“Do go in,” Bren said to Toby and Barb, while Geigi’s attention and his courtesies passed smoothly to Ilisidi. Personal staff had neatly coordinated the arrivals by inverse order of rank, and the paidhi-aiji in particular did not enter the dining room after the aiji-dowager. Toby and Barb went first, least in rank; he came second, and as host and holder of the estate he took his place and bowed to Lord Geigi, who entered next, and found his chair at table, at Bren’s left.
Immediately after, Ilisidi arrived with Cajeiri—hindmost.
And what with Banichi and Jago, Cenedi and Nawari, Lucasi and Veijico, and Geigi’s guards, Saoji and Sakeimi, the wall around the dining table was solid black and armed to the teeth . . . not that the guests present didn’t trust each other. It was the house itself that was in jeopardy: dinnertime was absolutely classic in the machimi, as the most convenient time to sneak up on a house—what with servants coming and going, everybody gathered in one place, and maybe not paying attention . . . and perhaps a little buzzed with alcohol.
Their bodyguards, however, were paying attention. Constantly.
Poison? Not in his kitchen. Not with his cook.
Not with off-duty security having their supper next door to the kitchens.
And not with a household staff that came from Najida village. He had too many eyes, too many people on alert for any intruder to get that chance.
And dinner began, first of all, with wines, fruit juices, liquor. One knew what things their guest had been in the way of missing.
“Do choose, Geigi-ji,” Ilisidi said. Ordinarily staff would seek her choices first. She gave Geigi that honor.
And Geigi chose a delicate white wine for openers . . . Cajeiri opting for a sparkling fruit juice.
After that, then, came a succession of courses, especially the traditional regional dishes of the season. The cook had announced a seventeen-course dinner, which, even for atevi appetites, amounted more to a leisurely and lengthy tasting event than a dinner in the usual sense. There was a constant succession of plates and dishes—fish, shellfish, game of the season, imported curd and sauces of black bean plant, greenbud, orangelle, too many to track. There could not be a utensil in the kitchen not being washed and reused. There was black bread, white bread, whole-grain and soft bread. There were three kinds of eggs; and preserves and pickles. There were gravies, light and dark. There were vegetable sherbets—palate cleansers—between the courses. Bren had had particular warning from the cook about the lime-green sherbet, and he had a servant hovering anxiously by to be absolutely certain neither he nor Toby nor Barb got into that dish, which would have probably dropped them to the floor inside the hour.
There were souffles, and patés, there were crackers, four different sorts, and there were, finally, oh, my God—desserts, from cream fruit pudding with meringue to cakes and tarts, and a thirteen-layer torte with a different icing in each level.
Bren pushed back from the table in near collapse.
“If you’d like to go back to the boat—” Bren said to Toby in a very low voice, “staff can see you down. It’s dark already. But if you would like to attend the session in the study, where we shall drink brandy, or pretend to drink it at least, and observe courtly courtesies—”
“Barb?” Toby asked.
Barb looked on the verge of pain, but her eyes had that bright, darting glitter they got at jewelry counters. She looked at the lordly company, and at him, and at Toby, all in three seconds.
“When could we ever have the chance?” she asked. And then said, quietly: “If it really isn’t an intrusion for us to be there.”
Give Barb credit—and at times he truly struggled to give his ex any credit—she really was trying to absorb the experience she and Toby had fallen into, and she was on best behavior. She’d gathered about five Ragi phrases she could use, she’d bought herself a beaded dinner gown—itself a scandal in Najida village, but he didn’t tell her that—which she was not, thank God, wearing tonight. And after she’d helped Toby sink a boat in the harbor on the night when the whole place had erupted in gunfire—he’d actually had to admit Barb had been trying through all of it. Harder still, he had to admit that her help to Toby had mattered when it counted. Tonight she’d picked up cues very well, and Toby was happy, which mattered even more.
“Wouldn’t be a problem at all,” he said. “Mind, Lord Geigi handles our language on a regular basis up on station: you’ve heard. Just don’t be too informal with him. There’s some good brandy for us—don’t touch the dowager’s brand. Or have an orange and vodka. Those things are safe.”
