“Nandi?” Eisi asked.
He certainly owed Eisi and Liedi better than they had yet had from him.
“I think,” he said, and amended it, “I know you have a great deal more work to do since there are more of us. I have just had a letter from the major d’. He thinks you should have help. More staff. I am not sure how to go about this, but how much do you think you need?”
“We are managing, nandi,” Eisi said. “We missed the laundry last night, but—”
“One is certain that is not your fault, nadi. I do not think this note is at all because of that.”
“It is just all the confusion, nandi. Once Boji does go, there will be far, far less to do.”
“And we have four more people, four more beds, that much more laundry of all sorts. We have the chance now to ask for help.”
“Once the new rooms are ready, and things are back in order, we shall be absolutely on time, nandi. We are sorry.”
They were very earnest faces, good faces, apologizing for a situation they were sure left them at fault. He could never even manage clean clothes or find half his belongings if it were not for Eisi and Liedi.
“Tell me the truth, nadiin-ji. Are you Guild?”
That drew a little laugh. “We are Servants’ Guild,” Liedi said, “nothing more.”
“But,” Eisi said, “we take instruction and we know some things your aishid has taught us.”
No few of Father’s and mani’s servants were plainclothes Assassins’ Guild. It was the case with nand’ Bren’s staff. And Uncle’s. But Eisi and Liedi were not that, if they had admitted the truth. Father had plainclothes Guild minding the door, and in the kitchens. And maybe he should ask for that.
But he knew increasingly what he wanted, who he trusted, and how he wanted to arrange his household.
And since Father asked . . .
“I am going to give orders,” he said to them, “and I cannot promise that my father will honor them, but I shall argue for them. First, Eisi-ji we do not have anything but a door and a message bowl, but you are my major d’ from now on, and, Liedi-ji, you are the doorman. I shall have to confirm that with my father, but that is what I want. And there should be people to take your orders.”
“Nandi,” Eisi said. “We thank you for the honor. We shall perfectly understand if the decision comes down otherwise.”
“I shall argue in that case,” Cajeiri said, “and I shall do everything I can, and I shall hope to be heard. You tell me the staff we should reasonably have, what would be helpful to you, and how you would arrange things. What do we need? What would make my father say we have a well-run household?”
Eisi and Liedi looked at each other. Then Eisi said, “The laundry and the beds take time. The more people, the more laundry. Your wardrobe, all that sort of work, Liedi and I gladly manage—we should manage it, and do double duty as valets. We have the skills for fine fabrics. If we only had two young people to manage the servant’s quarters, the light cleaning and regular laundry and beds, we should be well-set. Maintaining the rooms in order is not difficult.”
“Can you find two people who would get along with us?”
“I think without any difficulty, nandi,” Liedi said. “Any instruction they lack—we can give.”
“And clearances. I trust these people would come from Father’s staff.”
“They would, nandi, yes. Nobody can come in here, but from there. And we shall ask the major d’s help.”
“Then I shall advise him, and you will requisition whatever we need. Requisition. That is the word.”
“Indeed,” Eisi said.
“I take it there are forms?”
“There are, nandi, there indeed are. What we need are personnel requests and supply requisitions. We shall file them if you will sign them.”
He was increasingly sure of his moves. There were forms. That meant there were routes things had to follow. He had watched them all his life. “Fill them out as you can and bring them to me.” A thought occurred to him. It landed with particular force in a spate of hammering from behind his bedroom. “If we have two more people, we are out of room again.”
“That will be so, nandi. We shall have to ask for that, too.”
“Forms,” he said. It occurred to him that there might be a reason in Father suggesting he do something now, before the new construction was finished. There was an upstairs and a downstairs that was only accessible in the servant passages, and that extended this way and that, sharing walls with nand’ Bren’s servants if one went back far enough. He had no idea. The halls back there changed—they had changed when his sister was born and Mother took on staff, and now they would change again, very likely, and Mother and his baby sister might yet take refuge with Great-uncle until the hammering stopped. Great-uncle would not be unhappy to have them. But Mother was never happy to be disarranged.
“We shall advise the major d’,” was Eisi’s reply. “We shall make everything proper.”
“I shall advise my mother,” he said. “Eisi-ji, Liedi-ji, you have been extraordinarily patient with me, in everything. You will always be first, in my staff, whether or not we can carry this through right now.”
“We are honored even by your thought, nandi,” Eisi said. “We shall go find out what we can do.”
“I shall give you a letter. I shall write it right now. And you will do whatever you need to do to be proper. If we need more room—one has no idea. There is the upstairs.”
He dashed off the letter to Father’s major d’. Please be advised . . . That was how staff letters always started. . . . that I have made Eisi major domo and Liedi doorman to my small household according to your letter and they will receive the mail from you. Not that there was very much or very often, but if there was, that was the proper function of their posts. Please give them the right forms and tell them what they need to do to get two domestic staff. Also we need the forms for their rooms, and if it is at all possible, can there also be a domestic staff room with table, chairs, and a refrigerator? Thank you very much, nadi, for your advice and your assistance.
