Intruder (40 page)

I
t was well into morning. Nobody had been allowed out into the halls, which Cajeiri first took as a security alert in disguise when the permitted servant, Eisi, woke him, apologizing that he was late, but they had to keep the doors shut and not stir about the halls.

“Why, nadiin-ji?” he asked.

“Your father the aiji has had visitors.”

“Who was here?” he asked, and the senior servant said, “We are not to discuss it anywhere, young gentleman. May one assist you to dress?”

“Who was here?” he asked Eisi.

“One is truly instructed not to say, young gentleman. There is breakfast. Just now. One has set it on the—”

“
Who
is it you serve, nadi?”

It was, deliberately, because he was angry, mani’s sort of tone. The servant looked at him, wide-eyed, and said: “The paidhi-aiji, nandi. He visited. We were not to move. So everything is late this morning. One fears—one fears breakfast is cold.”

Nand’ Bren. Nand’ Bren had been here on business, and he had been ordered to stay in his room.

That was crazy. And Eisi stood there looking upset.

“You are not to tell anyone I asked the reason,” Cajeiri said grimly, and he got out of bed. “Help me dress. Is my aishid awake?”

“Yes,” Eisi said, and hurried to the closet.

He dressed. He heard his aishid stirring about, and Jegari came in, dressed as far as shirtsleeves.

“Everything is late, nandi. We all overslept.”

“My father surely had official business this morning. With the paidhi.”

“There is all that business with your great-grandmother going on.”

“I was part of that,” he said peevishly.

“You were, nandi,” Jegari said, “but your father may have had other business with nand’ Bren.”

“One supposes.” He still did not like being left out. He slipped on the light day-coat Eisi offered him, and they went out, picking up Lucasi and Veijico and Antaro on the way to the sitting room. Eisi had set out breakfast on the modest table that served sometimes as a dining table—it was a disgusting breakfast, since the eggs were cold, there was only mild red sauce with the eggs, none of the green, so someone had made a mistake. The toast was cold.

And there was still a lot of opening and closing of the front door, so something was going on.

Boji screeched, upset. That would bring his father in if that went on. But Boji’s breakfast was late, too, and he was out of sorts. Cajeiri left his breakfast half eaten, went over to the small table, took a raw egg out of their hiding-place, and went to feed the rascal.

He carefully opened the cage. Boji saw the egg and was right by the door, ready to climb up on his arm, where Boji now preferred to sit to eat his eggs. Boji’s funny little face had brightened delightfully when he saw the egg coming, and it made him a lot happier. He enjoyed watching Boji eat: his little tongue was very neat and clever, and he could reduce an egg down to absolutely nothing but clean shell, light as could be, in an amazingly short time. He scratched behind Boji’s ear and got a happy chirr out of him, while Boji held his egg for himself and plied that long tongue cleaning out the egg.

Just as a knock sounded at the door and the door opened nearly simultaneously with the knock. Boji exploded, the eggshell flew, and Boji bounded off the top of the cage and up to a hanging plant, then off for the top of the bookcase and the hanging and on to the tall vase and, Cajeiri saw to his alarm, right for the door, where a fool of a woman stood wide-eyed with the door wide open.

Worse, she yelled and ducked.

Boji shrieked, leaped for the woodwork and sailed right over the servant’s head, right out the door into the hall.

“Get him!” Cajeiri cried, and all four of his bodyguards rushed the door, shoving the woman—one of his mother’s servants—out of the way. The servant lost her balance, rebounded off the table by the door and sent it skidding over the bare tile edge of the room before she fell flat on the tiles by the doorway.

Cajeiri ran past to the hall, but there was no sign of Boji, just Lucasi and Jegari looking about in every direction, and too many doors open. The servant’s door to the sitting room stood open, the door to his father’s office was open, and past that, there was the accommodation and the bath. The door to the further hall and the kitchens and the security station and his mother’s suite was open. Worst, the door right beside his had the servants’ passages, which went even downstairs, if
those
doors should be open. Only the door to the foyer was shut.

It was a disaster. “Why is the servants’ door open?” he asked angrily. “Which way did he go, did you see?”

“One fears he may have gotten to the far hall, nandi,” Jegari said.

Boji had no harness on. No leash.