“I’ll just sip at the brandy,” Barb said. “God, I’m stuffed.”
“Goes twice,” Toby said, “but if we won’t be trouble, we can go down late to the boat, your staff willing.”
“They’ll be up for hours, cleaning. And someone will be on duty. You’re welcome to join us.” He wasn’t Ilisidi’s escort this evening: Lord Geigi filled that post. He saw he’d inherited Cajeiri, who hadn’t said a word this evening, not one. “Are you coming too, young sir, or will you retire?”
“I shall come, nandi.”
The dinner party broke up. The dowager and Geigi went out together. Cajeiri stayed right with him. Lucasi and Veijico stayed right with Banichi and Jago. The young lord had been amazingly proper today—one was tempted to compliment him, but one always wondered what he was up to.
Gathering the gossip, Bren rather suspected, in the legitimate way, which meant sitting with the adults and listening even to things that didn’t really interest him, in hopes of some bit of mischief he could get into.
As for Toby and Barb, they were truly overfed, and had had perhaps just a half glass too much already.
But Geigi had come in from a long, long flight, endured all manner of inconvenience for a man of his girth, met with Tabini, hopped two flights, and since had a long bus ride, a meeting with Ilisidi and now a massive supper, so one rather suspected the brandy service would not stretch on into the small hours.
“Delightful, positively delightful, Bren-ji,” Geigi said to him as they were settling in to the admittedly cramped sitting room. “I have not had such a dinner in ages!”
“You are very kind to say so,” Bren said; and took a brandy himself, if only to moisten his lips with it.
Talk ran light for the while: Cajeiri was as quiet as Toby and Barb, and Bren himself had little to say, once the dowager and Geigi took to discussing the Marid.
Now that was interesting. One knew, but didn’t know the intricacies of the Marid relationships the way Geigi did.
Geigi had himself been married to a woman of the Marid—“I committed my own folly,” was Geigi’s way of putting it, “so I cannot wholly fault my fool nephew on that point, except that when the man ahead of you has fallen into a pit, it is entirely foolish to keep walking down the same course.”
“It is what we said from the beginning, nandi,” Ilisidi said. “You were doing, yes, much the same as your nephew did in listening to the Marid; but there is a difference. You hoped to stabilize the west coast, which was in a very uncomfortable balance at the time. Your staff served you gladly; you had the confidence of the Edi, despite your unfortunate marriage, and despite your wife’s best attempts to bankrupt your fortunes. Your nephew, in these dangerous times, was more concerned with stabilizing his own fortunes—no, not even his fortunes: he is not that foresighted. His comfort. One scarcely believes young Baiji ever had a thought in which his own convenience and comfort were not preeminent.”
Geigi nodded solemnly. “One hoped he had changed. I lamented my sister’s passing—we were often at loggerheads, but she had virtues when it did not involve her son. And she was my sister.” Geigi sighed. “Marriage has been very problematic for my house, nadiin-ji. A reef on which my branch of Maschi clan may have finally shipwrecked.”
“Say no such thing!” Ilisidi snapped. “Your management will resurrect Maschi clan’s fortunes. As for heir-getting, Baiji will produce an heir with a lady o
f advantageous birth, his mother will have his rearing up to fortunate seven, and then we shall simply pack him up to the station so you may have the pleasure of bringing up your nephew in a proper way.”
A little smile. “You have it planned, aiji-ma.”
“Enough of aiji-ma. ’Sidi will do, I say. Speak to me. Voice your opinion about this course.”
“I would wish my heir to grow up at Kajiminda,” Geigi said wistfully, “and I would wish to have my nephew as far away from any impressionable child as possible.”
“Ha. Bring your nephew up to the station, then marry the young woman I suggest, and install her as lord in Kajiminda.”
Geigi’s right brow lifted. He took a sip of brandy. “Do you have a name for this theoretical young woman?” he asked.
“We have two possibilities. But we lean most to Maie of the Calrunaidi. A brilliant young scholar. Her brother will inherit Calrunaidi, and she has no shortage of prospects. She is sensible, good at figures, a credit to her parentage, which is Calrunaidi and Ardija. She is no beauty, but it is not beauty that recommends her.”
