The faces of those legislators present were very solemn.
“Yes,” they said, almost in unison. “Yes, aiji-ma.”
“Be it absolutely clear,” Tabini said, in that same low tone. And then: “This is my grandmother’s table. I will have no more to say.”
“Indeed,” Ilisidi said, and gave a slight move of her hand. “We are weary. We are quite weary, nandiin. We shall present the traditional brandy in the parlor, but one is quite certain there will be no notice taken should certain of our guests depart to urgent duties.”
Dared one assume it was time to go? It was a delicate decision—a political decision, whether to take his human presence into the parlor and mix his controversial self into very fragile atevi business, or to consider himself dismissed to quarters, bring up his computer, and hope to God he could find a viable printer in the household.
He decided on the latter course. The company rose, some to the parlor with their security, some to the foyer for a good-bye to their host, and he managed to slip aside and to get a glance at Banichi, whose sense of these things was usually much more reliable.
“One thinks we should go to our rooms,” he said under his breath. “We have papers to prepare.”
“Yes,” Banichi said simply, confirming it was a proper thing to do—whether the other would have been proper, Bren had no idea.
But he was glad to get back to his own small refuge in Ilisidi’s suite, and to shed the formal clothes, and to put on a dressing gown for a late session over the computer, a hunt, a final hunt for exactly the right words.
He was aware of movement about the apartment, was aware of some sort of consultation between Banichi and Jago, and some sort of communication flowing to the outside. A crisis didn’t take the night off. People were moving, he was quite sure—planes were flying, trains were rolling, legislators were spending a night on the move, huddled in small groups, discussing in advance of more specific information. And worrying how the measures they had taken to survive Murini’s seizure of power might look now—there were bound to be very worried men and women on their way to the capital at this hour, and a certain number trying to figure out whether they should run to the farthest ends of the continent or still back Murini, or whether it was indeed, all up for the revolution.
Blood had already flowed within the Kadagidi house. There were bound to be other realignments in progress.
He worked until the letters blurred. He refined. He memorized. And a request to Ilisidi’s staff brought a small plug-in printer, a machine capable of taking a format his computer could deliver, and a great stack of packaged paper. He loaded it, he set it to work, he informed the knowledgeable servant of his requirements and, with paranoid misgivings, left it to print and several servants to collate and convey it to a copy machine which would, they assured him, run much more rapidly than the printer.
He was, at that point, exhausted, and realized he had only taken the first sip of the brandy staff had poured hours ago. His hands and feet were like ice. His eyes blurred on ordinary objects. He sat in his bedroom, warming the brandy and his hands together against his middle, and studying his feet, seeing whether concentration could send blood down to warm them, or whether that would have to await his going to bed.
And he was very, very far from sleep at the moment. Far from sleep and needing every minute of it he could manage. Perhaps a second brandy. He didn’t want to take one of his few pills—they lingered, and he couldn’t afford to be fuzzy-brained facing—
He didn’t want to imagine it.
Jago dropped in, not on her way to bed, clearly: She was in uniform and armed—she was only looking after him. “Will you not sleep, Bren-ji? Staff is asking.”
Staff had been too wary of his glum mood to enter the door, he read that.
“Sleep does not come, Jago-ji. The mind will not sleep.” At the moment the mind was half elsewhere, mistaking the shadow of a dim bedroom for the deep dark of space, nights that went on forever and ever, measured only in the deep folds of a ship’s progress. He was there. He was here. He wandered between, trying to assemble his arguments for a planet that viewed him as a traitor—on both sides of the strait: Humans because he served the atevi aiji, atevi because he had set burdens on them and left them. A thick mist seemed to settle about him, and then to give way to an atevi room with Jago in it. “How is the staff faring?”
Jago hesitated a moment. Then: “I am the staff, at moment. Tano and Algini are in a special meeting at the Guild. They have asked for Banichi to attend. We would not both leave you.”
“If he needs you—”
“One believes they are arguing for cancellation of certain Filings once accepted.”
“Against me?”
“Against you, among others, nandi.”
“Not nandi.” He felt uncharacteristically fragile at the moment. “If they come to any harm, Jago-ji, if they come to any harm over there—” What did he say, what threat was enough, against the Guild itself? “I will go after them.”
The slightest of smiles. “We believe Tano and Algini will return after the meeting. This is a duty they owe. But it is very likely they are in the act of reporting facts they have observed, and resigning any man’chi but that to this house.”
That, he thought, might not be the wisest thing. “Perhaps they should wait until tomorrow for that,” he said.
“Then it would hardly matter, would it?” She settled on the substantial footboard of the bed. “I have remained to protect you from any untoward business in the dowager’s house, which we know will not happen, and Cenedi is annoyed with us, but he understands the form, and I understand it. Banichi would not leave you to anyone else, not even Cenedi. And I trust that if the Guild fails to be reasonable, Banichi will be back, all the same, and we shall simply await the damages to be filed.”
It was humor, as Jago saw it. He managed a faint smile for her effort. And felt better for it.
“So,” he said, “we are in no acute danger. Nor is the house.”
