Resurgence

by C. J. Cherryh

  “His man’chi?”

  “To your great-grandson, I think. To Lord Tatiseigi. To the aiji-consort. I do not think there is any attachment to Lord Machigi. He is not at ease in Machigi’s presence.”

  “Nor in ours.”

  “Nor in mine, aiji-ma, though I think he wants advisement. I think he views my counsel as in his interest. I hope so.”

  “We would not oppose your advising him,” Ilisidi said. “For my great-grandson’s sake. And for the sake of some solution in Ajuri. Perhaps I shall have a conference tomorrow with Lord Machigi. Perhaps you may then find an opportunity to send this young man a note.”

  “Aiji-ma.” Bren took a sip of brandy. “I shall simply say that you are his best ally, if he can achieve it, even above Tatiseigi.”

  19

  Cajeiri was where he had rarely ventured in these days of good behavior, the servant corridors, and the construction zone. Time was, he had used the backstairs of mani’s apartment on a regular basis, sometimes for mischief, but now that he owned a suite of rooms and their adjacent service passages, he had rarely even opened the access door to the world behind the doors—until now, that a day of hammering and a great deal of shifting heavy things about had produced some sort of—Eisi said—organization.

  He wanted to see. He wanted a sense of where things were settling, and whether they were what he had promised, and most of all, he was curious where his people were situated.

  His four younger bodyguards were undisturbed, in two rooms adjacent to his bedroom. But a step through the access brought the smell of fresh paint, and otherwise—no ladders, no canvas, no workmen such as had been there for days. The place was painted a cheerful pale green, and the hall that had used to go on and on—did not. To the right, past a new door, was a landing with stairs going down, which he had never suspected lay behind that wall.

  His senior aishid gathered in the corridor, and his younger one followed him. Eisi and Liedi were there, to show him the new arrangements.

  “They are not quite finished,” Eisi said. “We have access to the downstairs throughway, as a route to the kitchens: and there is storage for supplies and seasonal wardrobe. Your father has granted you the space against future need, but there are no plans for any residence on that level. The carpenters have left, we have moved furnishings in from house storage, excepting what Guild may request, and an electrician will finish the work in the next few days.”

  It was all quite amazing, that they now had a door where there had been endless hallway, and that four little rooms had been combined into two, for the Guild station and a general sitting room for staff: and the sitting room had a recess with a refrigerator. It had, besides, a small television. The Guild station was similarly equipped.

  Beds and chests had been moved in, and there were, besides the accommodation, three showers and a bath, with stacks of towels. Everyone was pleased with the bath, which had a steam closet.

  And it was his, the whole arrangement, with room for everybody, and a security door, which, considering things that had happened in the Bujavid—was a reminder. The whole of the Bujavid was all an up and down maze, the family rooms, and the service areas, and the passages, with rooms and passages above and below the level where the lifts stopped, the level that had outside doors, while the service passages had exits only to the rooms and the kitchens and storage. Some of nand’ Bren’s servant passages intertwined with Father’s on one level or another, nand’ Bren’s apartment lying next door, with arrangements spread out so that key people could be near their stations. The halls could be traded back and forth even with neighboring apartments, by knocking out walls or adding new ones, so it was all one well-guarded system . . . now. And there was history in them—assignations, assassinations, conspiracy, and secrecy.

  Now there were cameras, and nobody moved unseen.

  Security was always an issue. Storage was as great a one, and access. His staff had a sitting room of their own, and a security office that would communicate with Father’s own—and the new security door meant control over staff that was not his coming and going—they simply could not, without a key. He owned two doors he could close and lock. And he never had, before.

  Things were settling. The construction was nearly done. He was even looking forward to his tutor Dasi’s lessons now that the hammering had ceased and everybody had a place to rest. He had seen and done things some of which he could not tell anybody outside. But he had questions, things to ask Dasi to teach him, things like how storms were made and how old the skeleton was in Great-uncle’s basement, as well as how a computer worked and why the Southern Ocean had more storms than anywhere.

  There would be the ordinary things, like math and geometry and economics, but he had his list of questions to divert Dasi onto more interesting tracks. And there was so much he wanted to know that just had no answers.

  He could not talk at all about the kyo. He understood that. That was all secret, and what his father chose to let out was how it was going to be. But he had his little treasure, that Hakuut had given him, that he kept now in a locked drawer. He would like to know what that metal was and if it was metal at all. But it was a secret.

  And he wanted to know more about parid’ji, and how they lived in the wild . . . and about the history of the park that might take Boji.

  And about railroads. He had heard a lot from Nomari that he wanted to understand.

  He was going to have to become like Father—Father rarely traveled anywhere except Taiben. But if there were new things to figure out, puzzles that had to be solved, things to learn— and why rules existed . . .

  He might find ways to do things. Go places. Try things.

  A door opened behind him. Hurried steps sounded in the new corridor, and he turned. Liedi arrived in some excitement.

