Intruder (25 page)

Jegari was in the sitting room. So was Lucasi, both of them at the table with books and papers. Antaro and Jegari had their own lessons to do, Guild lessons, about regulations, and guns, and procedures, and so on. Algini had promised to teach Antaro demolitions when they had gotten through some course work at the Guild. Antaro in particular said she really wanted to learn, and Jegari had said it was a good thing that both of them have that training, to protect somebody who would someday be aiji of the aishidi’tat. So it was possible Antaro was off somewhere about that.

But it was curious Veijico was the one gone, too, when he came back from his lessons.

Very curious. Jegari and Lucasi were clearly busy, however, pens going.

He was just about to ask Jegari and Lucasi where their partners had gone when he heard footsteps in the hall, from the servants’ hall side. The secret knock sounded, and he opened the door himself. There were the missing pair, Veijico in her heavier uniform jacket and Antaro in an outdoor dress coat.

That was odd. They had definitely come in from the service passages; staff could come and go from the next floor if they used the service passages and went through security there. Nobody would stop them. And particularly nobody would question security staff—even wearing outdoor coats.

“Nadiin-ji,” he said with a polite little nod as they came in.

“The shuttle left the station an hour ago, nandi.”

“Good,” he said. He was always interested in the comings and goings
of the shuttle. Even if his father would not let him go watch it. But that did not explain why they were dressed for the outdoors or coming in from the servants’ level. “Did you go out to learn
that?
”

They grinned, both of them. Widely. “You are properly observant, young gentleman,” Veijico said.

“One should expect so,” he said, sure they were up to some mischief, and was intrigued to see Antaro unbutton her coat, which seemed rather uncommonly snug. And there—

There, in a red leather harness and with a coiled-up strap, was a long-limbed little creature all over with black hair, with a pursed little mouth. It stared at him with big gold eyes.

It blinked, looking just waked-up and a little scared.

That was weirder than it staring. It blinked like a person. It was spooky, it doing that. It looked to be
thinking.

Its little hands took a firm grip on the lapels of Veijico’s leather coat. It looked the other direction, then buried its face under her coat, still holding on.

That was even spookier. And somehow very sad.

“It will bite, nandi,” Antaro said, “if it thinks you will harm it.”

“Is it what you expected, nandi?” Veijico asked. “We can still take it back if you wish.”

The parid’ja smelled just slightly. But not badly. And it looked so small and so scared.

“One wishes to hold it.”

Veijico took the creature in both hands and gently pulled him away from its grip on her coat. She handed it to him, keeping the strap in her hand, and immediately the creature grabbed Cajeiri’s arm with tiny fingers and leaped up closer to his body, clinging in the same way to the lapels of one of his better coats and butting its head against his shoulder, trying to get inside his coat.

That felt weird. Its little hands were quite strong for its size. He could feel it breathing. Very gingerly he stroked the fur on its back, below the harness.

“One would suggest the cage soon, nandi,” Lucasi said, “so that he can—”

The creature unwound suddenly and made a flying leap for the nearby chair. Antaro neatly intercepted the jump with her arm, strap still in hand, and it shrieked, went upside down for a moment, then climbed up and clung to her arm as Lucasi quietly opened the brass cage.

Antaro carefully unclipped the strap from the harness, with the creature inside the doorway, and it leaped for the crossbars inside the cage. It made a fast clicking sound and settled there and blinked at them.

From her pocket Antaro produced a small egg and offered it. It darted forward to the cage door, snatched the egg in amazingly capable fingers and darted back to its perch, where it clutched its prize under its chin with both hands and looked at them all with quick bright eyes.

It was astonishing. It was amazing it was not gears and motors. It was
alive.
It was
thinking,
and it looked back at them and clicked at them, in defiant possession of the egg, which perhaps it thought was not safe to eat yet. Or perhaps it was just too upset at the moment.

“It will need water,” Jegari said.

“And a sandbox,” Lucasi said.

