“Yes, nandi.”
“So.” Bren brought his hand down on the seat rail. “So we shall hope to meet an excellent if retiring young man, one who, whatever his failings, offered the proper response when you were in trouble. Is that entirely agreed upon?”
“Yes, nandi.”
“ Pleasestay close to me and my aishid.”
“Yes, nandi. We shall be very careful. We shall be absolutely well-behaved. And we shall not touch anything.”
“One is grateful. You may justly discharge your debt by visiting him, briefly, and expressing a reserved gratitudec in one sentence, young lord! For the rest—you are your father’s son and your great-grandmother’s great-grandson and you are not obliged to twosentences.”
A bright grin. A laugh. Cajeiri had one excellent quality, having had the dowager for a teacher: the ability to see when grownups had their reasons, and to sense that complex politics should be left to his elders. “Yes, nandi! One sentence. We promise.”
“We will handle other matters.”
“Yes, nandi.” Eyes flitted to a fair-sized animal bounding along beside the bus. “Is that an ai’wita?”
Hopeless. The kid waseight. Bren laughed, and waved his hand. “Go look at it.”
A thunder of youngsters leaving their seats, headed for the back windows to have a look, and Bren turned and sank down in his own seat, with a roll of the eyes toward Banichi and Jago, who were amused.
He truly wished he could bring up Baiji’s debt, but that was going to have to be finessed, now that Baiji had paid off in other ways. Possibly, too, Baiji had gotten on the wrong side of some of his uncle Geigi’s talent—a knack for standing on both sides of an issue—he could still be playing minor politics with old Southern contacts, who knew? It could be useful. Tabini-aiji was working hard from the other side, trying to use the Farai as a wedge into a changed Southern political landscape. Their layabout lordling Baiji could end up being useful a second time.
Meanwhile, his own day’s program involved getting back to the estate before even mild-mannered Tano locked Barb in her room.
The south road, past the intersection for the train station, rose over rolling hills as a slightly muddy track, not well-kept—shockingly not well-kept, one might think. It devolved from a graveled stretch of dirt to a thin pair of wheel marks through tall grass with only the memory of gravel to keep it from mud puddles. It was not overgrown with brush, one could at least say that for the traffic, as the people of Kajiminda had surely come and gone to market in the village, and up to the train station or as various freight might have come from the airport. Surely Najida had sent some small commerce over to Kajiminda’s farming village, and conversely. But the upkeep had definitely fallen off since the last time Bren had seen the route, and, Bren supposed, it was not all one-sided. Things must have fallen off during the Troubles.
So hisestate might make the gesture of improving it, putting down gravel, and cutting the grass, at least to the halfway mark.
He was already seeing certain things he thought he should report to Lord Geigi, once they drove onto Kajiminda: the condition of a low wooden bridge, blocked with brush and ready to become a major problem of local flooding—erosion across the road, a hard bump for a bus or a truck: points against the young caretaker lord. Those inroads of erosion were going to become a gully at that low spot. And he noted loose boards on the second low bridge they crossed. The road definitely should be an issue in their eventual conversation, when they had done their fill of thank you and what a storm that had been.
The outlying signage was yet another matter: it generally needed painting. And the sign that pointed to Kajiminda, where the main market road went on down the coast toward the greater township in the region, and the lesser one went on toward the estate—that was lying on its face in the grass.
Certainly, the factory further down the main road in Lord Geigi’s district should be generating traffic clear to Dalaigi, and up to Kajiminda—but it looked no better on the track they did not take. Lack of maintenance up in this direction might have discouraged it, that, or habits and patterns of travel had shifted during the years of the Troubles—granted, this was not a main road, and possibly some change in rail service had encouraged them to use the rails for something that local. But it didn’t change the fact that the road needed to be fixed.
He remarked to Banichi and Jago, “We shall want to visit the factory, on some day before we leave the district. There is a certain lack of maintenance. But despite other circumstances, one has no wish to enter upon a neighborly exchange with an excessively critical view. There may be reasons.”
“Yes,” Banichi said, but Banichi’s gaze was otherwise out the window, observing details, marking this, marking that. So was Jago’s attention.
The youngsters clearly thought the jolts and ruts were exciting. The road had, to the paidhi’s eye, a certain spookiness about itc and still he told himself that it was no good going into a negotiation with preconceptions based on road maintenance.
In that view, as they had turned onto the unmarked and overgrown track that led to Lord Geigi’s estate, Bren said to himself that he might reasonably extend the gesture at least of mowing, if not patching allthe road up to Geigi’s private road—he should offer that, for an old ally’s sake, and for the help Baiji himself had rendered in a desperate situation. If there was any dearth of proper equipment in this estate, there was not in Najida: he had a grader, and a truck, and he could get repairs moving. This young man might have felt somewhat isolated and lacking direction in his situation during the Troubles. Perhaps he had simply not been up to the job he was given—the Maschi line was running thin, down almost to its last. Possible Baiji had come in with no training for the job he had prematurely attained. Possibly he and staff had had their difficultiesc Perhaps Najida could help smooth over more than the roads.
Bump! The passage of truck tires—at least more frequent here—had created massive potholes, where the native sandstone, not far beneath the layer of dirt and grass had shattered or eroded into sand.
Well, however, his own two-year departure from the region, almost three years until this visit, had removed the last experienced authority from the district and left everything to Baiji. Could he greatly blame the man, who had at least avoided invasion on this coast? Baiji might be due some credit in areas other than road construction.
And the villa did, when it appeared in the distance, appear much as it had a decade and more ago, red tile roofs above a sprawling structure of the harder, coastside limestone, plastered and painted white.
Well-painted and orderly, still, within its surrounding garden walls, with the little false garden watchtowers, and the villa’s general L-shaped roof reflecting the bright sun in a cheerful way. That view entirely lightened his mood. The orchards were still well kept. The stucco wall and towers—built mostly to keep pests out of the orchard—were immaculate.The natural woodland that ran down to the shore was still what it had been. Geigi’s dock and yacht were not visible from this vantage: the wooded coast curved somewhat, making a neat little cove where Geigi kept his boats, and from which Geigi’s extended household did a little fishing. And when they turned through the gates of the low, white-plastered outer wall, the road became a broad gravel track, leading up to a portico not unlike that at Najida.