Protector

  There was morning tea and there were breakfast sandwiches, courtesy of the staff—a few of whom might not have been to bed at all last night. The staff party in the apartment had broken up to get Lord Geigi’s last personal baggage and their breakfast down to the train in a secure condition—and not just Lord Geigi’s own belongings, but baggage and breakfast for Lord Geigi’s bodyguard, his several accompanying servants, and four more new staffers chosen from among the Edi people. That little group had arrived from the peninsula last night.

  So their company numbered him and his four bodyguards; Geigi and Geigi’s bodyguard, another set of five, and twelve of Geigi’s staff. They were, uncharacteristically for Bren’s train trips, a full and excitedly noisy car this morning, with most of them and all of the baggage heading into orbit in a few hours. The new staffers from the Edi people were facing their first flight of any kind, having come in last night by train—and they were moderately terrified, being reassured by everyone that it would be a grand experience.

  It might be—for everyone but portly Geigi, who did not take to cramped shuttle seating and the necessary ground-waits in the spaceport lounge, and who dreaded the climb to orbit only as a prolonged misery.

  They were down to tea, now, absolutely stuffed, in Bren’s case. Satisfying Lord Geigi’s appetite took a bit more, but even Geigi swore he could not down another sandwich or pickled egg, and swearing that he was always spacesick in free fall.

  It did not prevent him taking another sip of tea and a little sweet cake.

  “This has been quite a trip, Bren-ji. And outside of the difficulties and the gunfire, a very profitable trip. My estate saved, my nephew married—and lastingly out of my view. Which is, one hesitates not at all to admit, a very good thing.”

  Bren laughed. “Favor us more often, and without the gunfire, please. You will have to come down to see the new wing on Najida. Not to mention seeing the Edi estate built. It would be very politic for you to visit next year, Geigi-ji.”

  “Sly fellow. I shall try. No, very well, I swear I shall get down to the planet at least once a year hereafter, even if my estate is not missing its portico.”

  “Next time we may do that fishing trip. Bring Jase down with you.” Jase Graham, Captain Jason Graham these days. Their best plans for that long-promised trip had run up against a series of disasters. “You should simply kidnap him. Stow him in baggage.”

  “One fears that will be the only way we may have him,” Geigi laughed. “But we at least shall try. Kindly keep the world peaceable for a while and I shall do my very best.”

  “I shall most earnestly try, Geigi-ji.”

  “And most imminently, I shall go ahead and send Cajeiri’s associates. I have slept on it, and I agree with you: the boy should have this business resolved, however it turns out, poor lad. Now you frown.”

  “Worry that we are doing the right thing, Geigi-ji.”

  And more worry—which he had learned last night, after his conversation with Geigi—that the Ajuri situation still had volatile potential. Not on the scale of the west coast mess which had brought Geigi down to the planet, and not likely immediate. There was that.

  “Damiri-daja is opposed to the visit,” Geigi said. “I greatly admired your approaching her after the party. I was aghast. But well done, Bren-ji. Very well done. I must say that before I go.”

  “You heard all that.”

  “I have excellent ears.”

  God. Atevi hearing. It was so hard to judge. “One hopes no one else did.”

  “Had Damiri-daja wished otherwise, she would have stopped it. Still . . . well done.”

  “One is still worried about Ajuri’s reaction, Geigi-ji. They may have envisioned the aiji’s displeasure being short-lived. The rebuff from Damiri will sting.”

  “Well, well, most clearly—the boy will have little to do with Ajuri, hereafter, in any form, so long as his grandfather is acting the fool. I have heard it from him: he wishes not to deal with the man. Protect him from Tatiseigi’s sillier notions, too, where possible. Man’chi to his father is his safest course, and I sense it is developing in a perfectly natural way. A future aiji is bound to develop stubborn notions at a certain stage of life. That is the nature of aijiin, always the independence, the search for associations which just do not come to them in any normal way. And this boy—is his great-grandmother’s child. In a sense—so is Tabini-aiji. They are in that sense brothers, more than father and son. The boy is already making appearances at his great-grandmother’s side. As Tabini-aiji also did, in his youth, I well recall. Tabini-aiji sees the boy as growing up exactly as he did, and he finds both pride and reassurance in the occasional misbehaviors and risk-taking—another matter which Damiri-daja resents, if one may speak the absolute truth of the matter. Tabini-aiji will not side with his wife if she pushes the issue of the boy’s attachment to the dowager. Look to Ajuri not to leave this situation alone. The gesture Damiri-daja made, in her choice of gowns—that will indeed hit hard. I swallowed half my glass in sheer amazement.”

  “One hopes she can make peace with her uncle Tatiseigi. As one is surprised to see you have done.”

  “Ah, that old scoundrel.” Geigi gave a gentle laugh, rocking back, hands on knees. “Tatiseigi and I have at last found common ground on this visit: idiot nephews, and porcelain-collecting. I have promised him the loan of certain rare books from my library, and made him a gift of a very special regional ceramic his collection lacks. We have, in fact, become steady correspondents. Fools, both of us, where it comes to glazes and clays.”

