And curiously enough, he had actually felt more nervous about the new bodyguard Father had added to protect him than he had been about the people who might want to attack him, though he knew in his good sense that that was a stupid way to feel. And certainly he had been glad to have them at Tirnamardi. There was nothing they were doing that put him in more danger. It only pointed up that there was more danger, there would be and would always be, and that people had died, and could die.
Aunt Geidaro was gone now. He so hoped cousin Nomari could stay alive.
Someday, Atageini was going to belong to his sister. And someday he would be aiji. Someday. Someday. Someday. He did not want that to happen for a long, long time.
But—and that was what upset his stomach—it could happen any given day.
That was what all this security meant. The world was always changing. But suddenly, throughout the world and above it, a lot of changes were happening at once. Humans had been forbidden on the mainland for hundreds of years, except for the paidhiin, and in a very short time, for the first time since the War of the Landing, thousands of human strangers were going to land on atevi soil, even if they were being shipped right away over to Mospheira.
And goods were going to fall down from the space station on the petal sails, as they had done with people aboard, hundreds of years ago. The new petal sails, carrying only cargo, would land in a hunting range shared by the North Coastal association and Ajuri. Some of those goods were atevi goods. Others would be put on ships and sent to Port Jackson.
That had never happened before.
And he had three human associates now living in a sort of manor house in Port Jackson. So close—compared to their being on the space station—but still so very far from him, in a city that looked nothing like an atevi township. He wanted to call them. He so wanted to hear their voices. There would come a time he could call them. That was the good part of the changes.
But everybody said that they were settling in and should not be distracted yet. Their parents were with them, well, Gene’s was, and Artur’s were, but Irene’s mother was still up on the station, in a good deal of trouble, and with Irene not speaking to her. He wished he could do something about that, but he had no idea how, or whether it ever could be fixed, or even if it should be fixed. Irene’s mother . . . was a puzzle to him.
“You look worried, Jeri-ji,” Jegari asked, dropping down to one knee by his chair. “Is there a problem?”
“Nothing that was not there yesterday,” he said.
Antaro was nearby. Lucasi and Veijico came over to hear what Jegari asked.
“So what is the trouble?” Antaro asked.
“I think Eisi and Liedi should have a holiday. They really should. But they cannot.” He cast a glance at the large filigree cage, at the black ball of fur hunched on one of the perches. “Boji is only waiting to wake up in a bad mood tomorrow, and upset the whole household. One feels stupid even to be talking about Boji, but he is a problem.” He drew a deep breath, and sighed. “I have decided I have to find a place for him, and I have spoken to Onami on the matter. Eisi and Liedi have been very patient with me. But Boji is a problem for everybody. And I cannot go on imposing on my servants. They came to do far more for us than feed Boji eggs.”
“Are you determined to let him go?” Jegari asked.
“I have to. I believe I have to, for his sake as well as the household’s.”
“I think Eisi and Liedi will actually miss the little creature,” Antaro said. “So will we. He has saved us more than once, a very effective alarm in the night—excepting the times he simply wants his breakfast at an indecent hour. But if you truly are determined . . .”
“His manners will not improve.” Things had been flung, and broken, and stolen, not to mention a scratch on the dining table his staff took special pains to cover. It was historic furniture, all of it, and now the table had Boji’s signature, as long as his own hand. “And he is cramped in that cage. I owe it also to Eisi and Liedi. And to him.”
“Shall we consult with Onami, then?”
“That, yes. Finding him a place will solve one problem.”
“What is the other, nandi?”
He hesitated to say. He hesitated a long moment, not wanting to cause trouble, not wanting to sow discontent, as Great-grandmother would say. But coming home—realizing that the changes wrought on his trip were coming through the door with them—that everything was changed . . .
“One is disturbed, Gari-ji, not even to have been warned I was getting another aishid. I was upset at first. And I was truly glad they were with us in the trouble at Tirnamardi. But here we are, home, and we have no room, and things are having to change. You were not warned, either, were you?”
“We were not. But they are the best we could hope for. And there was bound to be a second team. The heir has to have two.”
“I cannot break my promise that you should be first.”
“Jeri-ji,” Antaro said, “they are by far senior. The promise is to us, and we can forgive it.”
“But I cannot put them in your place. I will not. And I do not know how to sort it out politely.”
“They did not displace us from our rooms. They are trying very hard not to disturb the order of things.”
“But they displaced Eisi and Liedi further down the hall. Into a storeroom.”
“That is tonight,” Lucasi said. “But the whole hall is going to be for them and your staff. That is the word from your father’s people. They will be installing security doors and clearing space.”
“If we were a proper household, Eisi and Liedi would have rooms nearest my door.”
“More important that the seniors be nearest,” Veijico said.
“And the new team is the best we could get,” Cajeiri said. “I know. I know that. But—I do not want us to change, nadiin-ji. I cannot send the seniors away. I agree I should not. We need them, but—”
“We do absolutely need them,” Jegari said. “For our training and your safety. We want to be good. They can make us be.”
“But I cannot have them displacing you or upsetting everything in the household. They are tremendously skilled. We are all safer for their being there. But how do we manage at home—with them? They are just—older.”