He sealed it. He had, lately, his own smaller seal ring. He had a small roll of red ribbon that had come with the ring and the waxjack, and he did it properly, with the seal atop the ribbon, then solemnly handed it to Eisi.
“Nandi,” Eisi said. And they left, happy, he thought. He hoped they were happy.
Things had changed—in just that little time. But they had started changing when Father had named him heir, the night Seimiro was born. They had changed again when Father assigned him the double bodyguard. They were eleven right now. They would be fortunate thirteen, perhaps by nightfall.
And Eisi and Liedi would, he thought, no longer have to ride in the baggage car feeding eggs to a spoiled parid’ja.
He cast a look toward the antique filigree cage, and Boji stared back, small, golden-eyed face between two black-furred fists clenching the stems of metal vines. Boji was uncommonly quiet, as if he was a little puzzled by Eisi and Liedi leaving so suddenly out the front door.
No more baggage cars. There would not likely be another such trip for Boji, ever again, unless it was to a new home.
There would not be another day on which he was at home only with his younger bodyguard.
Not be another day in which he could slip away and do something unreasonably stupid. Sad, even if the last had nearly ended in disaster.
Not be another day in which he could evade lessons and memorizations.
And when he was grown up and doing some of Father’s work, there would be precious little excitement in a stack of forms and letters.
He so wished he were on the Red Train right now, and that he could postpone thinking about household problems, when deep down he was wondering and worrying what mani was doing.
Did Father think the same—that rather than being down in his offi
ce talking to people with problems, he had rather be on that train himself?
He had never quite imagined Father that way. There was only once, well, twice, in all the varied upsets, when Father had not solved things from behind a desk.
He thought, Father had rather be doing something himself, had he not? Mani used to be aiji. But now she is free. Now she does as she pleases. And she is a help to Father. She does protect him.
But Father is probably worried too, right now. Things could go so wrong.
Father has to risk mani. There is no stopping her. But he has pinned me down, making me heir, and now that my sister is Uncle’s, she will never be as free as I was. Poor Seimei.
I have to do what I have to do, that is the top and the bottom of it. And right now that is simply not to be a stupid child where my staff is concerned.
And to advise Mother there is apt to be more hammering.
* * *
• • •
Breakfast had been, for the dowager, very late, which argued she had had tea and cakes and done a little study, closeted with her aishid, reviewing security reports up and down the Red Train, not to mention intel that might have come in during the night.
Absolutely she wanted to prolong chitchat with the two people who were her current interest, there being nothing else to distract her, while the Red Train thumped along, prioritized on the track. They might pass other trains, and occasionally there was, unseen, a train going past them in the other direction on the dual track—freight and passenger trains alike. And if those trains were westbound, then those aboard might catch the sight of the Red Train out their windows and wonder at the rare sight. If eastbound, alas, they were seeing it in much more detail, while shunted onto a siding and delayed, as the Red Train rocketed past.
The Red Train did not move often. There was that saving virtue.
And when it did, it meant the business of the aishidi’tat was in progress, or headed that way, so wherever it went—people had reason to wonder.
The occupants of the Red Train were, however, blind and oblivious to it, except by the mild shock of air and the sound as someone passed—themselves having no way to view the scenery they were passing.
Certainly they were not blind to the world, however. They had a Guild operations center aboard, and information was accumulating as they went.
The train slowed markedly. Bren asked himself was that proper, but said nothing. The dowager gazed to her left, to Cenedi. None of the bodyguards, however, seemed perturbed, and not too strangely, neither did Nomari.
“Padisi Bridge,” Nomari remarked. “It is a reduced speed crossing.”
“Is it in decent repair?” Ilisidi asked.
“It is, aiji-ma, but old.”
“There is nothing wrong with age,” Ilisidi said shortly, and Nomari said nothing else. Then the dowager asked, more pleasantly, “Do you know every part of the system, nadi?”
“I have never been east of the Divide, aiji-ma,” Nomari said. “Nor taken the southern spur.”
“Well, well, the mountain route we understand is a long, cold trip, and without windows, exceedingly tiresome. Have you ever worked at the airport, nadi?”
“No, aiji-ma, for three years on the city system and then on the circular route.”
“And then were absent a while,” Ilisidi said.
A momentary silence, a consideration about the answer. “In those days, in the Troubles, aiji-ma, there were observers watching who came and went, and they stopped a man—a man I knew. Who knew me. I could not help him. There was nothing I could do.”
“Where was this, and what was his name?”
“His name in those days was Asimi. His real name was Panveni. Not Ajuri. Madi clan. One of our allies. Once.” Nomari’s face showed disquiet. “There was nothing I could do.”
Bet that Cenedi was taking notes.
“Where was this?”
“On the platform, at Koperna, aiji-ma. I felt then it was time to drop out of sight again. So I went south.”
From Koperna, it was certainly a way to lose oneself, or to lose one’s life—going straight down into the Taisigin Marid, out of Senjin.
“They were anxious times,” Machigi said, hearing it all, “and our security knew fairly fast that he was not Taisigi. That was clear when he tried to barter a scarf for a bowl of soup—he had a small sum in Transportation coin, did you not, nadi? You knew better than to be caught that way. But the word for the scarf was the Dojisigi word, and the shopkeeper immediately called enforcement.”