  “We have become each other’s dinner guests,” Bren said, and they both laughed, because Tatiseigi at the paidhi’s table was the least likely thing in the world.

  • • •

  The salted fruit juice helped, actually. Cajeiri made it to his feet and into his bathrobe, intending to go have the bath he had missed last evening. He went out into the sitting room of his little suite and Boji immediately jumped to the door of his cage, clinging to the grill, glad to see him. Boji let out a head-splitting shriek, little feet and hands shaking the door in great hope of being taken out of his cage.

  “Hush,” he said. Boji was not to make noise and bother the household, and it hardly helped his head. Silence was one condition of having Boji, and if he was going to leave the suite to have his bath down the hall, he could not give Boji the impression he was going to get out of the cage for a while and then put him immediately back in. That would guarantee shrieks and bad behavior.

  It was a large cage, as big as the couch and as tall as he was, an antique brass cage. Its bars were filigree work of vines and flowers. It was specially made for Boji’s kind, who, collared and leashed, retrieved eggs for their owners.

  But Boji, in the city, had no way to hunt and there were no trees to climb. He was fed all the eggs he could want. His black fur was sleek and brushed and he was getting a little plump. What he lacked most was exercise. Cajeiri gave it to him when he could; but this morning Boji just got a second egg, delivered through the little feeding gate, and was quite happily appeased, at least momentarily.

  His room was very different from the rest of his father’s apartment. It had white walls—everything did, and he could not change that. But he had covered the walls where he could. There was Boji’s cage, and the brass vase taller than even Lucasi. There were animal carvings on all the furniture, and tapestry pictures of outdoors, mountains and fields and fortresses and such; and most of all there were plants, plants hanging from hooks all over, in every place where they could get light from fixtures in this windowless, closed-in suite. They were special lights. They shone like the sun. Housekeeping had provided them to help his plants.

  His mother called it a jungle. He was sure it was not a compliment, though if anyone else had said it, he was sure he would like it. He had never been able to show his rooms to his great-grandmother, but he thought she would approve
his choices. It felt like his great-grandmother’s sort of room.

  And this morning he was not so sure he really wanted his bath until he absolutely had to. He wanted to let his headache go away. He wanted no one to say anything unpleasant to him, and most of all he wanted no one to ask him why he was walking around with his face was all squinched up as if he had a headache, which he certainly did. And the condition of his head and his stomach was not something he wanted gossiped about on staff. It was bad enough Eisi and Lieidi had to know he had misbehaved and drunk something from leftover glasses. He was really quite ashamed of himself. Or it was the effect of the headache and upset stomach.

  Geigi and nand’ Bren must be on the train at this hour, well on their way to the spaceport. He so wished he could have gone with them, to say good-bye to Lord Geigi, and just to be outside the Bujavid and out of the city entirely for a few hours. The spaceport, too, would be something to see—he had been there once in his life, but he only just remembered it as big white buildings and a long strip of concrete. When he and Great-grandmother and nand’ Bren had landed back on the planet, they had landed at an airport over on the island of Mospheira, where only humans lived—that had been something to see.

  And from Mospheira, at Port Jackson, they had crossed the straits on Bren’s brother Toby’s boat, and then stowed away in a rail car, and ridden mecheiti—so many ways they had traveled to get back to Shejidan. He had done all these things most people never had and before that he had had the run of the starship, and known secret passages and places nobody in the Bujavid could imagine. He had floated in air. He had seen water hang in globes you could chase.

  Now he was limited to a suite of rooms in a nest of potted plants, with poor Boji in a cage.

  It was because of his grandfather that he had no idea when he was going to be allowed out. And if these were the conditions he had while his guests were here, it was going to be embarrassing.

  Let us see the ocean, they would say. And he would have to say no.

  Let us see mecheiti, they would say. And he would have to say they could not.

  He would be embarrassed to have them know how strictly he was locked in, now. He could tell them about the adventures he had had, but he could not show them any. They might think he was lying, and he could not prove anything.

  And being locked in was likely the way things would be, and he would have to make the best of it and just hope his mother was polite and did not call any of them abnormal.

  They had been through a lot. But they had settled matters on the west coast. They had had a big signing where Lord Machigi of the Taisigin Marid made an alliance with Great-grandmother. Everything had been going so well.

  And then his grandfather, from just embarrassing and annoying, had gone crazy, for all he could understand, and thrown a fit because he was excluded from Great-grandmother’s party, and he had come upstairs and scared the staff. His parents’ marriage had almost collapsed that same night, because of Grandfather. Beyond that, he had a strong notion there were things going on with Grandfather that, being a boy, he was not supposed to know.

  If Grandfather had gotten in—what would he have done?

  The scene his grandfather had made had not made his father approve of his grandfather, which he now did not, at all.

  It certainly had not made him approve of his grandfather, either.

  And it probably had made his mother mad, too, though she would not admit it.

  Would his own grandfather have tried to kill him, to force his father to take his unborn sister for his heir?

