Protector: Foreigner #14

by Cherryh, C. J.

  Hell, yes, it was a good move. It positioned Damiri not as an Atageini hanger-on, dependent on her uncle, nor as Tabini’s almost-divorced consort; nor yet as Lord Komaji’s alienated and, through most of her life, unwanted Atageini daughter—

  The marriage with Damiri had been a match of sexual attraction, in Tabini’s case, with more attention to her Padi Valley connections than to an undistinguished father in a fairly minor northern clan.

  But if Damiri suddenly became a close ally of the aiji-dowager, the one force on earth who held her own toe to toe with Tabini himself . . . it was damned certain Damiri saw something to gain.

  If Damiri had mentally and emotionally gotten past the alienation of her son—and started thinking in a practical way of her own future, and of her soon-to-be-born daughter’s future—

  Damn. He had been watching one hand while the other had been moving. It was not an unknown situation in the aiji’s court, but he rarely these days found himself so blindsided.

  “Interesting,” he said. In the legislative sitting room, with an attendant now moving within earshot, replacing a pot of tea, it was all he could say. “Jago-ji, keep me informed.”

  So Tabini was going to send Cajeiri and his foreign guests to his great-grandmother’s very conservative, very traditional house—the mediaeval stronghold of Malguri.

  His whimsical revenge on his grandmother—for his having to accept Malguri servants in his house?

  No. Affairs of state might occasionally have petty motives, but there was deeper purpose when it regarded security. Tabini’s household, with a crisis between Tabini and his consort, was not the best place for a collection of clueless and provocative human children.

  He had expected to be the one called in to assist with the event. He had expected to house the heir’s young guests, as the person who could actually talk to them and educate them in protocols before they made any really serious mistakes. No doubt he would still serve in that capacity—though the dowager and Cenedi and others of her staff actually understood ship-speak, a fact she was never going to advertise.

  Tabini played excellent chess. One should never forget that fact. So did Damiri.

  And so did the aiji-dowager.

  God, he could almost see the pathways of it. But some of these winding trails had two layers. At least two.

  Jago left him, and he was sure she would be back. The sitting room attendant had provided a fresh pot of tea, poured a cup and took the cooling pot away. Tea was an unending resource, once one had ordered a pot.

  News came, finally, not with Jago’s return, but with the gentleman with a long pole and a hook, who, in the traditional manner, reached up on the wall to the framed agenda board, and slid bill number 2823 over to the right, into the slot for the hasdrawad.

  The tribal bill had just passed committee, by a vote of 43 to 41.

  Bren let out a long, slow breath.

  Passed. Now the legislature would debate the tribal bill, presumably would pass it—and the paidhi did not officially want to hear the reasoning behind some of the yes votes it would draw: the expectation that both tribal peoples would be swallowed up in large regional associations where they would be junior, small, and never, ever have any political force.

  That expectation didn’t take into account that little bomb in the package, the business with the guilds.

  And given the character of the Grandmother of the Edi, and Her of the Gan, he had every confidence the tribal peoples would not fade into quiet compliance. He only hoped the Grandmothers would appoint two of the quieter voices actually to sit in the legislature. He could not imagine them in that committee room.

  So with all the potential troubles yet to come—the bill had now gotten to the floor, and it, thank God, had the votes to pass.

  He felt like celebrating. He considered giving the whole staff the next day off and just sleeping in.

  Then the representative of the Messengers’ Guild brought over the official bowl for the sitting room, and in it was one black cylinder with a red seal.

  Word from Tabini.

  He absently poured himself yet one more cup of tea for reinforcement and cracked the seal with a thumbnail, expecting something about the bill—or the security arrangements.

  It said, beyond the usual salutations:

  Remember our conversation. This is that moment. My son is going to my grandmother, who will host his guests and handle all events up to the festivity.

  Following a heated discussion in which my wife concluded the world does not contain a hairdresser who can pass both security considerations and her requirements, my wife has applied to my grandmother for staff and my grandmother has just agreed. I am sure you will not need to tell your bodyguard, but should it have escaped notice, confirm it for them.

  It must have been a message passed to the committee room. With all that going on. God.

  The tribal bill, I am assured, will clear committee today. The cell phone bill will be tabled as we have requested, to be brought up in some future session. The resolution in favor of the Marid agreement will likely pass.

  My wife is having recurrent dreams that there are strangers in the house. I am not superstitious, but she has wanted the kabiu of the house adjusted, and she does not sleep well. She takes alarm at bumps in the night and our son’s parid’ja will occasionally cry out in the daytime, which does not improve her feeling of danger. Therefore I am sending the animal with my son and his guests, while my wife and I resolve our difficulties regarding staff and security, which will likely involve more than a hairdresser.

  I leave it to my grandmother and to you as to where to entertain these children. My son will celebrate his birthday here in Shejidan, where both his parents can properly congratulate him. He may at that time avail himself of the museum and the natural history exhibit as well as the services of the Bujavid staff, provided that we shall have been able to arrange adequate security.

