Peacemaker

by C. J. Cherryh

  Boji, furry and long-limbed, was clinging to the bars of his cage and making his water-bottle rattle. And he had better not let out a screech in Great-uncle’s apartment, at whatever hour it was.

  “Hush!” he whispered. But it could not be that early in the morning: he smelled tea.

  And if Great-uncle’s servants had brought breakfast to the guest quarters sitting room, he and his guests ought not to oversleep and make things inconvenient for the staff. His father had dinned that into his ears even before mani had taught him it was twice true if one were a guest.

  So he crawled out of bed, put on his dressing-robe, and pulled the ornate cord next to the service door. He hated to wake his servants after their hard work yesterday, but he and his guests would have to dress, if tea had arrived on the household’s schedule.

  And if Boji was starting to get restless, Boji had better have his egg and have his little accommodation cleaned out, or he would become inconvenient in more than one way.

  He had worried about bringing Boji into Great-uncle’s apartment—and he was sure he was not nearly as worried about it as Great-uncle. Great-uncle, with all the fine antiques in his Bujavid apartment, was surely reckoning the possibility that Boji might somehow get out of his cage again, the way he had just done in Great-uncle’s house at Tirnamardi.

  And it had looked for an awful moment when they had gotten off the lift as if Great-grandmother might send Boji back to his father’s and mother’s apartment—which he did not want, because his mother was already upset about his having Boji. His mother had almost said he could not keep him in the first place—and it was sure that Boji was going to make a racket if he was left alone and bored or hungry.

  But then Great-uncle had ordered his staff to direct Boji’s cage to the guest quarters of his apartment. And he had promised Great-uncle he would be triply sure there was no problem.

  “Just wait,” he said to Boji, and made the clicking sound that imitated Boji himself. “Be quiet. Be good. Just a little while. Hush.”

  The servant passage door opened quietly, and Eisi and Liedi came in, two young men a little subdued and tired from the trip. He said quietly, “One is almost certain there is a breakfast service from staff, nadiin-ji. So we should all be up. I shall be right back.”

  The servant passage had a little accommodation—his guests being in the two rooms within his, he had advised them last night that they should not hesitate to go through his room in any case of necessity: the bed-curtain was as good as a wall. It was a very fine arrangement, although he found the thick bed-curtains a little spooky. He had been too tired to care, last night, and whether his guests had indeed come and gone last night, he had no idea. He hurried back, now, expecting that Eisi and Liedi would have waked his guests and advised them both that there was breakfast soon to be had, and that they would have his clothes laid out ready for him.

  He was not disappointed. He dressed quickly—he had to dress in the bedroom, while Irene was still in her little room, having to dress herself, and his aishid was doing the same out in the sitting room. Guild managed, that was all, having their own rules; and Jegari looked in on him, already in uniform—just a brief appearance in the doorway to tell him breakfast was indeed waiting.

  Cajeiri put his coat on. Eisi knocked on one side door and the other to advise his guests they might now come and go—such had been their arrangement last night.

  Gene and Artur and Irene all came out, dressed even to their coats, looking quite well put together on their own—though Irene seemed a little embarrassed in ducking back to the accommodation. Liedi meanwhile finished Cajeiri’s queue and neatly tied it with a pale green ribbon—he was honoring Great-uncle’s house today—and they were all in good order for breakfast.

  Boji was getting restless, uttering ominous scolding sounds, as if to ask now that the household was awake, where was his breakfast? Eisi immediately went to provide him an egg, before he set up a cage-rattling racket.

  Cajeiri gave a short sigh, relieved, and straightened his coat cuffs—habit, after so many breakfasts with Great-grandmother. Great-uncle’s household was absolutely proper, and there were so many ways things could go wrong in a proper Bujavid apartment—but his servants and his bodyguards were doing everything absolutely right at every turn. They had come in on the train with only what they were wearing, but Uncle’s night staff had gotten their clothes all clean and ready again.

  And the rest of their baggage was supposed to catch up with them today, which would make things easier. There were crates coming by train from Tirnamardi, because they had left so fast the staff had not had time to pack. And even if he had a closet down the hall, in his own suite in his parents’ apartment, he could not turn up in court clothes when his guests had none—so he could be comfortable here in Uncle’s apartment, at least until the crate came. He hoped it came after supper.

  Eisi and Liedi meanwhile gave a rap on the sitting room door frame and ushered them out into their sitting room. His aishid, standing at the buffet, were doubtless having breakfast themselves, but they managed to look as if they had been doing no such thing—Veijico and Lucasi were particularly good at that maneuver, and Antaro and Jegari were learning.

  The suite had a beautiful little dining table, and the buffet was all laid out with fine dishes, with racks of toast and little bowls of eggs, and a large tray of morning sweet cakes, too.

  They sat down, very properly. Liedi slipped an egg through the door to his partner and only one small screech from Boji escaped the bedroom. Antaro began to pour tea, all so, so smoothly, while Eisi began to serve so elegantly that Great-grandmother herself would find nothing at all to disapprove.

