Intruder

  “Not yet, nandi,” Koharu said, adjusting the fit of his coat. Koharu had hardly gotten that out when, some distance across the apartment, the front door opened, and Supani, on duty for visitors, was heard to say, “Welcome, young gentleman. May one show you to the dining room?”

  Well, that answered the question whether Cajeiri had gotten out of Tabini’s apartment.

  It didn’t answer whether he had done it entirely aboveboard.

  So the breakfast appointment was at hand.

  The meeting with Tabini was equally certain for midmorning.

  And the response of Lord Tatiseigi to the gift and the supper invitation was still in question.

  The old man was surely thinking about it by now—studying the porcelain from every angle, with, if one judged rightly, absolutely no doubt about its provenance—and with a great deal of curiosity about the circumstances that brought it to him.

  Ilisidi wasn’t here to moderate the old gentleman’s temper. She might not be back in time for the legislature’s opening session. She had her own business in the East.

  So the Tatiseigi business was all up to him, and he daren’t foul it up.

  Diplomacy, diplomacy.

  Jago slipped into the room, dressed for court, leathers smartly polished. “Bren-ji,” she said quietly, which meant his aishid was ready and waiting outside the bedroom. He went out with her, gathered up the rest of them and headed for the dining room, where Cajeiri and his bodyguard would already be seated.

  Cajeiri and his aishid all stood up, of course, when he and his came in, and they all settled to a quick service of tea and an opening sweet roll—a very nice move on the part of their young cook, Bren thought: Cajeiri was fond of sweets at any meal.

  “So how have you found the apartment, young gentleman?” Bren asked.

  “I have a suite, nandi!” Cajeiri said brightly. “One was permitted to pick out furniture.”

  “One is glad, young gentleman.”

  “Has nand’ Toby reached Mospheira yet?”

  “He sailed right on schedule, and one assumes so. We were a little worried about the weather, but he swore it would be no problem.”

  “He and Barb-daja are very good sailors, nandi.”

  “Far better than I am, young gentleman. I have every confidence in them.”

  “Have you heard from mani yet?”

  “Not yet, young gentleman. Your great-grandmother promised to be back as quickly as she can get the marriage contract signed and witnessed.”

  “That poor woman who has to marry Baiji…”

  “Exactly. Your great-grandmother can hardly rush things. The young lady is due a fine wedding, at very least, and relatives have to have time to get there.”

  “How long does she have to put up with him? —Is that talking about business at table, nandi?”

  Bren had to laugh, the question was so aside and so solemn; and he saw Banichi and the rest of his aishid smothering mild amusement, though Lucasi and Veijico looked a little embarrassed, and Antaro and Jegari looked worried.

  “No,” he said gently and quickly, “no, young gentleman, we two are merely gossiping, since neither of us is involved directly in the politics of the wedding, nor proposes to be.”

  “So how long will she have to live with him?”

  “Until there is a child confirmed, young gentleman. Which verges on a topic you should doubtless address to your parents.”

  “Oh, one knows all about that, nandi.”

  Bren took a piece of sugared toast from the server. One did not ask the source of the young gentleman’s expertise, no. Some things were best not said at breakfast.

  “Well, the contract will run only so long as need be,” Bren said. “The young lady in question is quite intelligent and very capable of seeing through all of Baiji’s lies and protestations. And the baby—assuming there will be a baby—will have man’chi to her and to Lord Geigi. But well before the baby has a name, Baiji will be living in retirement—a comfortable retirement, at least as the East understands comforts. He will have the society of his servants, whom your great-grandmother will install, and a bodyguard your great-grandmother will also install, and he will not visit the west again so long as he lives. So I do not believe we are likely to see Baiji again.”

  “He is incredibly stupid,” Cajeiri said, taking three pickled eggs. “And if he is stupid again and offends Great-grandmother, he will be very sorry for it.”

  “One dares say,” Bren said, and decided they had gone quite far as could be useful in discussing that scoundrel’s prospects. “But tell me about your new suite, young sir.”

