Conspirator

  “Because ’counters have political power and superstitious people are very excitable, mani, so one should know the numbers of a situation to know what superstitious people will believe.”

  His father laughed. “There, grandmother, you have produced a cynic.”

  “Next year,” Cajeiri said, doggedly being what Great-grandmother would call pert, “I shall be a more fortunate number in age . . .” He was infelicitous eight, divisible by unfortunate four, each bisected by unhappy two. “And then perhaps people will hear me seriously.”

  “You have been fortunate,” his father said, “to be alive, young gentleman.”

  “Fortunate to sit at this table,” his mother said. “Wheedling is not becoming anywhere.”

  “Forgive me, honored mother. It was excessive.” Decidedly, it had been. He had gone much too far. He sighed, hating his own impulsiveness, and helped himself to more sauce for the meat course, fighting to cool the temper that had roused up. Great-grandmother assured him he had inherited that temper from Great-grandfather, and his grandfather, and his father. “Find my inheritance in you!” she had repeatedly instructed him. “Mountain air is chill. It stimulates the wit, young man. Choler only ruins one’s digestion.”

  It was good advice. He had been in Great-grandmother’s mountains. He had been in the snow. He understood. And like nand’ Bren’s rock, paper, scissors—he had seen how wit beat choler, every time.

  So he reined in his anger, ate his dinner, and while mani and his mother and father chatted about the weather, the hunting, the repairs to the apartment—he thought.

  He thought about nand’ Bren having to leave.

  He thought about Uncle Tatiseigi being right down the hall and having his guards right outside his door, and Uncle Tatiseigi calling on his father every time he did a thing out of the routine.

  He thought about all these things, and the whole situation was what mani called—intolerable.

  Nand’ Bren had promised to take him on his boat when things settled down and people stopped shooting at each other, and it had been quiet for months, had it not?

  His parents were convinced he was a fool, untrustworthy even if he should go to Taiben, where Antaro’s and Jegari’s parents and the lord of the Taibeni (who was a relation) would take extraordinary care of him. He saved that hope for absolute last.

  He had asked to have his own staff and his own apartment, even if it let out into theirs, but he knew what modifications they were making to his parents’ old domicile, and there was no provision for him in that place having anything but a foyer, a closet of a study, and a small bedroom of his own, not even his own bath—they said another bath was impossible without tapping into the lines next door, which were in Bren’s proper apartment, which was being occupied by the Farai, and no one lately offended the Farai, not even for Lord Bren’s sake. And it was a security risk. They were building a monitoring station against that wall, which he was not supposed to say.

  But it was all just disgusting.

  Still, he kept a pleasant face, and had his dinner, and said a proper good-bye to mani, and a good night to his father and his mother, leaving the adults to their brandy. He gathered up Antaro and Jegari and the two guards who were Uncle Tatiseigi’s and went back to his quarters.

  He said, to the guards, “You should have your supper now. Go. I shall have an early night. You might have some brandy, too.”

  “Nandi,” they said, and went off, unsuspecting and cheerful in the suggestion. They were not nearly as bright as his father’s guards.

  Antaro and Jegari followed him inside and looked worried. They were as bright as anybody could ask.

  And he walked over to his closet and took out his rougher clothes, and laid them on the bed. He knew the handsigns the Guild used. He used several of them to say, “downstairs,” and “all of us,” and “going.”

  “Where?” Antaro signed back, in some distress.

  “Nand’ Bren,” was a sign they had, the same that Bren’s own guard used.

  “Your parents,” came back at him.

  He gave them that tranquil, pleasant look he had practiced so hard. And laid his fist over his heart, which was to say, “Carry out orders.”

  They didn’t say a thing. They went to their nook and into their separate rooms and brought back changes of clothing. They weren’t Guild. They had no weapons, nor anything like the communications the Guild had. They just quietly packed things in a single duffle, and meanwhile Cajeiri opened his savings-box, emptied that, found a few mangled ribbons of the Ajuri colors, his mother’s clan, and the green of the Taibeni, and, yes, finally, a somewhat dog-eared train schedule book he had gotten from his father’s office.

