Pretender Read online

  “You may have the water first, nandi,” Tano began, as Algini also came out of the bath—but at that moment a racket broke out in the hall outside their suite, a stream of angry shouting. He could not make out words. He looked in that direction, down the short entry hall, in some alarm, and Tano went as far as the outer door and listened, while Banichi and Jago waited with Algini, hands on sidearms.

  “Cenedi is out in the hall, explaining certain things to the household staff,” Tano said wryly, which drew a little amusement out of them all. One was ever so glad to find Cenedi alive today, and clearly indignant: None of them doubted that Lord Tatiseigi’s household staff needed certain key points laid out before them and the head of the dowager’s bodyguard was the man to do it—not least bringing home the fact that most of Lord Tatiseigi’s security equipment belonged in a museum, not active service. Even the paidhi understood certain facts without explanation, notably that there was a very good chance that the intruders who had gotten into the house last night, not to mention spies predating them, might well have installed bugs, and wise servants would not discuss household business in any area until security with proper equipment had cleared it…

  Proper equipment. That was a sore spot. Security with proper equipment necessarily involved outsiders poking about in Lord Tatiseigi’s household security, even bringing in some outsiders, namely Taiben clan, with whom the Atageini maintained a centuries-old feud, while the bodyguard that Tabini had brought in had its own opinions, and certainly Banichi had voiced his.

  Outside security having access to house equipment had been one major sticking point of discussions downstairs. In the paidhi’s staff’s case, certain things they had were unique on the planet, a matter they had not entirely explained to the Atageini; anything that had come in from outside was better than what existed here. The Atageini lord was upset with the implications, his servants were all indignant, and the Guild security employed by the Atageini were in a particularly glum mood, having lost members of their staff due to deficiencies they themselves had doubtless pointed out to their old-fashioned lord long since. No, no, no, their lord would say: he bought quality to defend his house and his province. Quality items once purchased ought to be good for decades if not the next generation—Lord Tatiseigi had no understanding at all of how radically the advent of electronics and computers had changed that basic precept of atevi economy. Quality things lasted for generations, did they not? One bought the most expensive and it was clearly going to last for decades.

  And, oh, emphatically, one could never trust security outside one’s own man’chi, one’s own loyalty. That was a principle to which the Atageini had adhered for centuries. It had preserved their power, their autonomy, even within the aishidi’tat. It had guaranteed the aiji had a refuge when things came to crisis. Lord Tatiseigi would very tactfully suggest so. Did it not prove his case?

  Never mind that a little support from Tatiseigi would have meant joining the detested Taibeni in passing certain bills in the legislature, and made the whole Kadagidi defection more difficult. Things had gotten damned hot downstairs, once history came under discussion, and that had diverted the discussion into details unrelated to Lord Tatiseigi’s antique defenses.

  But Tabini-aiji had, aside from the argument, insisted, guest that he was under this roof, and Lord Tatiseigi had quietly and very reluctantly agreed to supplement his own leaky surveillance equipment. Or at least most of it. So the scene downstairs had ended, an hour ago, discussion having gotten around to old pieces of failed legislation, and the Taibeni-Atageini feud, which the aiji outright insisted had to be buried.

  The particular source of the near-disaster in the last two days, the item that had cost staff lives, had been Lord Tatiseigi’s communications units. It had turned out they might just as well have phoned the neighboring Kadagidi province outright and advised them that the paidhi and his staff had gone out chasing Tabini’s eight-year-old heir halfway to Taiben, who were being asked in to aid their old enemies. The Kadagidi could have no doubt now that Taiben had responded, and that they were all, including the heir, the aiji-dowager, and the aiji himself with his Atageini-born consort, reinstalled in Lord Tatiseigi’s house, a growing nucleus of the old adminstration reconstituting itself apace, a threat to the Kadagidi’s theft of authority.

