Foreigner: (10th Anniversary Edition) (23 page)

But, caretaker of Malguri? One knew where Djinana stood. Firmly
against
the hanging of schedule boards and the importation of extension cords and the sticking of nails in Malguri’s walls. He knew that—but he didn’t know even that much about Banichi at the present moment. Certainly Banichi hadn’t been wholly forthcoming with him, either that, or Banichi had been damned lax—which wasn’t Banichi’s style as he knew it.

Unless something truly catastrophic had happened. Something like an attempt on Tabini himself.

That surmise upset his stomach.

Which, dammit, he didn’t need to happen to him when he had just gotten his stomach used to food again. No, Tabini wasn’t in danger. Tabini had far better security than he did; Tabini had the whole damned City to look out for him, while
his
staff was down at the airport, leaving
him
to Cenedi, who could walk in here and blow him and Djinana to small bits, if Cenedi were so inclined to disregard
biichi-ji
and stain the historic carpets.

“Appropriate paper and pen.”

“With your own scroll-case, nadi?”

“The paidhi doesn’t know where his staff put it. They don’t let him in on such matters. Try some appropriate drawer. If you don’t find it, it can go bare. —And if Banichi isn’t back by tomorrow morning,
you’ll
go with me.”

“I—” Djinana began a protest. And made a bow, instead. “I have some small skill at protocols. I’ll look for
the scroll-case. Or provide one from the estate. Would the paidhi wish advice in phrasing?”

“Djinana, tell me.
Am
I frightening?
Am
I so foreign?
Would
I give children bad dreams?”

“I—” Djinana looked twice distressed.

“Do I disturb
you
, nadi? I wouldn’t want to. I think you’re an honest man. And I’ve met so few.”

“I wish the paidhi every good thing.”

“You
are
skilled in protocol. Do you think you can get me there and back tomorrow unpoisoned?”

“Please, nand’ paidhi. I’m not qualified—”

“But you’re honest. You’re a good man. You’d defend your mother before you’d defend me. As a human, I find that very honest. You owe your mother more than you do me. As I owe mine, thank you. And in that particular, you could be human, nadi, which I don’t personally consider an outrageous thing to be.”

Djinana regarded him with a troubled frown. “I truly don’t understand your figure of speech, nadi.”

“Between Malguri, and your mother, nadi—if it were the ruin of one or the other—
which
would you choose?”

“That of my mother, nadi. My
man’chi
is with this place.”

“For Malguri’s reputation—would you die, nadi-ji?”

“I’m not nadi-ji. Only nadi, nand’ paidhi.”

“Would you die, nadi-ji?”

“I would die for the stones of this place. So I would, nadi-ji. I couldn’t abandon it.”

“We also,” he said, in a strange and angry mood, “we human folk, understand antiquities. We understand preserving. We understand the importance of old stories. Everything we own and know—is in old stories. I wish we could give you everything we know, nadi, and I wish you could give us the same, and I wish we could travel to the moon together before we’re both too old.”

“To the moon!” Djinana said, with an anxious, uncertain laughter. “What would we do there?”

“Or to the old station. It’s your
inheritance
, nadi-ji. It
should be.” The paidhi was vastly upset, he discovered, and saying things he ordinarily reserved for one man, for Tabini, things he dared not bring out in open council, because there were interests vested in suspicion of humans and of everything the paidhi did and said, as surely misguidance and deception of atevi interests.

So he told the truth to a caretaker-servant, instead.

And was angry at Banichi, who probably, justifiably, was angry with the paidhi. But the paidhi saw things slipping away from him, and atevi he’d trusted turning strange and distant and withholding answers from him at moments of crisis they might have foreseen.

He’d puzzled Djinana, that was certain. Djinana simply gathered up the dessert dish and, when he couldn’t find the scroll-case, brought him an antique one from the estate, and pen and paper and sealing-wax.

He wrote, in his best hand,
Accepting the aiji-dowager’s most gracious invitation for breakfast at the first of the clock, the paidhi-aiji, Bren Cameron, with profound respect
…

It was the form—laying it on, perhaps, but not by much. And he trusted that the dowager wouldn’t have
her
mail censored. He passed the text by Djinana’s doubtless impeccable protocol-sense, then sealed it with his seal-ring and dismissed him to give it to Cenedi, who was probably growing very annoyed with waiting.