And it was his fault. His stupidity. He had taken Boji out of the cage without his leash, because Boji would be held by his interest in the egg, and Boji was stronger and trickier than he had ever imagined.

And now Boji was loose somewhere. Even his aishid in immediate
pursuit had not been fast enough to see which way he had gone.

“Antaro and Veijico are searching as quietly as possible, nandi,” Lucasi said. “Shall we search?”

“Do,” he said. “Do.” He heard a step behind him, remembered the servant and turned. The servant gave a stiff little bow. “Leave my suite alone, nadi!” he snapped at her. “You are not to open that door.”

“Young gentleman,” the woman protested.

“We have said!” It was mani’s expression, and he used it, spun on his heel and headed for the sitting room servant’s door, the first one. And the sitting room had its
other
doors open on the foyer. And even as he stood there in shock, he heard the front door open and stay open.

He went out to the front hall and the foyer, trying to compose himself, and saw his father’s major d’ receiving mail from someone, with the door standing half open. Neither man looked alarmed.

One could just imagine…

The transaction done, the major d’ closed the door and turned. “Young lord,” the major d’ said. “Your father has requested you not be in the foyer without a bodyguard.”

“And
we
request this door not stand open!” he said. “Ever!” And he marched back and shut the doors between the sitting room and the foyer. Shut them hard, one and then the other.

And he had been rude, he knew, and he had been rude to the servant his aishid had knocked down, and he had insulted his father’s major d’, an estimable old man.

And Boji was missing somewhere in a very large apartment.

The woman was still in the hallway when he got back. Cajeiri said to her, quietly and deliberately, “You are not to tell anyone. Anyone! Or you will have me upset with you for the rest of my life!”

The servant looked a little angry. Cajeiri didn’t, at the moment, care, but he thought it good, on mani’s teaching, not to make
the woman think she had an enemy. “If I get him back, and if you are discreet, that is all I want, nadi. I shall forgive it. But not if you talk to my mother!
Never
if you walk to my mother!”

“Nandi,” the servant objected.

“One does not care if my father himself has told you to report, nadi. You will not talk, or I shall remember it forever, and you will
not
be happy!”

“Shall I search for him?”

He drew two quick, deep breaths. “You may search the servants’ hall, quietly, and without attracting attention. If you find doors are open, close them, but remember which doors and report them to my aishid. Above all, do not leave any doors open!”

“Yes, nandi,” the servant said.

“Go,” Cajeiri said, and went, himself, and joined the search at the end of the hall.

Two serious death threats and a warning from the Guild in a single morning was definitely worse than the average day. The news about the dowager’s agreement with the Taisigin Marid had begun to get out.

And there were rumors, Banichi reported as Bren walked the distance to Ilisidi’s apartment, that the agreement was actually between Tabini-aiji and the Marid.

Bet on it, the rumors would swear that various disadvantageous provisions were in the agreement, privately negotiated by the paidhi-aiji. One rumormonger’s private fear went into full-scale distribution as fact as the rumor passed through the usual channels.

“We had better get this agreement signed, nadiin-ji,” Bren said to his aishid, “before they claim we’ve traded the space station into the bargain.”

“The controversy is decidedly warming up,” Tano said.

“And in so few days,” Jago said. “One can never get
facts
distributed so quickly.”

The dowager had made room in her schedule—she had not said whose meeting she had moved to accommodate the paidhi-aiji, but Bren suspected Cenedi’s absence and the fact that the dowager was currently attended by two of the lesser-rank bodyguard meant that Cenedi and Nawari were attending some otherwise important meeting in her stead.

As for the information he had brought, he could only forge ahead—not that he wanted to tell the dowager that there was trouble in the aiji’s household, but Ilisidi’s affairs were bumping up against the Ajuri-Atageini feud, and there were reasons. He had thought it over and over, and he had made his decision—he had to tell her, in such a way it did not inflame the situation.

There was the requisite tea service. And afterward, the dowager patiently heard everything he had to say, then waved her ruby-ringed hand dismissively.

