“Committed,” Kurt said.
Evan nodded. “Committed.”
“Yes,” Lyle said.
“I’ll recommend you,” Bren said. “My consent may seem remarkable—given your unorthodox approach. But I will recommend you. I daresay the braids wouldn’t get by in the offices of the Department.”
“No, sir. But they don’t pay attention to us down in Documents.”
He nodded. Shoes were optional, down in the depths of Documents. “Skip the classes. For good. You’re going into the employ of the State Department, under Dr. Shugart’s direct supervision. For pay.”
“We have transcripts—” Lyle said. “We brought them.”
“I’ve got them,” he said. “I’m estimating, among the three of you, someone can come up with grammar, math, science and history equal to a ten year old’s needs. I’m estimating you can keep ahead of the kids, academically, though they may actually outpace you in physics. What they tell you about Reunion will be classified until further notice, and let Dr. Shugart do any official communication with the State Department in that regard. She’ll see it gets where it needs to be and no further. I’m very serious about that. Nothing gets out. You are not to be a source for any news item. Understood?”
“Yes, sir. Nandi.” They made little bows. “We are so excited,” Evan said.
“Fifty-three people. Devotees of the machimi plays.”
“Yes, sir.” A faint, faint murmur.
He nodded. “That’s not a bad thing. That’s not at all a bad thing. Do many understand them?”
“Most . . . most need the subtitles. But not always.”
“Good. That’s good.” He truly thought it might be, though it led in scary directions. “One additional matter: no matter your excitement, you must not gossip about this assignment, your careers, or the children—including within your club. You may not talk about it in others’ hearing. Discretion.” He said it in Ragi, in which it was a much stronger word, and embraced a lot that he had said about their social lives. Then he said, in Mosphei’, “And on the matter of girls.”
“There’s one,” Lyle said in Mosphei’, blushing. “Sort of.”
“I know that,” Bren said. “From the time you talked to Mr. Lund, there has already been a background check, stiffer than you passed to get into Linguistics. There will be monitoring of your contacts’ contacts, for security reasons. You’re allowed a private life. But it cannot intrude into your responsibilities to the project. No pleading can alter any of your obligations, no stranger can come onto the grounds of the project without approval, and the project will take precedence over your personal lives until the children are grown, possibly after. Does that condition upset you?”
A little uncertainty. “No, nandi.” Shakes of heads. A belated one from Lyle. “I understand,” Lyle said. “I do understand, nandi.”
“If you have policy questions or personal problems, you will ask Dr. Shugart. Remember these young people are under the aiji’s protection. He will know what happens to them. He will know your names. Do you understand that?”
“Yes,” the answer was.
Taking on three students with families and attachments meant setting Shawn’s security more deeply on the matter of their backgrounds—finding out their connections, arranging it so no problems assailed their families and friends. It was what happened when one worked for State. Or held office. Or worked security.
But they didn’t know. They couldn’t know how scary it could get. They got up when he did, they bowed, they went through the courtesies, they expressed how very happy they were—and they were sincere and overwhelmed. He read that. He was a little worried at the imitation of atevi style, at the fervent thanks and the good wishes they paid him personally.
He stood there after they left, staring at the shut door and asking himself if he was at all smart to take their assurances and their good intentions and most of all taking people who were too enthusiastic about their crazy project—subtitling the machimi plays, for God’s sake, popularizing a near-sacred atevi art form on this side of the straits. With a club of like-minded souls. And long hair. Young men—who likely still thought they might manage a normal life on the side. They were in for more than they possibly understood.
But—he said to himself—their fluency, give or take some quaint expressions a couple of centuries out of date, even in the aiji’s court—gave him better than anything he expected. Their fluency, their awareness of manners, was transcript enough. There were years to work things out. There were years that would lead everyone places these kids—including the three kids he’d just met, about the age he’d been when he’d first crossed the strait to a whole different world—couldn’t imagine or predict.
Sometimes one just took a deep breath and rolled the dice.
“You have accepted their statements,” Banichi observed.
He drew a breath. “I could find no better candidates in the halls of the University, nadiin-ji, and of that I am reasonably certain. I know my choices over there, and there are far worse.”
He wanted copies of those subtitled plays. Wanted to know how accurate they were, whether interpretation went off the rails on any points.
Wanted to know something about those fifty-three club members—just to be sure he understood what influences might go back and forth.
And he was just—professionally—curious.
“They are quite in awe of you,” Jago said. “You say humans do not feel man’chi. But it did seem so.”
“Many things look more impressive when one is young.”
“Ah,” Jago said, sounding entirely unconvinced. “Is that what it is?”
7
Boji felt the weather coming, no question. He bounded from perch to perch in his filigree cage, pried at the cage door with his small fingers, spilled his water dish, and, more uncommon, ignored the offer of an egg.
“Hush, hush,” Cajeiri said, laying a hand on the cage. He and his bodyguard and his two servants occupied the largest guest suite, and his servants, Eisi and Liedi, had done their best with Boji, offering him everything they had to quiet him. Boji kept bouncing and screaming, and Cajeiri hoped that Nomari, lodged down the hall, could not hear it—it sounded as if they were murdering the little wretch, who, if ever he escaped his cage, had a suite full of precious, fragile things to bound onto and away from.
