“It is more than generous,” Nomari said fervently. “I shall relay that.”
It was a lot for Uncle to promise. It was extremely generous toward the people out there, and especially toward the missing. If people scared and running were all it was, Cajeiri thought, they could find their way back to good grace. Maybe some had broken the law to escape Guild notice, or lied on registrations, or even pilfered, all very small things if there was restitution.
But it was troubling, if they were so scared that they were not standing by Nomari under the current circumstances, and the situation reflected badly both on Nomari’s leadership and their honesty.
And it seemed very odd that they should not know each other. Supposedly they were all Ajuri, and most of them were at least remote cousins, with ties that traced to people somebody ought to have in common, but these three people appeared to have nothing more in common than the names they had gone by, which were likely not the right names in the first place.
Nomari had left the taking of names to Uncle, relying on him, since Nomari had come in with no staff, no bodyguard, no lists, nobody but this shapeless lot that had trickled in out of the woods southward, and down the roads from the train station. That had been a mistake never to make, Cajeiri thought, to leave a responsibility at loose ends. One should know who these people were. One should ask, and remember names, and understand exactly what problems they had.
There were things about being in charge that he, being just fortunate nine, had learned, and one of them was that going about with no staff and no bodyguard at all would be a very scary prospect. He felt sorry for Nomari in that regard—he truly did not know wholly how to manage; and he thought of what Great-grandmother would say, that if Nomari was going to be lord of a place like Ajuri, he would be another dead lord of Ajuri if he left things like this to chance.
“If you do not become lord of Ajuri, Cousin,” he asked, because he thought someone should ask, “what do you think will happen to these people?”
Nomari looked troubled. “Is it your intention to cast us off, nand’ Tatiseigi?”
“It is a good question,” Uncle said. “Where will they go?”
“Nandi, if your answer to me is no, then I have put these people in danger, and I could only ask you to protect them. Otherwise, they will have no choice but to go back where they were, wherever they were. Either way I shall go somewhere far. Likely somewhere inconvenient.”
“Even so, you cannot be safe the way you were before,” Cajeiri said, and Nomari looked at him.
“I likely shall not be. But my presence can only draw trouble to them.”
“That is your whole plan,” Uncle said. “You would not, say, attempt anything against Geidaro-daja—personally.”
A small pause. “Nandi, I would trust the aiji someday to resolve the lordship, somehow. I would hope there would be someone to set new authority over Ajuri. But one more Ajuri killing will not mend the clan.”
“A law-abiding answer,” Uncle said, nodding. “Good. Well. But say that I recommend you. How would you survive the year?”
Nomari frowned. “One would hope,” he said quietly, “that with such an appointment—the Guild might take an interest in my survival. That they might afford me protection enough to make it possible.”
“Would you trust the Guild, since the uniforms seem to alarm your followers?”
“If the aiji can trust the Guild, then I must trust them.”
“Could your people?” Uncle asked. “To a specific point—could they take their disputes to the Guild, in a lawful way, and could they then abide peaceably by the result?”
“Nandi.” A breath, a solemn nod. “A sober and a fair question. Ajuri—has lost so much, so much, for so many years. Would I trust the Guild? If they asked me to go into Ajiden and take power, and not to stay in hiding, I would go in. I would be terrified. But I would go, given their presence with me. I would open records, such as I could lay hands on, and I would certainly lay them open to the Guild. My interest is in sorting out my people, the ones whose man’chi is to Ajuri, and the ones whose man’chi is to something else. I have never seen a great house function well, until this one. I have never met a lord I could believe was a lord. Now I have met two.”
“Counting my great-nephew,” Uncle said, and Cajeiri drew in a breath, not sure he was not being courted, instantly mistrustful.
“Counting the young aiji, yes, nandi. I do count him.”
“How many follow you? Can you answer that?”
“Out there, nandi, sixty-three, less the three; but beyond that—as to how many, but I would guess two hundred that I have personally met. I know small groups, five in one place, three in another, who know other groups. I do not personally know all the names. No individual of us knows all the names, or who is living and who is dead. One is at least sure that word is passing among the exiles . . . that I have approached you and that you have at least heard our case. In whatever guilds they may be serving, or in what places, more may come here. One only hopes they are discreet, and that they offer you no distress.”
“Do you think Geidaro-daja the greatest danger you face?”
A pause. “Nandi, the Guild would know that better than I.”
The quick answer was, yes, that Great-aunt Geidaro was a worry. The wiser one was that Nomari might not, at his level, know who else was a concern. That was a good answer, Cajeiri thought. Uncle probably thought so, too.
“We are continuing our investigation,” Uncle said, “and our investigation has extended into places the Guild may know and the aiji in Shejidan may know, but much of it is not ours to ask. I can only ask your patience with the process, difficult as it may be. And one other thing.”
“Nandi?”
