Deliverer Read online

  “Indeed,” Great-grandmother said, and the dreaded eyebrow lifted. “Pert, are we? Your father will certainly see our influence in that. We are not certain it will please him.”

  “I am not certain I shall please him, mani-ma,” he said. “Perhaps then he will send me to Tirnamardi.”

  “He certainly will not, since I will not permit it, and he certainly should not, with the whole Association watching and judging you. It would be no favor to you were he to do that, Great-grandson.”

  “Perhaps I shall go live in space with Gene and Artur.”

  Foolish provocation. He knew it the instant it slipped out.

  “Do you imagine,” Great-grandmother asked him, “that that course would not require you to grow up? Do you imagine that the changes now proceeding in you would inexplicably cease, and you would be forever a little boy? I assure you, Gene and Artur are growing up. Are you?”

  “One has already grown, great-Grandmother.”

  “You have reached an infelicitous year,” Great-grandmother said sharply, “and yet show promise in it. Your arguments have improved, but do not yet convince us. Learn from your father, boy. Then argue with us again.”

  He was dismissed. He was left with no recourse but to bow, and watch mani walk away ahead of Cenedi, a straight, regal figure, walking with small taps of the dreaded cane, with great-uncle Tatiseigi at her side and both their bodyguards behind. His staff, his own and Great-uncle’s spies, had seen and heard everything: staff witnessed everything, and one was obliged to be dignified, even while losing badly and being embarrassed and treated like a child.

  He remained upset. He was not fit at the moment to discuss matters. He walked down the short hall to his own suite and cast Great-uncle’s two guards a forbidding look as they attempted to go in.

  “Wait here, nadiin,” he said, assigning them to stand at the door. It was only Jegari and Antaro he admitted to his rooms; and pointedly he shut the door and glared at Pahien, who, across the hall, had started an advance on his door.

  The Taibeni pair had gained a certain wisdom about his moods. They went and turned down his bed, and quietly prepared his closet, choosing his wardrobe for the morning, doing all the things Pahien did, and said not a thing in the process.

  He was not in a mood to sit down and talk with them and not in a mood to go to bed. He stalked to his desk and looked through his books, and looked at his unfinished sketch of the ship. That made him think about Gene and his associates up above, and made him think about being happy, which he was not, at the moment. Not at all.

  He knew what he was. His parents were an Infelicity of Two and he was a Stability of One. He served the same function with his great-grandmother and his great-uncle, to keep them united in peace. He had served that function with Lord Bren and the kyo, and very many other people, and he had wished someone else would take that job—but he was clearly stuck with it. That was what Gene would say. Stuck with it. That expression meant very many different things in Gene’s language. One was stuck with something. One stuck with a thing.

  Mani would say everything fluxed and changed, and very few things stuck together, unless there was One to make them stand still. A Stability was a valuable thing to be. Everyone wanted a Stability. It was when it stuck to something else isolated and became an Infelicity of two that it began to be in trouble.

  Baji-naji, mani would say: fortune and chance: flux. Everything shifted, or the numbers would hold the universe from moving, and the ship could never move through space and people who were wrong would never change their minds.

  He detested numbers.

  But he had to acknowledge he was probably stuck with Great-uncle’s two guards.

  At least for a while.

  And mani had come out of that meeting with her anger up, and that was why she had been so blunt and so unobliging.

  He should have seen it. He had not. Fool, he had been, to talk to mani when she had just had to deal with rude people in the salon. She had been on alert, and that had been an infelicitous moment to go on with that conversation. He should have asked to talk to her in the morning, but now she had closed the subject and taken a position.

  He had to learn. He had to learn not to walk into such arguments, and to pick felicitous moments. That part he agreed with. He had seen enough fighting to give him bad dreams at night. He had seen people die. He had probably killed someone, which he tried not to remember, but did. And he knew people here on the planet wanted to kill all of them, and that he was obliged to be smarter than most boys.

  He was obliged to grow up faster than most boys.

  And then people would see what he was.

  A Stability could become an Aggressor, quite as well as a Support. He wished people really were afraid of disarranging him and disturbing his life. No one believed he was a threat—well, his father’s enemies might, but people in his household called him a Stabililty. He had rather be an Aggressor, at the moment.

  But Bren-nandi said no. Bren-nandi had told him it was better for an aiji to prop things up than to knock them down. Murini was the sort who had knocked things down, and look what it had done, and how badly he had ruled…and everybody wanted him dead. Build. That was Bren-nandi’s advice.

  But he still wished he had his father’s power to break heads of those who had hurt his family. If he were aiji, if he was his father, he would be thinking about that. So was mani thinking about it, and he was well aware that was why everybody was too busy to talk to him as if he had any worthwhile ideas of his own. Mani was more Aggressor than Stability, and she was One, was she not?

  But she had dinner with disagreeable people. She was polite. She found time for them, and smiled, even when it was a political smile.

  And she had invited Lord Bren, when people there were not well-disposed to him. Why?

  She was either a Stability or an Aggressor. Bren-nandi was always a Stability. One could feel the flux settle, when Lord Bren took hold of a situation.

