Invader (16 page)

He started replaying the speech, the assassination attempt, the police questions, asking himself what they'd suspected and what they'd meant.

He readjusted the lumpy pillows, stuffed more under his arm and fell back in them, asking himself if maybe aspirin would help.

But that gradually became a dimmer thought, and a dimmer one, as the ribs stopped hurting, having found some bracing against the pillows that kept the tape from cutting in. He wasn't sure it was sleep, but the thoughts began to be fewer, and fewer, and he wouldn't move, not while he'd found a place where he actually had no pain.

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^
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Y
ou couldn't
see the orbiting ship in Shejidan. City lights obscured all the dimmer stars — granted a clear sky, which it looked to be, a return of late summer warmth above the city, mountain winds sending a few wisps of dark cloud across a pink-tinged and bruised-looking dawn.

Uisidi liked fresh air, and ate breakfast on her balcony, here, as at Malguri, and Bren couldn't help but think of Banichi's disapproval of the balcony in lady Damiri's apartment — which, if he looked directly up from the table, he thought must be the balcony above this one.

The venture into hostile territory, as it were, would give a sane man pause, and he'd had more than a twinge of doubt in coming here, but it gave him, too, a strange, fatalistic sense of continuity, things getting back on track, reminding him vividly of Malguri, and now that he was here, the butterflies had gone away and he was glad he'd accepted the invitation. The old ateva sitting across from him was so frail-looking the wind could carry her away — her servants and her security around her; Cenedi, chief of the latter, standing to Ilisidi in the same position Banichi, when he wasn't standing watch over the paidhi, held with Tabini.

Banichi wasn't here. Banichi still hadn't come back; it was Jago who'd delivered him into Cenedi's hands at the door — and Cenedi who'd delivered him to Eisidi's company. Cenedi, who directed every sniper who had a motive to consider the Bu-javid's balconies, and who, if someone transgressed Cenedi's direction, would take it very personally: a Guild assassin, Cenedi was, like Jago, like Banichi. For that reason he felt safe in Cenedi's hands, not at all because Cenedi happened to owe him, personally — which Cenedi did — but precisely because personal debt wouldn't weigh a hair with Cenedi if he were called on — professionally.

So the paidhi sat down with the aiji-dowager, the most immediate arbiter of life and death, possibly in collusion with the man who'd tried to kill him last night, at a table outside on a balcony he was sure was as safe and no safer than his own upstairs. White curtains billowed out of the room beyond them in a dawn wind that lacked the cold edge of Malguri's rain-soaked mornings. The wind carried instead the heavy musk of tropic diossi flowers from somewhere nearby, possibly another balcony.

Potential enemies, they shared tea first.

And small talk.

"Does it hurt much?" the dowager asked.

"Not much, nand' dowager. Not often."

"You seem distracted."

"By thoughts, nand' dowager."

'This fiancee?"

Damn
the woman. There was decidedly a leak somewhere, and there was absolutely nothing chance about Ilisidi's revealing it as an opening gambit: that she did so might be a gesture of goodwill toward the paidhi.

It was definitely a demonstration of her power to reach inside Tabini's intimates' living space.

"Her action is nothing I can complain of, nand' dowager." He took satisfaction in giving not a flicker of emotion to a wicked old campaigner. "She was certainly within her rights."

"No quarrel, then."

"None, nand' dowager. I regard her highly, still. Certainly she would have told me — but business, as you know," (pause for no small irony) "kept me on this side of the strait. That's certainly the heart of her complaints against me."

"The woman's a fool," Ilisidi said. "Such a personable young man."

One couldn't argue opinions with the dowager. And a sparkle of warmth and enjoyment was in Ilisidi's eyes, twice damn her, the smile on thin, creased lips just faintly discernible.

He said graciously, "My mother thinks so, I'm sure, nai-ji. So does Jago. But I fear both are biased."

A servant laid down two plates of food — eggs, and game, in season, to be sure — muffins — the muffins were always safe.

"Human ways and human choices," Ilisidi said. "You have no relationship with this woman they've sent?"

"Deana Hanks."

"This woman, I say."

