Well, but it was just stupid! Breaking with associations was not his value in the scheme of things, was it? Had not Lord Bren said that? Had not Great-grandmother and Great-uncle agreed? He mixed most of the continent in his bloodline, and it had turned out the lords were considerably wrought about that, each vying to claim a share of him for their province, their people. They all thought those connections he had were a good thing.
So, and had he not gained human associates, including Lord Bren, who advised his father. He was never going to give Lord Bren up, was he? Did not Lord Bren serve his father, and his father approve him?
So he could make these two who were so devoted to him understand how that was, and maybe get them to stop objecting about the rules.
He decided, he was not going to sit on his hands—Bren’s word for doing nothing. He was not an island. He was not born for that. He connected everything. Was that not why everyone who wanted the aishidi’tat to survive—had cheered him in the streets when he came here?
“Gene and Artur were my associates during the voyage home,” he began, attempting cheerfulness toward two maddeningly attentive faces. He decided to be patient. Great-grandmother had taught him to be, and thwacked his ear when he fidgeted. He decided to fight with words. Lord Bren had taught him that. “Gene and Artur and Bjorn. They made fortunate three.” That hurt to think of, because, up there, they still would be fortunate three, without him. Gene had somehow invited Bjorn into the group. Or Bjorn had added himself, and confused him, since he had known his great-grandmother would disapprove. “I said Irene should join us because it made us five—though humans hardly think in numbers. They were born on a space station we never even knew existed, a few years ago…”
“A number of matters have to be attended to,” Ilisidi said to Bren, and spared a glance up. “Are you chilled, nand’ paidhi?”
“Only a little, aiji-ma. Please, finish your tea.”
“Well, well.” She poured her cup, and by gesture, offered the same to him, from her own hand, in this breakfast with few servants.
“Honored, aiji-ma.” He took it, and warmed his hands and scalded his mouth with the first sip.
“Bitter?”
“Hot. Heat is welcome.”
“Well, well, but I shall be leaving the Bu-javid. Things must be said while we have the chance, nandi-ji. The repairs of Tirnamardi are one thing. The repairs to the fabric of the Central Association—those are far more urgent.”
“Indeed. Whatever you wish said, or done, aiji-ma, I shall do.”
“There have been too many assassinations in our absence from the world, even into the East. Lord Mesi is dead.”
That was a neighbor of hers, in the Eastern Association, her distant home.
“One regrets to hear it.”
“Poisoned. And he was such a careful man.”
“One urges the dowager take very great care at Tirnamardi. We already know its risks.”
“Disaffection in the district. A house neighboring the Kadagidi. Not to mention marriages across that border.” Of which Cajeiri’s mother’s relatives in Ajuri clan were several key ones, nominally interested in mending fences—and likely to make approaches, honest or otherwise. Ilisidi pursed her lips, the cup stayed on its way to her mouth. Her gold eyes darted a sharp glance aside to the doorway and back. “Tatiseigi asked remuneration from my grandson for the damages to the estate. He will get it. He will be quite astonished.”
So Tabini himself was going to foot the bill for the battle. Or the national treasury was. “It seems just,” Bren said. “But the province at large suffered, too.”
“A people as stubborn and prideful as their lord. They will wrangle over compensatory damages and ask funding for repairs. That is not the compensation my grandson proposes for them.”
“Not industry.”
“Never.” Amusement crinkled her eyes. “No. The Atageini have no bent for factories. Nor would Tati-ji ever accept it. But developing the hot springs at Comei…public baths there will gain money and trade, and preserve the natural environment. It was our suggestion, to my grandson.”
“An excellent notion.” It truly was. He knew the area, a set of terraces and hot springs, natural and beautiful, but almost inaccessible. They only had to get a rail line through Tatiseigi’s estate—and he began to see that Tabini had another motive in mind besides gratitude: they had tried to get that line through for the last fifty years. Putting it through near Comei—that was brilliant. Tabini hadn’t dropped a stitch.
“Beyond this,” Ilisidi said, “the recovery of one bus from the Taiben woods…that will mollify the transit authority. Recompense to various districts for wear, tear, and damage to the trucks and buses: my staff is making a list. The monetary damages will be dealt with.”
She was a force of nature.
And she would be leaving the capital soon, to find her own way back east, to her own holdings, after her sojourn with Tatiseigi. So he imagined. He would miss Ilisidi. He had lived so closely with her and her staff and Cajeiri during the voyage that he had, yes, dammit, regarded her as family—he had lost his own mother in parting with the world, and it had been too natural during those two years to fall into Ilisidi’s orbit. It was an emotional attachment that would shock and amaze the dowager.
Time, he thought, to cut those bonds. Might it be his own too-frequent presumptions on her society that had driven her to take refuge elsewhere?
But she knew what was right to do, and she was self-protective, and protective of the boy. She had the right instincts. She surely saw that those bonds needed to be cut, and national politics as well as the welfare of the boy himself was the urgent reason for doing it now, as painlessly as possible.