  He was quite, quite proud of his little staff this morning. And Great-uncle’s staff had provided a very fine old tea service, all wrought with gold curlicues and painted scenes. The plates were so ornate that his guests, accepting food from Eisi, kept arranging things around the painted scene in the center, as if it should never be touched.

  Great-uncle was not treating them any differently from important grown-up guests. It was very good of him. And his guests were trying, too; but it was almost scary to think about, even with his guests on absolutely best behavior and all of them trying not to make mistakes—there was bound to be, somewhere in his formal birthday festivity, a state dinner, with five different sorts of crystal and all sorts of little plates and forks, with adult guests, all there to look at him and all the while wondering whether he was going do something awkward or stupid—

  He hated formal dinners. And there was bound to be one.

  He knew he had gotten a reputation, even before this last year. He was sure everybody had heard about his losing a boat at Najida and riding a mecheita across Great-uncle’s just-poured pavement And it was a lot to expect of his guests, not to make a mistake with all those forks—but he could not embarrass his guests by correcting their table manners.

  They did watch him. They did copy him. So he tried to do everything exactly right. He thought—though perhaps it was a mean-spirited thought—that his mother particularly would order the most elaborate table the world had ever seen, just to embarrass his guests in front of everybody. It was a very unhappy thought. But he had it, all the same, and he hoped his father would prevent any such notion, because his mother could be subtle when she was mad.

  He just hoped for the sort of birthday his mother had said he had had once before, just a few gifts to him—or no gifts: he was getting too old for gifts, even if he had had the best ever, from Great-uncle and mani, and from his father, just in getting his associates here.

  If they all just looked proper and used the right fork, that would make his mother happier. And she was not going to be in a calm and generous mood . . . not with her father assassinated, and her clan with no lord now, and this Haikuti person that Banichi had shot dead—he was another Ajuri. He had no idea whether his mother knew him.

&nbs
p; Great-grandmother was tracking somebody else in Ajuri clan right now, and Great-grandmother was deadly serious, so somebody else in Ajuri was going to die. His birthday festivity was going to be a terrible family dinner. Mother and Great-grandmother notoriously did not get along.

  It upset his stomach even thinking about it. He remembered a certain recent party when they had gotten together, and he had experimented with brandy.

  But Madam Saidin had warned him to put on a pleasant expression today. That was his job.

  So he did it. And talked about pleasant things instead.

  • • •

  There was mail. Indeed there was mail, and after everything that had happened in the last few days, it had the feeling of little time capsules—letters from before the world had turned sideways, from before they had two Dojisigi Assassins and the lord of the Kadagidi under lock and key in the dowager’s backstairs. Bren broke seals and unrolled messages that truly, had nothing to do with current reality.

  The legislature had been in session, with important bills at issue, and he hoped the tribal bill in particular would have passed. He had left Lord Dur to manage it.

  But, the letter from Dur said, the upper house had not voted. The bill had been postponed because of the Ajuri assassination.

  One rejoices to say the prospects are good for passage, was the word from Lord Dur. We have two laggards arguing past issues, but events in the midlands today are demanding urgent attention. We are postponing the vote until after the young gentleman’s birthday celebration, hoping that all matters can be resolved privately before the vote.

  Privately. Before the vote.

  That meant one-on-one meetings and promises. Deals.

  Damn. He hoped it would have sailed through without that.

  Not that the next few days were going to be quieter. The last thing the world needed was for events at Asien’dalun, the Kadagidi estate, to reverberate into the debate over the tribal peoples’ admission into the aishidi’tat . . . which affected the voting balance. The Conservatives were going to have serious questions about the removal of a Conservative lord of very old family, no doubt about it, even if he had already been banned from court . . . and the fact that the Kadagidi affair involved three prominent Conservatives and the notoriously liberal paidhi-aiji, not to mention involving the Taibeni and a handful of human guests, was going to create shockwaves on its own. Agitating both parties at once never helped an issue.

  He had already called in political favors on the tribal peoples bill. He was going to be running low on favors, he feared, and he had already put allies at political risk. Lord Tatiseigi was going to have to help settle that one—at least on his side of the political divide.

  The other messages at least proved mundane . . . a day-old question on the Ajuri succession was germane, but nothing he wanted to respond to—it was nothing Tabini-aiji wanted to respond to, he was damned sure of that.

  There were, in the stack, two questions arising from the opposite point of the compass, the always-volatile Marid—questions involving the Scholars’ Guild, and the controversy over how the Marid apprenticeship system was going to combine with a proposed northern-style classroom education—neither of which were pertinent to the mess they had on their hands.

  There was a letter requesting Jase-aiji’s appearance before the Transportation Committee, something to do with the port, one supposed, and about as remote from current business as it was possible to be. The committee had realized, through its own sources at the shuttle port, that a ship-captain was on the planet, and they wanted to talk to him directly, probably about technical issues and regulations . . . a set of technical concerns that also seemed from another universe, at the moment.

  He finished the pile. He made a few notes about the birthday festivity, requesting advisement directly to him should anything unusual on that topic reach his clerical office.

