Intruder

by C. J. Cherryh

  It was the most splendid place. It was his. He had as many plants as he could possibly want, all different kinds, and the cage, and the dark animal furniture that was warm and old and just the sort of thing he liked. He threw himself on the bed and bounced, and sat up and looked at his aishid, who had come from admiring their rooms to admire his.

  “Mani would like it,” he said, and his aishid agreed with him. “She would,” Antaro said.

  And that the kabiu master who had arranged everything would have understood exactly what he wanted and made everything feel right, right down to the plants and the cage and all of it—that felt good, as if the man had understood how he saw things and respected him. That was what kabiu masters did. Mother’s and Father’s rooms would fit them, and the white sitting room had to impress important people and make them sit still and be solemn, but this was a place for him to be comfortable and at home, and for him to think about things, and for him to imagine things, with the mythical beasts and the real ones and the ones from the human archive all mixed up. In real life, he enjoyed open places, with animals running around. He had enjoyed the ship, too, which was all bare and plastics, with, here and there, plants growing wall to wall, to help the air—and the most marvelous tunnels to get into, dark, cold, secret places.

  And this place had a little of all of it. And, as on the ship, the lights would keep the plants growing, and, well, the servants would water them…

  The servants.

  That was a problem.

  He went sober all of a sudden, in that thought. He had plans. He had secrets about his map and his books. He had things in his baggage that mani would understand, but some people would not.

  His mother would not, in particular. He could not imagine that she would.

  He could ask her if he could have a servant. But then she would ask why.

  “Is something the matter, nandi?” Veijico asked.

  He had his little office. He had a sitting room all his own, the same as at Najida. He was so proud of it. But it was not his, while he had no staff to keep it. And he could not ask his bodyguard to do household things.

  He only wished—

  He thought, I will have to account for everything.

  And he thought about the cage.

  And all those plants that had to be taken care of, because the Bujavid had no such systems as the starship had, to keep them healthy.

  “Nandi?” Antaro asked.

  Best if there were young servants, at least as young as his bodyguard was.

  But there were no young people on staff. There were never any young people. There had not been that many even in Najida. Though he had seen one or two on staff—they had never met. They would not presume to introduce themselves and he could never be so undignified as to run over and introduce himself—

  Certainly not when he was with Great-grandmother, with all those people watching. He would have embarrassed the servants terribly.

  It was just as hard to make bargains with anybody on staff. Except—

  A plan began to come to him. He said, “Nadiin-ji, Eisi.”

  “Eisi?” Jegari asked. Eisi and his cousin Lieidi were not the youngest servants. But he was one that had come from the eastern mountains, like Veijico and Lucasi. Most of the household staff was from Taiben, like Antaro and Jegari, and his father’s bodyguard, and the major domo, and their cook and kitchen staff; and the rest of the staff was from the north, his mother’s clan, Ajuri, and two young maids from Great-uncle’s clan, Atageini, which was his mother’s other clan. Eisi and Lieidi had come in from where Father and Mother had been hiding out during the coup, and they were very trusted, but they also were very minor on the new staff, where the Taibeni major domo ran everything.

  Servants had politics, just the same as everybody. Pay attention to the servants, mani had told him. Pay attention. Servants are your first defense, before a matter gets to your bodyguards.

  “Tell Eisi and Liedi I want to see them,” he said.

  “Now, nandi?” Jegari asked.

  “Now will do,” he said. “Or later. I want to arrange for the plants to be watered.”

  That drew a curious look from his bodyguard, but not a word of question. They had gotten close, he and his bodyguard, after everything that had gone on in the west. They might have figured out exactly what he was thinking.

  “Yes,” Lucasi said, and left his bedroom and was gone a while.

  Cajeiri set to looking into all his drawers and finding out where things were. Antaro and Jegari and Veijico set to doing exactly the same thing in their own quarters. Cajeiri cleared the middle drawer of his bureau, moving underclothes to the next drawer down, and opened one of his boxes, and moved his collection of curious sticks and rocks and such, and a perfectly good but bent spoon, a plain teacup with a chip in, and various other things he had gotten here and there. A sparkly pin mani had given him. It could be emeralds. He was not sure. But he took special care of it, and kept it in a little box. He had a ring he had outgrown, from when he had been a baby, and he had a shirt button, which he had liked when he was much younger. It was only a shirt button, but it had a pretty design in the glass. He had half an agate, which looked like a view across a bay. He had a stone from Malguri’s front walk, which he had picked up to remember mani’s home in every detail. He had one from Taiben, and he had left Great-uncle’s Tirnamardi in too great haste to have one, but he had several from Najida, three of them for the slingshota he carried in his coat pocket—well, on less formal occasions.

  He had arranged everything when he heard the outside door open, and he went back into the sitting room, with his bodyguard catching up to him at a fairly sedate pace. It was Lucasi, with Eisi, just Eisi.

  “Nandi.” Eisi bowed. “One understands you wish to see us. Lieidi is with Cook at the moment, but Lucasi-nadi said I should just come.”