  “I have a bedroom and an office and a sitting room, and my bodyguard has their rooms,” Cajeiri said with a burst of enthusiasm, eggy knife suspended in fist. “And plants. I have a lot of plants!”

  “Plants, young sir.” Potted plants were comparatively rare in atevi homes. Public places might have them. It was a particularly odd choice in a boy of eight.

  “Like your cabin on the ship, nandi!”

  “That bad?” he laughed. “For all I know the things are growing all over the station by now.”

  “Your cabin had them everywhere,” Cajeiri recalled. “And I very much enjoyed them. They would move when the air blew. It was like being in a garden.” A deep breath. “I enjoy being outdoors. I detest being locked up all the time. When you do go back to Najida, nand’ Bren, please take me with you! I promise I shall be no trouble at all!”

  “With your father’s permission, one would have no hesitation in having you as my guest again, young gentleman. But you must please him.”

  A sigh and a frown. “Nobody can ever be that good, nandi!”

  “Your father must be happy with you if he lets you pick out your own furniture.”

  “Mother did. One hardly knows why.”

  “One is certain your father had something to do with it.”

  “My father gets me worse and worse tutors. Everything is boring. They mumble. Na, na, na. I detest it. You could teach me. You and Banichi, nandi!”

  “I fear your father has us both quite busy for now, young sir.”

  The next course arrived.

  “But you promised to take me out on your boat, nandi. You promised, you promised, you promised! So you have to get me back to Najida, or you will have a promise you never kept!”

  Cajeiri was sometimes eight. And at such times the paidhi was obliged not to be.

  “Whenever your father approves such a visit, young gentleman, one will certainly keep that promise. But I fear,” Bren added, cold-bloodedly swerving the conversation off that reef, “that your father is already suspicious that my inexperience with young gentlemen does not offer adequate supervision. I fear I have only just escaped his extreme displeasure in the business at Najida, and one very much hopes you are indeed permitted to be here this morning.”

  “We are here,” Cajeiri declared, heir to his father’s and his great-grandmother’s quickness of wit. “We are permitted to visit here! We do not detect any displeasure!”

  That was only partly reassuring, though one was not so ungracious as to say so. “Yet I have felt responsible for the danger you were in,” Bren said, ladling up an egg, “and we assure you that, had I lost you, young gentleman, I could hardly have faced your father or your great-grandmother again. My life would have been over.”

  “It would not!”

  “Well, not by your father’s doing, but one doubts he would ever regard me kindly again.”

  “But I am not reckless,” Cajeiri said. “I have improved!”

  “That you have, young gentleman. You have improved greatly this year, in good sense, in maturity, and in perception of others’ motives. And now you are protected by your own aishid. So I should not be surprised if one day soon you do come to visit at Najida.”

  Cajeiri had swallowed half an egg, clearing his mouth for a strong argument, and suddenly seemed a little perplexed to be agreed with.

  “And I shall be extremely
happy to welcome you when you do,” Bren added. Sad, sad, to feel a little triumph at getting the better of an eight-year-old in an argument, when he had yet to face the lords of the aishidi’tat on the floor of the legislature.

  But he had, he hoped, made the point with the boy, that his credit with Tabini might well have suffered from recent events. He loved the kid, humanly speaking, that most reckless of emotions; but it was hard not to. And he constantly worried the lad’s precocity would someday land him in some misjudgment far exceeding the skill of his young bodyguard to protect him. One perceived a new danger: now that Cajeiri had at least half of a real Guild bodyguard, with the other half in training, that the boy might soon move beyond his usual pranks and bet far too heavily on their abilities.

  It wasn’t fair to the scamp’s young bodyguard, either, who certainly had a great deal staked on his survival—their lives and reputations, for starters.

  “I promise I shall talk to your father,” Bren said, “when the day comes that I can get back to Najida myself. They will build the new wing this year, once they are sure of the main roof. I had far rather be there at the moment, watching it.”

  “I wish, I wish I could see the building! I could learn far more about building than any tutor could teach me!”