“Accept the hospitality of this house and sleep upstairs tonight. With three persons unaccounted for and not all known to you—I now insist on that point. You may stand on principle, but you do not serve your people by putting yourself where they may have to die for you.”
There was a small silence. Nomari’s mouth had instantly shaped no, but it stayed unspoken. Then he said, “Nandi, I shall go out and tell my people.”
Baji-naji. It had the feeling of things balanced, fortune and chance poised and apt to tip on that point.
“He should go about outside with bodyguards,” Cajeiri said. “Uncle. One asks.”
“A good idea,” Uncle said soberly. “House security will go with you, and stay with you. They may stay in the background. This house will engage the Guild to provide you security—”
“Nandi,—”
“For our own reputation, which is in my keeping. You have entered our grounds, you have shared our table. We have reached a determination that at very least, whether or not we take the step of recommending you for office, you should not die on our grounds and that that woman now occupying Ajuri should not have her way.”
Nomari drew a deep breath, appeared to abandon what he had intended to say, and gave a nod. “Nandi. One is grateful.”
“I do it as well for the young gentleman’s sake,” Uncle said, “and for the general safety. Do not consider cost. I shall stand for that, until I can reach a decision. Meanwhile my Guild senior will arrange matters.”
“I am grateful,” Nomari said, there being no choice once Uncle declared what he would do. Engaging Guild protection cost a great deal. Money was not a thing that Cajeiri had ever held in his hand, and rarely even seen, but his tutors had taught him what money was worth, and what a typical worker brought to his clan, and what his personal spending might be, and how each and every clan’s finances ran, besides the very much larger numbers of the Bujavid, and the branches of government.
And the sort of Guild protection Uncle would engage for Nomari was, he was sure, senior, the sort that might come out from Guild Headquarters, and probably they would be people his own senior aishid would know on sig
ht.
In the meanwhile they had three people who had either gotten out the iron gate far out of sight of the house, slipping out of the hedges behind the estate truck, or worse, people that had not left at all.
Definitely he should not visit Jeichido in the pens this evening, weather or no weather—not this evening and not the next, and probably not for the rest of his visit here, not supposing that Uncle would even make a decision about Nomari before he left. He understood all of it. He was upset to understand it. He wished that there were somewhere he could visit and not have every trouble in the aishidi’tat arrive on the grounds before evening.
But that was the way things were for Father, and for Great-grandmother, and lately for Uncle. They had all sorts of power to do almost anything . . . except to walk outdoors or go riding, or go to the public parks, or to the public plays, or the races, or enjoy anything of the world he saw on television. He would never in his life have that freedom.
He really should not feel sorry for himself for most of it, he thought. But he was deeply, deeply angry about the riding.
• • •
Tom’s packet contained a hundred fifty-three pages of text, photos, and reduced-size architectural blueprints, all, of course, in Mosphei’. Heyden Court had been built a hundred years ago, probably without blueprints of any modern sort. These had been produced after the fact by people doing repairs or alterations. Individual blueprints in the stack were labeled with dates—in effect, showing the various modifications made in the historic house during its life as a residence, as an administrative facility, as a guest house and storage, then as classrooms during the two years of repairs after the Ames Hall fire, and finally as an art museum with upstairs storage.
Along with the house blueprints came diagrams of the on-site garage, the garden with its lighting and water, and a schematic of the grounds in general, right down to the potting shed and sprinkling system—the gardens being, besides the lighting and water, the part of the property least changed since its occupancy by Dr. Heyden and family. Outbuildings were of great concern in any question of security.
Bren and his aishid worked at the dining table, that being the largest work space, amid a collection of half-empty teacups. Bren made a chart of the symbols he knew—a few were mysteries they puzzled out together—for various items such as windows, doors, conduits, and outlets.
“Door?” Tano asked.
“Double door,” he translated and Tano scribbled a Ragi symbol.
Did the Assassins’ Guild understand architectural diagrams? Absolutely they did, with far more expertise than any graduate of the Department of Linguistics. They knew all about standpipes, and he had had an entirely wrong idea.
“One has several recommendations,” Banichi said, tapping the front entry, “first of all about the downstairs sitting room. That room should be a security station, and a communications center, with an area set aside for politely receiving guests and callers, but no deliveries to be brought within the residence without examination. Workmen and deliveries, all, all should pass this point.”
Security on Mospheira had always been fairly adept at guarding against pilferage and fools. Violent crimes were generally domestic disputes, business partnerships gone wrong, property crimes, and the occasional mental problem. Public security had been obsessed with guarding the coasts in certain periods of tension, in fear of an intrusion from the mainland, not to mention an intermittent problem with smuggled goods, but only in the last twenty years had the President of Mospheira even had a security team around him.