Wise Ilisidi, he said to himself. Wise. Even kind. Ilisidi had found so delicate a way to manage, had arranged all the details, and set up a plausible situation which would help the boy through it and wean them all apart, their little family that could only have existed in the human geometries of shipboard living. That this departure to Tirnamardi was just the natural, convenient progress of things…he by no means believed it.
The breakfast invitation was the last he would have of her company for a while, he became sure.
“Well, well,” she said, pushing back her dish, “best break this up before you freeze, nandi.”
“Then I must say good-bye to you, aiji-ma.”
“Oh, indeed, not quite good-bye, paidhi. Join me for dinner this evening.”
He might have stopped in rising, ever so slightly, but he covered his dismay with a bow—or thought he had.
The dowager smiled beneficently.
The party, he well knew, was a company of Easterners arrived yesterday, to meet the dowager, to felicitate her on her return, and probably to deplore her recent associations…meaning humans, shipboard and current.
And she wanted him there tonight, when he had intended to have supper in his rooms, troubling the staff as little as possible and giving no intimation of his presence in her household.
“I shall, then,” he said, his heart beating just a little faster. He searched her face, the flick of a glance, for motive, or hint, or warning, and gained nothing at all. “Honored, aiji-ma. Indeed, I am honored.”
“There was no place on the ship we could not go,” Cajeiri said. “Well, except onto the captains’ deck, or into a few such places, but we knew every passage, even between decks, even the dark, cold places, where you could almost float when you walked.”
His audience followed everything with rapt attention—gratifying. Jegari and Antaro were older and taller and stronger than he was. It was hard to feel in charge when one had to look up constantly. But at the moment, he felt embraced, and felt their loyalty about him, solid and good and steady.
He could hardly help it. Wicked ambition took over. His next sentence was: “We need to know this place that well.”
A spark leaped up in that placid, absolute devotion, the same little spark he had seen leap up under fire in Tir
namardi—in two young bodyguards who by no means knew this place, this huge single building. Was ignorance and fear of this great house the reason they had been so subdued, so absolutely, deadly earnest and spooked by every noise? They had known their deep forest. This stone place had different rules, and they must be more lost than he was.
“Yes,” they said, almost as one, seizing on what he said. And he immediately had second thoughts: he knew the hazards of what he proposed, and knew, too, what these two were not—Guild, for one: Assassins’ Guild, the way bodyguards were supposed to be, and their pretending to be would not sit well with those who were. Pretense was no longer a game. Not in the Bu-javid’s nervous corridors—where there might well be people bent on killing. It might get them into dangerous trouble.
But neither was it a game, that he needed to have his freedom, and he needed to have knowledge of his surroundings, in case some intruder got into Great-grandmother’s apartments, or met them in the halls. They had to know the escapes and the secret ways, and these existed: he knew they did—they had used some of them to get into the Bu-javid alive.
“There are wires,” he said. These two had seen the effect of wires, that could be set ankle-high, nearly invisible, that could take a foot off. It was one of the deadliest traps the Guild used, and there were wires guarding the aiji his father, and guarding lords, and various other sensitive places throughout the building. He knew that just on a reasonable guess, because he knew the resources of the Guild that defended them.
“We know wires,” Jegari said cheerfully. “Taiben has them.”
They would know other things, then. That was good. His father’s hunting lodge had been a major security installation in Taiben province, and the Taibeni had maintained it until the coup…so they were not ignorant in that regard.
And after Murini took over, the Taibeni had served to protect his father, as woodland rangers…and they had shuffled here and there about the province, eluding Kadagidi attacks and returning attack only when they picked the ground and the odds. They might be wide-eyed and quiet, these two, and spooked by shadows, but that was because they did notice things. They were quick and they might be clever—once they knew facts to work on.
They had to find out how things were set up, that was what, and that included even the Guild’s security precautions, so they could move in safety. If they were his substitute for Gene and Artur, and this was where he had to live, well, freedom to come and go would fix a great many things. On the ship, he had had the computers on which to look things up, and they had had the intercoms at every turn, and the back passages and service accesses and crawlways to enable quick movement and secret meetings. The Bu-javid was absolutely riddled with passages on its lower levels, and had no few above. During the fighting, at the very time he had been running for his life and climbing stairs until his stomach hurt, he had seen the pipes and the conduits that ran right along overhead and all around them on the walls, and he knew that where those conduits and pipes disappeared and appeared again for water lines and vents, there would be access panels, valves, and interrupts of some kind. That was the way plumbing and electricity worked. There had always been access panels on the ship, and there had to be such here, unless one wanted to chisel through a wall to get at something stuck in the plumbing. And that was just too stupid. It was not the way clever builders would do things.
“We need maps, nadiin-ji,” he said. “And we can draw them, for all the servants’ halls.”
“We can indeed do that, nandi,” Antaro said.
“But no one should see you at it.”
Jegari touched a finger to his head. “We remember forest paths. There is no difference, nandi. All we have to do is walk through and then draw the map when we get to the room.”
He was perplexed suddenly. He found he had no Ragi word for service access. He thought, sometimes, in a mishmash of Ragi and ship-speak. “Panels where you can reach wires and pipes.”
“Entry plates, nandi,” Jegari supplied.