"I have none such," he said. "Not the remotest interest, I assure the dowager."

"Pity."

"Oh, I don't think so, nand' dowager." He applied cream to a muffin, or tried to. A servant slipped in a little deft help and he abandoned the effort to the servant.

"Such an inconvenience," Ilisidi said.

"Lack of appeal in my professional associate — or the broken arm?"

Ilisidi was amused. A salt-and-pepper brow quirked on an impeccably grave black face. Gold eyes. "The arm, actually. When are you rid of that uncomfortable thing, nadi?"

"I don't know, aiji-ma. They sent me instructions. I confess I haven't read them."

"No interest?"

"No time. I'd quite forgotten to read them." The ice had broken and other topics were permissible. He steered in his own direction. "Your grandson was anxious to have me back."

"My grandson would have traded three lords and an estate to get you back, nand' paidhi. Drive a hard bargain with him."

"The dowager is very kind."

"Oh, let's be practical. We've a damned foreigner ship in our sky, the rural lords are in revolt, someone tried to kill you, the religious see omens in the numbers, and the television tells us absolutely nothing. Fools sit out at night on their rooftops with binoculars, armed with shotguns."

"If you had eyes to see to Mospheira, you'd see the same, aiji-ma. As I said in the joint meeting, opinion as to potential benefits is vastly divided."

Ilisidi's head cocked slightly — she had one better ear, Bren had come to think; and certainly Cenedi lurking at the double doors was taking mental notes on every inflection, every nuance, everything said and not said.

"Nand' paidhi," Ilisidi said, "what you want to say this morning, say to me, straight out. I'm curious."

"It's a request."

"Make it."

"That the dowager use her influence to assure the Association's stability. I know how much that entails. I also know you've weighed the cost more than anyone alive, nand' dowager."

He touched the old woman to the quick. He saw Ilisidi's eyes shadow, saw the darkness of a passing thought, the map of years and choices on her face, the scars of a long, long warfare of atevi conscience.

With two words and the skill of the assassin behind her, this woman could take the Association apart, wreck the peace, topple lords and assure the breakup of everything humans vitally concerned with the peace had to work with.

And she refrained. Atevi lords weren't much on self-denial. They were a great deal on reputation, on being respected. Or feared.

Twice the hasdrawad had passed over Ilisidi's claim to be aiji of the Association that effectively dominated atevi affairs. They'd passed over her as too likely to curtail other lords' ambitions. Too likely to launch unprecedented worries.

Little they'd understood the men they'd installed as (they hoped) more peaceful administrators: first her son and then Tabini aiji in her stead, and oh, how that rankled — her grandson Tabini reputed as the virtuous, the generous, the wise ruler.

Ask 'Sidi-ji to remain a shadow-player to posterity, as well as the past generation?

"I haven't knifed the mayor or salted the wine," Ilisidi muttered. "Tell my grandson I'm watching him, nand' paidhi, for like good behavior." Nothing fazed Ilisidi's appetite. Four eggs had disappeared from her plate. Her knife blade tapped the china, and two more appeared from the quick hand of a servant. "Eggs, nand' paidhi?"

"Thank you, nand' dowager, but I'm still being careful with my stomach."

"Wise." Another tap of the knife blade, this time on the teapot. The empty one was whisked away, another appeared, the cosy removed, the dowager's cup refilled. "Not disturbed about last night."

"I regret the loss of life."

"Fools."

"Most probably."

"Uncertainty breeds such acts. Debate, hell. What
else
is there to do but deal with these people? What are they
voting
on?"

"I'm sure I agree, nand' dowager."

"It's amazing to me, nand' paidhi, at every turn of our affairs, just at our achieving the unity we sought and just at our developing the power for the technology we could have developed for ourselves — lo, here you fall down from the skies and give us, what, television and computer games? And at our
second
opportunity to adjust the terms of the association, coincidentally with our efforts toward space — behold, this ship in the heavens, and another moment of crisis. There are damned important atevi issues, nand' paidhi, which have repeatedly been set aside for the sake of unity in the face of human intrusion, issues which have
no
import to humans but vast import to atevi. And it's not just because the hasdrawad thinks I'm a bloody-handed tyrant, nand' paidhi, no matter what you may have heard from my, of course, clean-fingered grandson — there are reasons I was passed over for the succession that speak a great deal more to the political climate at the time my son demised and left Tabini and his junior cronies in position to vote us down. So here we are again, nand' paidhi." The knife whacked the plate, commanding attention. "Listen to me.
Listen
to me, paidhi-ji, damn you. You ask forbearance. I ask your full attention."