  “One is gratified,” Cajeiri murmured with a little answering nod. “Eisi-nadi, I have a whole suite, and I have no staff. Would you be willing to take care of everything? One very much wishes you would be my staff, and nobody else, and I would arrange it with Siedi-nadi, so you would only have my rooms to take care of, as if you were my major domo, and Lieidi would be your assistant.”

  Eisi was a smallish young man, not a particularly handsome one, and he had no particular household skills, neither he nor his cousin.

  “One hardly knows what to say,” Eisi answered. “One would be—one would be very pleased if Sieidi-nadi allowed it. If your father the aiji approved.”

  “One hardly thinks there would be any trouble,” he said, “and I shall ask Siedi-nadi myself, if you will just do it. There are a lot of plants to take care of.”

  “One understands a garden!” Eisi said. “One would be extremely attentive to it! So would my cousin!”

  “Then you both shall be my staff,” he said—he was very well aware it was a responsibility and that if he took them, he would have to take care of them forever, and they might not be the best or know everything they should. But he felt comfortable with them, more than with any of the staff, precisely because they did not have the fine manners and the high expectations of everybody else. He really, truly meant to do the very best for them and to expect man’chi, once he won it from them. They were country folk. Like nand’ Bren’s staff. And he was determined, now.

  Sieidi-nadi, Father’s major domo, was out conducting the tour and supervising staff. So he said, “Wait here, nadi,” and he took Lucasi with him and went out and located the majordomo; the tour being over, Sieidi-nadi was supervising staff assisting in the kitchen and was very busy.

  He called Sieidi-nadi over to a relatively quiet corner, with Lucasi standing by, and said, with a little bow:

  “Nadi, I have so many plants, I need a staff.” He saw Sieidi’s look, just a little distracted, a very busy man presented just one more complicated thing to do. “And I have found staff who know what to do,” Cajeiri said quickly, “and they have agreed. Eisi and Lieidi were gardeners.
They want to do this. I have asked them to be my staff. I would like them to be official, and to be the only ones to take care of my rooms, always, so no one will make a mistake. But one has to ask you, nadi, and one hopes you will say yes.”

  “Of course,” Sieidi said. “Of course. An excellent opportunity for them, young gentleman, but they are country folk, knowing nothing of protocols.”

  “But I am only a child,” he said, “and we shall all learn together! I am very glad, nadi, if you will do this!”

  “Nandi,” Sieidi-nadi said, and bowed. “I shall make that assignment.”

  “Thank you,” he said, “thank you, Sieidi-nadi!”

  He went back to his rooms. His rooms. And his staff.

  “Eisi-nadi,” he said triumphantly, “I have the major domo’s approval! You and Lieidi-nadi both are assigned to me, and you are to be the only staff, and you will keep the plants and do just a little tidying-up—we are really very neat, my aishid and I! My Great-grandmother would hit me if I left clothes about. You will just deliver laundry to the staff and hang my clothes and help me and my aishid dress and that sort of thing—I will explain when I need things. But when I ring, you are the ones to come, and nobody else! Ever!”

  “Yes, nandi!” Eisi’s eyes were wide. He looked very happy. Very, very happy.

  Cajeiri found himself happy, too, and feeling safe in a way he had not been even in mani’s apartment, because mani’s servants were always snooping, and if not mani’s, his mother’s.

  Now he had a place to be that was his, and whatever he wanted, two grown people would try to do, and he had his aishid, and he had his plants, and his furniture, and for only infelicitous eight going on felicitous nine, things were looking up.

  And while Eisi was in the back rooms getting more particular instruction from his bodyguard and things about their belongings and about security in the place, he happily looked over the brass cage, and worked its doors, and slid the window of it up and down, just because they worked, and they were clever, how they were made. It made him happier still to imagine a parid’ja living in it—because that was one reason he had wanted just his own servants tending the room.

  It was all just splendid. The huge brass vase, its surface cut with sparkling lines, was in the other corner.

  And on the message table, the kabiu master had added a set of stones, three in number. Three was a felicitous number, and he was sure this particular type of stone, inky black, meant something special, and somebody would tell him that sooner or later.

  He had no bath: he would share the household bath with his parents.

  And there was no dining room, nor breakfast nook. But his own servants—that was excellent!

  He thought now that he could be happy here. People had been killed in this apartment, in the coup, and died right in the front hallway. Murini the traitor had lived here after killing Father’s servants and guards. But all that unhappy history was washed away and repainted, and now there were growing plants. Living things. Space was wide and black and colder than anybody could imagine.

  But plants made a room alive. And this one was.

  If he could not live with Great-grandmother or have his own apartment all to himself, this was not too bad.

  The baby, when he was born, would have windows.

  Damn, he thought. He would have been perfectly, perfectly happy with what he had, until he knew the new baby had windows.

  Had he? He tried to remember when he was a baby, and if that room was where he had used to live, but the first thing he could really remember in his whole life was the old sitting room, just in bits and pieces. And since the rebuilding, it was as if somebody had taken his memory and shaken it into pieces, where it regarded this place.

  He could remember Great-uncle Tatiseigi’s place. And the porcelain lilies in the front hall, from long ago, before they been shot up and they had had to replace them.

