walk with her, speak for her, and keep her safe and out of difficulty, Ika-ji. Take two of the men with you.”

  The maid—Ikaro was her name—looked both diffident and cheerful at the prospect—bowed to Barb, and stood immediately waiting.

  “Get a wrap,” Bren said. “It’s nippy. People will be curious about you. Just smile, buy what you like or what you might need for the boat. Provisions. I’d meant to send those with you, as was. Pick up some of the local jellies—Ikaro will make sure you get the right ones.—Ika-ji, she may buy foods: no alkaloids.”

  “Yes, nandi.”

  “Toby?” Barb asked.

  “Is it safe?” Toby asked. “You always say—”

  “The village is only over the hill and very safe. The men are just to carry packages, in case,” he added with a grin at Barb, “you decide to bring back sacks of flour. Just enjoy yourself. Buy something nice for yourself. You’re on the estate budget. Get something for Toby, too, if you spot something.” He went near and said, into Barb’s ear: “There’s a very good little tackle shop.”

  Barb was honestly delighted. She disappeared into the bedroom, with the disconcerted maid in pursuit, and came back with a padded jacket and gloves—and Ikaro.

  “You’re sure you’ll be all right?” Toby said, getting to his feet.

  “I’ll be perfectly fine,” she said, and proceeded to mortally embarrass the maid by kissing Toby on the mouth, not briefly either, and with a lingering touch on Toby’s cheek. “You be good while I’m gone.”

  “I have no choice,” Toby said with a laugh, and the little party got out the door—which shut, and left a small silence behind.

  “You’re sure she’ll be all right,” Toby said.

  “My staff would die before they let harm come to her,” he said, and sat down and poured a little warmup into his teacup. He had a sip, as Toby settled. “I haven’t had a chance to talk to you, not really. We’ve been in rapid motion—certainly were, the last time we met. It’s been a little chaotic, this time.”

  Toby wasn’t stupid. Far from it. He gave an assessing kind of look, beyond a doubt knowing that he’d just maneuvered Barb out the door. “Something serious?”

  “Just family business. Not much of it. Nothing I could have done but what I did, but I am lastingly sorry, Toby, for leaving you when I did. I don’t know what more to say. But I am sorry. I had two years out and back to think about that.”

  “Hey, you have your job.”

  “I am what I am. I don’t regret much, except I know what you went through. I say I know. I intellectually know. I wasn’t there, that’s the point, isn’t it?”

  “I read the journal you gave me,” Toby said. “I read every word of it.”

  Bren gave an uneasy laugh. “The five-hundred page epic?” It was, in fact, hundreds of pages, uncondensed, but deeply edited—compared to what Tabini had gotten: the whole account of his two years in deep space, hauling back unwilling human colonists from where they had run into serious trouble, trying to prevent a culture clash—the one that might eventually land on their doorstep.

  The kyo would arrive as promised, he had every anticipation—a species that had come scarily close to war with a colony that hadn’t asked before it had established itself too near. A colony their own station had had to swallow—a large and unruly item to try to assimilate, given the attitudes in that bundle of humanity.

  But that had nothing to do with the situation he’d left Toby in—their mother’s last illness and Toby’s wife walking out, with the kids. Two years. Two years, and no more house with the white picket fence, no more wife, no more kids. Barb and the boat, the Brighter Days . . .

  “It’s no excuse,” Bren said. “Not from your vantage. Go ahead and say it. I have it coming.

  “Say what?” Toby shot back. “Don’t put words in my mouth, brother. Don’t tell me what I think.”

  “Maybe you’d tell me.”

  “Which is why you maneuvered Barb out of here? She is my life, Bren. Not just your old girlfriend. She’s my life.”

  He didn’t like hearing it. But he nodded, accepting it. All of it. “Good for both of you. If she makes you happy—that’s all that matters.”

  “You’re not still in love with her.”

