Deceiver: Foreigner #11 by C. J. Cherryh

did not want Geigi’s current staff having free rein in his security operations. Algini was very, very right about that notion. They would have to research Geigi’s bodyguard, learn who their relatives were, how placed, how connected, during the usurper’s regime. Matters which could hang fire forever so long as these men served in orbit could reach out to change loyalties, once they were on the planet. Geigi himself would know that, and likely had been very careful which of his staff he picked to go with him—but would he have done it with perfect information?
    God, what a mess!
    “Are we, however, yet admitting the heir’s two new guards to trusted levels?” he asked, a point of not-idle curiosity.
    “Not in any particular way,” Tano said, and Bren nodded slowly. Lucasi and Veijico, whom Tabini had installed in addition to Antaro and Jegari, came to the household with high-level credentials, too. But by that statement, his aishid was not turning over the house codes to them, not yet admitting them to decision-making, apparently not even letting them give orders to the servants. The dowager’s staff, yes, could do all those things. Cenedi, absolutely; but Cenedi was a long-standing exception. His staff was clearly running a very tight ship.
    So Geigi’s staff was destined to be under-informed until the investigation ran its course.
    “I concur,” he said. It was not a lord’s business to critique security decisions unless he found serious fault—and with his aishid, he didn’t. Ever. He was damned lucky, he thought. Very damned lucky to have this bodyguard. He would not be alive, if they had been in the least lax, but they had not, not even when they had arrived on what they had expected to be a working vacation. They still smarted over the ambush at Kajiminda . . . when their domestic sources had given them bad information, and when their lord had not picked up on the clues that should have warned him.
    “Do what you need to do,” he said. “Staff will move anything in the library that you want moved out.” Staff would not be allowed to touch Guild equipment. But historic porcelains and small tables and sitting chairs were definitely something staff could handle, and should, with their own sort of care.
    So he went out and gave the orders to the servant staff. The household security station, in the advent of another guest, was about to be remade as a visiting lord’s residence.
     
    All of which meant the paidhi’s office now became his last refuge, the last secure, quiet place where he could work and answer correspondence and prepare arguments for the coming legislative session . . . which was what he had been doing when all hell had broken loose in the district.
    But the legislative documents, regarding a proposed cell phone installation, lay underneath a stack of research and maps of the west coast, which was pretty well the situation in reality. He was no longer sure he would make it back to the capital for the session . . . but then, he was no longer sure the cell phone controversy would make it to the floor, thanks to the nest of problems he’d stirred up. He should be in Shejidan for the session.
    But he was likely to be here, on the west coast, trying to comprehend Edi interests and figure exactly how the dowager’s proposal was going to work in practicality.
    Oh, the debate in the legislature was likely going to be loud and nasty.
    Another armed set-to with the Marid?
    Well, on the one hand, another Marid flare-up was the one thing he could think of that might draw the Padi Valley clans back together—fragmented as that local association had been since Murini’s clan, the Kadagidi, had seized power in alliance with the Marid. The Marid was generally detested now. By everyone—including the Padi Valley.
    But, ironically, and on the other hand, a proposed Edi seat in the house of lords could see the Padi Valley and the Marid united in opposition. The Padi Valley would oppose it because they