“Ardija,” Geigi said, nodding slowly. The aged lady of Ardija, as Bren well-rememered, was Drien, Ilisidi’s closest living relative in the East. It was a connection with her own estate of Malguri that Ilisidi proposed for Geigi.
“The young lady has rights there, but no inheritance: Drien of Ardija has a brother-of-the-same-mother whose son will inherit that estate. So young Maie has better connections than she does prospects. She is a well-dispositioned child who could do far, far better than temporarily marry one of my neighbors and produce them heirs with her connections . . . frankly, a potential inconvenience to my house, which has no heir but this young gentleman, and he is too young for her.”
“Great-grandmother!” Cajeiri said in shock.
“Continue to be young,” Ilisidi said, brushing the matter aside. “Too young, I say, and the young lady is far too bookish for your taste. Not, however, for Lord Geigi’s interests, perhaps. Geigi may marry her.”
“Marry,” Geigi said, still in shock, himself; and Barb and Toby were looking in Bren’s direction in some small concern, but it was no time to provide translations.
It was a brilliant piece of dynastic chess—if the individuals involved could be persuaded. The sticking point was persuading any young lady of taste to bed down with Baiji long enough. But that marriage could be contracted to last just as long as it took to produce an heir, then evaporate as if it had never been. The young woman would find herself quickly married to Lord Geigi, who might even visit the planet for the occasion—and thereafter, if one could read Ilisidi’s plans between the lines, young Maie of the East would occupy Kajiminda, deal with the Edi, and bring up a suitably educated heir for Geigi’s branch of Maschi clan. Maybe two heirs, if she and Geigi actually took to each other . . . though the unspoken matter in the background was that Geigi was rumored to have very little interest in young ladies, and no success in getting an heir of his own.
“With adequate security for her residence here,” Geigi said quietly, “that above all. She would be an immediate target of our neighbors in the Marid. So would her child.”
“The Edi will be establishing their own house somewhere neighboring both Kajiminda and Najida,” the dowager said. “And one does not doubt they will become a force to be reckoned with.”
“But is that a certainty?” Geigi asked. “One believed it would still be under debate in the legislature.”
“Oh, pish,” Ilisidi said with a dismissive wave of her hand. “My grandson has a brain. He will agree with me, given the other circumstances. And he will see that the legislature agrees. The arrangement gives no great advantage to any single western house, which would be the greatest sticking-point. So it will pass.”
It wasn’t going to be as easy as the dowager said, but with the possibility of a renewed set-to with the Marid looming in the immediate future, and another round of Marid-directed assassinations aimed at destabilizing the aishidi’tat, then countermoves by the aiji, the house of lords might be inclined to give in and support the proposal. Even the hidebound traditionalists of the center, like Tatiseigi—who was a staunch ally of the aiji-dowager on other points—might be persuaded. One had the feeling of watching a landslide. Boulders were coming downhill, in the dowager’s planning, and damned little was going to stand in her way.
Certainly not one young bookish girl in—what was the clan? Calrunaidi. Nobody in the west had ever heard much of Calrunaidi.
But one had certainly heard of Ardija. That, tied closely to Malguri, and involving relatives of the aiji-dowager, was a bloodline of some potency.
And that alliance would tie the west coast firmly to Malguri, which was Cajeiri’s inheritance, until he produced an heir for it.
God. On the chessboard of politics, that was a potential earthquake. The great houses employed not only numbers experts, they employed genealogists to track this sort of thing. They would see it—but they likely would give way to it, in the interests of peace.
“One would agree,” Geigi said, “if this can be arranged.”
“Good, good,” Ilisidi said. “So you may think on it and tell me your thoughts when you have had time to mull it over. Perhaps we should have our last round and let you get to your bed, Geigi-ji. You must be exhausted.”
“One admits to it,” Geigi said. “And I shall indeed think on your proposal, ’Sidi-ji. I shall think on it very favorably.” He turned then to Toby and Barb, and said, in very passable ship-speak: “We discuss politics. Unavoidable. One wishes a more tranquil conversation.”
