" Betrayer" by CJ Cherryh

To Joan and Buzz: good neighbors, good friends.

Prologue

It was boring sitting by a sick person. But Cajeiri sat. And wondered if bullets counted as being sick.

He remembered the ship and his associates up in the heavens, and he wondered if Lord Geigi would keep his promise and help him find out if his letters ever got to the space station.

He remembered his two lost bodyguards and wondered how they were—if they were even alive.

He remembered Barb-daja, who had hair like nand’ Bren’s, like sunlight, and whom Great-grandmother thought a silly person. But Barb-daja had been very brave, in her odd way. And she didn’t deserve to be kidnapped. He had been, once, but he was clever, and the kidnappers had had no luck at all. Barb was not as tough, and she had no way at all to talk to anybody who asked her questions. She could just say “Bren” and “Toby,” and then somebody might figure out what she was saying, and that would not be good.

He thought about his mother and father, off in Shejidan. They were going to have another baby. But he was not going to let that baby be better than he was.

He hardly knew his father and mother. They had given him to Great-grandmother, and he had gone off to space to grow up, well, as grown up as he was, and they hardly knew him, either.

So he had to prove to them that he was the best and the smartest and the quickest. He would prove that to everybody, when he got a chance.

Mostly, right now, though, he had to keep his promises. And he had given nand’ Bren a promise. And even Great-grandmother had to respect it.

He sat. And sat. And even did his homework and read the book on protocols, which was so dull that sitting was exciting.

He waited. Which was all he could do, day and night. He slept, his bodyguard slept by turns, and they just waited.

1

« ^ »

There was a sleek red and black bus parked out on the lamp-lit drive, outside this magnificent administrative palace in the heart of Tanaja, in the Taisigin Marid. That bus held a number of the Assassins’ Guild, armed with guns and explosives, and it held itself as a private fortress, surrounded by local forces—who as yet had not moved against it.

In the relative peace and quiet dark of the upstairs suite in the palace, in the baroque bedroom with its four-poster that Bren Cameron occupied, thick velvet draperies masked its lack of windows. It was black as the depths of a cave. And there was no way to tell the time except by his pocket watch on the side table, the lighted display of which said it was just before dawn.

At least there had been no gunfire, no alarms from his bodyguard, or they would have notified him. The peace had officially lasted through the night. Tensions might be a little less now that nerves had had time to settle.

For which he was sincerely grateful.

Getting out of bed—still in the dark—was its own trial. A large bruise had spread across his chest, and he knew he had to put the compression wrap back on and, worse, put on that damned bulletproof vest again. He’d almost rather be shot without it, but the risk of that actually happening was still far too high.

He was human, an official in the service of the atevi, who owned most of this planet. He was, in the course of that service, on the southern coast, a guest in the house of the enemy, with no assurances that hospitality would continue.

He had come to negotiate with the lord of the Taisigin Marid, a district virtually at war with the Western Association, the aishidi’tat, which he had come to represent—if one counted the aiji-dowager, the grandmother of Tabini-aiji, as officially equivalent to Tabini-aiji himselfc

and Ilisidi clearly counted it that way. Ilisidi, the aiji-dowager, had considered it a good moment to make a radical move and had told him to take that shiny red and black bus and get over here, where noofficial of the aishidi’tat had ever set foot. His mission was to talk to Machigi, who had never actually seen a human, and persuade him notto go on expanding his power to the west.

The whole Marid district, the Taisigi, Senji, Dojisigi, Sungeni, and Dausigi clans, who were supposed to be part of the aishidi’tat, had never been tightly joined to it. They had conducted assassinations on the west coast for years, and recently they had sponsored an attack on Bren’s own coastal estate at Najida and on his person at neighboring Targai—hence the painful bruise.

Thus far Machigi, lord of the Taisigin Marid, the master of this house, this city, this district, had been willing to talk to him. But he had no assurances that mood would last. Machigi was a young autocrat who ruled a fractious, faction-ridden clan in a local association that had always gone its own way, and nothing was guaranteed.

But Machigi was also in a bit of a bind with his neighbors to the north, the Dojisigi and the Senji, who were making a bid for power, which was why the aiji-dowager had thought it a smart move to send one Bren Cameron to conduct more or less clandestine talks with Machigi.

Bren set his feet on the floor and went in quest of the light switch in this windowless room.

Knocked into a table he belatedly remembered.

Found the door.

Found the light switch.

He had left his two valets across the tenuous border at Targai. He could call servants from Machigi’s household, but he opted not to do that; he didn’t want Machigi’s people inside this suite of rooms any oftener or any longer than absolutely necessary.

Lights went on, brutally bright. He squinted, went in search of clothes, and was very glad someone—in his exhaustion yesterday he could not remember who, but definitely one of his four bodyguards—had at least opened his baggage last night and hung his wardrobe to shed its wrinkles.

Investigation of the top bureau drawer proved someone had put his linens, his gun, and his shaving kit where he liked to have them. Probably Tano. Or Jago.

He hoped his bodyguards, next door to this room, were finally getting a little sleep. He had no wish to disturb them at this hour asking where his socks had gone.

He had fallen asleep last night without his evening bathc a scandal in itself. A hot bath this morning was unutterably attractive—and there existed that uncommon luxury for atevi guest quarters, a private bath and private accommodation down the inner hall of their suite, instead of down a common hallway and shared with every resident on this floor. There was a servant’s access in the same inner hall; his staff had fixed that door, so that was not a security issue.

So he could feel safe in that hall, and a bath was beyond attractive—it was diplomatically necessary. Humans smelled odd to atevi, especially after a day or two—vice versa, too, but he was a minority of one here, in a place that had never seen a human. So that was item one on his list, in an uncertain day. Light from the bedroom gave him light enough in the hall to get to the bath and turn that light on.

The bath provided a curious little one-person tub, quite unlike the communal bathing facilities in every great atevi house he had yet visited, and more like, at least in principle, what he would expect on his native island of Mospheira. It was atevi-scale, large for a human, a quickly filled little step-down tub— one stepped onto the seat and then down into the tub, then threw the lever to block the drain, threw another to admit hot water, which came out steaming, and then threw a third to mix in cold water just in time to save one’s toes from scalding.

He settled down as the water rose around his ankles. He let the bath climb fairly rapidly to his chin—a foot short of the top of the atevi-scale tub. The water steamed pleasantly in the cool air, and he shut off the flow and leaned his head back and shut his eyes.