Intruder by C. J. Cherryh Page A

mend situations for you. None of us like to be used by third parties. We deeply resent such things.
    I will never tell you which parts are lies. But I promise to base my future actions faithfully on this document as if all these things were true.
    And that, paidhi, is the most significant truth that has ever passed between us.
     
    “Damn!” Bren said when he had finished it. He passed it across to Banichi and Jago, who could share the document, and settled back with arms folded.
    “Is something other than what was represented, Bren-ji?” Tano asked.
    “Lord Machigi is what he is,” Bren said. “You shall see, nadiin-
ji, when you read it. This man is full of turns. But so is Tabini. And so is the dowager. One is not sure what one has loosed into the aishidi’tat. He is a man of qualities. One is simply not certain in what direction they tend.”
    In due time Banichi finished reading—clearly so. He let expression show—a little perplexity in a lift of the brows. And Jago, half a beat later: “The Dojisigi and the renegades together did not find a way to attack this man directly. One should remember that.”
    The paper went to Tano and Algini, who read it together.
    “He did say,” Banichi said, “that you should use this paper as you see fit.”
    Banichi and Jago had been there in the breakfast room when the statement was made.
    “One believes both the dowager and Tabini-aiji should see it, nadiin-ji. With all it entails. One does not want to inflame the situation. But they do need to see it, do they not?”
    “The question is, at all odds,” Jago said, “whether he will keep his pledge to stand by this version of the truth.”
    “Is it not?” Bren said, and thought—in Ragi, which was the only safe way to think on the topic, There is no one in the world more unhappy than a solitary ateva. Machigi said it: he has no relatives in his own district. His aishid is all he has. His clan is virtually wiped out, except a contract marriage to a Dojisigi, and he himself has not yet married. He has taken no risk of that sort…and begetting a child is a risk for him. He says he was about to marry a woman fifteen years his senior. But that is all politics.
    And it may, like every other statement in that letter, be a lie.
    Machigi is young to have landed in such a position. He does not admit to fear. Possibly he feels none, since he has never known a time when he was not a target.
    For a young man, he is scarily short of good advisors. But the four closest to him are extraordinary, at least in combination.
    He vividly remembered having a gun leveled at him—in Machigi’s hands. And with equal vividness, he recalled Machigi’s immediate and easy change of tactics when he had not spooked. Machigi had become sarcastic, sullen, then increasingly outgoing and cheerful. Shift of masks. One after the other. And which was real?
    Yet—I shall miss you, Machigi had said.
    Right before handing him this outrageous document, a flat-out warning that no one should investigate the truth who did not want to find out things that would be very inconvenient for their future relationship.
    I promise to base my future actions faithfully on this document as if all these things were true.
    The scoundrel, Bren thought. The outright scoundrel. Jago was right. Two dangerous neighbors, Murini and the shadow Guild alike, had hesitated to take on this young man.
    And once the Shejidan branch of the Guild had moved into his land, Machigi had advanced straight toward Najida, dodging fire, slippingright through the zone of conflict and helping deliver a death blow to the shadow Guild.
    With what intent? To protect the dowager?
    Or to attack her, if the Shejidan Guild didn’t stand by its word?
    If Machigi had intended simply to run for safety, any ship in his harbor would have carried him to far safer territory in the Isles with far less effort. No. Machigi had come straight for Najida. He had gone for Ilisidi, pursuing, presumably, not her