  And there was, yes, a query from his tailor, requesting a fitting.

  God. Maybe he should see to that today, before anything blew up. Granted his wardrobe was stalled in transit . . . it could be a good idea.

  At least the tailor and the looming birthday festivity posed a distraction from darker thoughts.

  But then he caught, in the tailor’s note, that slight change from festivity to Festivity, the elaborate form of the word, that set his heart to beating just a little faster.

  Festivity as in . . . national holiday.

  Was that an error? National holiday?

  He rang for Narani, and when that gentleman arrived:

  “Close the door. Rani-ji. Has there been a change in the aiji’s plans for the birthday?”

  The old man’s mouth opened slightly, an expression of consternation. A deep breath. “Yes, nandi. Yesterday.”

  Amid all the confusion.

  “One apologizes. One apologizes profoundly.”

  “Well, hardly a consequence to our plans,” he said, but thought then— “Did the announcement come before or after the news from the Kadagidi estate?”

  “Before, nandi. Just after breakfast.”

  Which meant the aiji had thought about it and changed his plans somewhat before yesterday morning and before the Kadagidi manor house had lost its local guard, its front porch and a corner window.

  One last little message lay on the desk, one of those Bujavid announcements, by the distinctive cylinder: such usually regarded public hours, a restriction within the building, or a change in the museum exhibits. He reached for it, opened it, cracked the seal, expecting to see an official announcement of the change.

  Running dark since the day before yesterday evening meant that they had not been getting news. They had been in Lord Tatiseigi’s television-free estate. The last word they had gotten from the outside world had been information about Lord Ajuri’s assassination, a rotten enough omen for the boy’s upcoming birthday, omen rotten enough to have shut down the legislature on its own, despite strong forces pushing to get the tribal bill through . . .

  Now he understood Lord Dur’s advisement about the suspension of the vote until after the boy’s birthday celebration, which had seemed an odd sort of thing to send the legislature into recess. It wasn’t just a birthday celebration. It was a Festivity that was going to shut down the city and cause a business holiday across the continent.

  The memo, arrived from the Bujavid events office just this morning, said that the change in scope of the aiji’s event required them to move the reception out of the Green Hall and into the larger Audience Hall. Now the event was to be preceded, during the day, by a private dinner in the aiji’s apartment and an invitation-only tour of Lord Tatiseigi’s display in the Bujavid Museum—some of his fabled porcelain collection. That necessitated a museum closure on that entire day. Due to expected crowd pressure, the usual distribution of souvenir cards would be on the third landing, and not inside the Bujavid hall.

  Crowd pressure wasn’t the half of the reason.

  “This came yesterday?” he asked.

  “Yesterday, nandi.” Narani gave a mortified little bow. “One is so very sorry not to have mentioned it.”

  “I suppose the decree was on the news. There is a public celebration.”

  “Yes, nandi.”

  “We were somewhat preoccupied,” he said, with irony. “The matter could hardly have sat at the top of your report, Rani-ji, when we arrived as we did last night.”

  “You did mention the birthday, nandi. And one thought you knew,” Narani said. “One very deeply regrets the omission.”

  “One is a little startled to hear it,” he said. A national celebration was the sort of thing one did, besides the four seasonal festivals of the year, for a felicitous event, such as the launch of an important national program. There were lesser, city functions—the appointment of a lord to high office, the opening of a new public facility. These were minor, an excuse for some bu
sinesses taking a holiday, bars and restaurants doing good business . . . but nationwide?

  The timing was infelicitous . . . right over the assassination of the boy’s grandfather . . .

  Or it was to cover an infelicity.

  “One suspects,” he said to Narani, “this is not unrelated to the assassination. Is there any word who was behind that?”

  Narani answered very quietly: “Absolutely none, nandi.”

  He would not have said what he had just said about the timing to anyone on domestic staff but Narani.

  “Incredible to me that the aiji would have done it,” he murmured, “so close to the boy’s birthday.”

  “One concurs, nandi.”

  The shift from private to public event, however—likely did relate to the grandfather’s assassination . . . a determination not to have that infelicitous event overshadowing his son’s fortunate ninth birthday. It was a fast decision, if that was the motive.

  And depending on where one placed responsibility for the assassination, paving over it with a national festivity was either deprecating the importance of Ajuri clan, or it was fiercely deploring the event, the person that had done it, and supporting Ajuri clan. There was a word for it. Bajio kabisu. Overturning the odds. For the traditional-minded, for the marginally superstitious, it met adversity with a tidal wave of good omen. It overpowered a setback, in effect—wiping it out, as only a very powerful lord could do. It said: we are more than that. We cannot be affected.

  This time it said, my son is more than this.

  It put the boy in the political spotlight. In a political context.

  And a slap in the face of whoever had assassinated Komaji became, by sheer chance, a slap in the face of the Kadagidi, since there was no way Tabini was going to cancel his gesture in the face of fate . . . to mourn the downfall of a much more impotant clan . . . that had happened to birth a traitor and house a problem.