Profound shift of focus. “On his way, aiji-ma!”
“One assumes that since he knows he has an approved residence available to him, he intends to make use of it and get this done, as we have urged him, before there is any greater furor. We couriered a message to him last night. He will lodge in the Taisigi mission and, we presume, is coming here to sign the promised agreement at the earliest.”
Within the hour, that message must have come, just before they entered the dowager’s sitting room. Tano and Algini, on duty out in the hall, undoubtedly had found it out from the dowager’s staff. They had probably sent that information to Banichi and Jago, who were with him. But they had not been able to inform him while he was engaged with the dowager.
“Then I shall inform Lord Geigi, aiji-ma.”
“Do.”
“Shall I attend the signing?”
“Oh, that you shall, nand’ paidhi. You certainly should! And if I can persuade my grandson and Lord Machigi, we will have a large attendance—in the lower reception hall, with the news cameras. The news service, we are told, has carried so much rumor about this agreement that truth about it will be news indeed. And once the document is signed, we shall have exhibitions for the participants. I have the library engaged in creating an informative display of maps and books, along with the full text of the document. I have a package ready to go to the television, a tour of the coast in question, interviews in the Eastern village that will become key to the new port. The villages in the East are quite excited. They have just gained a new meeting hall and the prospect of a road linking the three villages along that shore. And a promise of new building, employing locals. It will require minimal dredging, it is in an area of minimal impact on sea life or fisheries, it is all at my expense, and Lord Geigi has informed us, back at Najida, while you were off visiting Lord Machigi, that there is a technology that can deal with pollution in the waters of the bay, so the local fishery will not suffer. You see, nand’ paidhi, we are not too old to learn new ways.”
“I shall certainly approve it, if it does that.”
“We are quite interested in seeing it applied, not only on the East Coast. You will explain it to my grandson.”
“With the greatest enthusiasm, aiji-ma. I shall need to ask Lord Geigi, clearly.”
“And with this inducement, you, nand’ paidhi, are going to prepare arguments to convince fishermen who need their sons and daughters to follow their trade to let the youngest go to pursue this new technology.”
Preventing technology was easy: ignorance, poverty, and prevalent disease did that very effectively. Directing it by stages was what the paidhi’s office had been established to do…without disrupting the social structure or ripping the old trades and the old customs away indiscriminately. “One entirely understands the mission, aiji-ma. And I shall take pleasure in it.”
Give or take two death threats in one morning. But he’d had those ever since he’d left off building dictionaries and had begun to build a space program.
So Machigi was coming. No wonder the death threats.
That meant the Guild was shifting things into motion, possibly because of more credible than usual death threats; they hadn’t forewarned his aishid, damn them…
On the other hand, they were in position now to know exactly the state of readiness. The dowager had the documents, he had laid the groundwork with critical committees, Siodi-daja had set the de facto Taisigi trade office near the Bujavid, where Machigi could safely lodge and from which he could safely reach the Bujavid.
And Ilisidi had a notion she was going to set up a media event.
They were in it. The Guild might tweak circumstances. But the event was about to become a juggernaut.
It wasn’t the first time he’d looked at a program he’d launched with Ilisidi and had misgivings.
But this one—
He saw in it a real possibility that he and Ilisidi and Tabini could go down, along with the aishidi’tat, if it all blew up.
At very least, the paidhi-aiji might be called upon to take all blame.
God, he hoped this worked.
There was no sign of Boji. Nothing. Cajeiri had stood guard inside the sitting room while Antaro stood guard outside, and Veijico and Lucasi and Jegari had turned over every chair and looked in every vase and moved every heavy item to discover any Boji-sized hole.
“He can get through anything his head can get through,” Jegari said, “and that is a very small hole.”
It was beyond exasperating. “He will need food,” Cajeiri said. “He will need water sooner. What will he do, nadiin-ji? Shall we keep our apartment door ajar?”
“Just a crack would be enough for him,” Jegari said. “He can move the door. They’re quite strong.”
“One knows he is strong, nadi!” Cajeiri said in frustration. “One could not hold him! And he can hide in the smallest space! What have we not thought to search?”
“Any hall beyond any opened door, or any door that may have opened since,” Veijico said unhappily. “Perhaps you should advise your father, Jeri-ji, so he can alert the staff. He can go on moving every time an entry is left unwatched.”
“No,” he said. “We shall not.” He had just gotten permission to invite his associates down from the ship. And that could go away if his father was angry with him. Every good thing could go away, just like that. “We cannot make my father mad, nadiin-ji. Let us try to get him back on our own. He may come back for food and water. Let us set an egg in the cage. With the door open. And then one of us will watch there.”
“There is the bath, nandi,” Lucasi said. “That often has water standing. Or simply condensation. It will smell of water.”
“One of us can watch there,” Jegari said, “even all night. He is most active at twilight. When the house lights are mostly out, then he may come out.”