“Which is their usefulness,” Antaro said. “We have talked about this, all four of us. And we are young, Jeri-ji. We have been young together, and we have learned together, but the older we get, knowing our responsibility, the more we worry about our protecting you, because we have not been through the Guild courses. We are not as well-trained as we could be. We have learned things from Cenedi and Banichi that we would never have learned in courses, and we have codes we are not supposed to have . . . that we must admit to the seniors, and trust they know why we have them. But we do not, sometimes, know the simple things we should have learned . . . procedures, the working of certain equipment that we shall need. Veijico and Lucasi have at least had some higher courses. They were actually put into the field. While we . . .”
“You all do very well,” Cajeiri said. “Banichi says so. Cenedi says so.”
“But, Jeri-ji, we dread, we greatly dread, the day we make a mistake that could let harm reach you. Yes, we are a little set back by their arrival. We dread being fools in front of them. How could we not? But . . . they are instructors, and we are all benefitting. They have pointed out things we need to know. Should know. They have the ability to reach sources in the Guild we did not even know we had available . . . and they will open doors at the highest levels, even for your father’s aishid, that is how much they help. We are not unhappy in this arrival. Everybody in the household can benefit from their presence,”
“And there is a political point,” Jegari added quietly. “They are not Taibeni. Nobody can object to them.”
Father’s mother had been Taibeni. Father had insisted on Taibeni for hi
s own guard, after the betrayal of the unit the Assassins’ Guild had given him. The Guild had objected to such heavy reliance on Father’s maternal clan, and so had the west coast. Great-grandmother had lent senior Eastern Guild for Father’s guard, but politics in general was not quite happy with that, either, nor quite happy with Antaro and Jegari, also Taibeni, as his senior bodyguards. Veijico and Lucasi were highlanders, at least not Taibeni, but not known quantities, either.
His new aishid, however, being central Guild to the hilt, with ties to the Council—that would make the Guild Council so much happier and it would make the legislature a lot happier, too. He understood that. He might be only fortunate nine, but he well knew how households were woven together by staff with all sorts of ties. Everybody was connected to somebody who was connected to somebody else, and Council connections meant an instant audience for high-level problems—without going through the lower halls of office. Even Father had had difficulties, when he had taken a lower-level bodyguard and fought Guild Administration and Guild rules.
But there had been other reasons for that opposition, too, as it was a very good thing Father had taken the action he had. Guild Administration had changed, in the same action that had broken the Shadow Guild.
“The seniors say, too,” Jegari said, “that they hope to be here at least a few years and continue to teach us.”
“You are senior,” Cajeiri said. “I said you were, and they cannot change that.”
“It will only confuse the household, Jeri-ji. They are willing to take orders through us, but they are seniormost, and outsiders will call them that—we are perfectly willing to have them take that name for their tenure here, and receive communications, without confusing your father’s staff, or the Messengers’ Guild. Someday they will retire and we will truly be senior, and because you have to have a double guard, we will be taking on a younger aishid ourselves. Meanwhile you will be safer, and we will become better protection than we would otherwise have been.”
“Your junior aishid plans to keep you alive,” Veijico said. “And these four will help us when Banichi and Cenedi are not with us. Eisi and Liedi are not unhappy in this change, either. Probably they are not happy to ride in the baggage car with a screaming parid’ja, but they are very happy in being your staff. Should they spend their whole lives doing what they do now? No. But now your father will be sending you out alone. Your travels may increase. Your household is growing, and you also have your associates, who may visit, perhaps at Najida, perhaps without nand’ Bren and his aishid in residence. So yes, we shall adjust. Nothing essential will change. We do not mind being called junior. To them, we are.”
“I shall call you younger. Not junior.”
“That will do,” Antaro said. “And moving Boji out will ease the work Eisi and Liedi do, so that will help them, too. Staff is going to modify that storeroom out in the servant’s passage into two rooms, pleasant rooms, with all the comforts staff has.”
“Maybe with television,” Lucasi said. “The seniors are asking for it. It should be easy to do.”
“Well, if they have television, you should have it,” Cajeiri said.
“You should have it,” Lucasi said.
He had not thought of that. It would never do in the sitting room. But it would be nice in the bedroom. He remembered the archives, from the ship. And horses and dinosaurs. They all could enjoy them. He could improve his ship-speak. That was the good part.
And his aishid was not unhappy with Rieni’s unit, and Eisi and Liedi would have less to do if they did find a home for Boji. Four more people needed things—cleaning, packing, all sorts of things. He was worried about finding rooms for everybody. But if they could make the servants’ passage into a comfortable place . . .
He had thought about growing up, and about his own household, and finding more room—someday. He had been sure when he had gotten back from the space station that the walls would close about him again and swallow him up—his tutor was a good tutor, and not unpleasant; but there would be dinners he had to attend and court sessions he had to attend, and parties he had to attend, and it would just all get back to routine the same as ever.
He had not expected a trip on his own to Tirnamardi. Nobody had expected Nomari showing up. He had still not gotten back to his lessons, but that was going to happen, he was well sure of it.