It had been a mistake to bring Boji, who could not be let out of his cage, and who was unhappy about it. He had not settled, and now the weather, threatening storm, had him entirely overwrought. It was only going to get worse.
“Move his cage back to the servant passage,” he suggested to Eisi and Liedi, since they had put Boji’s massive cage right next to one of the tall windows—for Boji’s pleasure, as they had thought at the time. Thunder and lightning would not make Boji happier, that was becoming clear, and with Mother coming—
With Mother coming, it was going to be even worse. He had offered to Uncle to vacate the grand suite, which was usually Great-grandmother’s when she was visiting. This suite was right across the hall from Uncle, who would not appreciate Boji’s screeches either, and his own usual, more modest suite was down the hall, where he would be perfectly content to be.
Except Nomari was in that one right now, because they could not guarantee his safety otherwise, and besides—that suite could not accommodate his double bodyguard, as this one could.
Besides all that, Uncle said that in strict protocol he should stay put, because he was his father’s heir, now, and outranked Mother.
That disturbed him. That deeply disturbed him, as something unbalanced in the world. He and his mother had not gotten along so well as they ought, but she was his mother, and she should have respect, especially since—the thought even more disturbed him—she probably had been born in this very suite, when her mother had been the highest-ranking person in the house, excepting
only Lord Tatiseigi.
He had never thought of that before, and the thought made the rooms seem haunted with the past, a stolen baby, a marriage that had gone wrong and led to everything else.
Uncle was having the servants open up the upstairs floor, which was repaired since nand’ Bren’s aishid had blown up the floor. There, too, an important person had died—but not a person he was sorry about.
If one began to total up people who had been born here and people who had died in Tirnamardi, naturally and otherwise, it was a lot of people, and the whole place was full of ghosts. Grandfather had lived here. Grandmother had died here, well, on the lawn, near the gates.
It thundered and Boji screeched, just as Eisi and Liedi began to move his cage. Boji went on screeching as the massive cage, as tall as they were, and twice as long, rolled over the ancient tiles, the brass wheels doing, he fervently hoped, no damage to the floor. Cajeiri stayed as he was, by the window, but back a little, close enough to see the sky, which still was cloudless on this side of the house.
But that was not what was piling up to the southwest. He had seen that dark gray line from the windows in the great hall, before he came up to change for dinner.
He was such a fool to have brought Boji on this trip. A fool to have him here, a problem in the heart of important problems.
He was a fool to think he could go anywhere, ever, without just his arriving tipping over some small situation into big problems. He wished he could be like Great-grandmother, or Father, and have the means to solve them himself. Right now—
Right now it was comforting that he had the senior aishid. Father had said—for your sake and for the juniors, both, it was a good idea, and now, since talking to Father, he kept hearing that warning over and over again, thinking that, yes, his young aishid would do their best, but it was true they could also get killed trying to protect him.
They had been, at times, his accomplices in doing things he knew were slightly forbidden—but now he was thinking not only that he had been selfish and stupid to bring Boji and keep his staff busy with a spoiled and unhappy parid’ja, but that if he did something else stupid on this visit he could get his bodyguards killed, especially the juniors. It was not just that they were responsible for him. He was responsible for them, and when things became this serious, they could only hope he used his good sense.
So he waited patiently, not standing any closer to the window than his senior bodyguard said was acceptable, and let his valets move Boji back where at least the lightning and thunder would be less scary for him. He waited to let his valets also see to a dress shirt and coat for dinner.
Mother was coming. He was worried for her safety just in getting from the train station tomorrow. He hoped Mother and Great-grandmother would not have a towering fight when Great-grandmother arrived in Shejidan, which would set both of them into a bad mood.
He was trying so hard not to be angry with the whole situation, and to keep a pleasant expression on his face. His young bodyguard took the initiative to bring him his vest and coat, since time was short and his valets were still trying to settle Boji in what had been the quiet of the service hall.
His staff was clearly doing the best they could. He had brought Boji here because he had not wanted Boji upsetting his mother while he was gone, and he had not wanted to leave his valets again in Shejidan with the sole and lowly duty of caring for a spoiled fool’s spoiled pet. Everything he saw going wrong on this trip was a chain of his small personal decisions—because he had not been willing to accept all the responsibility his father had settled on him. Because he had wanted one piece of his foolish childhood to stay with him on this trip and he had wanted to enjoy the part of his birthday celebration he had not gotten before the whole Shishogi affair had happened. He had been thinking only of his own affairs, and not thinking through, entirely, that from the time Father sent him on his own, Father had expected him to think ahead and not backward.
Well, between his bringing Boji and his going out to see Jeichido, he had certainly failed in that.
Father had said—listen to his senior aishid, to protect the junior one. Father had never expected Great-aunt Geidaro to show up. Father had never expected Ajuri to make a scene, or refugees to be camped on the lawn. And he supposed that it was a certain degree of trust—or a concern for making things worse—that Father had not sent a swarm of Guild here to bring him home.