“Well, well,” she said, “and well presented, paidhi-aiji. One reads very well between the lines. And one has seen it coming. We have known Damiri-daja from the day she took her first steps, and we are all too well acquainted with the Ajuri-Atageini issue. One was, to be quite honest, never that surprised that the prior lord of Ajuri should die of indigestion. Nor surprised that the new lord of Ajuri has noticed his daughter sitting next to my grandson.” A waggle of fingers that sparked ruby fire. “And Tati-ji has certainly noticed his notice. It hardly surprises him. But—Damiri-daja had a falling-out with Tatiseigi, naturally; she was young and foolish. She had to imagine that her father in Ajuri would be the perfect parent. She went to him—she came flying back again, having found no great solace there. Tatiseigi took her back. And she met my grandson from that standpoint…so things became as you have witnessed. She has grown up somewhat suspicious of relatives’ motives. She has been a staunch and stable match for my grandson. But Damiri-daja has always suspected us…she suspects anyone whose advice to my grandson supercedes her own. And removing her child from her care—but the heir of the aishidi’tat was at risk. I
could keep him safe from assassination. I could teach him what he needed to know. I could set the stamp of the Padi Valley conservatives on him, through his great-uncle. Should he lack these advantages? What could she possibly expect of Cajeiri’s father—considering the actions of her own?”

There were times one could both deplore the dowager’s actions—and uneasily understand exactly why she’d done what she’d done by taking over Cajeiri. The result was Cajeiri as Cajeiri was, educated by his politically independent Eastern great-grandmother, the chief power over half the continent, and by Tabini, the very liberal aiji of the Western Association; and in a minor way educated and supported by Tatiseigi, chief of the conservative Padi Valley Association and of the conservative party as a whole. He was
not
to fall to the influence of a small, ambitious northern clan.

More, he was alive.

“One is sorry for Damiri-daja, aiji-ma, at the very least. And one feels she has been good. And one does not know where to stand, but one fears Lord Ajuri has put Ajuri clan in a very delicate political situation.”

“Unfortunate in the extreme,” Ilisidi said. “We have urged Tati-ji to quiet the quarrel of his clan with the Ajuri, for her sake. But I fear it may get worse, much worse. There are investigations in the Guild, proceeding slowly, carefully, but Ajuri clan is rapidly losing its influence. And one does not believe that the current Lord Ajuri has the skill or the background to weather this, any more than the late Lord Ajuri. Damiri’s choice now to attack us in her resentment over her son is very ill timed—
very
ill timed. It has the flavor of her father’s sort of shortsightedness and clan-centric thinking, but one supposes she is in an emotional state right now and needs no urging from him to be unreasonable. But one is very suspicious her father is adding fuel to that fire.”

“One has great trepidation even to mention my interceding with her, aiji-ma—”

“Oh, by no means consider doing so, paidhi-ji. If the attempt went badly, it would go badly for everyone involved, and the fact that Cajeiri is strongly devoted to you cannot make you a disinterested party in her sight. One fears you are in fact a special target of her resentment, particularly as the boy’s last adventure landed him at your estate.”

He drew a deep breath. “You are aware, aiji-ma, that Cajeiri-nandi, from the moment of his return to his mother, cited your rules quite strongly in contradiction of his mother’s reprimands.”

“Did he?” Ilisidi said with a lift of her brows. “One will have to have a word with him—not for adherence to my instruction but for the political folly of antagonizing his mother. He acted quite foolishly in doing so. Does that state of affairs continue?”

“One has not had that impression, aiji-ma. One believes it was in the high emotion of being moved into his parents’ household. Being moved out of his chosen surroundings has become a sore point with him. And of course the restrictions of the Bujavid are difficult for anyone. He is rarely allowed out of that apartment. With good reason, of course. But—”

“One perceives it,” Ilisidi said. “I have discussed the matter with him. Intellectually, he understands his situation. But he is a child. A very young child—intermittently.” A sigh. “His father was like that as a boy. A constant surprise. His parents and I found him one day walking on my balcony rail. His parents of course ordered him to come down. He said if they did not permit him to reside the season at Malguri, he would throw himself off the third-story railing. There was quite an argument while he walked up and down the rail. He settled for half the season at Malguri.” A deep sigh. “Tabini knew even at that age that half of what he wanted was better than nothing. He was quite smug about it when he left, and he said of course he would not have fallen because he did not
wish
to fall, and that he was not a fool, nor should be dealt with as one. In fact he was so obstinate a child, his parents sent him to me fifteen days early.”