“Now we should go,” Bren said. “Back to safety, young sir. Back to the house.”
They walked. Cajeiri and his young guard walked with them. “I want to fly a plane,” Cajeiri said.
Was one in the least surprised?
“I want to fly the shuttle,” Cajeiri added.
One could still be surprised.
“You should talk to the shuttle pilots regarding that matter, young sir,” Jago said, a definite rescue from the topic, perhaps a new and dangerous ambition, granted they lived through this day.
They walked up the hill, passing many slower walkers in the crowd, then a handful of other persons filling fuel cans at the pump…whether or not authorized was itself a question, but the fuel pump had been unlocked, its existence made known, and others took advantage.
Some other arrival was in progress in the meanwhile, a large bus that, ignoring the jam on the driveway, which might stretch for a kilometer and more, had gotten around the long hedge. Now it came rolling across the open lawn between the jammed drive and the Taibeni camp, bouncing and bumping in its haste. Perhaps its driver had been alarmed by the aircraft passing over their heads, and had made an emergency move to try to gain the house, but its course across the lawn had come very close to the Taibeni camp. Mecheiti bellowed protests to the heavens and vexed Taibeni came out to the edge of their camp, bearing weapons.
“Get to the house, Bren-ji,” Banichi said, and only then did the full range of possibilities occur to him. Rifles were out. Guns were drawn, all facing that bus across the hedge.
This is insane, Bren thought, hurrying Cajeiri and his escort up the house steps. Surely no Kadagidi invader would dare.
But he climbed, and cast a look back only when he had reached the top of the steps. The errant bus had stopped, just on the other side of the hedge.
It had stopped, under a hundred guns, and a lordly passenger was debarking in considerable indignation.
“Uncle will not be pleased with them for parking on the lawn,” Cajeiri said, “whoever did that.”
To say the least, uncle would not be pleased.
But more than the untoward incursion of the bus, he had the sudden image of all those vehicles on the driveway, constrained by the hedges on either side, attempting to move under hostile fire. Or trying to evade some vehicle carrying explosives across that same lawn.
Folly, his own sense said. He was sure Banichi and Jago saw the same.
But this bus at least had brought only another set of passengers, servants, bodyguards, and baggage.
“Come inside,” Bren said, laying a hand on the young gentleman’s shoulder. “Here is far too exposed. We are sure they are safe, but this is long enough for—”
“Those are Ajuri colors!” Cajeiri said suddenly, and neither pointed, that dreadful human gesture, nor raised his voice too high as he indicated the bus, the self-important arrival that had come in on the lawn. “That will be my great-grandfather and my uncle on my mother’s side that just ran over uncle’s grass.”
Ajuri clan. Well, Damiri had indicated they would be here by evening. And the sun had entered the last third of the sky. Ajuri had pushed it, and come a little early, perhaps in fear of traveling close to dark.
“Then I suppose we shall wait for them,” Bren said, from their vantage on the steps. They did seem safe. The plane and its noise had vanished, the outraged Taibeni had quieted the mecheiti, rifles and guns were put away, and the bus had by now disgorged a collection of staff and, behind the first lord, an elderly man who was very likely the aiji of Ajuri clan, Damiri’s grandfather. The first to alight, the younger gentleman of note, might well be Damiri’s uncle, second highest lord. There were a couple of other aristocrats, and a collection of still younger individuals, including young ladies. The middle tier of aristocrats were all carrying hunting rifles, some of them flashing gold baroque ornament on the stocks, and with ammunition cases in evidence, quite the martial addition; but more to be feared, black-uniformed Guild security moved around them, watchful and bearing automatic weapons, and not at all favoring the armed Taibeni in their lords’ vicinity. In the background, a few harried domestic staff began to hand suitcases out of stowage, a pile which grew and grew. The Ajuri, a burgeoning small platoon of them, had every intent, it was clear, of claiming lodgings in the house…suitcases and staff and all.
Indeed, it might be a reasonable expectation, under ordinary circumstances. They had certain rights of approach, being Damiri’s relations, with Tabini in residence.