  God. He composed himself and said quietly, “No. Definitely I’m not.” And then on to a gentle half-truth. “I hurt her feelings when I broke it off. I was rough about it. She’s still mad at me. And she probably doesn’t want to admit it.” It didn’t account for Barb making a ridiculous marriage on the rebound, divorcing that man and attaching herself to his and Toby’s mother, and then to Toby. And lying to his brother regarding the evident tension between them wasn’t a good idea. Toby knew him too well, even if Toby didn’t want to read Barb, in that regard. The hell of it was, Toby wasn’t blind, or stupid, and Toby could read Barb, which was exactly the problem. “I have every confidence in Barb, when I’m not there provoking her to her worst behavior. Is that honest enough?”

  Toby didn’t look happy with the assessment. “It’s probably accurate.”

  “Doesn’t mean she loves me. You want my opinion?”

  “I have a feeling I’m going to get it.”

  “Not if you don’t want it.”

  “Damn it, Bren. Fire away.”

  “Barb doesn’t turn loose of emotions. She doesn’t always identify them accurately. That’s always been a problem. She’s still charged up about me, but it doesn’t add up to love. There was a time we were really close. I’ve tried to figure what I felt about it, but I’m not sure we ever did get to the love part. Just need-you. A lot of need-you. That was all there ever was. Not healthy for either of us. Now it’s done. Over. Completely. Where you take it from there—I have no control over. I don’t want any.”

  Toby nodded. Just nodded. How much, Bren asked himself, how much did Toby add up for himself? How far did he see—when he wanted to?

  “I don’t want to lose my brother,” Bren said, as honest as he’d been hedging on the last. “Bottom line. I want you around. As much as can be. I don’t make conditions.”

  Second nod.

  “You’re mad at me,” Bren said. “You don’t want to be, but you are. Do you want to talk about it?”

  Toby shook his head.

  “Is it going to go away?” Bren asked. “I’m not so sure it will, until we do talk about it. Is it Mum?”

  Toby didn’t look at him on that question.

  “It is,” Bren said. “I wasn’t there. Not only at the last. I wasn’t there for years and years before that. Flitting in for a crisis. But you were there every time she needed something. You want my opinion again? You shouldn’t have done it.”

  Toby stopped looking at him. Didn’t want to hear it. Never had wanted to hear it.

  “Toby, I know it makes you mad. But you were there too often. I’m saying this because I love you. I’m saying this because I was sitting safe and collected on this side of the strait and you were getting the midnight phone calls. I shouldn’t say it, maybe. But I think it and I’m being honest.”

  “Think what you like. How was I going to say no?”

  “I wish you had. I wish you had, Toby.”

  “Shut up. You don’t know a thing about it.”

  He nodded. “All right. I’ve said enough.”

  “I deserve a woman who was there when I needed her. Barb was there, at the hospital. She was always there. She wasn’t throwing a tantrum every time I had to go and see about Mum. She wasn’t pitching a fit in front of the kids. She wasn’t talking to them about me while I was in Jackson at the hospital. You want the bloody truth, Bren, it was better there than with Jill.”

  There was a revelation. The happy home on the beach, the white picket fence, the
tidy house and the two kids . . .

  Toby went home to mother. No matter how rough “home” got, home wasn’t with Jill, not the way Toby remembered things now.

  It was also true their mother had had a knack for finding the right psychological moment and ratcheting up the emotional pressure . . . I need you. Oh, I’ll get along. I had palpitations, is all. Well, go to the doctor, Mother. Oh, no, I don’t need the doctor. Smiles and sunbeams. I’m feeling better. You know I always feel better when you’re here . . .

  After he’d flown home from the continent in the middle of some crisis, because she had one of her own; and she’d hover right over the breakfast table and praise him to the skies and tell Toby what a good son his brother was—salt in the wounds. Absolute salt in the wounds. She’d had Toby rushing to her side because he never loved her enough, never could equal the sacrifices brother Bren made for her, oh, it was so good when Bren was there. She just sparkled.

  Hell.

  “I love you,” he said to Toby, outright. “I love you even when you’re mad at me—which I don’t blame you for being. You can take a swing at me, if you like.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  “It might clear the air.”