“We have procured the sandbox,” Antaro said. “Two packages are being sent up from freight, on an urgent basis. The address says to notify us, nandi, and one hopes senior Guild will respect that, since we have somewhat abused the Guild seal throughout this operation. One package has a sandbox and sand, dishes, brushes, all the things it may need, and the other is a packet of fresh eggs and fruit, nothing that needs refrigeration.”

“One should be fairly quick with the sand, one suspects,” Jegari said under his breath.

Meanwhile, fascinating sight, the creature stuck one long fingernail into the egg top and made a hole, which it carefully widened. Then it shifted the egg to hold it in two hands as a young
child might hold a teacup. Its purplish tongue flicked into the egg and lapped the yellow contents up quite neatly.

It was very neat. It licked up all the egg it could, then dropped the very clean eggshell onto the floor of the cage and leaped to the other bench.

“Its name is Boji,” Cajeiri decided, and when everyone looked at him oddly: “Boji was one of the mechieti my great-uncle had. Besides, it reminds me of Baiji, who deserves to have a silly creature named after him.”

“Indeed,” Lucasi said.

“Must he always be in the cage?” Cajeiri asked.

“Or on his lead,” Veijico said, “until he is very much tamer. They can become quite tame. He will sit on your shoulder or on your arm, and he will reach man’chi, once he trusts you. But let him rest a little, nandi. He was very upset on the train and especially in the lift. One believes the noises frightened him. A dish of water and a little quiet would be good for his stomach right now.”

“Water,” Cajeiri said, and Jegari immediately left the premises, presumably to take care of that. They had kept all the goings-on very quiet, because there was a strategy in the plan, that nobody else should know about Boji until he had been on the premises for a few days, and then one could prove that Boji was not any disturbance at all, that he did not smell, he did not scare the servants, and that they could take care of him perfectly well without disturbing anybody.

So he settled to watch Boji, just to watch him, determined to keep such an exciting creature and plotting how he could keep Boji’s presence as quiet as possible—while Boji settled to watch him, with what thoughts on the other side of the cage wall one could hardly guess.

It was very strange how much and how immediately he liked having Boji there. They had been fortunate five, he and his aishid, and he supposed in a way there was now an infelicitous sixth, but Boji should hardly count in the class of persons.

And besides, his mother and father were hardly superstitious, or they would hardly have had another baby. Two was an infelicity, and four was no better, so either they had to plan another baby soon—that was a horrible thought!—or they had to be a family of four forever, or, counting their aishidi, twenty, which still not that good a number.

But the baby would hardly have a bodyguard right off, would it? They would be sixteen for years. Two eights. Four fours. Eight infelicitous twos.

His mind wandered off to thinking about the baby. And once he brought his mind back from its diversion, it informed him it was
not
an unrelated worry, because his mother had gotten more and more touchy and particular the closer she was to having the baby. She had the servants running all over getting this and getting that and making things just so.

And if anything went wrong, his mother was the likeliest to object to Boji, as she had started objecting to everything lately that might inconvenience the baby.

He could claim that he had gotten Boji because of the numbers—because seventeen was a
lot
better than sixteen. That was the thing to say to anyone having a silly argument about something. One just found good or bad numbers, as suited, and argued. It was what the old men did.

And Boji
and
the baby certainly made the nonadults in the household not-two. Which was a good thing.

So, then, he decided he would say he had felt unlucky about the household numbers with the baby, so he had gotten Boji to make the numbers better.

He liked that. It fit. It would make his mother think he was learning traditional thinking, and he was supposed to do that.

So now he was happy, and even ’counters had to be. Happy, that was.

That was brilliant. It stood a fair chance of working. Or at least of diverting the argument.

Now—if he could just keep his mother from finding out Boji even existed—

First off, he had taken his precaution and gotten just two servants, Eisi and Lieidi, assigned to attend his suite, and once they introduced Eisi and Lieidi to Boji and explained the situation—they would hardly betray him at this point, would they? They would understand that this was a surprise, that eventually the whole household would know, but they would not betray a surprise, would he? Not if they wanted his future good will.