Except—now he had his associates living just across the strait, and he had letters to write and contact with them by phone—he had to work out how that would be; and, Father had promised, he could have his associates visit. Someday.
And meanwhile he had Uncle wanting to set up new stables and get Jeichido out of his herd before there was trouble with the old herd-leader; and then there was little sister, who was now heir to Great-uncle, and who would need a canny older brother to keep her safe and adventurous.
It was not just Eisi and Liedi who needed help. He did. Or he would. His life was expanding, as if the circle of everything he dealt with was just getting larger and larger and larger all in a handful of days, and he could not afford to make mistakes. The way he had not been a fool when things at Tirnamardi had gotten dangerous, and he had sat back and not ventured to go outside into trouble—he could not afford to be a fool in the future. He had to have people around him who were not fools, and who, like Antaro and Jegari, would never hesitate to tell him the truth.
8
The market truck had gone out under guard, taking the crates to the train station, and before it had gotten back from that mission, the estate bus arrived from the same place. It had been black and red and shiny, and it came back now with a good deal of unpainted aluminum. Replaced windows and windshield still had their stickers and markings on them, and by the patchwork and replacements, it had been a shocking lot of gunfire. One was appalled—not at the sad condition of the bus—but at the seriousness of the assault on people of Tatiseigi’s household.
“That woman,” Ilisidi muttered. “And her associates.”
Well, the tires were sound and the bus was promised to be running well enough. They boarded, with all their people, and Bren and Ilisidi rode together in a great deal of silence—not angry silence, but a thinking silence, and one certainly knew better than to intrude with observations when the dowager was thinking. They shared a cup of tea on the way—the bus had not lost all its amenities, even with bullet rips in some of the seat cushions.
“We missed an interesting time at Tirnamardi,” was the dowager’s eventual comment on the matter of the bus, to which Bren replied, “One is very glad to hear that the house is safe—and that nand’ Tatiseigi himself is back in the Bujavid.”
“One does not mourn that vicious woman,” Ilisidi said, referring to Geidaro, in Ajuri. “We may mourn the information lost. She was likely to spill secrets to save herself. But they have opened up all the cellars of Ajiden to inspection, now. Fire failed and the secrets there will be interesting. Still, one does not believe we are done with that lot of scoundrels, and we are glad to know my great-grandson is out of Tirnamardi at the moment. We will very soon have to deal with Kadagidi. And Machigi has chosen this moment to light a fire in the Marid. He claims his reason is a tantrum by that child in Dojisigi. There will be much more to it. As there is much more to Machigi’s plan than he has confided in us, one suspects.”
“One hesitates to trust him,” Bren said, “without knowing his reasons.”
“Indeed not. Perhaps he thinks us too busy in the north and not paying him sufficient attention. But that would be a simple answer. The Marid is the Marid, and moves for its own reasons.” She lapsed back into silence, frowning in thought, and not all of it, Bren was sure, focused on Machigi.
One did rather wonder how the conversation would go between Tatiseigi and Ilisidi once she was alone with him. Not hot, no. Temper was a weakness Ilisidi did not choose to demonstrate. But there would be discussion. Had there been an opportunity for Lord Tatiseigi to c
onsult her, before Tatiseigi had done what he had done?
It was not Tatiseigi who had moved on this one. It was Damiri—wholly Damiri, by what Bren understood, and he did not think it was spur of the moment—not from the time she had conceived a second child.
Ilisidi had had Tatiseigi as her closest ally. The reliable. The dependable. The devoted.
Now here was an heir to Ajuri who might know Machigi personally. Here was an heir to Atageini clan intimately related to her great-grandson. Here was a move, a major move, by Tatiseigi—without even a phone call to Ilisidi.
But how could the man have refused what Damiri offered, under the circumstances?
And here was Machigi on his own doorstep wanting the dowager’s help, in effect, to take over the entire Marid.
Did the whole thing somehow form a design of interconnecting threads?
The aishidi’tat will ultimately face the indignation of the west coast, with all its problems; Machigi may ally with Senjin and have Dojisigi literally cornered against the mountains.
A man with connections to Machigi has turned up to take Ajuri, on one side of Tatiseigi, and Kadagidi, on the other, is still to fill.
He had no idea in what quarter of that maze Ilisidi’s thoughts were wandering, but it was a very silent bus ride.
Twice aiji-regent. The outsider who forced a close national union on the continent with most of the lords resisting, and handed it to her grandson.
Damiri has waited nine years to challenge her and make a move.
Tatiseigi has been maneuvered into a corner—but one he wanted desperately—and he accepted Damiri’s daughter without consulting Ilisidi—or, possibly, without consulting Tabini himself.
What occupies Ilisidi’s mind right now? The one—or the other?
It was always a mistake to try to figure atevi emotion, when it was this complicated. One knew where her heart and her expectations were anchored: her great-grandson, to whom she was entrusting her life’s work, the aishidi’tat. And the one was in danger of being maneuvered by his mother, and the other was potentially under assault by an old enemy under the control of an undisciplined young tyrant in the Dojisigin.
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