After that, with Djinana handling those courtesies, he composed another letter, to Tabini.

I am uneasy, aiji-ma. I feel that there must be duties in the City which go wanting, as there were several matters pending. I hope that your staff will provide me necessary briefings, as I would be distressed to fall out of current with events. As you may know, Malguri is not computerized, and phone calls appear out of the question.

Please accept my warm regards for auspicious days and fortunate outcome.
Baji-naji
be both in your favor. The paidhi-aiji Bren Cameron with profound respect and
devotion to the Association and to Tabini-aiji in the continuance of his office, the
…

He had to stop and count up the date on his fingers, figuring he had lost a day. Or two. He became confused—decided it was only one, then wrote it down and sealed the letter with only a ribbon seal, but with the wax directly on the paper.

That one was for Banichi to take on his
next
trip to the airport, and, one presumed, to the post.

Then, in the case that one never made it, he wrote a copy.

Djinana came back through the room, reporting he’d delivered the scroll, and asking would the paidhi need the wax-jack further.

“I’ve a little correspondence to take care of,” he said to Djinana. “I’ll blow out the wick and read awhile after, thank you, nadi. I don’t think I’ll need anything. Is the dowager’s gentleman out?”

“The door is locked for the night, nand’ paidhi, yes.”

“Banichi has a key.”

“He does, yes. So does nadi Jago. But they’ll most probably use the kitchen entry.”

The kitchen entry. Of course there was one. The food arrived, not from the stairs, but from the back halls, through the servants’ quarters, his bedroom, and the sitting room, before it reached his dining table.

“I’ll be fine, then. Good night, nadi Djinana. Thank you. You’ve been extremely helpful.”

“Good night, nand’ paidhi.”

Djinana went on back to his quarters, then. He finished his paraphrase of the note, and added:

If this is found, and no note of similar wording has reached you before this, Tabini-ji, suspect the hand that should have delivered the first message. After one poisoned cup, from the dowager, I am not reassured of anyone in Malguri, even my own staff.

He put it in the guest book, figuring that the next occupant
would find it, if he didn’t remove it himself. It wasn’t a book Banichi would necessarily read.

And, as he had just written, he was far from certain of anything or anyone in Malguri, tonight.

Thunder rumbled outside, and lightning lit rain-drops on the night-dark window glass, flared brief color from the stained glass borders.

Bren read, late, in no mood to sleep, or to share a bed with his morbid thoughts. He looked at pictures, when the words began to challenge his focus or his acceptance of atevi attitudes. He read about old wars. Betrayals. Poisonings.

Banichi arrived on a peal of thunder, walked in and stood by the fire. A fine mist glistened on his black, silver-trimmed uniform, and he seemed not pleased. “Nadi Bren, I wish you’d consult before decisions.”

The silence hung there. He looked at Banichi without speaking, without an expression on his face, and thought of saying, Nadi, I wish
you’d
consult before leaving.

But Banichi, for what he cared, could guess what he was thinking, the way he was left to guess what Banichi was thinking, or where Jago was, or why the so-called servants they’d brought for him from the City were absent or unavailable.

And maybe it wasn’t justified that he be angry, and maybe Banichi’s business at the airport or wherever he’d just been was entirely justified and too secret to tell him, but,
damn
, he was angry, a peculiar, stinging kind of anger that, while Banichi was standing there, added up to a hurt he hadn’t realized he felt so keenly, a thoroughly unprofessional and foolish and human hurt, which began with Tabini and extended to the two atevi besides Tabini that he’d thought he understood.

Heaving up his insides on a regular basis probably had something to do with it. Mineral balance. Vitamins. Unaccustomed foods that could leach nutrients out of you instead of putting them in, or chemically bind what you
needed … he could think of a dozen absolutely plausible excuses for calculatedly self-destructive behavior, half of them dietary and the other half because, dammit, his own hard-wiring or his own culture wanted to
like
some single one of the people he’d devoted his life to helping.

“I don’t
have
to be the paidhi,” he said, finally, since Banichi persisted in saying nothing. “I don’t have to leave my family and my people and live where I’m not welcome with nine tenths of the population.”