“We have to know where all those are. Those should be on the maps. I know how to wire things.” He was very proud of that. “And I know about—the things you turn like faucets, to shut water off…what do you call the things that shut off pipes?”
“Valves,” Antaro said.
That was still a Mosphei’ word, by the sound of it. Ragi had borrowed a great many words from Mosphei’, so nand’ Bren had told him, even for things like plumbing, which atevi had had a long time before humans dropped down to the world. His head was stuffed with new information: he met strangeness on every hand, all the hours of the day, and he was determined not to forget his lessons from shipboard. He was determined, now that he thought of it, to draw every passage on the ship, from memory, with all the accesses they had used, he and Gene, and Artur, when grown-ups tried in vain to find them. And then he intended to do the same for the Bu-javid.
There were bullet-holes in the hallways here in the Bu-javid. People had died out there, and his father’s staff had been murdered in his apartment without even a chance. Here the back ways could very clearly be important. If he knew them, he said to himself, he could get himself and Great-grandmother to safety. So anything was justified, so long as he was careful, and kept his notes secret.
“And we need to get into communications,” he said. “If it were the ship, we could just listen in. We need to learn how the phones work, so if we want to know something, we can learn it.”
“Security will surely catch us at that, nandi,” Antaro said with a frown. “They can tell if we tap a line.”
“How?”
“One by no means knows how, nandi, but they will know.”
“We need to know how they know. One could ask our security that. One could find a clever way. Or one might find a manual. Is there a library, do you think, nadiin-ji?” He had no idea if there was a computer library here in the Bu-javid, the way one could call up files on the ship, but it seemed reasonable that people would want some sort of reference near, and the Bu-javid certainly had every other amenity. Downstairs, when they came in, there had been records strewn across the floor. Those had to sit somewhere…records of all sorts. Books. Maps. Charts. Diagrams.
“There is a library,” Jegari said. “There is a great library, nandi.”
“A very famous one,” Antaro said. “But one has no idea where in the building it may be.”
“I can find out,” Cajeiri said in every confidence, “and they will lend books to me. My father will approve my study. Study always looks innocent.”
“Can one be certain,” Jegari asked carefully, “that this inquiry will not bring trouble on you, nandi?”
“I have no such fear,” he said, and indeed, had none at all, and quickly changed the subject. A servant had just come in. It was that woman who always smiled at him and made smiling look like a chore. Pahien was her name. She belonged to the staff here. And he detested her. “Eat the eggs, nadiin-ji. Quickly, before I have to.”
The servant had brought a message cylinder, a silver filigree one, proffering it in a small silver bowl. It was, Cajeiri saw, Great-grandmother’s personal message cylinder. And he did not think it portended anything good. Great-grandmother rarely sent him messages, and they were usually social, but often a reprimand, sometimes a very scathing reprimand. He was prepared to control his face, and hoped to the depth of his heart they had not just been overheard in what was a very important scheme.
There was, the message read, a party tonight.
And he was invited. His heart leaped up.
But it was a dinner party for lords out of the Eastern Association.
Well, that was not good news. It was no one he knew. Probably nobody in all the world he knew would be there, except Great-grandmother and Cenedi and his men, and security would be on strictest duty, which meant Jegari and Antaro had to eat later and stand behind his chair. He would have to dress in starched lace and sit on display, like a porcelain on a pedestal, and be perfect and still while people stare
d at him.
It was just gruesome. It was not at all what he called a party. Everyone would talk past him, or expect him to perform, or ask him cleverly worded questions about things Great-grandmother would not want him to talk about and then smirk if he proved too clever for them.
“I shall answer, nadi,” he said to the maidservant, who took the cylinder and the bowl away and would return with his own plain message cylinder and appropriately sized paper and pen. And then she would stand by and stare at him while he wrote.
On the ship he could have called Gene on com and asked whether they might have pizza.
But even on the ship, he would have answered Great-grandmother with a carefully written message, and that message would say, inescapably, in very proper script, “One will be extremely honored to attend the formal dinner this evening at sunset, esteemed Great-grandmother. One is gratified by the invitation.”
2
The paidhi’s quarters within the dowager’s apartments were, indeed, a little cramped for the burgeoning piles of documents and letters which had been pouring into the paidhi’s nonexistent office since their arrival in the Bu-javid. Citizens had complaints, felicitations, and earnest queries as to whether, for instance, the station was the agency which had sent down the mysterious capsules that had been rumored landed in the remote north.
Probably they had done so, was the short answer. But Bren had no personal idea what these mysterious landings portended, whether such packages were dangerous, or observational, or just what the station might have had in mind. One could note that they had been landed during Murini’s takeover, when the station had every reason to mistrust the situation. But the station had neglected to mention the existence of such things when they had passed through—admittedly in haste—and he had no information for the recipients of such landings. He could not say whether they were dangerous to approach, and now everyone was looking for such items in their bean patches and hunting areas. It was hard to tell a farmer just to be patient, with an unknown thing sitting in one’s orchard, with a parachute draped over the fruit trees…that was one photo he had received, and yes, if he were the orchard-keeper, he would be understandably perturbed.