“ I rescued the aiji’s son at sea!” Baiji cried. “If I were of hostile mind, I would have delivered him to these alleged Southerners!”
“One might point out,” Bren said, “that I personally, aboard my boat, followed your nephew’s indication to locate and pick up the heir, who was at no time actually in your nephew’s hands. What he would have done had he been the one to intercept the aiji’s son is a matter of dispute.”
“Unfair!” Baiji protested. “Unfair, nandi!”
Ilisidi signaled she wanted the handset. Immediately. He picked it up, passed it over, and it reverted to handset mode, silent to the rest of the room.
“Nandi,” she said. “Geigi? Your nephew has become a scandal. Your estate reverts to yourcapable hands. Settle whom you wish in charge, exceptthis young disgrace! The connivance of the Marid to take this coast has continued and your nephew continues to temporize with the South as he did during Murini’s tenure. There was excuse, while Murini sat in charge, but this flirtation has continued into inappropriate folly and a reluctance to go to court. One cannot imagine what this young fool hopes to gain, except to extend the Marid into northern waters and settle himself in luxury funded by my grandson’s enemies!”
“I never did such things!” Baiji cried.
“And he is a liar!” Ilisidi snapped. Then she smiled sweetly, and extended the phone toward Baiji. “Your uncle wishes to speak to you, nadi.”
The servants who surrounded Baiji still did so, and Cenedi would not let Baiji touch the dowager, even indirectly: Cenedi transferred the phone to a servant, who gave it to Baiji, who put the receiver to his ear with the expression of a man handling something poisonous. His skin had acquired a gray cast, his face had acquired a rigid expression of dismay, and as he answered, “Yes, uncle?” and listened to what Geigi had to say, he seemed to shrink in size, his shoulders rounded, his head inclined, his occasional attempts to speak instantly cut off.
“Yes, uncle,” he said, “yes, uncle, yes, one understan—” A bow, a deeper bow, to the absent lord of his small clan. “Yes, uncle. One assures—uncle, one in no way—Yes, uncle.” And then: “They just left, uncle. One has no idea why. One did nothing to—” Baiji was sweating. Visibly. And Ilisidi sat there with the smile of a guardian demon, staring straight at him, with Cenedi standing by her side.
Bren—just sat listening, until a movement in the doorway caught his eye.
Cajeiri had shown up, his two companions barely visible in the hallc Cajeiri in an oversized bathrobe, hugging it around him and drinking everything in with large eyes and two very good ears. He didn’t create a stir, didn’t say a thing.
And, silent, like two black ghosts, Banichi and Jago turned up behind Cajeiri, likewise listening.
Bren found he himself had dropped a couple of stitches in the moment of noticing that arrivaclass="underline" Baiji was handing the phone back to one of his servant-guards, who offered it back to Cenedi, who offered it to Ilisidi.
“Yes?” she saidc and looked fiercely satisfied. “Excellent. We shall see he does, Geigi-ji. We shall try to learn the whereabouts of staff. And we shall expect you.”
“Expect you.” So Lord Geigiwas coming down from the station, on—Bren found he had lost track of the launch schedule and had no idea of the date of the next shuttle flight; but it was weekly. It would not be long, likely, before Baiji found himself accounting to his uncle in meticulous detail.
Ilisidi handed the phone to Bren. “Lord Geigi has signed off, nand’ paidhi. But he wishes you well.”
“Indeed.” He set the handset back in its cradle. “And you, neighbor?” LordBaiji, he did notsay: Ilisidi had removed that title with that simple, deliberate nadi, and he didn’t argue.
Baiji clasped his hands between his knees and compressed his lips to a thin line as he bowed to the dowager and to him. “One apologizes,” he said. “One so profoundly apologizes, nandiin.”
Whack! went the cane.
“About time!” Ilisidi said. “Confess, wretch, or we shall lose all patience! What began your unfortunate association with these notorious troublemakers? Name their names, each one!”
Baiji stammered something. Bang! went the cane a second time.
“You have this single chance to redeem yourself,” Ilisidi snapped. “Your uncle will ask us what your subsequent behavior may have been, and we assure you we shallanswer him. As things stand, we cannot construe a use for you. As things may become, we mayconsider a quiet settlement that may let you recover some respectability. Choose, and choose now!”
“With greatest appreciation, aiji-ma, with greatest appreciation for your intercession—”
“You bore us. Talk! Give us your account!”
The dowager did nothing to steady Baiji’s nerves. His mouth opened and closed. He mopped his face with his sleeve, and he said: “Aiji-ma. My fault began with the Troubles, when the whole world was going toward Murini. The Marid supported him in everything. But the lords of the Marid—after supporting Murini in his—in his ill-considered enterprise—”
“Attacking my grandson and murdering his staff. Let us be specific.”
“Attacking—attacking the aiji, yes, aiji-ma. Once Murini had done that, once he had taken over the central clans, the Marid would, one is quite sure, have replaced him if they could. One saw them manuevering for power, in the old way.”
“A reasonable assessment,” Ilisidi said mildly.
“And in their maneuevers, aiji-ma, in the nature of their manuevers, one feared they wished to extend their power up from the South without challenging Murini up in Shejidan. It was no profit to them to go eastward. All the economic profit lay in their going westward and north, along the coast, which is a kind of enterprise—fishing, and all—that they understand. They were sending out emissaries and promising extravagant things in their own name, saying that they were Murini’s allies and that favor and economic union with them would gain great profit. The alternative—the alternative—was down in Pura, where they assassinated—assassinated Lord Kaien and his whole household.”
“A disgrace.”
“It was so tiny a house. It threatened no one, but it suggested independence and no one could protect it. That was the point, aiji-ma. From where we stood it was very clear. And houses capitulated, one after the other, the Udiri, the Wori, the Maisi and the others, right up the coast. Even Dalaigi wasc was growing quite chancy: Southerners openly walked the streets, and there were assassinations of small people, even shopowners, for refusing to deal with them. The Edi were not able to withstand these assaults. The little villages—these people could by no means pack up and go into the hills, and there was no safety in the inland, nor any aiji to hear their request for help. There was nothing for them to do, aiji-ma. I had no support—I could no longer contact my uncle! I could no longer protect Kajiminda!”
“Go on. Omit nothing.”
“Aiji-ma, a letter from the South was by no means unexpected. Murini was by then in Shejidan. Receiving this letter— one might have appealed to Shejidan and voiced one’s opinion that the Marid was only supporting Murini as a convenience, and that they meant to assassinate him once the center of the aishidi’tat was in any sense stable under his rule. One thought of this act. But from a coastal lord and a relative of Lord Geigi— one had no confidence that Murini-aiji would hear such an opinion with any understanding or gratitude. He would be just as likely to report all I said to the Lord of the Marid, and then where would I stand? I would be dead. I believed I would be dead in short order did I attempt to reason with Murini or divide him from his Southern allies.”
“Not badly reckoned,” Ilisidi said more mildly. “You begin to interest usc even to make some sense. Name names and recall that we have been out of the current of Southern politics for three years.”