  The latter details had doubtless leaked far and wide among the Padi Valley clans before Tabini’s staff had gotten the last die-hard user of the compromised system to shut down transmissions and quit gossiping on the network. The fact of the dowager’s and Tabini’s presence in Lord Tatiseigi’s house was likely on the morning news in Shejidan, for that matter, because reports of the disaster, the attack, the resistence, and the advent of former administration into the Atageini province had all flowed back and forth on that compromised network.

  The first result of the gossip had turned up this morning, as ordinary Atageini provincials, shopkeepers, farmers, and town laborers en masse, all linked into that network, had rolled onto the estate grounds to join their threatened lord’s defense against what they perceived as an assault against their sovereign rights. An untidy host of town buses and farm-to-market trucks had pulled up on the formal cobbled drive in front of the house, and no few armed farmers had turned up with tractors and small earthmovers, very truculent and martial arrivals in the lower hall. Hearing that someone wanted to shut down their lord’s communication system, they had involved themselves and their outraged civil liberties in the dispute about the safety of the system, a matter of local pride. They had backed down only because they had finally gotten it through their heads that the apparent Guildsman in black was not an Atageini security officer, but Tabini-aiji himself, arguing with their lord, and proposing to improve local communications, if they could only shut down the core of it for a certain number of hours.

  The whole matter of the civil protest had started because Taibeni rangers, of that hated neighboring clan, had set up some sort of competing communications installation in their camp on the manicured front lawn, a much more state-of-the-art system about which the Taibeni were as secretive and defensive as the Atageini were about their own network. Lord Tatiseigi had demanded that rival network be shut down, claiming the Taibeni were spying on his defenses—the Taibeni being older enemies than the Kadagidi themselves. That ancient feud had boiled on under the whole debate, and the presence of the farmers and heavy equipment operators had provoked a haughty delegation from the Taibeni leadership, arriving to support Tabini-aiji against Tatiseigi’s provincials. That had been the point at which the paidhi-aiji had decided to retire quietly.

  But argumentative as all sides were, and no matter the simmering feuds between Taiben and the Atageini, the presence of those lowland farmers and those high forest rangers alike guaranteed that the Kadagidi would meet more opposition today than had already sent them packing back to their own province last night. The line of buses and trucks out there might give the Kadagidi pause, politically as well as tactically. At least for the daylight hours.

  “One has no idea how long it may be, nadiin, before anyone downstairs has time to consider domestic requests,” Bren said. “But at the earliest, I should be very obliged if I can persuade our host to let me connect to a printer…granted we can disconnect from the network.”

  The household computers had become an object of extreme contention in the communications issue too. But all he wanted was a computer with available backup, a printer, and a considerable lot of paper to put information out that, in his own opinion, someone needed to hear. It was a report, a document which itself might not be prudent to produce in a house likely to be assaulted tonight; but he was down here to make that report, and if it got out, even into the hands of the opposition, it would create gossip and questions—but it was far more useful to get it into Tabini’s hands, ammunition against such arguments as proceeded downstairs, if only he could persuade Tabini to hear him on the topic.

  “One is reliably informed the aiji has come upstairs, insisti
ng on a bath,” Banichi said, pausing in his careful examination of bullet holes in the walls. “We should all be safe for a few hours, Bren-ji, and the aiji has retired, perhaps for the rest of the day. The debate has doubtless exhausted everyone.”

  Banichi knew his frustration. And knew the importance of what he wanted to print.

  “If one might hand the report to his staff…if one could gain access to one isolated machine…”

  “The aiji’s staff indicates to us that he will rest after his bath,” Jago said, and the subterranean text was that his own staff had tried to get the audience he had asked for—tried, and gotten nothing. The aiji had rebuffed that approach as he had deflected all other attempts. The paidhi’s influence had been a major grievance behind the coup. He knew it. He had not gotten his own audience; his staff met opposition: It was a standoff. But even if it made Tabini angrier than he was, he still had to get that document into Tabini’s hands and get him to read it.

  “Go,” Jago said. “Have your own bath, Bren-ji. We have told the aiji’s staff the gist of things. More than that, Cenedi will brief them, if they will not hear us.”