Mospheiran security had, however, suffered its episodes of internal corruption. And the nation had had a brief unpleasant period of Heritage Party rule, in which security had absolutely obsessed on the supposed threat from the mainland. Recruits to the security operation taken in during that period, not so long ago, had to be somewhat suspect in terms of dealing with an atevi-connected program.
But over all, from police to military, one expected an honest professionalism which was willing to deal with a higher threat level—bearing in mind it had never, ever met one, and could not always imagine the possibilities.
The underlying problem was, one feared, precisely the Mospheiran outlook that had delayed the packet downstairs, the pervading notion that orders were subject to their interpretation and that a little later was good enough. Security had never had to deal with truly sophisticated threats—even Heritage’s militarization of the coast had been, in continental terms, unsophisticated.
Maybe, Bren thought, he was mistaken in introducing to the island the level of suspicion natural on the mainland. Precaution could go both ways—far too much security might suggest far more industry in breaching it, and he might actually escalate the threat. It might work a sea-change on Mospheiran attitudes and capabilities, even suggesting that children could be a target.
But too little caution could lead worse places, to a scar on Mospheiran history, harm to the children in question, a major problem with the aishidi’tat . . . and turning a young boy’s mind to an anger that boy had never remotely felt, a young boy who would, one day, control all the formidable power of the aiji.
They couldn’t risk things going wrong.
And that meant that, without the consent or knowledge of the aiji or the Guild, his bodyguard was going to try to instruct a hand-picked set of high-level Mospheiran security in that level of caution, and rearrange the traffic flow of a Mospheiran historic house to more resemble atevi dwelling patterns which were defensible with atevi procedures. While such precautions might look like elegant design, they afforded effective barriers against political radicals and random lunatics of a sort Mospheira had not had to deal with.
“Tom has laid out a schedule for construction, and we shall make suggestions for the modifications,” Bren said, “but one is fairly confident that the third floor, which has been a storage space, little altered from its original design, will convert easily to residence—while security modifications are still going on below.”
“The first floor should hold no function but security,” Banichi said. “The doors should be under lower-level guard, with no discretion about their orders; and anything done in construction should be under close watch and supervision, then checked by highest-level security. One would insist the door to the security station should be metal, and resistant to explosives and fire, that the security station in such a place should never be entirely vacated, and that there also be a guarded and monitored security door before the stairs. The lift access should be behind that door, and behind the same arrangement of doors on the lowest level, where it comes to the garage entry, which must be controlled from the upstairs station. There should likewise be a secondary security station and proper secure door on the residency level.”
“Giving absolute orders to Mospheiran personnel,” he said, “will be a problem. If they have a written protocol, trained personnel will generally follow that—but unfortunately they tend to make exceptions for associates and relatives, and for each other.” They were his people. Mospheirans had their quirks and their virtues, and his aishid was used to him, so not everything had to be explained. In their view, he was sure, not everything could be explained by any logic, but he could at least warn them. “They will be stressed by guilt if they must ignore that. But these will be good people—intelligent people, who will also feel extreme devotion to their service.”
“They have enjoyed peace on the island,” Algini muttered, “and have been very fortunate.”
“One should set down rules,” Jago said, “as comprehensive as possible, specifically excluding such associates, giving them a moral basis for doing what is sensible. Likewise it will protect their relations and associates from becoming a pressure point, and perhaps that will be understood.”
“Compose it, Jago-ji, and I shall translate.” The phone rang, which was not expected at this hour. He turned his chair and reached for it.
/> “This is Bren Cameron.”
“Bren, Tom here. I may have found some tutors.”
“The Committee relented?”
“Not exactly.” There was understanding humor in Tom’s voice, that faded. “The Committee will not be happy with them, to say the least. If we take them, we have to slip them over into State, with credentials of some kind. Diplomas may not be in their future.”
“Students?”
“Seniors, willing to take the risk. State is my suggestion, not their requirement. They made no conditions, but they’re not that worldly-wise. It was my suggestion to pay them—they hadn’t gotten that far in their thinking. One of them heard the Committee was balking at cooperating with the Heyden Court setup, and they stopped me on the sidewalk.”
“Advance planning.”
“None whatsoever.”
“On the other hand . . . senior students in Linguistics, with a paidhi in office who shows no signs of leaving—that’ll land them in Translation Services if they’re lucky, but there’s no guarantee. I understand their position, but they’re taking a chance. Don’t say anything that can get back to the Committee—they definitely won’t look kindly on the move. Do you have a way to contact them?”
“They gave me cards.”
“Good. Tell them I’ll talk to them. I can judge their fluency. I’ll need names to clear them past Francis House security.”
“I’ll take care of that. You’ve got enough on your hands. Or will have. Gin’s documentary is going to land with considerable commotion.”
“You’ve had a look at it?”
“The President’s sent out a copy to the Cabinet, to Kate, to Ben, to me, as interested parties—and to various committee heads—including the Heritage caucus. The President’s called Moxon in for conference, as a point of courtesy.”