  That was a sort of power, too. That was a great and valuable power, was it not?

  Nand’ Bren knew his timing to the finest degree. Nand’ Bren spoke, and even his father changed his mind.

  So it was not just Aggressors who changed things, was it?

  Something occurred to him as he fingered the sketch of the ship and thought about Lord Bren and great-grandmother.

  On Bren’s advice, his father had agreed to have atevi go into space. It was his father who had had all the factories built which built modern machines. It was his father who had used television to reach the outlying villages and towns and kept the aishidi’tat informed. It was his father who had seen that if the humans failed to get their affairs in order and establish a stable authority up in the heavens, then disorder would spread in space—and that had led everybody to discovering the trouble at the far station, and rescuing Gene and everyone, and meeting the kyo, and learning about that danger in time to do something. And it was his father’s decision that they were building another starship, one that would belong to atevi, and maintaining an atevi authority on the space station, and using all manner of technology…

  So his father might be an Aggressor—aijiin were that. But his father had wanted nand’ Bren’s influence and mani’s both to instruct him in his growing up. His father had gotten him and mani out of the reach of Assassins, seeing danger coming. His father was behind all sorts of change and technology which had brought on the trouble. So his father took chances.

  And valued technology. And nand’ Bren.

  So it was not like arguing with uncle Tatiseigi, who deplored everything new just because it was new.

  So living with his father was not quite like being in Tirnamardi.

  Mani had said there should be no televisions under her roof. Where mani came from, in the East, things were very kabiu, and proper, and people were more interested in the traditions, like Uncle Tatiseigi.

  But if Father were running the apartment, well, he could just possibly ask for a television, an
d maybe a computer, could he not—he could tell Father how he had learned to use the computers on the ship and he needed to keep his skills in practice, and he could tell Father how he needed books. There was the whole human Archive, over on the island, or at least up in space, on the ship, if he could get it. And that would bring movies. He ached to have movies again.

  And there was a world of things on the ship that were just more convenient, that they could set up, like the kind of communications he knew Banichi and Jago and Cenedi and Bren himself had brought down in their luggage—

  Communications which had proved so much better than Uncle’s, and saved their lives, besides. His father would not disapprove of that. His father might be impressed if he knew his son could use computers as well as he could. His father would think it was a very good thing for his son to have learned.

  Things could be different with his father in charge.

  Not to mention Father might let him fly with Dur’s son in the yellow airplane.

  Father was very close with Lord Bren, so he would be seeing Bren often, too. That was not so bad. If Bren was staying in Great-uncle’s apartment, that was just down the hall.

  And if his father gave him computers and keys and permissions and the like, so might his mother, who might be easier to approach in some respects. Then getting places and getting information might be a great deal easier. His father would be the one to approve his going to the library, and “going to the library” could cover a lot of territory, besides that he would bet the library Jegari and Antaro had talked about had more than one door.

  So it was not quite that he was about to be locked into an apartment with his father and kept like a prisoner. He was gaining access to someone who could get anything and do anything and get any book and any key in the world, if he could practice Bren’s kind of skill and just use his head.

  That was one point in its favor.

  Having those two Atageini bodyguards watching him and reporting to his mother and to great-uncle Tatiseigi—that was a problem.

  But he could get past problems. He could depend on Jegari and Antaro for anything.

  He drew a deep, deep breath, contemplating his sketch of the ship.

  Now that he thought about what his father could do if he wanted to, this could work out. It could very well work out.

  3

  Breakfast, and Banichi was back—just after dawn, a towering and unexpected shadow in the dowager’s inner hall. He stopped, he gave a sketchy bow; Bren did, on his way to the dowager’s table.

  And kept at bay the human desire to fling arms about his bodyguard, in sheer relief.

  “One is extremely delighted to see you, Nichi-ji.” Ever so properly. “One is ever so greatly relieved.”

  “One is extremely delighted to be back, nandi.” Banichi looked uncharacteristically tired, and was a little hoarse—one could imagine long talk, or loud talking, both unlikely in Banichi, but it had been an extraordinary week.

  “Did Tano and Algini come back, too?”

  “They are still at the Guild,” Banichi said, drawing that opaque curtain on all information within that organization, and telling him no more than that. It was worrisome. He wanted the rest of his staff back, with all his heart he wanted them, and considering Algini’s high rank in the Guild, he was by no means sure he would get them back. But he had Banichi safe and sound, and equally important, Jago had her partner back. Both facts made him feel ever so much happier in the start of a chaotic day.

  “Do go rest,” he said. “The dowager’s staff is packing and moving for us, with help from down the hall. I don’t know if you may have heard.” It was almost impossible that Banichi had not picked up, from Jago, if no one else, that they were changing residences, but he delivered the information himself, for courtesy. “We are to remove to Lord Tatiseigi’s apartment this afternoon, but no one will disturb your sleep, on my explicit order, and one is certain the dowager will concur.”

  “Indeed,” Banichi said, for once evincing the need. “I shall do that, Bren-ji. And I am thoroughly briefed. I will be awake by noon, when your security will gain advance access to the premises.”