  “Young gentleman! There is a phone call!”

  He had never gotten a phone call except from his mother and father. Great-grandmother? Mani did not use phones. Uncle barely did.

  Mother would send a servant.

  “Who is it, Liedi-ji?”

  “The operator at Mogari-nai, nandi! I think it is the young people.”

  He could not run. His father’s heir did not race to the phone. He followed Liedi back through the door to his proper apartment, to his writing desk, and the phone that rarely rang.

  He was trembling with excitement when he picked up the phone. “Yes?” he said in Ragi. “This is Cajeiri.”

  “Jeri-ji, this is Gene! They have let us call! We are here! We are safe! We are in our quarters!”

  “We all are!” That was Irene’s voice in the background.

  And Artur’s: “How are you? Did nand’ Bren get back all right?”

  “Yes,” Cajeiri said, catching his breath, “yes, he did, nadiin-ji! Are you in your new apartments? Are you in a good place?”

  “A place like the Bujavid,” Irene said, “like nand’ Tatiseigi’s house, with security. And staff. And food! A lot of good food!”

  “We also have tutors,” Artur said. “They speak Ragi with us. They have machimi. They show us all sorts of things!”

  “And we have television,” Gene said. “With a lot of tapes about Mospheira.”

  “How are your parents?”

  “Well, very well. My mother is very happy. She wants to learn to cook.”

  “We all have Mospheiran clothes,” Irene said. “I have six shirts!” She added, then: “But no lace. I like my atevi shirts. And my boots. We brought all our clothes with us.”

  “Have you seen much of the island?” Cajeiri asked.

  “We cannot go outside yet,” Artur said. “But we can see trees from the window. Kate-nandi is in charge, and Sandra-daja—she has a man and two boys—they come and go, but there is a security station downstairs. Sandra-daja’s sons ask us questions about the space station. We answer. Mospheira words are different. S
ome are.”

  “We want to come see you.” That was Irene.

  “I want you to come. You shall come. I promise it. But you have to be there. Nand’ Bren wants you to learn about Mospheira. But please be careful! Please listen to security! I heard about the Presidenta. You have bodyguards with you.”

  “The man who shot the Presidenta is one man,” Irene said. “People send us presents, a lot of presents. We write cards for everybody that sends. My fingers hurt.”

  “You are so happy there you will never want to come here,” Cajeiri said, not that he really thought so, and he was very glad they were happy where they were, but he felt a little pang of worry about it.

  “We shall come!” Gene said. “If nand’ Bren let us bring our parents, we would run to nand’ Toby’s boat and go today. We miss you. We miss Lord Tatiseigi and everybody.”

  “I shall tell him. He will be pleased.”

  “How is the baby?”

  “She is doing very well.” He almost added she had become Uncle’s heir, but it was probably something he should not say until he cleared it.

  “And your father?”

  “Everybody is fine.” It was wonderful that everybody was fine, but people over there had wounded the Presidenta and he had just had to leave Tirnamardi for safety’s sake because Aunt Geidaro had been murdered. There was so much not to tell them. It burned to be told. But—

  “Nand’ Bren said you visited Lord Tatiseigi,” Irene said.

  “By yourself,” Gene added.

  That was news. And it was a relief to know how much they did know.

  “Well, not completely by myself. My aishid, of course. And Eisi and Liedi. And another aishid. My father sent them because, well, usually I have mani’s aishid and nand’ Bren’s. And I visited my uncle all on my own, on the Red Train.”

  “Is your great-grandmother all right?”

  “Oh, she is. She was in Malguri at the time.”

  “So did you have a good time?”

  He hesitated just half a heartbeat too long on that, trying to think what he could say, what was allowable to say.

  “So was it a good trip?” Gene repeated, who knew him best of anybody, and he could not start things off by lying to his associates.

  “Well,” he said. “I shall tell you all of it when you visit. You are going to visit. I am determined you shall visit.”

  “They promise us. We are not sure when. So is everybody really all right?”

  “Mostly. Antaro broke her arm, but not a bad break, and she is mending.”

  “How?”

  “It was a storm. The mecheiti got loose. But everything worked out, and the mecheiti are safe.”

  “Now you have to tell us,” Gene said. And there was nothing for it. He had to admit there was a problem, or make up a string of half-truths. There was nobody at hand to say which, not even Jegari or Antaro at the moment.

  His associates were under tightest security. Nand’ Bren had said so. Probably somebody of his father’s staff was listening—he hardly did anything unobserved, ever. So if it was wrong to do, somebody would come and tell him.

  And nobody being there to see it, ignoring the desk chair, he slid down the wall and sat on the floor with his knees tucked up, as they had used to do in the tunnels of the starship. “It was Ajuri,” he began the story, and started more questions.

  They talked and talked, in Ragi, mixed with ship-speak, back and forth, finding words for what they had not seen together, nobody intervening, nobody stopping them. He drew a fence around things he would not say—such as where mani and nand’ Bren were right now.