  “Well, young gentleman, one is certain your tutor could think of problems of that nature, particularly in design, in architecture, in math, or in history. You could ask him your questions on the Najida repairs. And one would delight to provide you pictures of the work in progress. That might actually get an interesting answer.”

  A flick of gold, perpetually curious eyes. “One might win favor of my tutor,” the imp said with a little grin. “And one wishes very much to see the pictures. Perhaps I shall ask him hard questions, nand’ Bren. Tell me a hard question to ask him!”

  That was Cajeiri. He would be in the dictionary looking up the biggest words to use with such questions before the next tutoring session.

  Which would do the rascal no harm at all.

  “Ask him,” Bren said, “about the difficulties of extending a roof and a basement on an old building, and how one can be certain the foundation will hold the weight of a new story.”

  “I shall, nandi!”

  “Meanwhile,” Bren said, seeing the end of breakfast at hand, “you might enjoy touring the changes in this apartment. And perhaps you might see my library set up with books you have never seen.”

  The rascal was delighted to have a tour of the apartment and particularly delighted to be able to borrow a book on, of all things, the history of Mount Adams. The lad had always had a penchant for geography, even of places as remote from him as the moon.

  But Cajeiri had actually seen Mount Adams once. He was among a very few living atevi who could say that. One should never forget that point.

  Clearly Cajeiri hadn’t.

  And the book was in Mosphei’, which was very close to ship-speak. Cajeiri wasn’t letting that language go, either—for good or for ill. It was an uneasy matter with his parents, and particularly with his Ajuri grandfather. But worse, in Bren’s opinion, if one tried to cut him off from the language and pretend he had no such associations. This was a boy who met prohibitions with deviousness.

  In that thought, one let him take the book. It wasn’t the same, at least, as the human television archive, which Tabini had outright, and probably wisely, forbidden him until he reached his majority.

  So the boy left happy in his acquisition. Cajeiri was subversively teaching ship-speak to his aishid, one was relatively sure of it. The thought did occur to him that probably he should tell Tabini that what was likely going on.

  But, then, if Ilisidi hadn’t mentioned it to Tabini, who was he to intervene?

  It was a change of coats for the next meeting of the morning—and, thank God, so long as the meeting was on the upper floors of the Bujavid, his bodyguard let him out his front door without the bulletproof vest. Bren didn’t think Tabini would shoot him, granted that the young gentleman had actually had permission to come next door for breakfast.

  But he hadn’t had a face-to-face meeting with Tabini, not since, on the dowager’s orders, he’d veered significantly off course from his loyalty to Tabini and gone to meet with a Marid lord on whom Tabini had already Filed Intent.

  “Is there any whisper yet from Lord Tatiseigi’s staff?” he asked Koharu, as he was leaving his front door.

  “No, nandi,” Koharu said, and Bren looked at his bodyguard with the same question on his mind.

  “None, Bren-ji,” Banichi said. “As yet there is still no message from that quarter.”

  Worrisome. And puzzling. The old man couldn’t keep most secrets an hour. Neither, notoriously, and thanks to impossibly antiquated (but expensive!) systems at his estate, could his staff keep a secret.

  And Bren’s own security, who were tapped into every electronic whisper in the Bujavid, wasn’t picking up anything from Tatiseigi?

  He was sure now that the old man was more upset with him than he’d thought. And the ploy might crash, terribly. But he would have to patch that after he answered sharp questions from Tabini.

  So with that niggling at his mind, he took his bodyguard and went into the hall and next door.

  Tabini’s major domo let them in, and Cajeiri was not on the spot to meet him.

  Significant? Possibly Cajeiri had retreated to his suite with his borrowed book and had no idea there were visitors at the front door.

  Possibly he had gotten specific orders from his father to stay out of meetings. That would be a novelty.

  Or—who knew?—perhaps Cajeiri sensed his father was annoyed with the Marid business and had decided on his own not to be in the target zone.