  Careful thought persuades me that my wife’s decision, which we wish understood, is entirely her own, has moved the household expediently toward the best source of auxiliary security available.

  The new arrangement will entail a hairdresser, and added security, and we are confident this is the best solution.

  This letter is not for the official archive of our correspondence. We request you burn it and preserve no word of it.

  You may of course rely on the red car and all official assistance in dealing with the visitors.

  In caring for my son, care also for your own safety and my grandmother’s. These are unsettled times. But when have they not been?

  Deep, deep breath. He read it again to be sure of the nuance. And put the letter back into the cylinder and the cylinder into his most secure pocket, to have it dealt with by his aishid.

  His problem. Tabini was giving him the children. He had to refocus.

  He gathered up his work, had the attendant notify whoever of his bodyguard was at the door at the moment, and walked out.

  Banichi smoothly intercepted him.

  “The shuttle has launched from the station, Bren-ji,” Banichi said, before he could say anything. “It is on its way.”

  • • •

  He waited until they got upstairs, into the foyer of their own apartment, and only Narani was witness. Narani took his coat, and his case of papers.

  And offered the message bowl, in which there was one cylinder he well knew.

  Cajeiri.

  “I shall read this,” he said, “in my office. Banichi-ji, nadiin-ji, if you will be there.”

  “Yes,” Banichi said.

  They walked back to the office. Bren gave them Tabini’s letter, with its cylinder, then sat down in his work chair, opened Cajeiri’s cylinder, unrolled the little paper and flattened it under a heavy glass designed for that purpose.

  It said, To Nand’ Bren, from Cajeiri,
/>   I am very happy. I am coming to visit you and mani as soon as you send for me. I am supposed to be in mani’s apartment, but she is busy in meetings. Will you come get me until she can?

  PS. I have to take Boji with me. He eats eggs. About four a day.

  He looked at his aishid. “The boy is still at home. He wants to come here now. His father’s standing order is that whenever he wishes to come here, I should not delay him. Banichi, Jago—go get him. Quietly. One does not know what the situation is over there.”

  “Yes,” Banichi said.

  Tano and Algini stayed, and Banichi and Jago shut the door behind them.

  “Likely we shall be housing the human children until the birthday festivity,” he said, “and Cajeiri will have Boji with him—one hopes, with his cage. We may be somewhat disrupted, but we will manage. Please advise Cenedi of whatever of the situation he might not have heard. About Boji, among other things.”

  “Yes,” Algini said. And added, “We shall arrange for the red car, for the spaceport, when the shuttle is ready to land. Either we or the dowager will need to pick up the children.”

  “Do that, Gini-ji.” He let go a slow breath, thinking of that conversation he had had with Tabini, about problems in the household, and about his own subsequent conversation with Damiri. The dowager had had tea with Damiri, the morning after—but as to the outcome between those two, his aishid had not been able to tell him. So either Cenedi didn’t know what the two women had said to each other—or wouldn’t say, even to them. “As to what may be happening next door, with Tabini-aiji and Lady Damiri, one has no idea. One hopes for a good outcome.”

  “We are surprised the boy is sent out on such short notice,” Tano said. “Shall we contact the aiji’s guard and ask the reason?”

  “Discreetly,” he said.

  “You will wear the vest, Bren-ji,” Algini said. “Lord Geigi has moved a shuttle off-schedule to provide a shortened time frame—for any plans Ajuri might make.”

  “He has said so?” He was astonished. Shuttles delayed at times, on technical issues. They rarely rushed a launch to be early.

  “On our advice, Bren-ji. We requested he move the schedule. He said he would attempt it. He has put Paisien up in the flight order, ahead of Shai-shan. There are no passengers listed on the manifest for Paisien. There are four listed for Shai-shan. The manifests will stay as they are, so both lie.”

  Five days early.

  Early. To throw off any plans Ajuri had laid, and disrupt any mischief.

  “One understands,” he said. “We have the legislation as settled as we can manage. We are assured it will pass. We can go wherever we need go.”

  If Tabini could somehow find the time alone with Damiri to sort out the problems within his household, all to the good. It might be the best timing—at least to have Cajeiri elsewhere.

  In the meanwhile, given the boy suddenly on his hands, and the dowager rearranging her plans, there were things to do.

  It started with phoning his own clerical office, commending the runners who had served him today, and asking the director to come meet with him in his apartment.

  Tea with the worthy gentleman, who had served him under some very dicey circumstances, including during the coup.

  He would instruct the man to lay down a preliminary official schedule that looked—at least until they were out at the spaceport picking up Cajeiri’s guests—as if the paidhi-aiji were doing business as usual.

  It was a minimal sort of ruse, one they could adjust by the hour, and it might end up being one of several such schedules he let leak, but he thought it prudent.

  He also had to arrange with Lord Dur, quietly, to have that very respectable gentleman attend the Tribal Peoples bill on its course through the legislature, and advise his office of events.