He imagined a triumphant show, with Boji all tame and proper, sitting on his arm and maybe doing tricks, as he had heard his kind could—fetching things from a shelf, or bringing one a pen or a book from the desk. He would demonstrate to his father and mother how very mannerly Boji was, and his mother would be charmed, and meanwhile
he
would have something to do in his rooms besides lessons.

Boji bounded across the cage and shrieked.
That
was a little worrisome. He went to distract Boji and quiet him. He had
not
thought about Boji making noise. That was a problem.

That was a
big
problem.

The door opened. He held his breath. But it was just Jegari coming back. Jegari had brought a covered dish of water from the kitchen, just a plain little white baking dish of the sort that could disappear from the kitchen stores with nobody objecting.

“Here,” Jegari said, handing the water dish to him. “I shall open the cage. You can put the water in. Just be careful he does not get past you. Antaro can hold the harness while you work, through the grille.”

It took a little arranging, but Antaro reached in and caught the harness,. Cajeiri carefully bent down and put the water dish down.

“Now we can take the harness off,” Jegari said. “He should think about his training when he has it on, but he will only do it mischief if we leave it on. Besides, it will chafe his skin.

That took another bit of careful maneuvering, which Jegari and Antaro managed, getting the harness unbuckled and then letting Boji loose in the cage.

Boji was happier then and bounded this way and that, from perch to perch, ignoring the water dish.

Antaro flipped little hammerlike stops on the bottom and the top of the door.

Antaro said, “Always do that, nandi, because he may be clever enough to get his fingers through and open the main latch. That is why the area behind the latch has a much denser pattern in the brass, so he cannot do that, but my grandmother had one that could open almost anything.”

“One hopes he minds his manners!” Cajeiri said fervently, and then was amazed to see Boji hop down, dip both little hands in the water dish and drink just like a person.

Fascinating. And very spooky.

Then Boji leaped back up to the perch and then to the wall nearest him, clung to the brass flowers of the filigree and looked at him through the holes with first one eye and then another, as if correctly realizing now who he belonged to.

They said parid’ji could find man’chi to the person that owned them.

Atevi could. Mecheiti could, in their own way. He had never wondered about other animals, except cats and dogs and monkeys, which were as absent from the world as dinosaurs.

He had
so
wanted a cat or a dog. Or a dinosaur. Just a little one.

But Boji was going to be so good and so much fun. And if Boji decided to settle man’chi toward him, it was going to be very, very good, and so impressive for everyone he knew.

Boji was more fun than any baby. That was sure.

Once mani got back, he could visit her apartment and be under her rules when he was there, which he liked far better than his father’s rules. Well—but—

If he stayed overnight at mani’s apartment, once she came back, somebody
had to keep Boji. And he could not tell the staff about Boji yet. And he still had no idea what he was going to do about the servants.

He would have to leave half his bodyguard to stay in his apartment, and then he would have to lie, and then his bodyguard would, and it would just be damned difficult…

Or…he could take Boji to see mani. Mani might be amused by Boji. She had strongly protected all sorts of wild creatures on Malguri land, and she had been very fierce about telling lords they should not declare any wild creature to be vermin, which had prompted no few arguments with her neighbors and, on several occasions, shooting.

She would definitely think Boji was interesting. Boji’s kind lived on the western side of the mountains, and she might never have seen one close up. She
might
be his ally in keeping Boji. If she got back before his mother and father found out he was here.

He just sat, watching Boji clean his fur, plotting how to get allies on the matter of Boji.

And the shuttle was coming down. He would get to see Narani, and Asicho, who had used to treat him very specially. They were both coming back to nand’ Bren’s service. Bindanda was coming, too. Bindanda had used to make him special desserts. He could almost taste them.

And his tutor was not boring, which was a great surprise.