  That was a smarter move in some ways, but stupid, too, because there was no guarantee his father would not teach his sister just who was responsible for shooting her brother, and he could not think that shooting him would persuade his sister to trust Grandfather much, either . . . granted his sister was no fool.

  And while he and his mother were at odds, he did not believe that his mother would ever forgive anybody who shot him.

  So doing away with him could not have been the reason Grandfather had made the scene at the door, either. And he had thrown a very indecorous tantrum in Great-grandmother’s reception and gotten himself thrown out in full view of everybody.

  He kept thinking about it and thinking about it. He had nightmares about his grandfather turning up by his bed. He could only imagine what his mother felt about the situation.

  He had met people with perfectly understandable reasons for shooting him, like meeting him in a basement hallway when they were searching the house, trying to kill anybody they found—that was sensible. He had had nightmares about that. But to have Grandfather replace that man in his nightmares—

  That was scarier, somehow.

  There was a little suspicion, by what he figured out by hanging around doors, about Grandfather’s brother, the Ajuri lord, dying conveniently, which had made Grandfather the Ajuri clan lord. Grandfather’s brother had not been that old, or sick. He had just died.

  And his father had said Grandfather was insane.

  And he was not at all sure it was a joke.

  That was when his father had decided it was time to make his whole bodyguard official, and arm them, and get them all the proper Guild equipment.

  Was Grandfather the reason for that? Or only one reason?

  He was going to be really mad if Grandfather made trouble while his guests were here.

  Or if his mother and his father had a fight when his guests were here.

  Was his father even right to go on trusting his mother?

  Or was his mother still living here only because his father did not want the baby born in Ajuri? He certainly did not want a baby who was half Ragi brought up Ajuri, by Grandfather, either. That could be a lot of trouble in the future. So he was sure his father was not going to let his mother leave here until the baby was born.

  It was a mess, was what it was. Mani said reckless alliances could scatter man’chi into very bad places. Jago had said it too: relationships always create gaps in your defense.

  He went to his little office, which he used for his homework, but it was not homework he had in mind. There was a huge wall map, which was one of his most special and prized possessions. He had stuck pins in it, pins for people he was sure he had for associates.

  Two days ago, after his mother and his father had had another argument, he had gotten mad and taken out the pins for Ajuri clan. Now after thinking about it, he replaced them with bright yellow ones.

  Yellow for danger. Yellow for enemies. They were a little clan, but they were dead center of the territory of the Northern Association: he knew how to look at a map. All the clans of the Northern Association were little clans, but together, they were something more—the whole upper section of the aishidi’tat, for one important thing, everything above the Padi Valley Association and stretching clear to the coast up by Dur.

  And he had to turn those once-family pins yellow, a whole little knot of yellow pins for cousins and aunts and uncles, and his stupid, stupid grandfather.

  He had been so smug about all the connections he had had, and now his beautiful map had that nasty yellow spot of trouble on it, trouble that might still be as hot an issue when he was aiji in his father’s place, since he could not imagine how he was going to turn his grandfather sane or make his reputation better in the south. Father had said he wanted no Ajuri servants serving him tea, and that was just about the way he felt. Forever.

  The new baby, that Mother said would be a sister, would have been heir in his place, if he had not come back from space nearly a year ago, surprising everybody.

  Maybe Grandfather had not been happy to find out that the real heir was back, and that he had turned into Great-grandmother’s student. Maybe when Grandfather had found out Mother was going to have a baby, and that Father was on his way to taking back the capital, that was when Grandfather had gotten ideas about getting close
to the new baby. Even before he was lord of Ajuri he had started planning. And who was in Great-grandfather’s way?

  He was.

  That was a scary thought, It was what had upset him so much last night, when Great-grandmother, who was very, very smart about politics, had taken hold of his mother and gotten her to listen for the whole course around that big room—Great-grandmother had had that very grim look she wore when she was giving orders, and Mother had listened, and he had seen all sorts of motives going on, powerful motives. Motives that could get people killed.

  Maybe his mother stayed with his father because she really had man’chi to his father, and because that man’chi mattered more to her than any other, anywhere.

  Maybe it was because she liked being important and being the aiji-consort and having parties and pretty clothes. It had to be better than being home in Ajuri in a little house and not in charge of anything at all. That was a reason, but his mother had a lot more on her mind than parties and nice furniture. She was smart. And if she had had moments lately when she was not very reasonable, he had no doubt she was thinking hard whether to stay or go or what to do about him, and Great-grandmother, and the new baby, and Grandfather.

  It was all what nand’ Bren called a damned mess. He was not supposed to use that language, but damned mess did describe it. And he just had to tread very, very carefully, not only to get his birthday party the way he was promised, and try to keep all the pins on that map—but to be sure he did not cause his mother to leave his father.

  Once his sister was born—well, his mother would probably be more comfortable, and she would have a lot to do. He had to set his mind in advance that his mother was going to be treating his sister as her favorite, and she was probably going to start pushing to get his sister special honors, and make his sister important, and powerful. He saw that coming. His mother never would be on his side, because he was Great-grandmother’s, and his mother would try to make his sister take her side about everything, so long as she lived, by giving her absolutely everything she wanted.