  “Clear the air, hell! Your bodyguard would blow me to confetti.”

  “Well, they’re actually not here, but if you want to, let’s move away from the antique tea service.”

  “Now you are being ridiculous. Don’t.”

  “Well, but I’ll specifically instruct my bodyguard that if you ever do take a swing at me, they’re to let you. You’ve got one on account.”

  “Damn it, Bren.”

  “Yeah. Honestly, I know more than I look like I do. I know the things Mum did, playing one of us against the other—she did; you know she did. I winced. I didn’t know how to stop it. I honestly didn’t know. I mediate between nations. I couldn’t figure how to tell Mum not to play one of us against the other. She taught me a lot about politics. I never got the better of her.”

  “Me either,” Toby said after a moment.

  “Did she ever talk about me, you know, that awful Bren? That son that deserted me?”

  “No,” Toby said. “You were always the saint.”

  “Worse. A lot worse than I thought. I wish she’d damned me now and again. You deserved to hear her say that.”

  “Never did.”

  “If you’d been the one absent on the continent, you know you’d have been the saint and I’d have been in your spot.”

  That was, maybe, a thought Toby hadn’t entertained before now. Toby gave him an odd look.

  “So, well, you and Barb can talk about me. Blame me to hell and back. It’s therapeutic.”

  “I don’t. She doesn’t. Honestly. She’s not bitter toward you. You want the truth—she’s mad at you. But it’s hurt feelings. Like you say. Hurt feelings.”

  “Barb’s probably scared to death we’re getting together to talk about her. She knew damned well I was manuevering her out the door. But the moment dawned, she got her courage together and went shopping. She let us get together and now she doesn’t even know if we’ll make common cause and if she’ll have a boat to get home on. That’s Barb. She’s upset, so she’ll buy something expensive for herself. But she’s brave. At a certain point she can turn loose and take care of herself. That’s the Barb I loved. Back when I did love her, that is.”

  Toby managed a dry laugh. “She’ll want to know what we said. And she won’t believe it wasn’t really about her.”

  “Better make up something.”

  “Hell, Bren!”

  “Funny. When I think about that Barb that just went shopping, I know I probably did love her. But I don’t get that side of Barb anymore. That Barb’s all yours now. I don’t know how long that’ll be so, but I do know she won’t come my way again. It’s guaranteed Jago would shoot both of us.”

  “Hell, Bren!”

  “Well, Jago would shoot her. That, in Jago’s way of thinking, would solve all the problem.”

  “Are you joking or not?”

  “I actually don’t know,” he said, and added, dryly, “but I’m certainly not going to ask Jago.”

  Toby actually laughed, however briefly, and shook his head, resigning the argument.

  “So—are you and Barb going fishing with us after this? Can we share a boat? Or is there too much freight aboard?”

  “Sure,” Toby said. “Sure. I honestly look forward to it.”

  “Good,” he said, and because the atmosphere in the study was too heavy, too charged: “Want to have a look at the garden? Not much out there, but I can give you the idea. I actually know what’s usually planted there.”

  “Sure,” Toby said, so they went out and talked about vegetables.

  He went in after a while, and left Toby in the garden, where Toby said he preferred to sit. Barb was still shopping—that was rarely a quick event. The youngsters were settling in. He had—at least an hour to attend his notes. He went to his study then, and wrote an actual three paragraphs of his argument against wireless phones.

  Crack.

  Possibly the staff doing some maintenance in the formal garden, he thought, and wrote another paragraph.

  No, it was not good for the social fabric for wireless phones to be in every pocket, the ordinary tenor of formal visitation should not be supplanted—

  Crack!

  Skip and rattle.

  That was a peculiar sound. A disturbing question began to nag at him—exactly where the aiji’s son and his companions might be at the moment.

  He put away his computer, got up and went out to the hall.

  There was no staff. That was unusual. He went down the hall to the youngsters’ room, and found no one there.

  That was downright disturbing.

  So was the scarcity of staff.