“We shall do that. Eggs. Fruit. He loves fruit. And we have two servants we can trust, and that woman, who is supposed to be looking…have you heard from her?”
“She has reported on two doors,” Lucasi said, “which she closed, which are no help.”
“He will not have gone into the office. My father was there. Nor the security station, with people there. Nor the kitchen, too likely—wherever there are people, he will avoid.”
“The closets,” Jegari said. “We should look in the cleaning closets, Jeri-ji, in the servant hallways. He will want dark places. You should stay in the apartment and watch for him to come back, and let us search.”
He was not supposed to be alone. That was his father’s standing order. But he could stand watch all night near Boji’s cage if he had to.
And they would have to. He was not going to have his father forbid his associates again.
It was not even his fault. It was all the servant’s fault.
Except handling Boji without his leash. He had done that, and it was stupid. So he could hardly blame the servant, except for coming into a part of the apartment she had no permission to be in. And that just made him mad. Really mad.
“Nadiin-ji,” he said once they were in the hall again and had Antaro in their midst. “Only two servants were ever supposed to come into our rooms! This was agreed. Why did this person come in? Go tell Jaidiri that an unauthorized servant came into my room, when we had asked to have only particular servants tend our rooms! And that we wish him to know we want to have it as we ordered!”
Jaidiri was the head of his father’s bodyguard. It was scary to talk about involving Jaidiri in the mess, because things could go immediately to his father. But now that he had thought it through, dealing with it as a security matter seemed a sensible thing to do. Jaidiri would ask his father’s head of staff and find out who had ordered the woman to come into his room, because all the women were his mother’s, and they had no right nor reason to be meddling with his room. Jaidiri might mention it to his father in passing, but only as a matter of fact. It was going through channels. His father had constantly told him to go through channe
ls. And he would feel better if he knew why someone else was coming into his apartment.
Lucasi said, smartly, “Yes.”
“Do,” he said, making it an order, and Lucasi went off at that very moment.
“I shall go set up to watch for Boji in the apartment,” he said. “Keep searching.”
They agreed, and he went back to set up with a pen to block the door just slightly open, and have the cage open, with water in the cage, and most of all, just inside the door, an egg.
It was going to be a long wait, and he could not even take his eyes off the door to read. He just had to sit and watch, because Boji was very clever, very quick, and very sneaky. Trapping him was not going to be easy.
There was no likelihood that the paidhi-aiji was going to have to host a formal dinner for the signing, so Bindanda, who was sending out daily orders for this and that exotic item—mostly staples that had to be gotten from Mospheira, so as not to poison his lord—was not going to have to present a formal service amid everything else that was going on in the household. They did not want to go into the evening’s event with a heavy supper sitting on their stomachs; there was to be a little refreshment at a reception afterward, and the decision on a very light cold supper perfectly suited the kitchen.
“The boy you have engaged to assist me is intelligent and willing, nandi,” Bindanda said, arms tucked tightly across his stout frame, “and there are excellent possibilities in him, but one would not gladly undertake a dinner party as yet with only Pai for help.”
So Bindanda was off the hook and glad of it.
Narani, however, that estimable old man, was not. He had a great deal of work to do, including arranging yet another bulletproof vest—a change in brocade to go with the brown tones as well as the blue and the green—and being sure a young staff had every item of the paidhi’s court wardrobe ready not only for this evening on short notice, but for any of a number of meetings that might follow.
“One begs to urge that you need more shirts, nandi,” Narani informed him. “Five more, at minimum. And more socks. One has made a list, which one would be pleased to send to the usual supplier on Mospheira. And a session with the tailor is in order: We need one more vest, in a modest gray-green. And, nandi, one is certain one remembers the brown coat from before we went up to the station….”
One had to agree that a new coat or two might be in order. “But the brown coat is my most comfortable, Rani-ji. One wishes to keep it—for quiet, home occasions.”
“It was always an excellent coat, nandi,” Narani said, and one had confidence that his favorite coat would be safe and made as presentable as possible until it simply wore out.
Geigi’s own major d’ and staff were simultaneously working Geigi’s needs into the schedule; his wardrobe and that of his staff had to be in proper form for this evening.
And beyond that—
Beyond that, he and Geigi had nothing personally to do at this point but to exchange information and wait for events to play out, for Machigi to arrive in Shejidan, then settle into the Marid trade mission and get ready. The signing was set for the evening, and the word was out. Several lords, including Lord Dur, Adigan, and his son, were coming in by plane—by commercial plane, this time, unusual for the younger lord, but he was accompanying his father. The Edi and the Gan peoples were not sending representatives, but the new lord of the Maschi was coming. No few of the minor lords were coming in on short notice, some by train, some by plane.
