Intruder

"Intruder" by C.J. Cherryh

To Jane, for always being there

and always coming through.

1

  Spring in the southwest, and the heavens had opened—not the gentle rains of the summer, but a sheeting deluge that warped the spring landscape beyond the tinted windows of the bus.

Inside, warm and dry, working on a tray table almost sufficient for his paper notes, Bren Cameron enjoyed a sip of tea from a scandalous plastic cup. He had the four-seat executive arrangement to himself at the moment, and his briefcase lay open on the adjacent seat. His four-person bodyguard had all gone to the rear of the bus to converse with the young contingent of Guildsmen they’d been handed for protection, and that left him room to work.

Lightning flashed just uphill from the bus. Thunder cracked—worrisome for electronics, but he wasn’t working on his computer this trip. That machine had far, far too much in its storage to be bringing it into Taisigi territory, and he’d sent it on to the capital with his valets and significant items of furniture, the computer itself to be hand carried and guarded every step of the way. The spiral-bound notebook was enough for him, along with a stack of loose-leaf work and printouts and, within the briefcase, a folder of very official papers, vellum with red and black wax seals and carefully preserved ribbons.

A dark presence moved down the aisle, loomed over him and switched out the vacuum-thermos teapot on his little work surface. Jago was not a servant—the sidearm attested to that. So did the black leather of the Assassins’ Guild. She stood a head taller than any tall human, black-ski

He was the sole human on the bus, a single individual of fair hair and pale skin and pale civilian dress in a company of black-uniformed atevi. He was the sole human on the mainland, by now, and his personal world had gotten back to the atevi norm, where he looked up at everyone he talked to and struggled with steps and furniture. He was not a small man—as humans went. But here, even a small teacup meant a generous pouring, and the seat he occupied, scaled for atevi, accommodated human stature with a footrest.

It was his bus. And it had such amenities. He was dressed for court, lace at the cuffs and collar, a pale blue vest. His coat, beige brocade, hung behind the driver. He had his fair hair braided, and the ribbon that tied that braid was white, the badge of the paidhi-aiji— translator for the aiji, the ruler of the aishidi’tat, the Western Association. The white ribbon meant peace and nonviolence, the paidhi’s job being that of an intercessor in the affairs of lords.

The white ribbon was supposed to mean peace and nonviolence, at least, and the gun he usually carried in his pocket was in the luggage this trip. The bulletproof vest was only a precaution.

Jago made a second trip forward to advise him, leaning on the seat back across the aisle. “We have just crossed the border, Bren-ji.”

The border out of Sarini Province, that was.

So they were now in Taisigi district, in what had been hostile territory for centuries—a place he never would have contemplated entering. Not on his life.

But he’d already been there. He’d negotiated with the lord of the Taisigi. He’d gotten out in fairly good shape, despite the efforts of some.

And he was coming back, to finish what he’d started, now that the Assassins’ Guild had taken “supportive control” of Tanaja, the capital of Taisigi clan.

“Will you want lunch, Bren-ji?” Jago asked him. The galley on their well-appointed bus was in operation. A pleasant aroma had informed him of that some while ago.

“A light one, Jago-ji, half a sandwich, perhaps.” There was no knowing whether they were going to attend a formal di

“With the Guild, yes,” Jago said. “Not yet with Lord Machigi’s staff.”

“Let me know when you have, Jago-ji.”

“Yes,” she said, and went back down the aisle.

He poured another small dose of tea, sipped it, reflexively saved his papers from a spill as the bus hit a hole, and took a fleeting note: Road improvement, Targai-Najida to border—for a time when relations might be easier. They were still on the Sarini plateau, but the road—which on the atevi mainland meant a strip of mud, gravel, or mowed grass leading somewhere the railways didn’t go—would start descending hereafter, headed for the heart of the Marid, an arm of the wider sea that was its own small world.

The Taisigi whose lord he proposed to visit were one of the five clans of the Marid.

Lord Machigi of the Taisigin Marid had become the last man standing of the three most powerful Marid lords. The three lords had plotted, each in his own way, to take over the west coast of the aishidi’tat; unfortunately, one Bren Cameron, whose country estate lay on the West Coast, on Najida Peninsula, had decided to take a vacation right in the middle of the territory in question.

The Marid, immediately seeing something ominous in his presence, had attempted to assassinate him and his young guest, Cajeiri—who happened to be the eight-year-old son of Tabini-aiji, the ruler of the aishidi’tat.

That had brought in the lad’s great-grandmother, not the quiet sort of great-grandmother, but the lord of the East and notthe power to cross if one wanted a long life.

Hence the paidhi’s current trip to Tanaja, in a shiny red and black bus, with his own bodyguard and ten junior Guildsmen. His bodyguard hadn’t been sure the juniors were an asset—more apt to need protection than to provide it, in Jago’s words; but they were the guard the Guild had come up with on short notice, the Guild having deployed almost all its senior assets in the recent Marid action, and when all was said, ten additional Guildsmen with equipment certainly looked formidable.

So the younger contingent came along—in case absolutely everything he’d worked out with the young lord of the Taisigi had gone to blazes overnight. Which, in the volatile politics of the aishidi’tat, was not impossible.

Go talk to Machigi, the aiji-dowager had said—Ilisidi, the aiji’s grandmother and young Cajeiri’s great-grandmother. Get Machigi to give up his claim on the West Coast and ally with us. In turn, we shall stop the Guild from assassinating him. That was the order that had sent him to Tanaja the first time.

Socin the upshot of it all, two Marid lords who hadn’t won Ilisidi’s favorable attention were now dead, their houses occupied by the Assassins’ Guild, who were busy going through their records and finding out a host of things the deceased lords would not have wanted published to the worldcor to their own clans.

And here he was back in Lord Machigi’s territory for the second time in two weeks. Machigi’s premises were also being occupied by Guild forces, but in a theoretically benevolent way.

Tabini-aiji, back in the capital of the aishidi’tat, in Shejidan, was still watching the operation in some curiosity—rather in the ma