  He opened that and found that, yes, a train did leave the Bujavid station in the night: it went down to the freight depot, probably to pick up supplies, which was exactly the thing. Cook would be cleaning up in the kitchen, and the major domo would be engaged with mani—Cook was hers, more than his parents’, and that conversation would take a little time. The whole house would be focused on mani, because most everyone was hers, except his father’s and his mother’s staff, and those few would be paying attention to his father and mother, because everyone else would be waiting on mani and making sure she had all she wanted.

  Mani probably would socialize late—for her—turn in, and catch several hours’ sound sleep before she got up to go to the airport.

  Perfect.

  4

  Brandy, in the sitting room, with the comfortable wood fire, the rustic stone hearth . . . beneath ancient beams. The furniture looked a little out of place, being ornate and carved and far from rustic in its needlepoint seats and backs. The carpet was straight from the Bujavid: it gave the place, to Bren’s eye, a sort of a piratical air, the furnishings all having been smuggled off to the coast during the city riots and none of the furniture quite matching.

  But, formal or not, they were comforting, like old friends, every stick of the furnishings, the priceless porcelain vases on their pedestals. Bren was delighted with everything the staff had done, and expressed as much to the staff who served there. “One is astonished,” he said. “One knew you had extraordinary daring to make off with the dining room carpet, nadiin, but however did you get the furniture here?”

  “In a truck, nandi,” was the answer. “In several trucks. We pretended to loot it, we hid it in Matruso’s cousin’s house, and we took it by back roads.”

  “Extraordinary,” was all he could find to say. “One is extremely grateful, nadiin-ji. Say so to all the staff—and to Matruso’s cousin!”

  “Shall we serve, nandi?”

  “To be sure,” he said. Banichi and Jago were still with him, standing, and didn’t meet his eyes, which indicated they weren’t looking for a signal to sit down, and didn’t in the least want one. Barb and Toby were also standing, on best behavior—finally. “Sit down, sit down, Barb, Toby. We’re all informal here, after dinner. Any chair you like.”

  They were all outsized chairs for a human frame—Toby’s feet reached the floor, Barb’s didn’t, so she crossed her ankles and swung them a moment, feeling over the carved wood with pink-lacquered fingernails.

  “Very fancy,” Barb said.

  “This,” Bren said, slowly taking his own favored chair, “is the spoils of my Bujavid apartment. My staff risked their necks getting it away—or God knows what would have happened to it. Carted off to the South, likeliest. They shot up the aiji’s apartments, killed poor old Eidi, broke things—you have to understand, it’s like breaking things in a museum. These things are national treasures. The finest of the finest.”

  “They don’t have museums, do they?” Toby asked. Most every city on Mospheira did have.

  “Not as such,” he said, “but people do tour historic places, and the great houses do rotate pieces downstairs, into the public areas, during their own tour season. Anybody can go to the Bujavid, on the lower levels; anybody can apply to visit the library and the collections. Anyone
with scholarly interest can apply to have certain articles moved into a viewing room. You just don’t fire off guns in a place like that. It shocked everyone; it created great public resentment, once that fact got out. It was one thing that Murini’s lot shot people; it was another that his fools ripped up pieces of the past. You can’t imagine the furor.”

  “Well, I’d think people were more valuable,” Barb said.

  “People are valuable to their clan. The past is valuable to everybody. Losing that—is losing part of the collective. Part of the social fabric. It ripped. But restorers and copyists are at work. That’s one thing that’s taken so long. The aiji’s carpet that was ruined—the fools set a fire, for God’s sake—that’s going to take years to restore. In the meanwhile there will be a copy. The restored piece will probably go down to a formal room in the lower Bujavid.”

  “The repairs will be part of its history, I suppose,” Toby said.

  He was pleased. Sometimes Toby did get things. “Very much so. Exactly.”

  The brandy came, sizable doses, delivered by staff on a silver tray.