  Then he notified Bindanda that the young gentleman was dining with them, that the dowager might be. And that they needed a supply of eggs.

  • • •

  He had only time to draft the first half of his message to Dur before he heard Narani open the front door.

  That would be Banichi and Jago, with the young gentleman in hand. There might or there might not be baggage. If there was not, if the young gentleman were quitting his residence in a Situation, his staff might have to go next door a little later and collect it from Tabini’s staff.

  Well, it sounded, out there, that there was something more arriving than the usual luggage cart, something that rolled and rattled in an odd way. He guessed what that might be, even before he heard a sudden blood-curdling shriek in his foyer.

  Doors opened and closed and staff stirred from every recess of the servants’ halls, startled out of whatever they were doing.

  He left his letter unfinished, capped the inkwell, and blew out the waxjack before he rose and opened his office door.

  There in his foyer was the boy and a very large antique cage.

  “Nand’ Bren, we are here!” Cajeiri said. “And Boji.” There was an earsplitting shriek. “We are sorry about Boji. He is excited.”

  Tano and Algini came from the security station. The sitting room door opened, the young kitchen girls peering past the junior cook, who had arrived with one of the kitchen knives in hand.

  There were, with Cajeiri, with their baggage, but still partly outside the doors, the young gentleman’s bodyguard and two servants in Ragi livery.

  “These two young men are—” Bren asked.

  “My servants, nandi.” Another bow, more nicely delivered. “We are all here! We are so glad! One is grateful!”

  “Well, well, your great-grandmother will decide where you will stay this evening, and in what state.” He almost added, And who will house Boji and the servants, but he feared he already knew that answer. “She has been all day in a meeting, and one does expect she will be getting out of it about now, but you may at least settle long enough for tea and cakes, shall you not? Ladi-ji, if you will move the cage into the guest room for now.” The latter to Jeladi. He feared for the antique carpet runner, and feared an escape with the door still open, but the sitting room was a far worse choice, considering the vases.

  Meanwhile baggage was inbound, Narani and Jeladi, Cajeiri’s servants, and his young bodyguard all handing it in, more and more of it piling up in the foyer. “Welcome,” he said to all and sundry, and to Narani: “Tea for myself and the young gentleman. Advise the dowager’s bodyguard and say that the dowager would be welcome for a modest and informal supper here, should she wish.”

  Narani gave a little bow, and all those things would happen in short order. Bren showed the young gentleman into the sitting room, and they sat and had tea and cakes, quite spoiling any potential dinner, but Cajeiri was in a high good mood, chattering on about the party he hoped to have and asking questions about the shuttle and could he, could he, could he go to the spaceport to meet his young associates?

  “That rests with your great-grandmother, young gentleman,” Bren said. “You will have to ask her. And do be somewhat prepared for her to forbid it: we have some security concerns, and you know such situations can change on very short notice.”

  “But is there a chance, nandi?”

  “There is a chance, but one cannot promise: we get our advice from our bodyguards. And one has no idea what their landing schedule is, nor are they likely to decide it yet—as with all these things, they will watch the weather.”

  “Is it going to be good weather? I hope it will be good weather.”

  In point of fact he had absolutely no idea what the weather was outside. It could be pouring a monsoon over the city, and he had been so locked in his work, in an apartment without windows, and offices without windows, that he had not the least notion what was going on in the natural world.

  “I shall inquire,” he said. But Cajeiri’s question to his own bodyguard brought the answer that, indeed, it had just be
en raining, but the weather was due to clear tomorrow.

  “I hope they may hurry,” Cajeiri said.

  “They will be down in good weather, likely morning after next, young gentleman.”

  “Might we go to Najida and go on your boat, nand’ Bren?”

  “Only your great-grandmother and your parents can say that, young gentleman.” He could not fault the boy for being excited and full of ideas. But negotiating with a Marid warlord was no more strain than dealing with Cajeiri—who had his hopes all up and a justified fear that everything could fall apart on some adult whim. He would not promise things not in his hands. He could not appear to promise anything, and the boy had more changes of direction than Malguri’s upland roads.

  “When do you think they will actually land?” the boy asked. “At what hour?”

  “All depending on the weather, young gentleman. You know these things. You took the same flight.”

  “I was not entirely paying attention,” Cajeiri said, looking down, then up, sharply. “And I was upset about my birthday, nandi.”

  It had been that time of year, when all hell had broken loose.

  “And anyway,” Cajeiri said, “we were going to land over on Mospheira, not in the aishidi’tat.”

  “It is very little difference,” Bren said, “when you are moving that fast. You would only be a few minutes off.”

  “Can we see them land? Can we be there to watch?”

  “Ask your great-grandmother such things, young gentleman.” He had so many things he had to do, letters he had to write, arrangements to make before things started moving—but he was not about to leave the young gentleman unattended and in a state of high excitement.

  He was very relieved when Jago came in to say they had been in touch with Cenedi, that they had informed the dowager as requested, and that the dowager was arriving to take charge of her grandson—and his baggage—at any moment.