Betrayer

The heat embraced the sore ribs and eased the pain. He could stay here, oh, indefinitely.

But he had left his bed because the thoughts that had started to circle through his head had not been conducive to rest.

And now back those thoughts came, the moment he shut his eyes.

It was not quite accurate to say he was the first human to visit Tanaja. In fact, he was, by an undetermined number of hours, the second. Barb, his ex-lover and currently his brother Toby’s partner, had shown up in his suite last night.

Barb had been kidnapped from Najida, where Toby still was.

Barb, by the grace of his host, had arrived here apparently unharmed.

She had arrived that way. She’d hit the floor hard last night. His bodyguard, specifically Tano, had had to stop her from a move that could have gotten them all shot—Machigi’s guards were on a hair trigger and were unused to emotional outbursts from excitable humans—and one hoped she was not concussed.

Barb had taken her situation pretty well, considering. She might not understand everything that was going on, but she had understood she was not in a friendly place and had shut up.

She wasn’t conversant in the language. She’d been unable to communicate with anyone to any extent; and being Barb, she’d be vastly upset until she could talk to someone.

He had acquired, besides Barb, Veijico, a very young member of the Assassins’ Guild, who didn’t belong to himc in any number of senses. Veijico’s assigned lord was Tabini-aiji’s son Cajeiri, aged eight, who was back at Najida, presumably safe, presumably well, in the care of his great-grandmother, the aiji-dowager.

Which was where Veijico ought to be. But when Barb had been kidnapped, Veijico and her partner Lucasi had taken off in hot pursuit of the kidnappers—and Veijico had gotten herself caught by Machigi’s forces, right along with Barb.

Complicating matters—as if matters wanted more complication—Veijico’s equally young partner, Lucasi, another Guild Assassin, was armed and missing somewhere out in the wide rolling hills beyond Tanaja.

And one could only hope the kid didn’t shoot anybody in Taisigi territory while the diplomatic mission was in progress. Bren’s best current hope was that Lord Machigi’s men would be able to intercept the young man without getting shot or shooting him—which might not be easy, given Lucasi’s state of mind—or that Lucasi, in a sudden burst of mature judgement, would realize he was in over his head and take himself back to the safety of Targai, where he could get help and advice from senior Guild.

But rely on youthful ambition to do that sensible thing? It hadn’t prevailed so far.

And now he had two houseguests cluttering up his diplomatic initiative.

Their host, Lord Machigi, might or might not have been, responsible for kidnapping Barb in the first place. Machigi had very generously handed over Barb andVeijico when he arrived.

But that was no promise of good will. Lord Machigi was certainly responsible for a good deal else, including assassinations and a widespread scheme to dominate the whole west coast.

And Bren Cameron, paidhi-aiji, translator and negotiator, was supposed to turn this all around.

What gave just a little leverage to the plan was, as the aiji-dowager suspected, the very strong possibility that Lord Machigi had notkidnapped Barb, had notinstalled a deadly mine on a public highway in Najida district, and was notbehind the latest assassination attempt on him at Targai.

In fact, Lord Machigi had had his own problems—notably his neighbors, the Senji and the Dojisigi. Machigi was a young lord who had sprung onto the scene relatively recently, pushing the usurper, Murini of the Kadagidi, to power in Shejidan—and maintaining his power when Murini went down. All through that period he had refused to be respectful of the more senior lords of the Marid, who had just assassinated his predecessor; and now, far from assuming a quiet posture after Murini’s demise, Machigi had made independent moves to expand his territory to the long-desired West.

One had no idea how much of the ensuing mayhem in the southwestern corner of the continent was all Machigi’s action and how much was his neighbors’ trying to get ahead of the energetic young warlord they had unwittingly put in power.

It was highly likely that Guild had mined a public road and kidnapped a minor who was a civilian, two very illegal acts, according to the rules of the Assassins’ Guild, acts that would get both the perpetrators and the lord they served outlawed. The Guild leadership back in Shejidan was proposing to outlaw Machigi and any Guildsman who served him—a very bad situation for Machigi—on the assumption Machigi had ordered it.

It was one thing for a lord to be Filed upon by someone in particular, like a rival; that meant a small number of the filer’s Assassins might go out with Guild-granted license to take him out.

It was quite another for a lord to have himself and all his bodyguard as well as the perpetrators of the offense outlawed by the Guild; that meant that any and every Guildsman alive, of any house whatsoever, was directed to execute the offenders andthe lord who had directed them—on a priority above any other assignment in their local district.

The aiji-dowager, on the other hand, had judged Machigi had notbeen responsible for either act. She was trying to get the Guild action stopped, no mean feat, so that her emissary, namely Bren Cameron, could talk to Machigi.

In point of fact, the actions at Najida were as obvious as a bloody handprint left on somebody’s front door—too damned obvious, too clumsy, and too many violations all at once, a score of handprints laid all over Machigi’s operations in the West. Somebody had gone overboard in his attempts to get Machigi in hot water.

And who would both be that reckless of the welfare of the public on the west coast and be likely to profit from Machigi’s demise?

There was a short list, comprising the four other lords of the Marid, particularly the two in the north: Senji and Dojisigi.

But even thatwas not the scariest prospect. The disjointed character of the several attacks argued for a lack of central authority, several groups operating at once.

Letting the Guild Council proceed with a declaration of outlawry might have solved the Machigi problem quite nicely— and permanently—except that one of the two likeliest lords behind the trouble would immediately move into the power vacuum, filling the space Machigi had created in the cosmos.

And of those two, neither would be strong enough to keep any sort of peace, even inside the Marid. One would quickly assassinate the other, successors would rise up, the south would split from the north—again. The whole region would be in ferment—again. And whoever was temporarily in command of the Marid might attack the west coast, trying to snatch the power that Machigi had almost had; or he or she might just start a general war with everybody in reach, including, possibly, Tabini-aiji and the rest of the continent.

The whole matter trembled on the edge of chaos, right at a time when the continent was just settling down from the last Marid-sponsored event.

Peace was the least likely outcome once the five clans of the Marid spiraled into a power struggle.

As it had recently, reaching even into the midlands of the aishidi’tat and causing death and upset right into the capital.

So here he sat, Bren Cameron, paidhi-aiji, up to his neck in hot water againc on a diplomatic mission without precise instructions, in a spur-of-the-moment movec because the aiji-dowager had seen things about to go to hell and proposed to save Machigi, of all people on the planet, from imminent outlawry and assassination.

Would Machigi be grateful if she succeeded?