  But things that everybody in the aishidi’tat might hear on the news—he told them, which was about finding a cousin, and Aunt Geidaro being murdered, and Uncle declaring Seimei his heir.

  So they knew. His closest associates knew what was going on in his life, and knew about him having more guards, and about him trying to send Boji to a park to live, and about the new people, and all. He felt if they knew, if he could have them understand, and follow his life, and if he could follow theirs, he was no longer like Boji, in a pretty, but too-small, cage.

  “Please call me every time you can,” he said, when someone in their residence called out to tell his associates they should end the call.

  “Call Heyden Court when you can,” Gene said. “They will tell us!”

  “Yes!” he said. Heyden Court. He got up and wrote it down as it sounded.

  Heyden Court. A human name. A human place. He had the name. He meant to write.

  Often.

  * * *

  • • •

  . . . in which approach, Bren wrote to Nomari, in the sitting area of his own sleeping car, before retiring, you can heal the breach on which you are standing, without reference to any relationships you may have in the south. The dowager’s strong alliance with Lord Tatiseigi and the young gentleman’s close association with Dur, Taiben and Lord Tatiseigi would secure Ajuri’s perimeters and mend relationships fractured by recent actions.

  The dowager will likely not host breakfast or lunch tomorrow. Look to have meals with your aishid, at your request, and to spend a quiet day as you please. Your aishid can provide you reading material, or perhaps a game of chess, and generally keep you informed of any developments. We are all waiting for news at this point.

  He wrote likewise to Machigi. The dowager will not host breakfast or lunch tomorrow. She will be resting. Your aishid may contact the galley on your own schedule and they will be happy to comply. Please do not hesitate to message me should you have any need. I shall wake at the usual hour and spend my day reading. We shall be waiting for news, and I shall advise you at the earliest when we do hear from the train.

  Machigi could assume, if he wished, that the message passing through his corridor to Nomari was identical.

  Perhaps Machigi and Nomari would breakfast together tomorrow morning. Perhaps they would not. They had had their conversation, a fairly brief one, in which he hoped Machigi had not plied Nomari with too much drink for discretion.

  He dispatched the notes: Jago took them and returned in short order.

  He was too wrought, himself, to go directly to bed despite the brandy. He stayed in the sitting area, and at Jago’s return, Banichi came in, having finished his supper. Tano and Algini arrived, the same, and they sat and shared a rare glass of wine.

  “Things are quiet in the town,” Algini reported. “Lights are low on the town commons. The train station has had very little in the way of personnel moving about, nothing of concern.”

  “It went rather well,” Bren said, “all things considered.”

  “We have assets outside,” Banichi said. “You may sleep tonight, Bren-ji.”

  He heaved a sigh, wishing he were somewhere close to doing that. But his mind was turning over too many things, sifting memory of the dinner, remembering names, and faces, and the lay of the land outside. “What time tomorrow should we hear, one way or the other?”

  “We are trying something new,” Banichi said, “which may give us news. The team in charge of the train is communicating directly to the space station. And we will get the news relayed without use of the telephone—which is notoriously compromised—and the Messengers Guild. It should work. If that Guild protests—it was experimental.”

  The days when everything going to space and back passed through Mogari-nai were ending, then, challenging the close control of the Messengers’ Guild—a guild nearly as old as the Assassins, and more concerned with maintaining of their privileges and prerogatives than they had been of keeping politics out of their operations. They had tolerated breaches of faith. They had excused partisan members. They had resisted reform. They had protested Lord Geigi’s landers as violating their prerogatives, never mind they had been a communications link established to resist the coup.

  And the Ass
assins had had to contemplate the problems of coordinating the drop of freight from space with local security, with the Messengers as intermediaries. The last thing they needed was local folk coming out to watch a pod coming down—an operation which historically had not been without disasters.

  “So we are testing the satellite?” Bren asked.

  “It seemed a good time to try the system. But yes, we are testing it.”

  “We are in an isolation which might see an attempt to cut us off entirely from communication,” Algini said, “if things go badly. There are technicalities. But we are, thanks to the station, in a fairly infallible communication with Headquarters and, through them, with the Bujavid.”

  “We are,” Banichi said, “testing the satellite and the relays.”

  So the landers—at least one or two of them—were powered up.

  “We are going to hear from the Messengers,” Bren said wryly, “I am fairly sure.”

  “One believes so,” Algini said. “The Messengers may have difficulty penetrating the system. But that is their problem.”

  “Is monitoring off?” he asked.

  “Yes,” Banichi said.

  “Does the dowager know all this?”

  “Say that her grandson has not informed her of everything.”

  He almost wished he had not asked that question.

  But was the dowager capable of recklessness when she was challenged?

  Yes.

  And was Tabini going to sit still while Ilisidi was engaged, as she was, with the source of war after war on the continent?

  No.

  If Machigi was not acting in good faith on this one, he thought, he might do something he had sworn he would never do, and personally File on the man.