Nomari simply looked down, diffident in manner, usually that, when challenged.
“Look up,” Ilisidi said sharply. “Nomari-nadi. Look us in the eye. We prefer that.”
Nomari looked up, calmly, without anxiousness. He owned a good expressionless face when he chose to use it, better than a human paidhi often managed. The young man was polite, and probably had done a deal of spying for Machigi, playing a variety of roles.
“One gathers you immediately learned the Taisigi word,” Ilisidi said.
“I shall never forget it, aiji-ma.”
Aiji-ma, persistently, only to her, not to Machigi, in which one could be certain he had thought about the choice of terms. Whether it represented a role he was playing now, or a sincere declaration of allegiance, his record left one unable to guess.
“Well, well,” Ilisidi said easily, “Lord Machigi’s service was certainly an intelligent choice in your circumstances. One rather suspects you have acquired a choice of accents over the years. You do not often sound midlands.”
“I have generally tried not to, aiji-ma.”
“And you have moved often?”
“I have generally tried to move, aiji-ma, whenever my guild had an opening to move.”
“And you found other Ajuri as you moved. One understands you lost one protector early, but contacted another, being a mere boy. And kept moving. You became the needle catching all the scattered threads of Ajuri, stitching so long as they lasted, and apparently remembering in what fabric you had left them. You were the cause, when you were young, the lost heir of Nichono’s line, the last alive—but you never stepped forward. Instead, you became the organizer, under quite a few names. You developed allies, you created associations, you brought people into contact, and you had as your own purpose—what? To take down Areito’s line?”
“Areito’s line includes the heir and the aiji-consort,” Nomari said quickly, “and I never shall work against them. I owe the young aiji and the aiji-consort all I have and shall ever have. And I shall always be in Lord Tatiseigi’s debt.”
“A strong statement. Does it conflict with your association with Lord Machigi?”
“As I know Lord Machigi to be, it would not, aiji-ma.” This without a glance in that direction. “I respect him greatly and I worked for pay, fairly given. But I remember the aiji-consort from when we were children, and I owe her and her son a moral debt. And a debt to Lord Tatiseigi.”
It was unsteady ground. Perhaps Nomari was speaking in ignorance of the problems between Damiri and Ilisidi—but Bren thought not: the rift was known in many quarters. The company at Tirnamardi and on the trip to Shejidan had been together for days—and if he had failed to understand there was something novel in Damiri’s visit to Lord Tatiseigi, and that there was tension between her and her son—the Guild passed information, warnings, and cautions, social as well as operational, and when Nomari had acquired a Guild aishid, they would have told him.
So Nomari knew it was a troubled relationship. Nomari still steadfastly declared his debt to Damiri. And if Machigi did not pick up that little nuance he was uncharacteristically asleep.
“Well enough,” Ilisidi said, “well enough. Connections will be as connections need to be. Our associate to the south has nothing to gain from involvement in the midlands, so we need not be concerned about a conflict of ass
ociations.”
Pointed, that.
“I do not,” Machigi said. “But a well-disposed acquaintance in the north is certainly no disadvantage.”
God, rescue them from too fine a definition of a relationship not yet accepted by either side: Nomari was not yet confirmed as lord, but might more surely be if he gained the dowager’s support, and the dowager was pushing to define the terms of her support, without which Ajuri relations with Tatiseigi—given Tatiseigi’s strong connection to Ilisidi—would possibly blow up again.
It was a situation in which the paidhi-aiji was clearly challenged to say something, do something.
“Things are changing,” Bren said quietly. “There are influences on Earth from two sources in the heavens, influences from Mospheira and from regions of the aishidi’tat the railroad is possibly about to reach. The dowager’s great-grandson, young as he is, has the man’chi of the midlands excepting Kadagidi, which is yet to be filled. He has the man’chi of all the west coast except Ashidama Bay: he has connections well-placed on Mospheira, well-placed to advise him in whatever the future brings. You, nand’ Machigi, aim at stabilization of the Marid and its connection to the East—and you certainly have Najida’s good will in doing that. But the future of all the aishidi’tat is in jeopardy if the midlands cannot settle, and you, Nomari-nadi, are in a position to link Ajuri peacefully with Atageini and Taiben, to the good of everyone. You, Lord Machigi, have had reason to distrust Kadagidi’s Dojisigi ambitions. Those are gone, and will not exist in any new lordship over that clan, and you have seen that the dowager keeps her word. So there is every potential for an agreement in this gathering which will bring not only a cessation of war, but a commonality of interests. Everyone prospers—yet holds on to what is essential to his region.”
“The paidhi-aiji,” Ilisidi said, “has pinned the issue to the table. I have been curious what connection you, Nomari-nadi, may still have with the south. Interference from the Dojisigi affecting the Kadagidi and the Ajuri has been a problem in the midlands for generations. Injudicious marriages for trade connections. The only trade they brought was offspring of Dojisigi origins and a host of relatives bent on using them. Marry as you will, gentlemen, but gods! beget with some discretion.”
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