  The major domo showed Bren straight into the sitting room, offered him a chair in a small formal grouping at the head of the room, farthest from the fire, and offered tea, which one was obliged to accept. Banichi and Jago took their stations by the door, inside; Tano and Algini would stand outside—that was the custom. In effect, Banichi and Jago would be privy to everything said between the lords in question, and Tano and Algini would be talking to the other half of Tabini’s bodyguard and getting up to speed on things lords didn’t routinely say to each other, getting any warnings they ought to know about…or delivering them. Algini was, in fact, actually senior to nine-tenths of Tabini’s staff and bodyguard, and had probably been in direct contact with the Assassins’ Guild’s central offices since they’d come in last night.

  But the paidhi wasn’t supposed to know anything about that.

  Tabini at least didn’t keep him waiting. The aiji came right into the sitting room from the private entry, dressed in far brighter colors than he had worn in recent meetings: a ruby-red coat and elaborate black lace sparked with rubies or garnets, elaborate court dress that made one glad to have at least changed coats for the occasion. Likely it reflected a meeting after his. There was no reason for Tabini-aiji to put on any show for him.

  Bren stood up and bowed. Tabini bowed slightly, sat down and waved a dismissive hand at the whole situation.

  “Sit, sit, paidhi. Nadiin-ji, tea, if you will.”

  The servants hurried about it, pouring tea into very elegant cups, serving, and then removing themselves to the corners of the room to await an empty cup.

  “And how did my son deport himself this morning?” Tabini asked, by way of the requisite small talk.

  “Oh, excellently well, aiji-ma.”

  “Does he bother you? A plain answer on that, if you please.”

  “In no wise does he, aiji-ma. He is a delightful distraction and a welcome guest. One hopes, however, that he had permission.”

  “He did.”

  That was a relief. “One should have checked, aiji-ma. I was remiss last night, and realized that this morning, after he had arrived.”

  “He has not made any outrageous requests of you.”

  “None outrageous. He wishes to go to Najida and watch the construction, and he ju
stly reminds me he has not yet had a fishing trip on my boat, which I long ago promised him.”

  “My son,” Tabini said, and sighed. “You are the momentary center of his man’chi, one sees, and you surely sense this. He is obsessed with exploration. And one apologizes for the inconvenience.”

  “By no means, aiji-ma. He is pleasant company, delightful company—and his perception of hazards is increasing.” A breath. “Let me say, however, now that everyone is safe, one does profoundly apologize for events on the peninsula.”

  Tabini gave a wry frown. “He learns lessons in your care that his tutors could not teach him—that, in fact, we cannot teach him.” A leisurely sip of tea. “Court bores him, and boredom will turn him sour and warp him. I know this boy, paidhi-ji. I was such a boy.”

  “If one can help him, aiji-ma, one is glad.”

  “One would even add—and you should by no means report this to my grandmother—that I regard her teaching as invaluable. I would not have survived a year in office without the lessons she taught. I certainly would have not survived the latest attempt on my life.”

  “One understands, aiji-ma.”

  Second slow sip of tea. “You may well have wondered, in the course of recent years, why I sent my son to space, and why lately, having a chance to bring my son out of Najida, I left him in your care, at risk of his life and person.”

  Bren took a sip of his own, thinking fast; whether it was a slow set-up, or Tabini in a reflective mood? “One is much too involved in this to have good perspective, aiji-ma. One hopes not to have been a bad influence on him.”

  “He needs thoughts that challenge him. He is far too bright. And dangerous to the future of all we have built if misdirected. His tutors have never gained his respect. He defies them and plays cruel jokes on them, absolutely unconscionable disrespect, however amusing. He slips out unsupervised. Gods less fortunate, he has stolen away on a freight train. He has stolen a boat. One does not wish to encourage this sort of behavior, and mere lectures and punishment will not stop it. A dose of the real world seems a far better lesson, and none better to teach him behavior under fire than his great-grandmother. And none better to teach him the complexity of the world—and the contradictions within what looks right—than you, paidhi-aiji.”