But Tatiseigi, the boy was right, would have different thoughts. They were already limited in space. Tirnamardi’s upstairs had suffered in the attack. The staff and the boilers were already taxed to the limit.
Perhaps they should at least wait and try to slow the advance, and put the overhasty Ajuri in a calmer frame of mind. Their position on the steps was sheltered by the house, by the presence of Banichi and Jago, and the new arrivals pushed their way through the shattered hedge with some dispatch, weaving through the barrier of parked trucks, baggage and staff following, in evident intent to reach the house quickly. The elderly gentleman had taken command and walked ahead of the rest, in no mood to wait.
Damiri’s grandfather. Bren searched his memory for the name. Damiri’s uncle, a handsome fellow, was named Kadiyi, Bren recalled, out of the depths of his memory: He walked second. The old lord, the one who looked to have swallowed vinegar, was Benati, Bejadi, or some such.
Cajeiri descended to the midsteps landing, a little to the fore, and bowed properly as the old lord came up the steps, but the old man paid his young kinsman not a scrap of notice—climbed, in fact, right past him. The second lord did the same, to Cajeiri’s indignation, and up the steps they came, head-on toward Bren.
“You!” the old man said. In Ragi, that address was inestimably rude. “Foreigner! Out of our way, damn your impudence!”
“Honored sir,” Bren said. Clearly he had made a mistake in delaying to welcome the arrivals—there was no way in all the world the old man mistook him for anyone else on the planet, and clearly the old man meant exactly what he said. And finding it prudent and politic to let the insult slide off for the moment, and let Tabini-aiji and Tatiseigi deal with this brusque advance, Bren gave a slight bow and moved aside, cueing Banichi and Jago to let the affront pass, outraged as they might be.
Not so Cajeiri, who now boiled up the steps with Jegari in close attendance, right on the old lord’s heels. Cajeiri brushed past the second lord, past the old man, right to the top of the steps and the landing, to plant himself and his young Taibeni bodyguard between Ajuri clan and Tatiseigi’s front door.
“Outrageous! Outrageous action, sirs!” Did one hear the aiji-dowager’s tones ringing in that young voice? Bren was appalled, and hastened upward to try to patch up matters, hopeless as it seemed.
The lords of the Ajuri had stopped in anger and startlement, and perhaps, in that half-heartbeat, both of them had figured out that the child on the steps, Taibeni guard and all, was not a local Atageini—a surmise a young boy’s presence near the paidhi-aiji might instantly have suggested to the quick-witted. But Cajeiri was not through.
“Shall the paidhi-aiji have an apology, nandiin?” Direct quote from his great-grandmother, a question directed at the young gentleman, not once, but several times, at key intervals in their voyage. Bren stood stock still, but gathered the presence to bow profoundly as the Ajuri swung a collectively outraged look in his direction. “He had better have it!” Cajeiri said. “Now!”
“Nandiin,” Bren said in a low voice, and with a deep bow.
“Is this Damiri’s son?” the old man snapped. “Is this rude young person my great-grandson?”
“I am my father’s son, and the aiji-dowager’s great-grandson,” Cajeiri said, head high, eye to eye with his uncle and great-grandfather, whom he omitted from the genealogy. “And my mother is inside, and my father, and my great-uncle, and my great-grandmother the aiji-dowager. All of them esteem the paidhi
very highly.”
“Well, we see all around us the result of that policy,” the old lord said, and shoved past, brushing past the boy and his guard, this time with no excuse of ignorance.
“Jegari!” Cajeiri snapped, and, Oh, my God, Bren thought, and moved to prevent a weapon being drawn, but not faster than Banichi and Jago, not faster than the Ajuri bodyguard—while young Jegari, do him credit, had only put his body between Cajeiri and the indignity of being shoved aside by his own great-grandfather.
Atageini Guildsmen, cooler heads and uninvolved, had by that time frozen, standing stock still in confrontation, blocking their doorway to access as the Ajuri lords reached the upper landing. The intrusion ran right into the roadblock.