Among the latter—the lord of the Ajuri. They had word of that along with the news of the others, and what the lord of the Ajuri wanted, no one was certain. He was not in the Conservative Caucus, was not speaking to Lord Tatiseigi, and had absolutely no interests on the west coast or the east. His sudden appearance on the scene roused some question, given the matters the aiji had mentioned, but that was Tabini’s problem, on a completely different front. He would not have an invitation to the event, one was quite certain, and one hoped he had a hotel reservation and didn’t plan to move in next door…one hoped not, and one didn’t think he’d get such an invitation, no matter the situation in the city, where no few of those who were invited to an event on short notice were going to be calling in favors for lodging. The paidhi would have invited Dur, but he had Geigi, and no more room. Suites in hotels at any close distance were absolutely full-up where it reguarded suites. A room, possibly, could be had. But status was at stake.
So various staffs would be going mad, trying to outfit various lords for a court event, trying to assure on-time arrival, possibly from lodging clear across the city—and trying to assure their lord was decently fed before the event, which meant catering was going to be at a premium, as well.
In that thought—he did inquired about Dur’s arrangements but was assured he would dine on the flight.
So that was managed, and the new lord of the Maschi was not yet of status or seniority enough to be invited to dinner preceding so important an occasion. It was safest not to ruffle the waters of protocol; he would just stay quiet and not do anything remarkable this evening until he and Geigi had to go down to the affair, at a time decorously just ahead of the dowager’s arrival—staff would handle the timing.
He told his staff to advise him if any message arrived or any news broke.
And after the initial flurry of arranging things with staff, and with so short a time left, he felt himself incapable of focusing on any extraneous business. Geigi agreed he was in the same condition—so he and Geigi sat at the table in the sitting room and played cards, game after game. As a host, one did feel somewhat a failure in the matter of entertainment, but poker afforded a chance to occupy one’s mind and simultaneously carry on a bit of conversation—as they did, somewhat erratically. Playing poker with an ateva was calculated suicide, but he did win now and again in moments when Geigi’s attention, for his own reasons, lapsed off into the event bearing down on them.
Their sole job now was to stay out of the way of staff. Tano did pop into the sitting room to report that, yes, Machigi had reached the regional airport, had chosen to go out from there on a smaller plane, rather than go down to the larger airport at Separti, and would arrive at a good hour.
Arrangements for his protection were in place, Tano said, and Lady Siodi had requested Guild assistance to set up a proper private dinner, which had to be catered from across the street, one supposed. Machigi would get something to eat before the signing—nobody wanted to face a political problem on an empty stomach.
And the efficiency of staff contacting staff meant that by now Tabini was as unofficially in the loop as he wished to be—which was, for public consumption, not involved at all—and only Ilisidi’s staff was quietly working with Bujavid offices regarding the venue for the signing.
Banichi came in to report that set-up was finished in the downstairs reception hall and was undergoing a security check, and that the Guild was satisfied with arrangements for Machigi’s travel to and from the Taisigi trade mission.
By now, if the paidhi were playing for more than points, he would have been sunk in debt.
They tried small talk, which did nothing for one’s card-playing; by luck, the mail this afternoon had involved a report on the construction at Najida, and that carried into an engaging conversation with Geigi—and two lost hands—on the merits of native stone and wood as a theme for Najida’s new wing and the relocation of the sitting room into the new wing, with a window looking out over Najida Bay.
“A brilliant notion,” Geigi called it. “And what for the old sitting room? It was always quite convenient to the front door. One imagines the paidhi-aiji might enjoy the state of a reception hall.”
“Oh, one thinks not,” Bren said with a laugh. “One finds oneself quite content with the character of a country lord, nothing so grand as a reception hall in my house. One was actually thinking of making it another guest suite. And yet another idea was relocating my own quarters to the new wing and having the entire front hall for my guests. Guests were
never a consideration in the original arrangements at Najida.”
“The old lords were never a social lot,” Geigi said. “But you are quite apt to have a cluster of associates dropping by with large staffs, never forgetting the young gentleman. You may need that new wing to extend to the road.”
“I have thought of that,” Bren admitted. And they fell to discussing architecture, and the need to keep the view rustic, and to keep it from impinging on the tranquility of the bay, and of Najida Village.
“Trees,” Geigi said. “Native trees.”
One liked that idea. There were no trees on the ridge, and one had the notion, considering the field across the road, and the forest that quite abruptly began on the next rise, that the previous holders of Najida had gotten their timber by clearing that land.
It was hunting range. One had to consider that and leave ample grazing for certain species.
But the renegades and their mortars had done immense damage out on the heights—cratering the landscape. Granted it had been rock and scrub, it had been peaceful rock and scrub, and that he was determined to sculpt back into a semblance of something more natural than shell craters.
Not to mention the hazard of unexploded shells. They currently had the entire area posted, and the village children were strictly warned. A handful of children, in fact, had been the first ones to report the location of shells, and had quite wisely given them a wide berth.
“One is determined to restore the heights,” he said. “We may derive some stone from that source, but we will do plantings there, as well.”
“It has been neglected ground for centuries,” Geigi said. “Since the Edi were moved onto the mainland. I have in my collection woodcuts that show that area densely wooded.”