  He could remember a dark, deep place with a lot of real flowers. And spooky noise and echoes from far underground. He thought it was a funeral he remembered. But he could never remember where that was, except going down high, stone steps underground, and that he had been with his father, and ultimately closed in by the shadows over very many people.

  But he never could remember where that place was.

  Mostly, in his very earliest memories, more vivid than the lilies, he could remember Great-uncle’s place and being told to stay away from the mechieta pen.

  Oh, they had been so tall and wonderful, the mecheiti.

  He remembered being hauled off a mechieta, and it had been standing in bushes, which he now knew were Great-uncle’s driveway hedge, and the mechieta had gone right across the wet pavement and left tracks, so they had had to pull up all the concrete and start over. No one ever let him forget that one.

  He was happy to remember the space station. And the starship, oh, he remembered that so clearly sometimes it hurt, and he waked up at night thinking he was there.

  He remembered faces of his associates who lived there. Sounds. Voices. Those were fading. He had used to be able to remember them so clearly. Now they were hard to recall at all. And the thought struck him that the faces and the voices would be different now. They would be a little older. As he was.

  He did not want to be mad at anyone or anything. Not today.

  He had his cage.

  And his plants.

  And he had his aishid with him. He would always have them, so long as they all lived.

  He had just taken a staff. He could manage who came and went with his things.

  And he had allies. Was that not what nand’ Bren and Great-grandmother and Lord Geigi had been doing out at Najida, after all? They had been collecting allies, and associating them into organizations that were going to be powerful.

  And they had been very careful to include him in the meetings, as Father never did, because they planned for him to matter a great deal, not just eventually, but right now. He was not just a baby. He was important.

  He had nand’ Bren, and Great-grandmother, and Lord Geigi, for a start. The new baby might try to get to Great-grandmother and become her favorite, but he was there first.

  The new baby would have to try hard for nand’ Bren and Lord Geigi: they were solidly his.

  He had Great-uncle Tatiseigi, and he knew more how to keep Uncle happy than any baby would arrive knowing, and that was not easy to figure out.

  And not to forget Dur. The baby would never have met Dur or seen that yellow plane when it arrived out of the skies in the midst of a very bad situation.

  And there was Taiben and the deep forest, who were his—not just because his father was so closely related and associated there, but because two of his aishid were Taibeni and had important parents, close to the lord of Taiben, almost cousins.

  And the other two of his aishid were from the mountains, which he had yet to visit, but he would, someday; so there was that, too. Lucasi and Veijico had to have relatives who would be in favor of him.

  His associations reached north and south and east and west, to the height and width of the aishidi’tat, and that was not so small a thing, was it?

  He drew a deep, deep breath and went back to the map in his office. He pulled out all the pushpins that represented where he had already been.

  Now he put them in for where he had allies.

  He put a black pin in Dur, up in the northern Isles, and a second one for the Gan people who lived next to them—he had met the Grandmother of the Gan at Najida, when she had been visiting the Edi, and she had been very interested in him.

  He put a black pin in the mountains where Lucasi and Veijico came from; another in Port Jackson, clear across the strait on Mospheira, for nand’ Toby and Barb-daja.

  He put a black pin in Najida estate, which was Lord Bren and all his staff. He put one in Najida village, where he had met the Grandmother of the Edi and all her people, and was sure they favored him.

  He put a pin at Kajiminda for Lord Geigi, who was especiall
y nice to him, and another near Kajiminda, where the Edi were building a new estate, which had to be counted in the future.

  And another black pin at Taiben, to the north of Shejidan, for Antaro and Jegari’s relatives and his father’s relatives, too. Taiben was as sure as it was possible to be.

  Then there were his other relatives: a reluctant black pin in Ajuri territory, northwest of Taiben, where his mother’s father was lord. One very certain pin way across the continental divide, in Malguri, which was Great-grandmother, and one just next to it, that was Lady Drien, who was Great-grandmother’s cousin and a close ally through Great-grandmother. She was old, and old-fashioned, but she was influential.

  One important one went just north of Shejidan, in Atageini clan territory, and next to Taiben: that was Tirnamardi, for Great-uncle Tatiseigi of the Atageini clan.

  There was no way to get a pin that represented the space station, but he set one in the margin, for five associates up in orbit—and for Lord Geigi.

  That was thirteen pins, a felicitous number, but he decided to be honest and not to stop counting. He stuck another, number fourteen, in the margin. That was for Jase-aiji, up on the station; Jase-aiji was one of the ship-captains, and Jase-aiji would stand by him.

  Fourteen, however, was infelicitous and full of omens of division. Fifteen was not much better, and sixteen was infelicity stacked on infelicity. Seventeen was the most stable felicity until nineteen, and he did not know how to reach it unless he counted some pairs separately, and that had infelicities in itself.

  Doggedly then, and with confidence in Lord Bren, he stuck a second pin right in the left coast of the Marid for Lord Machigi. He had never met Lord Machigi, but he would meet him, he was certain; when he did, he would get Lord Machigi on his side somehow.