“You will not lay hands on my lord, sir,” Jegari pursued the Ajuri from behind, in a voice very quiet, and full of dignity, despite the fact it was a young, high voice, and he was not Guild, nor remotely a match for those tall, black-clad individuals in the old man’s company who were.
“Truce,” Banichi said, shoving between, confronting the five Ajuri Guildsmen face to face, and a head taller than four of them. “Truce. Let all pass. This is best settled inside.”
“Open the doors!” the Ajuri lord demanded, which did nothing to convince the Atageini guards, who continued to stand in his path.
Diplomacy seemed the civilized recourse, and being the only diplomat on scene, Bren moved very quietly up a step or two, bowed, said, “May one suggest,” as the Ajuri lords simultaneously turned a burning look his way. “This is a sorry misunderstanding,” Bren said, ever so quietly, and, not giving way in the least, “and one regrets having been a provocation to it. You have grown considerably, young sir, and you have borrowed your clothes from staff, so clearly your own kin failed to know you. Your great-grandfather has had a very tiring, very dangerous trip.” A deep, collected bow to the old lord, with absolutely no hint of his own outrage and the host of other feelings he had no business to let well up into his job—tiring trip, hell! He’d lay his own and Cajeiri’s against it, hour for hour, and throw in the last two years as well. “Some very reasonable people consider the paidhi-aiji at fault for his advice to your father. That is solely for your father to judge. But your estimable great-grandfather and your uncle have surely come here at great trouble to support your mother, nonetheless, young sir, and in supporting her, they have come to support you, as well. Do consider that, and let them pass.”
The old man had gone quite impassive, somewhat recovering his breath and his dignity, and one would have to have known both gentlemen, the older and the younger, to know what emotions were actually going on behind those faces. There was a lengthy pause, all the Ajuri staff and luggage-bearing servants gone almost as expressionless. A far-traveling human could quite lose that knack of impassivity, in close shipboard society—but it was vital he recover that skill in himself, and he had to encourage the boy, whose face was still like a thundercloud…the boy who, one had to reckon, in two years of shipboard life, only his great-grandmother had ever sharply reined in.
“True,” the old lord said darkly, as if it were a bad taste in his mouth to agree with the paidhi in anything at all. “Altogether true.” The younger, the boy’s great-uncle, still glowered.
“Great-grandfather.” A little scowling bow, but thank God the dowager’s training had sunk in more than skin deep. She had seen to it the boy had the social reflexes to take an adult hint and make that gesture, without which, at this moment, things could only have gotten worse.
“Grand-nephew.” A bow, finally, from the second lord.
“Great-uncle.” A second proper bow, finally a blink in that confrontational stare. “But we say again, you must respect the paidhi-aiji, great-uncle.”
“Nand’ paidhi.” It was not a happy face the second Ajuri lord turned in his direction: The expression was still completely impassive, and Bren returned the infinitesimally slight bow with measured depth, his own expression under rigid control now, not ceding anything but an agreement to civilized restraint on both sides.
The Guild, meanwhile, on all sides involved, had at no moment relaxed, and did not ease their stance in the least until Cajeiri directed his great-grandfather to the doors and the Atageini guards deemed the situation settled enough to let the lot of them into their lord’s house.
In they went, past workmen noisily sawing away at a piece of timber and shedding sawdust onto their heads. That stopped. There was embarrassed silence in the scaffolded heights, and the Ajuri marched on through, with Cajeiri behind them.
Bren followed, Banichi and Jago on either side of him, still alert, past the damaged lily frieze, the rest of the group having ascended the slight rise onto the main floor, where hammering likewise gave way to silence.
The boy had called on his bodyguard to deal with his uncle. That single sharp word still had Bren’s nerves rattled. “Perhaps one should advise Ismini and Cenedi,” he said to Banichi and Jago under his breath as they hastened up the steps, and Jago immediately took the steps two at a time, skirting around the group in an effort to reach the aiji’s and the aiji-dowager’s bodyguards—before the collective situation reached the drawing room.
Bren climbed the steps behind the cascading calamity.
“Well managed, nandi,” Banichi muttered, treading beside him.
“One can only regret to have placed my staff in an awkward position,” he murmured, echoes of footfalls hiding their voices.