  Cenedi, the dowager’s chief of security, was clearly their best hope: whatever Tabini’s feelings toward the paidhi-aiji, the aiji-dowager would get through, and Cenedi, in her name, could grab staff by the lapels and talk urgent sense to them…all sorts of urgent sense. But one also had to worry whether Tabini, with new staff around him, the others having perished, might not be subject to a new filter of information. They were Taibeni, but not all; and Bren had never known them.

  “I shall, then,” he said.

  “We have sent for clothes,” Jago said. “One still hopes.”

  It was by no means his security’s job. But his clothing, adult but child-sized, posed a major problem: It was not as if they could run to a local shop, even for the most basic items, and Tatiseigi’s hospitality had provided no domestic services ordinary to such a house. Their host was extremely harried, one had to understand, his housekeeping staff already pressed to the limits, and as exhausted as the security staff…but the plain fact was Tatiseigi detested humans as much as he hated Taibeni, with as much history behind the feeling: he hated their look, hated their influence, their technology, and their continued presence on the planet, and having a human houseguest attendant on the general destruction of his lawn, his hedges, and the tranquility of his province had clearly not made him change his mind on the topic.

  And if all that were not enough, Tatiseigi personally and as a close relative resented the paidhi’s former influence with Tabini-aiji and his current influence with the dowager. Most particularly Tatiseigi resented his relationship with the young lord, the aiji’s son—Tatiseigi’s own great-grandnephew, who had stood up for the paidhi in no uncertain terms.

  Oh, the paidhi was under Lord Tatiseigi’s roof on tolerance, no question, no matter that he and his staff—and the aforementioned young lord, with the detested Taibeni—had helped rescue the house from destruction last night. Lord Tatiseigi’s view was that the house would never have been attacked and damaged in the first place if not for the paidhi’s past influence, his support of this radical new space technology, its economic disruption, and the upheaval it wrought among the provinces. Consequently, the paidhi and his atevi staff could quite nicely go to hell—so long as the aiji-dowager didn’t notice his departure. So, no, there were no domestic servants to help them, it was hardly graceful to protest it from his tenuous position, and he had no wish to provoke another argument downstairs.

  But the sad truth was, he, born a nice democratic Mospheiran fellow, had grown pitifully dependent on clothes turning up miraculously arranged in his closet, the socially appropriate garments appearing in the hands of servants who would help him dress. Lace would be starched and hand pressed, every detail of his attire and his bodyguards’ black leather rendered immaculate without their much thinking about it or questioning what they were to wear on what occasion. Everything would be perfect—if his own staff were here. If he needed delicately hint at something, his staff would talk to house staff, or to any other lord’s staff, and miracles would happen, appointments would turn up, protocols would be settled, and he would never hear about the difficulties.

  His staff being up on the station, he now had to think about such details, down to finding clean socks. And the paidhi’s odd-sized wardrobe, at the moment, consisted of a single change of clean formal clothes packed into a soft traveling bag that had been tossed onto fishy ice, thrown down into dirt, bounced around a bus, tied onto a mecheita, tossed into this room, and shoved against a baseboard during last night’s armed assault. What he had worn yesterday was a total loss. The pale trousers were brown with dirt about the seat and knees, black with soot, and stained with blood, not to mention ripped from fence wire and branches. His cold-weather coat, no cleaner than the trousers, was ripped by the selfsame wire the length of the lower arm. His white, lace-cuffed shirt, where the coat had not covered it, was stained with every substance possible to find in the landscape, not to mention human and atevi blood. His boots had a seam parting along the right toe, in addition to the scuffs and mud.

  As it was, he decided if Tabini was not going to be available and if no printer was to be had, he should put his computer back into the hiding place that had protected it through the attack—they had no way of knowing at what time another alarm might sound—and see what he could do about the clothing situation on his own. Jago certainly wasn’t his valet, and his security staff had enough on their hands.

  Hefting the light computer case back up into its safe place hurt. Getting into his baggage on the floor and searching into the tangled mess of clothing inside discovered splinters in his palms he had not yet found. And the clean shirt he pulled out of the duffle was, as he had foreseen, by no means ready to wear. The lace had gone mostly limp. The body was more than rumpled: it had pressed-in wrinkles. The remaining spare trousers likewise showed fold and crumple marks.