  “Go,” he said, and Banichi disappeared, with one more duty in front of him—getting them in there, and coordinating with Cenedi. He knew Jago would refuse to leave him unattended for an instant, and with Tano and Algini still—engaged—at the Guild—it was all on Banichi.

  He had seen nothing of Jago since they had waked, however, in these safe halls: she was closeted with the dowager’s security so far as he knew, doing everything alone, at least as the sole representative of his own staff in the transition. There were matters to be arranged with the place he was leaving as well as the place he was going: passwords to be changed, keys to be traded, God knew what else.

  But Jago knew Banichi was back, and that it would not be all on her. Banichi would have advised her first of all, and he would be linked in by electronics at least the moment he passed the front door. So his personal world was knitting itself back together. Banichi was coming down off that state of high alert that had occupied his staff ever since their return—or at least he was relaxing enough to admit he needed sleep. That was good to see. And he very much preferred Banichi’s parting “Bren-ji” to “my lord.”

  He felt easier in body and soul, despite the disarrangement of the impending move. He returned his attention to his unanswered correspondence, composing on the keyboard, where erasure did not mean throwing away a piece of tangible paper that could then fall into wrong hands—and where he had an automatic copy of his exact words. Even carbon paper was controversial modernity, in very conservative households, and worked exceedingly poorly with calligraphic pens, to boot—but at the moment he had no staff to turn it into proper handwritten text, and he could work very much faster on the computer. He answered the inquiries from Patinandi Aerospace, and also from the Ministry of Transport, assuring the latter that he had communication with the scattered flight crews—the truth: they were in the “answered”’ stack, and, being sensible people, would get their typescript quickly.

  Most of all, he hoped Algini and Tano would show up soon, and his whole world would steady on its axis if he had some word from his errant but probably safe brother.

  The dowager was in the process of leaving; he intended to go say a formal farewell, but wanted to stay out from underfoot otherwise. Lord Tatiseigi had left his apartment at the crack of dawn, witness the fact that his own staff, namely Jago, was beginning to get contact down the hall in that other apartment. He had no idea how soon after the dowager’s departure Tabini would arrive here—or whether Cajeiri would come to wish him farewell as he left the premises. He dreaded that scenario. On the one hand it hardly seemed such an occasion, considering he would be only down the hall, but the change was far greater than that in the boy’s already unstable life, and he hovered between fear Cajeiri would pitch a fit and fear that he would only sink into quiet unhappiness.

  Damn, he would miss the boy’s frequent company, probably more, he told himself, than the boy would end up missing him. He at least hoped that would be the case. In the welter of arriving stimuli, in the sudden plethora of atevi to deal with as the boy settled into court life, ideally young nerves would discover the stimuli that made them react properly—that was the theory behind the dowager’s decisions. The boy, educated in space among human children, would find more and more atevi associates, discover them much more to his own comfort, and become, in short, whatever a normal atevi boy ought to be….

  Which was not—the dowager was absolutely right—not—snuggled too close to the paidhi-aiji and passionately addicted to pizza and ancient movies from the human Archive.

  He did interrupt his work to bid Ilisidi a brief farewell—she must have bidden farewell to Cajeiri already, since the boy did not appear. He asked Jago to order flowers sent to the dowager’s household staff, and more flowers to the staff of Tatiseigi’s establishment, and went in person to thank the cook in particular fo
r his skill and courtesy in avoiding poisoning him; and he also thanked old Madiri, the major domo attached to the apartment itself, for his devotion. Madiri looked to be in the final stages of collapse; he had the aiji’s household about to move in, and had Cajeiri in his charge in the meanwhile. It was not an enviable position, and he accepted thanks in a distracted series of frenetic bows, then rushed off to investigate a crash in the hallway.

  It seemed a good thing for the paidhi-aiji to disappear back into his office. He attended to his correspondence and did the requisite courtesies for the staff as people became available. And by noon, indeed, Jago turned up paired with Banichi, looking much less grim, and reported everything ready for his occupancy down the hall.

  He signaled his departure to the staff. He rather expected Cajeiri to come out and bid him farewell when he stood at the door, at least, but there was no such appearance. He only repeated his courtesies to Madiri and thanked him for his assistance with baggage and the like, and walked out, a little worried for the boy, a little distressed, to tell the truth.

  It was a short walk, the move down the hall; he personally carried nothing but his computer, Banichi and Jago nothing but two very large bags of what was not likely clothing.

  And, except for the worry nagging him, it felt like the settling-on of a well-worn glove, walking through that familiar door and finding that, indeed, Madam Saidin and staff members he knew were lined up to welcome him.

  “Nandi,” Saidin said—a willowy woman of some years, an Assassin whose working uniform was graceful brocade and whose principle defensive tools were her keen-eyed staff.

  “Nadiin-ji,” he said, using the warmly intimate greeting on first arrival, for her, and for the staff. They bowed—mostly female, and impeccable in their attention to the floral arrangements in the foyer, the priceless vases on their fragile tables beautifully arranged, incorporating his flowers, his colors, as earlier they would have been all the Atageini lilies.