  “Quite the life,” Toby said, and shifted an uneasy glance toward Banichi and Jago, who hadn’t moved, not an inch. Toby didn’t say anything. But the thought was plain . . . Can’t they sit?

  “A good life,” Bren said, ignoring the issue. He had no apology for the staff’s formality, no protest about anything staff wanted to do. They were on edge, in foreign presence, touchy about his dignity, which they saw as offended. But he was very content at the moment, with a smoky brandy, a warm fire, and his brother at hand. He did relax.

  “You have to wear that all the time?”

  “The vest?” He did. He’d shed the dinner coat, and sat quite informally in this family setting, though staff had offered to bring him an evening jacket. Putting one on would be a struggle with the lace, and he’d opted not to bother. “This, I assure you, is informal.”

  “The shirt,” Toby said. “The whole outfit. I have a spare sweater, pair of pants that would fit you.”

  He shook his head, gave a little laugh. “I really couldn’t. The staff is on their best behavior. Guests, you know. They would be a little hurt if I didn’t look the way they like.”

  “Well, I suppose we look a little shabby,” Toby said.

  “I could find you a shirt and coat,” he said. “Boots, now, boots are always at a premium.”

  Toby laughed uneasily and laid a hand on his middle. “I wouldn’t look that good in a cutaway, I’m afraid.”

  “I’d like to try what the women wear,” Barb said.

  That was a poser. “None in my wardrobe, I’m afraid.”

  “Oh, but there’s staff,” Barb said.

  “I can’t quite,” Bren said. “And it wouldn’t fit you.” He couldn’t envision going to one of the servants and asking to borrow her wardrobe—not to mention the issues of rank and guest status and Barb’s already shaky standing with staff. “Best not ask. Next time, next time you visit, I’ll send you both a package, country court regalia, the whole thing.”

  “Not me, in the lace,” Toby said. “I’d have that in the soup.” And then he added: “You used to wear casuals here.”

  “A long time ago. Different occasion.” Silence hung in the air a moment.

  “A few years,” Toby said. “Not that long ago.”

  “It’s different,” he said. “It’s just different now.”

  “You’re Lord Bren, now. Is that more than being the paidhi?”

  “A bit more.”

  “When are you going to visit Mospheira?”

  “It’s what I said. It’s not likely I will,” he said into a deeper and deeper silence. “Not that I wouldn’t enjoy certain places. Certain people. But it’s just different.”

  And the silence just lay there a moment. “You can’t say ‘enjoy old friends,’ can you?”

  “Toby,” Barb said, a caution.

  Which said, didn’t it, that he’d been the subject of at least one unhappy conversation?

  “I’m kind of out of the habit,” he said. “And no, not the way I think of ‘friends.’ Nobody on the island’s in that category any longer. Shawn Tyers, maybe. But he’s busy being President. Sonja Podesta. Sandra Johnson. Who’s gone on to have a life.” He’d named two women and he saw Barb frown. “I have friends up on the station. Jase, for one. Jase is a good friend. But—” That was headed down its own dark alley. He stopped, before it got to its destination, which was that it wasn’t easy to keep friendships polished when he was more likely to get back to the station sooner than Jase would get a chance to visit the planet. And that wasn’t going to be any time soon. “On the continent I have my associates,” he said. “My aishi.”

  Toby didn’t look happy with that statement, but damned if Toby was going to sit there in front of Banichi and Jago, who did understand Mosphei’, and tell him that atevi sentiments were in some measure deficient for a human.

  “Trust me,” Bren said, pointedly, “that I’m extremely content in my household. I’m not alone. I’m never alone, not for an hour out of the day. And I do ask you both to understand that, in all possible ways.”

  Again the small silence.

  “I brought you a present,” Toby exclaimed suddenly, getting up, shattering the dark mood entirely. “I have it in our room.”

  “Let Banichi go with you,” Bren said gently, and with a little restoration of humor. “You don’t run about alone, either. You come here with no bodyguard, unless Barb wants to take that post . . . you can’t just run up and down the halls as if you were my staff. You’re a guest. You need an escort. You don’t open your own doors. It’s my social obligation.”

