Conspirator Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  An Excerpt from Bren Cameron’s notes

  DAW Titles by C.J. CHERRYH

  Raves for Conspirator:

  “Complex and sophisticated . . . those who persevere will be rewarded with a space opera where ideas are as important as action. . . . fans will be delighted.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Her lucid storytelling conveys enough backstory to guide newcomers without boring longtime series followers. The characters are well drawn, and Cherryh’s depiction of both human and alien cultures is riveting.”

  —Library Journal

  and the “Foreigner” series:

  “Cherryh’s gift for conjuring believable alien cultures is in full force here, and her characters...are brought to life with a sure and convincing hand.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “A seriously probing, thoughtful, intelligent piece of work, with more insight in half a dozen pages than most authors manage in half a hundred.”

  —Kirkus

  “Close-grained and carefully constructed...a book that will stick in the mind for a lot longer than the usual adventure romp.”

  —Locus

  “A large new Cherryh novel is always welcome...a return to the anthropological science fiction in which she has made such a name is a double pleasure...superlatively drawn aliens and characterization.”

  —Chicago Sun-Times

  “As always, Cherryh alternates complex political maneuvering with pell-mell action sequences in an intensely character-driven SF novel sure to appeal to the many fans of this series.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “. . . . that transforms the book into an absorbing combination of anthropological SF and ‘The Ransom of Red Chief.’ Faithful Foreigner saga followers, in particular, will have a ball.”

  —Booklist

  DAW Titles by C.J. CHERRYH

  THE FOREIGNER UNIVERSE

  FOREIGNER

  INVADER

  INHERITOR

  PRECURSOR

  DEFENDER

  EXPLORER

  DESTROYER

  PRETENDER

  DELIVERER

  CONSPIRATOR

  DECEIVER

  THE ALLIANCE-UNION UNIVERSE

  REGENESIS

  DOWNBELOW STATION

  THE DEEP BEYOND Omnibus:

  Serpent’s Reach |Cuckoo’s Egg

  ALLIANCE SPACE Omnibus:

  Merchanter’s Luck | 40,000 in Gehenna

  AT THE EDGE OF SPACE Omnibus:

  Brothers of Earth | Hunter of Worlds

  THE FADED SUN Omnibus:

  Kesrith | Shon’jir | Kutath

  THE CHANUR NOVELS

  THE CHANUR SAGA Omnibus:

  The Pride Of Chanur | Chanur’s Venture | The Kif Strike Back

  CHANUR’S ENDGAME Omnibus:

  Chanur’s Homecoming | Chanur’s Legacy

  THE MORGAINE CYCLE

  THE MORGAINE SAGA Omnibus:

  Gate of Ivrel | Well of Shiuan | Fires of Azeroth

  EXILE’S GATE

  OTHER WORKS

  THE DREAMING TREE Omnibus:

  The Tree of Swords and Jewels | The Dreamstone

  ALTERNATE REALITIES Omnibus:

  Port Eternity | Wave Without a Shore | Voyager in Night

  THE COLLECTED SHORT FICTION OF CJ CHERRYH

  ANGEL WITH THE SWORD

  Copyright © 2009 by C.J. Cherryh

  All rights reserved.

  DAW Books Collectors No. 1474.

  All characters and events in this book are fictitious. All resemblance to persons living or dead is coincidental.

  The scanning, uploading and distribution of this book via the Internet or any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal, and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage the electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  First Paperback Printing, May 2010

  ISBN : 978-1-101-54978-0

  DAW TRADEMARK REGISTERED

  U.S. PAT. AND TM. OFF. AND FOREIGN COUNTRIES

  —MARCA REGISTRADA

  HECHO EN U.S.A.

  S.A.

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  To Jane and to Sheijidan—for keeping me honest.

  1

  Spring was coming. Frost still touched the window glass of the Bujavid and whitened the roof tiles of Shejidan at sunrise, but it left daily by mid-morning. This was a sign.

  So was the letter, delivered by morning post, discreetly received by staff, and, understood to be important, delivered with Bren Cameron’s morning tea.

  The little message cylinder hadn’t come by the automated systems. It had most certainly traveled the old-fashioned way, by rail, knowing the bent of the sender.

  It bore the seal of Lord Tatiseigi of the Atageini of the Padi Valley. It was silver and sea-ivory, with carved lilies.

  When opened, its exquisite calligraphy, in green as well as black ink, written on modern vellum, nicely paid courtesies due the paidhi-aiji, the human interpreter for the ruler of three quarters of the planet; the paidhi-aiji, the Lord of the Heavens, etc., etc. . . .

  Tatiseigi was being extraordinarily polite, and that, in itself, was an ominous sign, since Bren was currently, and for the last several months, sitting in the old man’s city apartment.

  Foreboding settled in before his glance skipped past the ornately flowing salutation to the text of the letter.

