Intruder (3 page)

He was just short of his felicitous ninth year, and in one more day he was going to be miserable for the rest of his life.

He had his own bodyguard now, at least: Antaro and Jegari, who were not Guild yet, just apprentices. They were sibs, from Taiben, and they were almost grown, but they understood him better than anybody in the Bujavid.

And now there were Lucasi and Veijico, another brother and sister team, who were real Guild and carried weapons and wore the black uniforms and everything. His father had assigned them to him. His father was not thoroughly pleased with them ever
since Najida. But they had learned a lot, and improved. So they were his, and he would not let them go.

His parents had promised him his bodyguard would have rooms of their own in the new apartment. And he would have a little suite. Which was good. He had not even been interested in looking at it when he had had a chance to look in on the apartment.

They had told him no, there would be no windows where they were going, not in his suite; he had not been surprised, but he was not happy about it, either. Ever since coming back to the Bujavid, he had felt closed in. Mani’s apartment had not just a window, but a whole balcony you could sit on. But his father’s bodyguard would not let him go out there.

So for the rest of his life, he would just have to sit in his windowless little suite and do homework and ask the servants to do anything that was remotely interesting. He had wanted this morning to go to the library and look up things about the Marid, because he had gotten interested in it, but his father’s bodyguard would not let him out of the apartment.

That was a forecast, was it not? It was just what things would be.

He was bored and angry, and went disconsolately from one thing to another, he tried to read the book nand’ Bren had lent him and wished he still had the vids from the ship that he had grown up with.

He wished even more that he had his companions from the ship, humans his age. He really wished there were someone, anyone, his age that he could talk to. But he was the aiji’s son, and who got to be associated with him at all was a political question, and important, and so far there was no boy his age in the whole world that his father approved of.

And if ever his father approved, he still had to get his mother to approve, and Great-grandmother, and Uncle Tatiseigi, and his Ajuri grandfather.

It was just grim here.

And it was going to be grim. Forever. His mother and his father and his grandfather and Uncle Tatiseigi had his whole life planned.

He sat down at his little desk, took a pad of paper and a pen, which had come with the desk, and, still furious, drew Najida estate the way he remembered it. He put in the rocks at the turn of the walk that led down the hill to the harbor. He put in nand’ Bren’s boat, and nand’ Toby’s. He ran out of paper for the little rowboat he had borrowed.

He ruined that, and drew it again on another sheet of paper. He constantly tried to draw things, to remember them when he had to move again. And he kept his drawings secret, among his Important Things, in that box on the floor.

Then it occurred to him he should draw this room, because once he had moved out, there was never any guarantee he would be back, or that the room would stay the way it was, once he had no say in the matter. So he drew it next, the tassels on the bedcover, the desk he was using, the hangings on the wall, the tapestry with the picture of a boat, and, most important, his big map of the whole of the aishidi’tat.

Veijico knocked and came in. “Nandi. A message from your mother. She wants you.”

Damn, he thought. And thought it twice. And again. He was not supposed to say that word out loud even if it was ship-speak and nobody had any idea it was swearing. Damn. Damn.
Damn.

Maybe it was a security lecture coming. His father had already had the security lecture with him. The legislature was going into session and there were controversial bills going to be on the floor, which brought out crazy people, who had any citizen’s right to be on the bottom, public floor of the Bujavid, so he must remember that.

And there could be people who were much more dangerous than simply crazy. There could be elements of the renegade Guild that they had not caught yet. The shadow-Guild, nand’ Bren called it. And
they
were scary.

So he was supposed to stay in the apartment.

He knew about defense. He had been with mani and Cenedi and nand’ Bren and Banichi over at Najida, in all the shooting. He had defended the house, had he not? He had defended mani.

And those people had been armed and bent on killing everybody.

He had killed somebody—more than one somebody in the course of things, though it upset him to think about it, and he sometimes dreamed about it; he did not want to say that to his bodyguard, whose job was to save him from situations like that. He had things he remembered and kept all to himself. Grown-up things.

But his parents never gave him credit for knowing anything at all.

He had no choice about going to his mother, now, however. He got up and put on his coat, with Veijico’s help, and when he went out the door of his room, the rest of his aishid was waiting for him. They were probably curious, being as bored and shut-in as he was, and with the same things ahead of them. So they were going to go with him and watch him get in trouble. He hardly blamed them. But:

“You can all stay outside,” he said, annoyed with it all. “One expects a security lecture. And you know all of that.”

“Yes,” Antaro said, speaking for the aishid; so they would stand outside the door, waiting for details.

His mother, three doors down the hall, didn’t have any of her bodyguard on duty…what with her guard, and his father’s, and his, the bodyguards all bumped into one another in the halls, and his young aishid had their own hard time, dealing with senior Guild, whose business was always more important and who always got the right of way.

He reached his mother’s door, and Antaro knocked, once.

His mother’s major d’, Lady Adsi, opened for him and let him into his mother’s borrowed little sitting room.

“Your mother is expecting you, young gentleman,” Lady Adsi
said, and left him to stand there facing nothing in particular while she disappeared through the inner door of his parents’ suite.

In a moment more his mother came through that door. She was very pregnant, but she was always beautiful. Today she had on a blue drapey coat and a lot of blue and white lace, and she smiled at him. That was supposed to be reassuring—but it was not entirely a reassurance, if one knew his mother.

He bowed. She bowed. She smelled like flowers, she always did. She waved a lacy hand toward her desk and went and sat down there, slightly sideways, to face him.

He came closer, folding his hands behind his back, and waited, wondering what kind of report about him could have come in, from what place, and how much trouble he was in.

“So, are you packed, son of mine?” she asked.

“Yes, honored Mother,” he said quietly, properly, though sneaking a glance over the papers she had out on the desk. One looked like a building plan. He thought it might be Najida. But it looked different. The rooms were all wrong.