“If there is danger, at this point, it would come from the Guild, or from individual members acting within their man’chiin.”
“So, but Murini is in the south. Perhaps on a fishing boat headed for the remote islands. Anyone acting for him must surely consider that acting for the Kadagidi would be better, and they would not let him land.”
“True.”
“So have a brandy. Come to bed. Banichi will surely not disapprove.”
A quirk of a smile, a downcast look, and she shrugged out of her jacket and its armor.
It was not exactly lovemaking, but she was warm, warm enough to take the chill out. He drifted off to sleep, waking only when Jago, who had never taken the earpiece off, slipped out of bed and left the room.
He got up, put on his dressing gown, shivering with chill, and got as far as the door before she came back again and put a warm arm about him.
“Banichi is back,” she said, a shadow above his head, “and says Tano and Algini will be here before morning. They have a matter to attend.”
“What?” He was half asleep and too chilled and worried for indirection. His mind pictured Guild business, a shadowy and bloody business, but Jago’s powerful arm folded him close and held fast, while her breath stirred his hair.
“Back to bed, Bren-ji.” The old way of speaking, that Bren-ji: Our so-easily-shocked paidhi, that tone said. Don’t ask, don’t wonder, don’t be concerned. This is not your business.
“Tell me when they get back,” he insisted. “Wake me and tell me, if you have to.”
Sometime before dawn she did.
Then he burrowed his face into the pillow, murmured an appreciation, and truly went to sleep.
10
Tano and Algini were there by morning, Tano with a slash across the hand, and with just a little stiffness about his movements. And not a word said, nor ever would be said, if it had been a matter within the Guild itself. One dared not ask. Bren only caught Tano’s eye, nodded, Tano nodded,
looked satisified, and Jago, while the house staff served a light breakfast, said that there was nothing that should immediately concern the paidhi.
Had they set aside the Filing on the paidhi’s life? One had no idea. And there was that troublesome immediately concern.
Hell, Bren thought, and had an egg with sauce, and a half a piece of toast, thinking about his notes, the points he had to make, and wondering whether the printing would be done, on a primitively slow printer and copy machine.
Banichi came into the little sitting room/office at that point. “The legislature, Bren-nandi, has a potential quorum. They will assemble at midmorning.”
That, on the traditional atevi clock, was fairly precise, about ten in the morning, which was about two hours, and the egg and toast suddenly weighed like lead. “Excellent,” Bren said, numb. “How is the printing?”
“It will be done,” Banichi said.
“Is there any possibility, nadi-ji, that we can employ a screen?”
Banichi’s face, rarely expressive on a problem, showed sudden doubt.
“We would not wish to be controversial on that matter. Have we bound the copies?”
“Not yet.”
“Printed images, then. Can we insert them?”
God knew no innovations, particularly not in the tashrid, even if the likely venue was the hasdrawad.
“We can manage,” Banichi said, and added: “Unfortunately the images will be in monochrome, Bren-ji.”
Banichi and the rest of them had gotten spoiled by the conveniences of the ship. They would have to make do on a very critical point, in images which would not look as real, or perhaps as reasonable, to the suspicious eye.
“I had better dress,” Bren said.
“Staff will assist,” Banichi told him, and he got up from the small portable table, walked back to his bedroom. He had not even time to look into his closet before the dowager’s staff arrived to take over the selection and preparation of garments, the meticulous details of a court appearance…which freed a lord’s mind to do more useful things.
Like worry.
His security staff was nowhere within reach at the moment: That argued they were backstairs in consultation, or seeing to something useful to the occasion. They had left him to the dowager’s staff, rare as it was for at least one of them not to be with him. He had put his computer away for safety. He trusted it was still in the desk, and that he was with allied staff, but all the same he worried, and felt exposed, and very, very lonely for the duration of the process. He wondered was the computer safe, and whether some new threat had taken his staff off to deal with it…
No information was hell. And he tried to remain pleasant with the dowager’s servants, and to express gratitude, and to approve the extraordinary efforts that had transformed a several-years-old coat into something he trusted would be suitable. He was numb to aesthetics, felt the silken slide of fine cloth on his skin, felt the expert fingers arranging his hair, the snug comfort of a meticulously tailored coat, all these things, while his mind was racing in panic between the safety of his own staff and the order in which he had his data.
The dowager’s major domo came in to survey the work, looked him over, bowed, and reported the printing was done, the last-moment insertion complete, the binding in progress.
“Excellent, nadi,” he murmured, and tried to haul up enough adrenaline to get his mind working on last-moment details. He did not ask the embarrassing question, Where is my staff? He simply trusted they were there, spread too thin, doing all they could with limited resources, and the one thing they could not manufacture was time to do all they had to. Tabini-aiji was calling the shots, Tabini-aiji was setting the time of their appearance, be it straight up ten o’clock by Mospheiran time or farther along. “One expresses utmost gratitude.”
Likely the domestic staff was attempting to handle his needs and the dowager’s all at the same time, not to mention the printing and paper procurement—enough to fill a small truck, when all was done—not to mention very critical things Cenedi might lay on them. It was a heroic effort of the staff, from kitchen to doorkeeper, he was very sure, not only for duties ordinarily in their line, but for a clerical effort that ought to have engaged a full-fledged office.
