“Yes, nandi,” the old man said, and went to shoo the servants back inside.
“Interesting device,” Banichi said. “Not nand’ Toby’s invention.”
“No. Old. Quite old.”
“We have used the spun shot,” Banichi said, “an ancient weapon.”
“Very similar principle,” Bren said. “Except the stick.”
“One does apologize for the pot,” Banichi said.
“Just so it isn’t the dowager’s porcelains, once he gets home.”
“One will have a sobering word with him, Bren-ji.”
“Quietly, ’Nichi-ji. The boy has had a great deal of school and very little amusement since the ship. Perhaps one may put in a word with his father, to find him space in the garden to use his toy.”
The boy had used to have racing cars—almost the last real toy he had ever owned, except what his human companions brought for his amusement. The last of the cars had come to a violent end—blown up, with explosives, in very fact. Banichi had done that—in a moment of need and improvisation. Toys since—no, there just had been very few.
“He will learn weapons,” Banichi said. “And hunting.”
Guns. And the other items of mayhem in the Guild’s repertoire. The boy already knew about detonators and wires. Knew about bombs and had seen things no eight-year-old ought to have seen.
“Not too soon,” he said sadly. “Not too soon, Banichi. His aishid is going to have to go off to train. That will be a hard time for him, when Antaro and Jegari go to the Guild.”
As they were already beginning to do, to become security for a boy who would be aiji—with very serious threats to deal with.
“Will those two do all right in that, do you think?” he asked, on the opportunity. “Do you think them apt, after this escapade with the train?”
“They have excellent background,” Banichi said, and, as they reached the study door: “We have had a serious talk,” Banichi said. “If you will, we can take them in hand—and not neglect the paidhi’s security. They are trustworthy, to let within the perimeter. Jago concurs. So do Tano and Algini. We think there are possibilities in these two.”
Of very, very few individuals would his security say that, he was sure.
“Would working with them take you away?” he asked, when he had opened the door and brought them into his study.
“No, Bren-ji. It would let the youngsters stay closer to the Bujavid, closer to the paidhi-aiji, as it happens. With the boy. We may be able to persuade his father.”
He’d missed Cajeiri. Broken pots and all, he enjoyed the company.
“Tabini-aiji said,” said Banichi, “that he came very close to death, this last year. He said that you and the heir might need the closeness of mind you gained with him on the ship, that it might serve you well. The boy has needed time to be atevi: he has needed to develop the instincts—the proper sense of being what he is. But, Tabini-aiji has said, this was never intended to sever you from the heirc should anything befall himself.”
He was a little shocked. Greatly sobered. Grim thought, and profoundly affecting, that the aiji had expressed that intention to his aishid.
“One has regretted the heir’s absence,” Bren said earnestly. “One has regretted it extremely.”
“Your staff knows that,” Banichi said, with an uncommon intensity.
“What do youthink, ’Nichi-ji?” Man’chi, that instinct to group together, that bond that held a household together in crisis, was as profound to atevi as love was to humans. Say that atevi didn’t love. Didn’t feel friendship. That was true. What they did feel was as powerful, as intense. And emotionally-based. “Do you agree with this notion? Does it disrupt us? Does it affect man’chi?”
Banichi had shepherded the young rascal aboard ship. Banichi had built the cars with him. Banichi had guarded the aiji’s son; and Banichi had been in Tabini’s own aishid, once. So had Jago. Now they were in the paidhi’s man’chi, together with Tano and Algini, who had come to them from a slightly more esoteric attachment—the Assassins’ Guild itself.
And didpotentially having the boy and his household tangled in theirs—somehow disturb the equation?
“We would not accept it,” Banichi said, the four-fold-plus-one weof the aishid itself. “We would never accept it, Bren-ji, if there was any possibility it would affect our man’chi to you.”
Bren bowed his head, deep appreciation, with a little tightness in his throat. “One is quite emotionally affected by that declaration, Banichi. You should know that.”
“One is still not a salad,” Banichi said wickedly, and made him laugh—old joke. Old, old joke, between them, from their first try at straightening out that particular question. He’d nailed it down a little better since. They both felt keenly what they did feel. The gulf was still there. One didn’t ask the other to be what he wasn’t, or, to a certain extent, to do what he couldn’t. Banichi and Jago had been ever so frustrated with him on one notable occasion, when their charge had risked his neck trying to protect his bodyguard.
He still would, if it came to that. It frustrated all of them that he had that contrary instinct; but they knew, if push came to shove and he panicked, he’d behave in a very crazy way. They just planned on it; and he tried not to.
Idiot, Banichi might as well have said; and he’d say, That’s what you have to work with, ’Nichi-ji.
It turned out to have been a good thing he’d sent two men with Barb and Ikaro. Barb had restocked the Brighter Days’galley with about a hundred kilos worth of foodstuffs, bought a very, very fine knife for Toby, and a complete atevi child’s dinner gown and coat for herself. She came back down the main hall in a froth of high spirits, while Ikaro privately came to Bren in the study doorway and presented the bills with deep and mortified bows.
“She is the associate of the aikaso’aikasi-najawii of my house,” he assured the young woman: that mouthful was to say, the companion of my sib of the same mother and the same father. “And by no means will the estate bear this expense on its books. I shall, as a gift to my brother. Tell Ramaso I wish to speak with him, and by no means be in the least distressed, nadi-ji. I am not, in the least.”
That was somewhat of an untruth. Ikaro was upset, and on no few levels—distressed that she had not been given the power to restrain Barb, distressed that she had had to worry all afternoon about his reaction, distressed now that the paidhi had possibly been put into a financial position and been finagled into restocking his brother’s boat, distressed that the paidhi was now going to have to talk to Ramaso to straighten things out, and distressed that she might not be kindly dealt with in that discussion. He tried to reassure her. He hoped that Ikaro might confide in him anything she felt she needed to confide regarding the event, if there was, say, more than a hundred kilos of goods, a knife, and a dinner gown involved.
Yes. There was.
When he said, “One hopes that my brother’s lady was circumspect, nadi-ji,” and Ikaro did not look at him eye to eye, but bowed very low indeed, that was a warning.
“She was not circumspect,” he surmised.
Intense embarrassment. Another deep bow, still without looking at him. “It was surely a misunderstanding, nandi. One failed to convey.”
“What happened?”
Hesitation. “She wished to purchase a ninth-year gown.”
He didn’t know what to say for a moment. A child’s coming-to-notice. Officially. And they were hand-made, a costly centerpiece of a family celebration. “One is certain she had no notion that it was a festival gown,” he said.
“Indeed,” Ikaro said, not looking at him.
“Surely—she did not succeed in this purchase.”
“No, nandi. One believes she understood there was a problem.” A bow. “One could not adequately interpret.”