Father had not. And things were not going to settle soon, he feared. They were likely to get worse, as early as tomorrow.
He and Mother did not get along that well. And worse, there were times when Mother and Uncle did not get along that well.
And there was the question what would happen when Mother did meet Nomari, and what truth might come out, much as he wanted to know it.
There were questions he wanted to ask Nomari before Mother took over and barred him from asking or hearing. And he could hope to show up early at table, and hope that Nomari did.
Or he could, if he and his aishid could turn him out ready for dinner a little early, catch Nomari in private, with no question of dinner-table propriety.
Maybe it was stupid and even a mistake that could hurt the situation. Maybe it was smarter to let Mother, who knew things, do all the asking. But if he never asked, given Mother’s tendency to keep her secrets to herself—he might never know, and he needed to. If he was supposed to rank higher than Mother, if he had someday to make decisions, he needed to, did he not?
Eisi and Liedi came back at least to be sure his coat and cuffs and collar were proper, and that he was turned out in a professional way.
“One is grateful, nadiin-ji,” he said to them. “One so appreciates your patience on this visit.”
They protested it was not patience. But it was. Everybody was patient. Everybody all his life had discounted his stupid mistakes because he was not the one allowed to decide the important things. Uncle handled things. And at least by noon tomorrow, Mother would take over, and Mother had her opinions, and she would very certainly say he was too young, and it was not for him to know.
But if he never knew, how could he ever make smart choices?
Mother had been born here. Grandmother had died here.
All the scary answers might be right down the hall.
He said, quietly, “I think I am ready. Nadiin-ji, I am going down the hall. I wish to talk to our guest.”
“Yes,” Antaro said, his junior bodyguard completely agreeing. The senior bodyguard was not all present—only Onami was. Onami simply gave a little bow and left to the rear of the suite, to report, doubtless, what he was up to.
He waited for Veijico and Lucasi to join them. And as they arrived from their quarters, Onami came back with all his unit, Rieni still fastening his jacket.
• • •
Eight bodyguards. All just to go talk to his cousin, who, because of three missing people and an oncoming storm, was staying just two doors down from his.
But at least his senior bodyguard had offered no word of protest to the venture. He wondered—he could not help but wonder—what they were thinking about him, whether they were sending reports to the Guild—and he kept imagining what those reports might be. The young fool went out and risked us all while he fed his mecheita. His spoiled parid’ja wakes the entire suite at night. He travels with the creature and imposes it on his uncle, who may be able to hear it. Now he ventures to disturb serious matters with unplanned questions . . .
The question he had in mind was far from unplanned. He had worried about it, slept with it, dealt with his great-aunt over and over in his mind, and now he wanted to ask it.
He arrived at Nomari’s door, where Uncle’s guards stood.
“He is here, nadiin?” Cajeiri asked.
“Yes, nandi,” the answer was.
“Advise my cousin I am forbidden to set aside any of my guard.” That was a convenient excuse.
If he was asking questions, all of them needed to hear the answer and judge it. “I wish to speak to him.”
“Nandi.” One of the men rapped on the door and opened it, and briefly passed the word inside, with the door standing ajar.
“Yes,” he heard his cousin say, and when the door opened wider he walked in, finding Nomari with the servants Uncle had appointed for him, and evidently in the last stages of dressing for dinner. Nomari’s coat was on. He looked composed enough.
“You are dismissed, nadiin,” Cajeiri said to the servants. “I take responsibility. Thank you.”
The two bowed and left quietly, amid, now, ten bodyguards, with the door still open.
“Is there news, nandi?” Nomari asked.
“Of the three missing?” Cajeiri asked. “No. One wishes there were.” He thought of saying that his mother was coming. But he was not to do that. That was his mother’s business. “I have a question, nadi. May we talk before dinner, very quickly? May we sit?”
“Nandi.” Nomari indicated the little seating group, and offered a chair. Cajeiri sat, settled back, drew a deep breath.
“There are points of curiosity,” he began, “and one thing I want to know. Who killed my grandfather? And why?”
Nomari’s glance was direct, quick, wary, before he lowered his eyes in a slight bow. “In all respect,” he said, “I—have no way to know that.”
“But you might make a guess, might you not?”
Nomari hesitated, gave what might almost have been a laugh, but was not. “Shishogi,” he said. “Shishogi. Shishogi. That is my understanding, nandi, at least—that is my guess for whatever went on.”
It was his own guess, too. It had been ever since he had known Shishogi existed. It was so simple and likely an answer. But he distrusted it. He distrusted every quick answer that lacked detail. “But why would Shishogi be upset with him? Did my grandfather tell him no on something?”
“I would not know, nandi.”
“I cannot know, either,” he said. “So I cannot be sure that it was his order. Why would he? My grandfather had quarreled with my father, and he had become unwelcome in our apartment, and in the Bujavid, but was a quarrel like that enough? Everybody quarrels. And quarrels end. Was that the reason? I do not think so.”
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