“How
do
they choose you?” Banichi asked.

“It’s a study. It’s something you specialize in. If you’re the best, and the paidhi quits, you take the job. That’s how. It’s something you do so there’ll be peace.”

“You’re the best at what you do.”

“I try to be,” he retorted. “I do try, Banichi. Evidently I’ve done something amiss. Possibly I’ve offended the aiji-dowager. Possibly I’ve gotten myself into a dangerous situation. I don’t know. That’s an admission of failure, Banichi.
I don’t know
. But you weren’t here to ask. Jago wasn’t here. I couldn’t raise Algini. Tano wasn’t on duty. So I asked Djinana, who didn’t know what maybe you could have told me. If you’d been here.”

Banichi frowned, darkly.

“Where
were
you, Banichi? Or should I ask? If you intended to answer my questions, you’d have told me you were leaving, and if you didn’t intend me to worry you wouldn’t trail the evidence past me and refuse my reasonable questions, when I rely on you for protection the Treaty doesn’t let me provide for myself.”

Banichi said nothing, nor moved for the moment. Then he removed his elbow from the fireplace stonework and stalked off toward the bedroom.

Bren snapped the book shut. Banichi looked back in startlement, he had that satisfaction. Banichi’s nerves were that tightly strung.

“Where’s Jago?” Bren asked.

“Outside. Refusing your reasonable questions, too.”

“Banichi, dammit!” He stood up, little good it did—he
still had to look up to Banichi’s face, even at a distance. “If I’m under arrest and confined here, —tell me. And where’s my mail? Don’t regular planes come to Maidingi? It looked like an airport to me.”

“From Shejidan, once a week. Most of the country, nadi, runs at a different speed. Be calm. Enjoy the lake. Enjoy the slower pace.”

“Slower pace? I want a solar recharge, Banichi. I want to make a phone call. Don’t tell me this place doesn’t have a telephone.”

“In point of fact, no, there isn’t a telephone. This is an historical monument. The wires would disfigure the—”

“Underground lines, Banichi. Pipes overhead. The place has plenty of wires.”

“They have to get here.”

“There’s gas. There’s light. Why aren’t there plug-ins? Why can’t someone go down to the town, go to a hardware and get me a damned power extension and a screw-in plug? I could sacrifice a ceiling light. The historic walls wouldn’t suffer defacement.”

“There isn’t a hardware. The town of Maidingi is a very small place, nadi Bren.”

“God.” His head was starting to hurt, acutely. His blood pressure was coming up again and he was dizzy, the light and warmth and noise of the fire all pouring into his senses as he groped after the fireplace stonework. “Banichi, why is Tabini doing this?”

“Doing what, nadi? I don’t think the aiji-ji has a thing to do with hardwares in Maidingi.”

He wasn’t amused. He leaned his back against the stones, folded his arms and fixed Banichi with an angry stare, determined to have it out, one way or the other. “You know, ‘doing what.’ I could feel better if I thought it was policy. I don’t feel better thinking it might be something I’ve done, or trouble I’ve made for Tabini—I
like
him, Banichi. I don’t want to be the cause of harm to him, or to you, or to Jago. It’s
my man’chi
. Humans are like that. We
have
unreasonable loyalties to people we
like, and you’re going far past the surface of my politeness, Banichi.”

“Clearly.”

“And I still
like
you, damn you. You don’t shake one of us, you don’t fling our
liking
away because your
man’chi
says otherwise, you can’t get rid of us when we
like
you, Banichi, you’re stuck with me, so make the best of it.”

There wasn’t a clear word for
like
. It meant a preference for salad greens or iced drinks. But
love
was worse. Banichi would never forgive him that.

Banichi’s nostrils flared, once, twice. He said, in accented Mosphei’, “What meaning? What meaning you say, nand’ paidhi?”

“It means the feeling I have for my mother and my brother and my job, I have for Tabini and for you and for Jago.” Breath failed him. Self-control did. He flung it all out. “Banichi, I’d walk a thousand miles to have a kind word from you. I’d give you the shirt from my back if you needed it; if you were in trouble, I’d carry you that thousand miles. What do you call that? Foolish?”

Another flaring of Banichi’s nostrils. “That would be very difficult for you.”