  Toby looked at him as if he were sure he was being gigged, but he stayed quite sober.

  “I’m serious. It’s just good manners. Mine, not yours, but be patient.”

  “So who’s going to escort . . . Barb?” Toby asked, and slid a glance toward Jago, the only woman in his personal guard—Jago, who had as soon consign Barb to the bay.

  “Exactly,” Bren said, and in Ragi: “Banichi-ji, please see Toby to his room. He forgot an item.”

  “Nandi,” Banichi said gravely, and went to the hall door and opened it for Toby.

  Which left him, and Barb, and Jago standing by the door.

  “So,” Barb said in the ensuing silence, “you are happy, Bren.”

  “Very,” he said. “You?”

  “Very,” she said, and slid in the chair and stood up, walking over to the fire, which played nicely on her fair curls. She bent down and put a stick of wood in. “I love fires. Not something you do on board.”

  He sat where he was. “Not likely. You live aboard the boat, year round?”

  She nodded, and looked back at him, and walked back toward her chair.

  Or toward him. She rested a hip on the outsized arm of his chair. He didn’t make his arm convenient to her. She laid a hand on his shoulder.

  “She wouldn’t object, would she?”

  “She may, and I do. Move off, Barb.”

  “Bren, I’m your sister-in-law. Well, sort of.”

  “Marry him, then.” He wished he hadn’t said that. He couldn’t get up without shoving Barb off the arm and he could all but feel Jago’s eyes burning a hole in Barb. “It’s not funny, Barb.”

  “I just don’t see why—”

  He put his hand on her to shove her off the chair arm, just as the door opened and Toby walked in.

  And stopped.

  Barb got up sedately. Cool as ice. In that moment he hated her, and he hated very, very few people on either side of the straits.

  Toby didn’t say a thing. And there wasn’t a graceful thing for him to say.

  “I was just talking to Bren,” Barb said.

  “Why don’t you turn in?” Toby asked. “Bren and I have things to discuss.”

  Barb’s glance flicked toward Jago, and the ice crackled. Barb shook her head emphatically at that suggestion. “I’ll walk back when you do,
” she said. “Toby, honestly, we were just talking. I wanted to ask Bren something. His guard understands us.”

  “It was talk,” Bren said. The Mospheiran thing to do was to explode. Among atevi, involving atevi, it cost too much. So did having it out now, on the very first night of their stay. “What is this surprise of yours?”

  A wrapped present. Gilt paper. Ribbons. Toby resolutely held it out to him, a box about the size of a small book, and Bren got up and took it. Shook it, whimsically. Toby gave him a suspicious look.

  “We’re too old for that, are we?” Bren said. “Well.” He looked at the paper. It said Happy Birthday. “God, how long have you saved this one?”

  “Since the first year you went away,” Toby said. And shrugged. “It can’t live up to expectations. But I was dead set you were coming back. So I got it, for luck.”

  “Superstitious idiot,” Bren said, and, it being Jago and Banichi alone, he took the chance to hug Toby, hug him close and mutter into his ear. “Barb’s mad at me. She made that damned clear. Don’t react. It’ll blow over.”

  Toby shoved him back and looked at him at close range. Didn’t say a word.

  “Truth,” he said, steady on with the gaze, and Toby scowled back.

  “Truth?” Toby asked him, when that wasn’t exactly what Toby was asking, and he grabbed Toby and pulled him close for a second word.

  “My lady’s standing over there armed to the teeth, and she doesn’t take jokes. Neither does Banichi. For God’s sake, Toby, nothing’s at issue. Barb’s acting out; she’s mad about dinner. I embarrassed her. You know Barb by now.”

  He took a big chance with that, a really big chance. But this time when Toby shoved him back at arm’s length to look at him, Toby had a sober, unhappy look on his face.

  “Damn it,” Toby said.

  “Look, you two,” Barb said. She stood, arms folded, over to the side. “What’s going on between you two?”

  “Turn about,” Bren said darkly, and held up the present. “Shall I open it?”

  “Open it,” Toby said. “It’s not much.”