  The paidhi will rejoice to know that repairs here at Tirnamardi have gone extremely well and we have greatly enjoyed this winter sojourn watching the restoration. However, with the legislative session imminent and with business in the capital pressing upon this house, one must regretfully quit these rural pleasures and return to the Bujavid as of the new moon . . .

  Two days from now. God!

  One most fervently hopes that this will not greatly inconvenience the paidhi-aiji. A separate letter exhorts our staff to assist the paidhi-aiji in whatever arrangements the paidhi-aiji may desire for his comfort and expedition . . .

  Expedition, hell! Two days was extreme gall, never mind that he hadn’t a leg to stand on . . . nor any place else to go. The man could have phoned. He could well have phoned instead of taking up a whole day of grace using the trains and the whole message process.

  One naturally hopes that the difficulties attending the paidhi-aiji’s own residence have now been settled . . .

  Tatiseigi’s current house guest in his country retreat was the aiji-dowager, who absolutely knew everything going on in the capital, including the paidhi’s situation. So the old man knew damned well the paidhi-aiji’s apartment difficulties were not in fact settled in the least, that Tabini-aiji’s apartments were not yet repaired, either—which meant Tabini was still residing in the dowager’s apartment while the dowager sojourned in Tirnamardi with Lord Tatiseigi.

  God, one only imagined whether Tabini might not be in receipt of a similar letter from his grandmother . . . requesting her apartment vacated.

  He somehow doubted Ilisidi would be that abrupt—or share the roof with her grandson for long. She likely would be off for the distant east, on the other side of the continent, where she h
ad her estate.

  He himself might, however, be sitting in the hotel at the foot of the hill in two days. This historic apartment, which he had occupied since Tabini’s return to power—and his own return from space—had served him very well through the winter; and, thanks to politics, there had been no delicate way to get him back into his own apartment, not as yet. Scions of a Southern clan, the Farai, were camped out in it, and for various reasons Tabini-aiji could not or would not pitch them out and get it back.

  He moved himself and his teacup from the sunny morning room to the less sunny, and chillier, office. There he sat down at the desk, laid out a sheet of vellum, and framed a reply which would not go by train, or it never would reach Tatiseigi before the lord left for the capital.

  To the Lord of the Lilies, Tatiseigi of the Atageini, Master of Tirnamardi, Jewel of the Padi Valley, and its great associations of the townships of . . .

  He had the letter for a guide through that maze of relationships, all of which had, in properly formal phrases, to be stated. He refrained from colored ink, even given its availability in the desk supplies.

  From the Lord of the Heavens, Bren Cameron of Mospheira, honored to serve the aiji as paidhi-aiji,

  Words cannot convey the gratitude of my household to have been housed in such historic and kabiu premises this recent season.

  One most earnestly rejoices in the anticipated return of the Lord of the Atageini to his ancestral residence, and further rejoices at the news that the beautiful and historic estate of Tirnamardi again shines as a light to the region.

  They’d wait a few years before the hedge out front had grown back. Not to mention the scars on the lawn. The collapse of one historic bedroom into another.

  Please convey felicitations also to your distinguished guest. The paidhi-aiji will of course seek his own resources and immediately remove to other premises, hoping to leave this excellent apartment ready for your return. One is sure your staff will rejoice and take great comfort in the presence of their own lord.

  That was one letter. He placed it in Tatiseigi’s ivory-lily message cylinder, as the reply to the message it had contained, and dropped the cylinder into the outbound mail basket.

  Then he wrote another letter, this one to Tabini . . . with less elegant calligraphy, and omitting the formal lines of courtesies: he and the aiji dispensed with those, when they wrote in their own hands—a very humaninspired haste and brevity.

  Aiji-ma, Lord Tatiseigi has announced his intention to return in two days, in company with the dowager, necessitating my removal to other quarters. One is well aware of the difficulties which surround my former residence and expects no actions in that matter, which might be to disadvantage. One still has the hotel as a recourse, which poses considerable security concern, but if need be, one will ask more assistance with security, to augment staff, and will manage.

  In the days before the legislative session, however, this situation does not arrive wholly unforeseen, and this would be an opportune time to visit my estate in Sarini province, barring some directive to the contrary, aiji-ma. One has some preparation yet to do in the month preceeding the legislative session, but the work can travel with me, and the sea air would be pleasant even in this early season. Also one has regional obligations which have long waited on opportunity, not only within the household there, but with the neighboring estate and of course the village.

  Accordingly one requests a month’s leave to visit Najida, the living which the aiji’s generosity has provided me, where I intend to pay courtesies to its staff and its village, and also to pay long-delayed courtesies to the estate of Lord Geigi, which I have these several months promised him to do.

  Lord Geigi was lord and administrator not only of the coastal estate of Kajiminda and all of Sarini province, but of all atevi in space, in his capacity as Tabini’s viceroy on the space station. And doing a damned fine job of it, up there. But Geigi had left his sister in charge of his estate at Kajiminda, the sister had died, leaving a young and inexperienced nephew in the post, and Geigi understandably wanted a report on affairs there aside from that which the nephew sent him.