  But they were at least clean. He found clean underwear. And socks. He got up and hung the clothes in the closet, which he should have thought to do yesterday, and began, stupidly, to strip off what he was wearing, right there in the bedroom, as he would have done on the ship.

  Someone rapped at the outer foyer door. He dived, caught up his pistol from his dirty coat out of the pile of clothing he had just dropped on the floor, and, both sleeves in one hand, held the coat for cover, moving into clear shot of that door as Jago, armed, walked out into the short inner hall to answer it.

  Two arrivals. They looked like domestic staff, in Atageini colors, muted green and gold. One was a woman, a rather substantial woman. And with a little bow and the exchange, presumably, of courtesies and names, they excused themselves right past Jago’s bemused stare and came in to survey the premises and the situation. Bren stood holding his gun in one hand and anchoring the coat with the other, and the two servants bowed and reported themselves to Banichi as if the lord of the establishment were part of the furniture. Jago had followed them in; she stood behind the pair, hand on her pistol, just stood, wearing no peaceable look. Tano and Algini stood in mirror image, hands likewise positioned.

  “We are instructed,” the man said with a sideward, embarrassed glance at Bren, “to provide assistance to the paidhi’s household.”

  Staff help. From Lord Tatiseigi. The sky would fall next. Then he decided it might not be a lie. The aiji-dowager or Tabini himself might have requested special dispensation for them—if either had happened to notice the conditions in which the old lord had settled them.

  But it would be impolite to seem astonished…no matter he suspected their sashay past Jago’s forbidding presence might be a reconnaissance for Tatiseigi as much as a desire to report themselves properly to Banichi, as de facto head of staff. House servants might be Guild, just the same as bodyguards in uniform, and if they were reconnoitering, seeing if he had pocketed the bath soap, then he was prepared to be annoyed beyond the slight they paid.<
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  “The premises are presently secure, nadiin,” Banichi said curtly. “We need laundry done. Boots seen to.” Menial tasks, all. The most menial. Banichi was likewise highly annoyed; if human ears could pick that up with no problem at all, the intruders could certainly figure it out. And as the pair’s survey of the room finally included the very obvious human, Bren held his coat in front of him and bowed his head in as pricklishly gracious an acceptance as a man could give while standing naked in view of strangers.

  “Clean clothes would be delightful,” he said, “nadiin. There has been a problem in that regard.”

  “Astringents, liniments, and plasters,” Jago said from behind their backs. “A medical kit, nadiin, if you please. Ours is for emergencies.”

  “Soap,” from Algini, “nadiin.”

  “Indeed,” the man of the pair said, and looked around the room full circle as if taking inventory of the historic vases and the condition of the furniture—perhaps because of the bullets that had flown last night, but one was still hardly sure. “Is all the paidhi’s staff lodged in these quarters?”

  “Guild security,” Jago said frostily from their backs. “We are on duty.”

  There was additional space and cots in a little closet of a room off the short entry hall. It was an extremely minimal apartment, not designed for a gender-mixed staff…but where Jago slept wasn’t in these strangers’ need-to-know.

  “Towels, first,” Jago reiterated, “nadiin. We shall be very glad of towels.”

  “Immediately,” the man said, with another bow, this last a little more courteous, and aimed toward Bren, as if he had finally gotten his mental bearings or overcome his shock. “My name, nand’ paidhi, is Timani.”

  “Adaro,” the woman said, likewise bowing. “One is honored to serve.”

  Bows on all sides. A little relaxation of manner. “Jago,” Jago said. “Banichi. Tano. Algini.” It was all staff-to-staff, the sort of thing that might have been done in the backstairs, if this suite had been large enough to have proper servant passages. Introduction of the lord of the household didn’t belong at the bottom of that list. The two Atageini servants, after the initial shock, had avoided quite looking at the half-naked human. And still tried not to.