“Your staff has absolutely no regret in that regard,” Banichi said.
Banichi’s and Jago’s steadfastness was the only warmth in a world gone suddenly much colder. And it posed a weight of responsibility. He wondered if he had the personal fortitude to approach the drawing room door at the moment, following the Ajuri entry into that conference. Or if it was wise at all to do so, risking more confrontation.
But Jago was beside that door, waiting for him among the bodyguards posted outside—now numbering Ajuri among them, the lords having gone inside—and Jago caught his eye with a look that said she had delivered her message and was going to keep her station out here.
More to the point, Ilisidi’s chief of security, Cenedi, and Ismini, head of the aiji’s guard, had just disappeared into that room, to have a quiet word with their lady and lord doubtless, and to advise them of the confrontation outside. Cajeiri went in on their heels.
And if the dustup between the great-grandfather and Cajeiri continued in there, and involved Ilisidi—well, that would frost the cake, as his mother used to say, and threaten agreements that had been made with dynastic purpose. The whole trembling association was at risk of fracture, the consort’s relatives on one side and Tabini and the heir and the aiji-dowager on the other.
Not to mention Uncle Tatiseigi, whose lawn was being parked upon, now, by a heavy bus of a clan nominally his ally by marriage, but clearly a clan with notions of special privilege, notions derived from Damiri’s parentage and their rival connections to the aijinate.
He had no choice, he decided. He left Banichi and Jago, passed the doors. The Ajuri lord, Benedi—that was the name, thank God he finally recalled it—who at the moment was being received by his granddaughter Damiri—cast a look over his shoulder and let a scowl escape his impassive mask. Damiri’s face still preserved a grimly-held smile, for him and for her father’s surviving brother.
Bren, for his part, avoided all eyes and gave a private nod of gratitude to the Atageini servant who quietly slid a chair into position near him, at the very bottom of the social order. He sat down there in silence, sat through the slight exchange of formal courtesies between the Ajuri, Tabini, and Ilisidi, and finally listened through the Ajuri’s extravagant praise of Tatiseigi, who perhaps had not looked outside since dawn. The family was making some effort to keep the peace, at least.
But the conversation immediately took a sharper edge as Ilisidi, hard upon Tatiseigi’s pleasant greeting, quoted a very obscure machimi writer about, “late to the contest, ah, late and bringing flowers
to his kin.” Bren studied his hands, racking his brain in vain to remember the rest of the line, which came from some rarely-performed machimi they had had on tape on the voyage. An Eastern playwright, from Ilisidi’s end of the civilized world. He was sure the next line was something less than complimentary, something about sailing this way and that and arriving to his lord’s aid long after his lord’s enemies had slaughtered the household. One only hoped the Ajuri were not conversant with obscure Malguri poets.
And, God, need they have Ilisidi start a war, as if they lacked all other impetus? Ilisidi had Cenedi at the back of her chair, Guild threat lurking in very senior form, and Ilisidi’s expression was sweet, familial malevolence, as if she truly hoped the Ajuri lord did understand her. Cenedi had been leaning near Ilisidi a moment ago, and he was now convinced Ilisidi had gotten the story of events on the step outside, particularly including the brusque treatment of her cherished great-grandson. Cajeiri meanwhile had settled, politically savvy for his years, right between his parents, and sat there like a young basilisk, regarding his maternal relatives with still smoldering ire and looking very satisfied with his great-grandmother. Cajeiri knew the quote, damned right he did, part of two years under Ilisidi’s tutelage.
Bren kept from meeting any eye, not encouraging the dowager to find another, plainer quote from her considerable repertoire. And Tatiseigi immediately rose to the social challenge, quoting from a better known and safer author, something about “their tents arrayed across the plain,” and “drinking rivers dry,” with a mournful reference to his ravaged house grounds, one was sure, and then to the enemy “lurking in the east,” “to come down with the gathering night.” That at least added up to a welcome, Bren was sure, parsing through the references, although the part about the enemy in the east raised a little uneasiness among the Ajuri.
“You expect yet another assault, nand’ Tatiseigi?”