Other staff had come in, not in the dowager’s colors, domestics in modest, house-neutral beige, and for a moment they were no different to his eyes than any of the domestic staff, perfect strangers.
And then not.
“Moni? Taigi?” They were a little thinner than he remembered…from downstairs staff, and then moved to his service, to his estate on the coast, and then to retirement, by all he remembered.
Deep bows, and scarcely repressed delight. “We are back, nandi,” Taigi said—Taigi ever the talkative one. “We are ever so glad to see you safe, may we say?”
“A welcome sight, a very welcome sight.” He was thrown back years, completely derailed from his current concentration, and utterly puzzled. “Have you come from the coast?”
“Your staff sends their utmost regard,” Taigi said.
“And wishes to send representatives to the capital to assist, nandi,” Moni said, “in whatever way possible.”
They were Guild, he ever so strongly suspected it. And given the recent—hell, current!—upheaval in that body, he was just ever so slightly nervous about their appearance here—scared, was more the point, but he put on his best manners, and collected himself. When had he ever been afraid of Moni and Taigi? How could he be?
“One has very many needs,” he said, “and first of all with the printing. Please, nadiin-ji—in ever so great a stricture of time—consult the dowager’s major domo and inquire if the printing will be finished within the hour? And ask how are we transporting it all to the legislature?”
“Indeed, nandi,” Taigi said, and the pair turned and left, leaving him—
Shaking, dammit. Two old acquaintances, two former staffers turned up, and he could manage no decent gratitude, only a moment of panic, a feeling of utter nakedness. He had been safe within the cocoon of the dowager’s residence, safe, for the only moment in years that Banichi and Jago had actually left him—and then two people from his past showed up, and he outright panicked and invented a job for them to do, a job that wasn’t particularly polite to the dowager’s staff, and entirely unnecessary: The printing would be done—it would be done, and if it looked otherwise, the dowager would press other facilities into service to see that it was done. He feared the pair had come expecting to resume their old intimate relation with him in this crisis, perhaps simply to help him dress for court, with the earnest good will of all his staff on the coast.
He was already dressed, thank God, and had no need to let them touch him. He felt guilty for his suspicions, and his panic, and the state of mind he’d gotten into, but he couldn’t find any confidence in the situation. He stood alone in the room for one cold moment, every organized thought flown out of his head, all his preparation for the legislature completely lost from memory—he didn’t know which loose end to grab first, or at what point to recover himself.
Concentrate on the speech, he told himself, but staying alive was his foremost responsibility—his utmost responsibility to everyone involved.
He took three strides to the door, found one of the dowager’s staff out in the hall, her arms full of printed, bound books, doubtless his.
“Forgive me, nadi,” he said in a low, urgent tone. “Set those aside and take me to Banichi or Jago or Cenedi. Immediately.”
“Nandi,” she said, bowing, and searching desperately in the baroque hallway for somewhere safe to set her burden. “Please follow.” Her conclusion was simply to clutch the heavy stack to her bosom and go, and he followed after her, back the way she had come, back to a door only staff would use, and a corridor as plain and severe as the ordinary corridors were ornate. Thick carpet-deadened steps here, minimal lighting cast the place in shadow as well as silence, and she led him quickly along one corridor and another until the
y reached a small, close room, a place of thickly-baffled walls and a little brighter lighting.
Banichi was there, with Cenedi, with Jago as well, and Tano. All eyes looked in his direction, fixed in absolute startlement.
“Nandi.” From Banichi, quietly and respectfully.
And he suddenly felt the fool. Felt like bowing, being out of his proper territory and with no good reason behind his flight from his own premises.
“Moni and Taigi just came in, nadiin-ji. One could not entirely account for their provenance. They claimed relation to the estate. I set them to query the major domo, regarding the printing.” He found himself a little out of breath, and Jago had already moved, past him, back down the corridor, on an investigative track. He added, inanely attempting to keep the conversational tone: “I came here.”
“Curious,” Banichi said. “They would know better. And staff let them in.”
“We were watching,” his young guide said.
“Unacceptable,” Cenedi said, and left on Jago’s track, with his own man on his heels and the young woman with the bound texts hard pressed to keep up.
“One hardly knew,” Bren began awkwardly, left alone with Banichi. “I held them in good regard.”
“Their reputation and their clearance was once impeccable for their assignment,” Banichi said. “Their current behavior is not. They have used accesses they no longer own to get in here. Bren-ji, go down that corridor to your right and exit the door.”
He didn’t question, except to say: “I left my computer on my desk.”
“Yes,” Banichi said, and Bren delayed no second longer, only went quickly where Banichi told him to go, to an unfamiliar plain door at the end of a service corridor.
That door opened into an ornate room behind a partial curtain—and led to the dowager herself, who, seated by a high window, looked up as he walked out from behind that curtain and into her presence.
“Aiji-ma,” he said with a deep bow.
“There is an alert,” Ilisidi said straight off, her mouth set in a hard network of disapproving lines.
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