It was, he realized, the new apartment, showing how the rooms were laid out. And she drew from under it another diagram that might be just an enlarged part of that plan, with several rooms attached.

“This is your suite,” she told him, and he looked hard, and tried to memorize it on the spot. It was a proper suite, the way he had had at Najida—well, except the hall it opened onto would not be the main hall of the Bujavid, but a hall inside the larger apartment, where there was no hope of getting outside unobserved.

But it had its own sitting room and a second little room for some purpose, and there was a master bedroom and closet, and beyond that a little hall, and a pair of rooms next to the bedroom, each, he decided, with closets. That pair of rooms would be for his aishid.

And she did not take the diagram away. She turned it so he could better see it.

“This will be your suite,” she said, and pointed out the numbers on the sides of the room. “These are the dimensions. You will have your own little office, do you see, for your homework.”

The extra room was about the size of the closet in the bedroom, but if it was an office, it would be a place for his projects, and that was excellent. His things would not be in danger of being stepped on. And he would have a table. And bookshelves.

“But you do not have enough furniture to fill it, son of mine,” she said.

One had supposed furniture would just turn up. Furniture always had turned up. He never had any choice in it.

His mother pulled out another paper and laid it atop the plan, a paper which had official-looking printing and a red stamp with the Ragi crest.

“This is an authorization,” she said, “for you to go down to the storerooms.”

“Storerooms. Downstairs?” The Bujavid had a lot of levels, and most of them were storage, all the way down to the train station. But he had never been there. Outside the apartment. Outside the apartment was an exciting notion.

“There is a warehouse office on the fifth level, which your aishid will have no trouble finding by this number.” She pointed it out, at the top of the paper. “Give the supervisor this paper. I have a copy. You are old enough now to have some notion what you would like. Your father and I thought you might like to apply your own energies to this matter. So in storeroom 15—it says here, do you see? —is your furniture from when you were a baby. Some was damaged in the coup; some was not and has been warehoused since. But one is sure you will have outgrown that. You have the floor plan, with its dimensions, do you see? This will show you what will fit, and you may ask your aishid for their help, but you must
not
show this paper to the supervisor: Everything about the new apartment is classified and not in his need to know. He may see
this
paper, which has the general
dimensions.” Another paper, with little written on it. “You and your aishid may pick out any furnishings you please. They simply have to fit the space you have.”

“Anything?”

His mother briefly held up a forefinger. “Within the bounds of size and taste, son of mine.”

“A television?”

“No.”

“Honored Mother, it is educational!”

“When one has a good recommendation from your tutor, one may consider it. Not until then.”

He sighed. He was not in the least surprised. Even mani had not let him have a television.

“One day, son of mine. Not now. And because you are young, there must be a few other restrictions. You may pick antiquities, but they must be only of metal or wood, nothing breakable, nothing embroidered, and nothing with a delicate finish or patina.”

“One has never broken anything! Well, not often. Not in months.”

“One trusts you would not willingly be so unfortunate. But if your choice of furnishing is breakable, if it can be stained or easily damaged, it must
not
be an antiquity or a public treasure. And do not overcrowd your rooms, mind. Listen to the supervisor’s advice. And note too that a respected master of kabiu will arrange what you choose in a harmony appropriate to the household, so do not give him too hard a task. You will make a list of the tag numbers of those things you wish moved to your suite and deliver that list back to the supervisor. Or you can take back any of your old furniture you would like.”

“One would ever so prefer to choose new things, honored Mother!”

“Then do.” She handed him the paper and the plan. “So go, go, be about it!”

“Yes, honored Mother!” He sketched a bow and headed for the
door at too much speed. Great-grandmother would have checked him sharply for such a departure. He checked himself and turned and bowed properly, deliberately, lest he offend his mother and lose a privilege just granted. “One is very gratified by your permission,” he said properly. “Honored Mother.”

A very faint smile lay under her solemnity. It was his favorite of her expressions.

“Go,” she shaped with her lips, smiling, and gave a little waggle of her fingers.

He left quietly, shut the door, and let a grin break wide as he faced his aishid, fairly dancing in place.

“We get to go down to the storerooms and pick out furniture!” he said. It was the best, most exciting thing since he had gotten here. He held up the papers. “And you can pick, too!”

The papers with the Ragi seal on them meant they had permission to go to the lifts. By themselves. And Lucasi and Veijico, in uniform, had their sidearms with them, and Antaro and Jegari had the small badges which meant Guild-in-training. The guards at the lifts made no objections at all to such a proper entourage, with proper papers. And Lucasi had a lift key, which he used once they got in. “So nobody can stop the lift,” he said importantly, as the lift clanked into motion.

They went straight down for a good distance; the lift stopped and let them out in a very officelike corridor that showed other, dimly lit corridors. The place was significantly deserted. Spooky. Their steps echoed.

Lucasi had the paperwork, but did not so much as check it, not since his first look; he said something obscure to Veijico, she said, “Yes, one agrees,” and they kept walking down the hall, arriving at the supervisor’s office, having contacted the supervisor as they walked.

And the supervisor very politely rose as they entered, looked at the official paper, bowed, then took up a stack of white tags with strings and a little roll of tape, which he brought with him. Veijico
gave him the permissible paper with the room sizes. And the supervisor personally led them out and down the hall to a long, long dimly lit side hall, past doors with just numbers on them. He opened the one marked 15 and turned on the lights inside.

It was a huge, dim, cold room full of furniture that made shadows, shadows upon shadows, more than the lights could deal with. The whole room smelled of something like incense, or vermin-poison. And it held the most wonderful jumble of beds and chairs, some items under brown canvas, some just stacked with pieces of cardboard or blankets between.