He'd been paying it. Completely. But he understood her. "All my attention, nand' dowager."

"Remember Malguri. Remember the world as it was. Remember the things that should survive."

"With all my mind, nand' dowager." It was the truth. Malguri wasn't that far away in his mind. He didn't think now it would ever be: the uncompromising cliffs, the fortress, half primitive, half modern, electric wires strung along ancient stones. The wi'itkitiin crying against the wind, gliding down the cliffs.

The towering threat of riders on mecheiti, shadows against the sun.

"Yet one more time," Ilisidi said, "the hasdrawad bids me step aside for progress. I am
old
, nand' paidhi. My associates are old. How many more years will there be to hear us? How many more years will there be, before everything is television and telephones and satellites, and there's no more room for us?"

"There will be wi'itkitiin, nand' dowager. I swear to you. There will
be
Malguri. And Taiben. And the other places. I've seen. If a stone-stubborn human like me can be snared by it — how can atevi not?"

For a moment Ilisidi said nothing, her yellow eyes lifeless in thought. Then she nodded slowly as if she'd reached some private decision, and made short work of another egg. "Well," she said then, "well, we do what we can. As we can. And these atevi, these humans sitting on their roofs this dawn, nand' paidhi, what would you say to them?"

It was a question, one without a clear answer. "I'd say they shouldn't panic yet. I'd say no one on this world has an answer, except that wholeheartedly I'll speak as the aiji's translator, nand' dowager, to the humans above and the humans below. And I'll make you personally aware as I can what I'm hearing."

"Oh? Is that Tabini's word on it?"

"I don't know why he didn't stand in the way of my being here."

"Clever man."

Argue with Ilisidi, and you needed only supply the cues. She was amused in spite of herself.

"I
will
get word to you somehow, nand' dowager. It's a frightening job to be an honest man."

"A dangerous job, among fools."

"But neither you nor Tabini is a fool, nand' dowager. So my life is in your hands."

"You claim no debts, nand' paidhi?"

"I'd be a fool. You're also honest."

"Oh, paidhi-ji. Don't ruin my reputation."

She touched such dangerous and human chords in him.

"The dowager knows exactly what she's doing," he said, "and the world
won't
forget her, not if she did nothing more than she's already done. She needs nothing else."

Ilisidi's brows came down in a thunderous scowl. But didn't quite stay that way. "You are reprehensible, nadi. It was a marvelous performance last night, by the way. I don't say brilliant, but the faint was a nice touch."

"I honestly don't remember what I answered the gentleman."

"Damned reckless."

"Not if I went out there to tell the truth — as I did. Too many sides in this, nand' dowager. It's hard enough to track the truth. And if the paidhi once begins to shade the truth at all, the difficulties I can make for myself are absolute hell. Please, nand' dowager, never read anything atevi into my actions. It's very dangerous."

"Wicked, wicked man. You're so very skillful."

"Nand' dowager, in all seriousness, Malguri touches human instincts, so, so deeply."

"What, greed?"

"Respect, nand' dowager. A sense of age, of profound truths. Respect for something hands made, that's stood through storms and wars and time. It persuades us that things we do may last and matter."

'That's the best thing I've ever heard said about humans."

"I assure you it's so, nand' dowager."

"More tea?"

"I've a meeting I shouldn't be late to."

"With my grandson and the Policy Committee?"

"The dowager's intelligence is, as usual, accurate. May I ask a favor?"

"I don't say I'll grant it."

"It's to all our good. Nand' dowager, be frank with me constantly. I value your interests. Give me the benefit of your advice when you see me stray, and I swear I'll always trust the tea at your table."

Ilisidi laughed, a flash of white teeth. "Away with you. Flatterer."