Deceiver: Foreigner #11 by C. J. Cherryh Read Free Book Online Page B

aiji’s guard will willingly vacate the grounds until they have secured the estate, and that operation is not yet complete. A further difficulty: Lord Geigi’s Guild bodyguard has no current knowledge of systems here on the ground, and they will need to be brought up to date on what capabilities we do and do not have.”
    “Best keep them here at Najida as long as possible, Bren-ji,” Banichi said, “and let the aiji’s guard have as long a time as possible to go over the premises there.”
    “Regrettably,” Bren said, “nadiin-ji, you know this is the only suite of rooms left. And while it is not my desire to see my bodyguard housed in the basement . . .”
    “Better to move our operations to the library,” Jago said.
    That was a thought: it would be closer to the front door—though one of the dowager’s favorite sitting spots, it was a thoroughly sensible suggestion, there being only this remaining suite remotely accceptable for a lord of Geigi’s rank.
    One last suite to be had—this one, small as it was, with only three rooms; and if Geigi brought more than four Guild with him, it was going to be a squeeze. But Geigi could handle that. He was adaptable—hence his success governing the atevi side of the space station.
    “We must move this afternoon, then,” Tano said.
    “We do not, Bren-ji,” Algini said quietly, “propose to give Lord Geigi’s aishid, Guild though they be, close access to our own operations. We hope for your firm support in that position.”
    “Without question, nadiin-ji,” Bren said. That posed another sticky little question. Lord Geigi was—one never said friend among atevi, who had neither the concept nor the emotional hard-wiring to feel that sentiment. But certainly he was a personal ally, a very closely bound ally of many years, through many very difficult circumstances. There was nobody more reliable than Lord Geigi, and they owed him profound gratitude and a feeling of absolute acceptance and trust.
    But one could not rely on staff, Guild or otherwise, who might have suffered a confusion of man’chi—that warm emotion in atevi which attached individuals to other individuals of greater power. Man’chi, the glue that held atevi society together and made households function, had a certain tendency to weaken—given long absence or political upheaval.
    And Lord Geigi, while only a phone call away from the planet, had spent the last decade up on the space station. The Guildsmen with him had been long out of touch with whatever ties they had had here in Sarini Province, or elsewhere.
    Given those circumstances, staff’s sense of precaution was entirely reasonable, by atevi lights.
    More, that absence had left Geigi’s estate—and his once-close relationship with the Edi people—to suffer the effects of two caretaker lords: first his sister, and then his nephew Baiji—whose flaws of character had been extreme, and whose staff had ranged from questionable to Marid-based.
    No knowing, in effect, what Lord Geigi would be walking into over at Kajiminda if he imprudently tried to go there straight away; and no knowing—a worse thought, which popped into Bren’s head quite unwelcomely—no knowing what odd influences might have gotten onto Geigi’s staff even while he was on the station, slowly and over the years. Tabini had been very careful who got into orbit—and with the shuttles grounded all during Murini’s administration, nobody in Murini’s man’chi had gotten into orbit—but man’chi was always subject to revision, given changed circumstances. Houses onworld had risen and fallen: allegiances had rearranged themselves clear across the continent. Certain clans had fallen. The Guild itself had suffered upheaval, including the overthrow of one Guildmaster and the assassination of another. Relationships on the planet had undergone profound change—and that might affect a whole range of things that could make a once-reliable relationship unstable.
    No, he decidedly