  He went to the inner garden door, and walked out into the sunlight . . . where, indeed, there were staff.

  All the staff.

  And Banichi. And Toby, and the Taibeni youngsters, all facing the same direction, into the garden.

  Crack. Pottery broke.

  A smaller figure, one on Toby’s scale, took a step backward, dismayed, with a very human: “Oops.”

  Oops, indeed. Bren walked through the melting crowd of servants, saw Ramaso, saw Cajeiri and Toby, saw Banichi on the left. Then he looked right, at the bottom of the garden, and saw a shattered clay pot, with dirt scattered atop the wall and onto the flagstones.

  “One will fetch a broom, nandi,” a servant said in a low voice.

  “Nandi,” Ramaso said, turning.

  Cajeiri looked at him and hid something, hands behind his back, while Toby just shrugged.

  “Sorry about that.” Toby gave a little atevi-style bow, showing proper respect for the master of the house.

  Bren was a little puzzled. Just a little. He looked at the broken pot, looked at Cajeiri.

  “One did aim away from the great window, nandi!” Cajeiri said with a little bow. And added, diffidently, “It was the ricochet that hit it.”

  “The ricochet?” he asked, and Cajeiri brought forth to view a curiously familiar object—if they had been on the Island: a forked branch, a length of tubing, probably from the garden shed, and a little patch of leather.

  “A slingshota!” Cajeiri announced. “And we are very good, with almost the first try!”

  There had been several tries, one bouncing, probably off the arbor support pillar, into the stained glass window.

  “Well,” he said, looking at his brother. “Well, there’s a little cultural transfer for you.”

  Toby looked a little doubtful then. “I—just—figured the boy could have missed things, with two formative years up in space.”

  Bren pursed his lips. As cultural items went, it was innocuous. Mostly. “You made it.”

  “Showed the kids how,” Toby said in a quiet voice. “Mistake?”

  “Slingshota,” Bren said, and gave a sigh. “New word for the dictio
nary. Just never happened to develop on this side of the water, that I know of. Banichi, have you ever seen one?”

  “Not in that form,” Banichi said with an amused look. “Not with the stick. Which is quite clever. And the young gentleman has a powerful grip . . . for his age.”

  Witness the demolished pot . . . a rather stout pot at that.

  “Well, well,” he said, “use a cheaper target than that, young gentleman, if you please. Set a rock atop the garden wall.”

  “I am sorry,” Toby said, coming near him, so seriously contrite that Bren had to laugh and clap him on the shoulder, never mind the witnesses present.

  “If the young gentleman takes out the historic ceramics in the Bujavid,” he said, “I may be looking for a home on the island. But no, no damage is done. Just a common pot. I’m sure some entrepreneur will make an industry of this import.” Or the Guild will find use for them, he thought, but didn’t say it. Banichi clearly was taking notes. “Just supervise, will you?”

  “No problem,” Toby said, and Bren laughed and patted his shoulder and walked away, Banichi in attendance, to have a word with Ramaso. “Let them have a few empty cans from the kitchen, nadi-ji. That will be a much preferable target.”

  “Yes, nandi,” the old man said, and went to shoo the servants back inside.

  “Interesting device,” Banichi said. “Not nand’ Toby’s invention.”

  “No. Old. Quite old.”

  “We have used the spun shot,” Banichi said, “an ancient weapon.”

  “Very similar principle,” Bren said. “Except the stick.”

  “One does apologize for the pot,” Banichi said.

  “Just so it isn’t the dowager’s porcelains, once he gets home.”

  “One will have a sobering word with him, Bren-ji.”

  “Quietly, ’Nichi-ji. The boy has had a great deal of school and very little amusement since the ship. Perhaps one may put in a word with his father, to find him space in the garden to use his toy.”

  The boy used to have racing cars—almost the last real toy he had ever owned, except what his human companions brought for his amusement. The last of the cars had come to a violent end—blown up, with explosives, in very fact. Banichi had done that—in a moment of need and improvisation. Toys since—no, there just had been very few.