“An extravagant honor, nandi,” Toby said, one of his courtly phrases of Ragi. “One is gratified by your notice.”
He got it out without saying orange drink, a close thing, with the word notice. Bren was astonished.
But then—Toby had spent the last couple of years running messages between the Resistance and the Island, and his vocabulary hadn’t exactly rusted.
“You speak a fair amount of Ragi, nandi,” Geigi said.
“About boats, navigation, hello, and good-bye, nandi.”
“-se,” Bren tossed in, the felicitous false-one, since Toby had given a list of infelicitous four. It was natural as breathing.
“-se,” Toby added in the next breath. “We hear, but do not talk, nandi.”
Geigi laughed. “Very well done!” And continued, in ship-speak: “The station knows you as Frozen Dessert.”
Toby and Barb both laughed.
Frozen Dessert? Bren wondered.
“Our code name,” Toby said to Bren, “when the authorities had to refer to us.”
Bren translated that for the dowager, and for Cajeiri. “That was the word referring to them and their boat, during the Resistance, aiji-ma, young gentleman. When they were running messages.”
“And bravely done!” Geigi said. “The enemy would appear and the dessert would melt in the sun.”
“Little boat,” Toby said in Ragi. “Hard to spot.”
“Very good work,” Geigi said in ship-speak, and in Ragi: “Tell them that they will be welcome as my personal guests in Kajiminda, when I have done a little housecleaning.”
“He says you’re welcome as his guests at Kajiminda when he has things there under control,” Bren said, thinking the while that Geigi could not possibly follow through on that, and, please God, would never have to give up his station post to do so. But there was another round of polite sentiments, all the same.
Then a tap of the dowager’s cane. “We must let this gentleman get to his bed, paidhi-ji.”
“Indeed, aiji-ma.” As host, he made the suggestion. “Geigi-ji, please let my staff escort you to your rooms.”
Geigi’s bodyguard, among other things, had to be bone-tired, exhausted, after standing the last while, and those two still needed to brief and debrief with the rest of his aishid, and with the aiji-dowager’s people. They had several more hours to go before they saw their beds.
“W
e are quite weary,” Geigi said obligingly, and in a series of small signals, the dowager gathering up her cane and signaling Cenedi; and Bren, as host, making a sign to Banichi and Jago, Geigi gathered his considerable bulk up from his chair, everyone got up, and there were goodnight bows all around as he left. Cajeiri and Barb and Toby hung back until the dowager and Geigi had gotten out the door.
For Bren, exhaustion came down on him, not just for this day, but for several days before. He waited while Cajeiri joined his bodyguard on the way out; and then heaved a deep sigh, feeling the effects of just about two sips too much brandy. “So sorry you have to hike down to the boat,” he said to Barb and Toby. And added: “Very well done, extremely well done. Frozen Dessert.”
They laughed, assured him an after-dinner hike wasn’t at all a hard thing for them, and he walked them to the door.
Then, in an attack of unease, and thinking of that long, dark set of steps amid the scrub evergreen, and that exposed dock below, he said to Banichi and Jago: “Nadiin-ji, one hates to ask, but would you go with them?”
“Yes,” Banichi said. “Let us pick up some equipment, and we shall be glad to do so.”
“I hate to bother them,” Toby protested. “Surely just house staff—”
“—is in no wise equipped to take care of untoward situations,” he said. “Indulge me. Geigi’s just arrived, with all that means. If our enemies aren’t asleep or more disrupted than we think, they’ll know he’s here, they’ll know meetings are going on, they’ll want more than anything to know what we’ve said, and I’m almost inclined to move out some more staff and house you two in the basement with Baiji tonight. Frozen Dessert, indeed. You’re too well informed. Scarily well-informed. And I don’t want the Marid getting their hands on you.”
“Is that all?” Toby laughed. “I thought it was brotherly concern.”
“That, too, is somewhere in the stew. Just take the protection. And if you’re harboring any more secrets, bring me up to date on them.”
“Oh, you knew we were running messages. Most of the time we didn’t have a clue about the content. At least on this side of the water.”