Intruder by C. J. Cherryh Read Free Book Online Page A

and
they
will also support you if you support them: I have the word of the Grandmother of the Edi, and Her of the Gan, that if you do support the West Coast plan, and if they get their seats in the legislature, they will vote for the dowager’s agenda despite their past relationships with the Marid.”
    “And the moon will turn green. This is a house of glass, paidhi! Every piece of it is poised on spit and promises.”
    “It has been difficult to build, nandi, but it stands because the benefit to all parties is clear. Foremost of these promises are yours and the dowager’s. She has staked a great deal on this. And on
their
firmness and fairness, all other things rest.”
    “I have staked my
life,
paidhi, and the lives of my officials—as you well understand. I cannot do more.”
    “As do I,” Bren said, “in coming here, considering the feelings in this region. But I judge the risk of your
life
is not what troubles you, nandi. I do not think you can be frightened by threats. What is at stake is one’s power and reputation. I lay mine on it. The dowager has laid hers on it, no less difficult of recovery, at her age, than is yours, given your region’s situation. We are all at risk. But you are not the man to retreat from a challenge, nandi: I saw that from the first. And I would have advised both sides of this agreement far differently if I in the least doubted your courage or your good sense. By allying with the renegades from the Guild, your neighbors to the north fell into a trap that you were smart enough to avoid. And you have the vision they lacked. Spend a handful of days in Shejidan and sign this agreement, nandi, and you can do more good for the people of the Marid than any leader has done for them in two hundred years. They will protest at first—”
    “I shall be lucky if I am not assassinated forthwith!”
    “You have now allied with the Guild proper and have their advice and protection. They will defend you with all their resources, nandi, and that includes the law itself. More, I have brought more with me than distant promises. I have brought proposals of a very specific nature, which may help your people understand the safety in this agreement and the prosperity right behind it; I have brought a letter of committment which the aiji-dowager has signed. I have brought a signed statement from Lord Geigi, and a detailed proposal of my own, which the dowager has heard with favor but not yet signed. I have them with me, and I will give them into your possession, for legal record of what we say and do here.”
    Machigi regarded him thoughtfully for a moment, then suddenly nodded. “We shall hear them.” He snapped his fingers, and Tema, the head of Machigi’s bodyguard, took a step forward. “The ministers should hear this, Tema-ji.”
    “Aiji-ma,” Tema said, and Machigi said to the waiting servants, “More tea.”
    Talk was ceremonially ended for a space. Any organization of thoughts had to be suspended in favor of reflection and calm for the space of a pot or two of tea.
    Bren drew a slow breath and revised his own notions of how to proceed—calmly, securely, within a hospitality proven reasonable and reasonably generous. Machigi was, he thought, as worried as a man should be with his region fallen into the hands of its longtime adversary, the northern Guild, and someone proposing, as a condition for solving his difficulty, that he come to a city he did not trust, commit himself to the hospitality of the man who had lately Filed Intent on him, and trust that it was not an elaborate plot the aiji-dowager had contrived to embarrass him and his clan in the view of millions.
    Hardly surprising that Machigi was perturbed. But Machigi was also in a serious bind, and might have been dead by now, by decree of the same Guild Council, if not for the aiji-dowager’s offer. Instead—the dowager offered him power over the whole district and Guild backing in holding it. Damned right Machigi was perturbed.