  In no way will this detract from my attention to legislative and committee matters, but it will at least provide more time to provide for a city residence . . . possibly even taking a house, or establishing in some secure fashion in the hotel . . .

  Depressing thought, trekking through the city to reach what would be, were he in his own apartment, a simple trip down in the lift. And a damned great problem to be living and trying to do research in the hotel, where security was a nightmare and spying was rife—all the minor lords being in residence for the session. The Bujavid housed the legislative chambers of the Western Association, the aishidi’tat; it housed the aiji’s audience hall, and the national archives. But it also, and year round, housed the most highly-placed lords of the aishidi’tat. A centuries-old hierarchy dictated who resided on what floor, in what historic apartment: the teacup Bren used casually, for instance, was ciabeti artwork, from the Padi Valley’s kilns, probably two hundred years old—not to mention the antiquity of the desk, the carpet, and the priceless porcelain on the shelf. Who held what apartment, with what appointment, from what date—all these things meant respect, in proportion to the antiquity of the premises and their connection with or origin from potent clans and associations of clans.

  And the aiji’s translator, the jumped-up human who had used to occupy the equivalent of a court secretary’s post in the garden wing next to the aiji’s cook—the human who had risen to share the same floor as the aiji’s own apartment, in the depletion of an ancient house which had left it vacant—had now lost that lordly apartment to the same coup that had temporarily ousted Tabini from the aijinate.

  In the coup, Tabini’s own apartment had been shot up, his staff murdered, and Tabini currently endured a sort of exile in his grandmother’s apartment, while his own place underwent refurbishment and his staff underwent its own problems of recruitment and security checks.

  But the apartment next door to the aiji’s proper apartment, the apartment which had briefly been the paidhi’s, was now, yes, occupied by the Farai, Southerners, no less, out of the Marid—the very district that had staged the coup and murdered Tabini’s staff.

  And why should Tabini thus favor a Southern clan, by letting them remain there? The Farai were natives of the northern part of the Marid, the Saijin district, specifically Morigi-dar—they were part of a foursome of power in the South, and they claimed high credit for turning coat one more time, opening the doors of the Bujavid and (so they claimed) enabling the aiji to retake the capital—while the rest of the Marid, namely the Tasaigin and the Dojisigin and Dausigin districts of the Marid, currently teetered somewhere between loyalty and renewed rebellion.

  If the Farai were telling the truth about a change of loyalty, they were owed some reward for it—and to put a gloss of legitimacy on their seizure of that precious apartment, they claimed inheritance from the Maladesi, the west coast clan that had once owned the apartment in question. It seemed the last living member of that defunct clan had married into the Farai’s adjunct clan, the Morigi. Tabini maintained the Maladesi lands had reverted; they claimed inheritance. It was at least a serious claim.

  So their seizure of that apartment actually had some justification. Tabini’s tossing them out of it might make his own future north apartment wall more secure— having a Southern clan there was a huge security problem . . . but tossing the Farai out of it in favor of the human paidhi, after their very public switch to the aiji’s side, would be counted an insult . . . a very strong insult . . . that might damage the Farai’s status in the still unstable South. And whether or not the Farai were sincere in their switching allegiances, they were challenging the Taisigi clan and seeking to rise in status in the South. Swatting the Farai down might help the Taisigi, who were not Tabini’s allies in any sense.

  So the paidhi had no wish to upset that delicate balance.

  A
nd certainly no other clan wanted to be relocated from their historic premises, the rights to which went back hundreds of years, to give the paidhi their space. They had their rights, the Bujavid had allotted all its upstairs room, and outside of booting out legislative offices in the public floors and starting a new scramble for available apartments below, there was nothing to be done for the paidhi.

  All of which boiled down to an uncomfortable situation. They had a clan out of the Marid taking up residence next to Tabini, where it wasn’t wanted . . . and for various reasons, it might stay a while. It was quite likely that one of the delays in Tabini getting into his apartment was his security reinforcing, and probably heavily bugging, that wall between him and the Farai.

  All of that meant the paidhi was borrowing Lord Tatiseigi’s historic apartment—vacant so long as Tatiseigi of the Atageini had been out repairing his own manor, which had been likewise shot up in the coup. The work was nearly finished, the legislature was about to meet—

  And the paidhi now had nowhere to go but the hotel or the country.

  There was, however, a bright spot of coincidence in the current situation . . . should he go to his coastal estate.

  His brother Toby had just put out of Jackson, out of the human enclave of Mospheira—Toby fairly well lived on his boat, and plied the waters mostly in the strait between Mospheira and the mainland. He might have to hopscotch a call from here to Mogari-nai and Jackson, but however they got it through, unless Toby was on some specific business, Toby could easily divert over to the mainland, just about as fast as he himself could get to the coast, and they might manage to have that long-delayed visit.