Deceiver

But that had its own necessary function in the house, the meeting place, the only place besides the dining room that could accommodate them all; and the dining room was just—not the place one discussed business. Impossible, he thought distractedly. And anyroom downstairs was bigger than the cabin Barb and Toby shared on the boat.

Two beds, he had told Ramaso. Were they going to think he was making a statement?

“The dowager will take tea,” Cenedi said, “but will not receive visitors tonight, nandi.”

“Mandi-ji.” Bren snared a passing servant, who skidded to a fast halt. “Tea for the dowager. Tea for any guest who wants it.”

“I shall take some myself,” Geigi said, “with teacakes, should there be any at this hour, nadi.”

“So would we like teacakes,” Cajeiri said. “My staff would, too.”

Where a boy Cajeiri’s size proposed to put more food after that supper, God only knew. “See to it,” Bren said to the servant, and as Samandri took out at all decorous speed: “Cenedi-ji, can your people supply security to the front door while we open it for Banichi and Jago?”

“We are already in position, nandi. And they are on their way.”

“Of course.” He found himself exhausted. “Forgive me, nadi-ji.”

“We are glad the paidhi has an accurate sense of these things,” Cenedi said diplomatically. “I shall see to the front door myself,” he added, “being in the vicinity. By your leave, nandi.”

“Please do,” he said. The others had gone back to their rooms. It was his job, as the lingering visible civilian, to get himself out of the hall and back out of the Guild’s way. The one moment that might provoke renewed attack, were there any enemy still in position, would be a door opening, and their guard needed no distractions in protecting them from more dings in the woodwork.

So he went back to the library, where Tano and Algini reported Banichi and Jago were now at the portico, and then that they were coming in. He watched the lights that indicated the opening and then the safe shutting of the front door, he heard the thump of the bar going into place, and headed back out into the hall again.

Banichi and Jago looked unruffled. Barb and Toby, in their company, were dirty and disheveled, their boating whites scuffed and bearing traces of dirt and evergreen. It was likely Banichi and Jago had landed on them, or thrown them into the bushes with a force they would have considered only adequate.

“Well, here we are again,” Toby said with a shaky laugh, “like bad pe

“Just thank God you made it—and thank God I sent Banichi and Jago with you! Who fired?” The last he asked in Ragi, and Jago said:

“We did, nandi. We had a security alert, and a sure target. The dowager’s men are searching the grounds. They will report. We stayed with our principals.”

“One is profoundly grateful,” he said. “Are youall right?” Jago was nursing a stitched-up wound from the lastfracas. And one didn’t ask Guild to admit to injuries in outsider hearing, but Barb and Toby were not exactly outsiders, and Jago nodded with, he thought, honesty.

“One remains a little sore,” she said, “nandi. But their return fire was not accurate.”

“It might have been, without you. Thank you. Thank you profoundly, nadiin-ji.”

“Thank you,” Toby added in Ragi, on his own behalf, with a correct little bow, and Barb echoed, in fairly bad Ragi, but with the correct addition of a third—consciously or not, “Thank you two, and Bren.”

“Indeed,” Banichi said, returning the bow.

“Go where you need to go,” Bren said. There was debriefing yet to do, and two of Cenedi’s men had come into the hall. “Rest. We are guarded, here.”

Banichi smiled, a little amused at him, but he frankly didn’t care. He was tired, his guard was tired, and Barb and Toby had just been through enough to keep them awake the rest of the night. Servants had shown up. He said to them: “I shall see nand’ Toby and Barb-daja in my study while staff prepares their bath. Send another pot of calmative tea to my office. And brandy. They will surely wish to sit a moment.”

“Nandi.” Two servants sped on different missions, and Banichi and Jago had headed for the library/security station. Bren directed Barb and Toby to his office door, opened it, and brought them inside.

They took chairs, gratefully but cautiously. “I’m afraid we’ll get dirt on the carpet,” Toby said. “Let alone the upholstery. Is my backside clean?”

“Honorable dirt,” Bren said, a rough translation of the Ragi proverb. “The staff will gladly clean it, and the chairs are tougher than they look. There’s a bath downstairs. They’re setting up. I’ve ordered a sedative tea. It’s fairly strong. Harmless to us. And a very good thing at times. Add a shot of brandy and you won’t wake til morning.”

“I wished I’d had my gun,” Toby said, “which is, of course, down on the boat.”

“Well, well, but you’re on the mainland, where professionals handle that sort of thing,” Bren said. “Unfortunately it means professionals on the other side, too.”

“That’s certainly a downside,” Barb laughed. She moved to brush back her hair and she was shaking. She looked at her hand as if it were a foreign object and made it into a fist, resting on the chair. “I guess the other side isn’t through trying, is it?”

In that moment he forgave Barb a lot. He looked at the two of them, his quasi-ex and his brother, and saw a pairc not the woman he’d have picked for Toby, but then, Barb lent Toby just enough of her predatory selfish streak to keep him from flinging himself on grenades and Toby lent Barb enough of his sense of stability and loyalty to keep her better side in the ascendant. Toby the rock. Toby the damned self-sacrificing fool. Barb wanted somebody who’d always be there—even if she had to follow him in and out of irregular harbors under fire, as it appeared: this the woman who’d lived for nightclubs and fancy gowns.

“Good for both of you,” he said, and meant it fervently.

“Just so damned glad you sent Banichi and Jago.”

“I assure you, you and whoever else went with you would have been under watch the whole route down to the boat, but you don’t have my skills at falling flat in the dirt on cue.”

“I’ll be faster at it, after this,” Toby said. “ Banichishoved me flat. I think I’ll remember that fact tomorrow morning.”

Bren laughed, well familiar with that sensation, which involved the relocation of every vertebra in one’s neck and back, not to mention the meeting with the ground.

And just then a knock at the door heralded the servant with the tea service, the very historic tea service—the others must be elsewhere disposed—the cups of which Toby and Barb took with dirty fingers, ever so carefully.

“This is beautiful,” Barb said, looking carefully at the cup. Barb had an eye for assessing things. “But my hands are shaking.”

“They won’t, in a moment. Thirteenth century, that service. Best the house has. —Thank you, nadi,” he said to the servant. “Please wait.” And took his own sip of tea. “Your boat will be safe. Someone is checking out both the boats, yours and mine, just to be sure.”

“So grateful,” Toby murmured. “You think of everything, brother.”

“I have no few brains working on problems for me,” he said. “So I don’t have to be brilliant.”

“I never appreciated a house like this,” Toby said. “I’m starting to understand it. In all senses. It’s not all tea and cookies, is it?”

“It’s a village of its own,” he said. “It defends itself pretty well, and we all take care of each other. Staff smuggled most every stick of furniture and set of china, even whole carpets, out of my Bujavid apartment when the Bujavid was being taken over. They got it on trains right under the opposition’s noses and had it and key staff members collected here at Najida before Murini’s people knew they were missing. And some of my staff, Murini’s people would particularly have liked to lay hands on, but they weren’t about to come in here to get themc Najida being part of Najida Peninsula, which is part of the west coast, which is Edi territory, Murini didn’t want his agents cracking thategg, for fear of what might hatch and raise holy hell. But you know that, Frozen Dessert.”