If you were a lord like Geigi, who’d actually married into the Marid, or drawn a wife out of there, you sensibly worried about the safety of your household—but that household being Edi, the likelihood of any lingering liaison was not high at all. It had surely frustrated the Marid, and perhaps made them wonder who was spying on whom. Geigi’s ex-wife had not risen high in her life, nothing so grand, after Geigi. She’d gone off to the Marid taking all Geigi’s account numbers with her, but Geigi, Rational Determinist that he was—had not been superstitious. He had immediately changed them, and the Marid’s attempts to get into those accounts had rung alarms through the banking system, a defeat that had greatly embarrassed Machigi’s predecessor.
It had been an elegant, quiet revenge that had done the wife’s whole family no good at all. Doubtless they took it personally.
Paru was the subclan in question, on the ex-wife’s father’s side. He wrote that name down, then got up and walked to the security station, the library, walked in after a polite knock and laid that name on the counter.
Jago, who was nearest, looked at it, and looked up at him curiously.
“This is the clan of Geigi’s wife,” he said, “who was greatly embarrassed in her failure to drain his accounts. And they doown a bank in Separti Township: Fortunate Investments. One simply wonders if they have any current involvement.”
“Paru,” Algini mused. “Fortunate Investments, indeed.”
“Certainly worth inquiring,” Tano said.
“Bren-ji is doing our job, nadiin-ji,” Jago said, amused.
“One does apologize,” he said, though the reception of his little piece of information was beyond cheerful. It clearly delighted his aishid.
“Permission to discuss with Geigi’s staff,” Banichi said.
His bodyguard had a new puzzle. They were cramped in these quarters, they were operating nearly round the clock, and Banichi and Jago had bruises and stitches from the last foray, but they had a puzzle to work on. They were happy.
“I leave it in your hands, nadiin-ji,” he said. “Whatever you deem necessary.”
And they thought his small piece of information was worth tracking. Nobody said, as they usually did, oh, well, they had already investigated that.
So he went back to mining the database with a little more enthusiasm.
When one was put out with half one’s aishid and not speaking to them, it was a grim kind of day. Everybody in nand’ Bren’s house was serious and busy. Cajeiri was bored, bored, bored, and tired of being grown up, which he had been all morning and most of the day, but it was not hisfault half his aishid were obnoxious, and he was tired of dealing with them, so he just found excuses to keep them elsewhere and away from him—it was no cure, but it at least made him happier.
There was a beautiful bay out there, probably sparkling in the sunshine, with boats and everything—but one would never know it, in the house, with all the windows shuttered tight.
There was a garden out there, with sky overhead and things to get into that they had never had time to investigate.
But it was off limits, because there could be snipers.
There was the garden shed, and the wrecked old bus, and all sorts of things worth seeing, not even mentioning there was Najida village not too far away, about which they had only heard, and which they had never yet visited.
And there were fishing boats and the dock and all the shops on down the beach toward the village, from a blacksmith to a net-maker. The servants talked about the net-maker’s son, who was about his age, so he gathered, and it was all off limits, because of snipers and kidnappers. The net-maker’s son could be outside in the sunshine. The aiji’s son was stuck inside, behind shutters.
The Marid was a damned nuisance to him personally, along with all the real harm they had done to completely innocent people, including one of mani’s young men being dead, which was just hard even to think of and terribly sad. When hewas aiji, he was going to be their enemy, and they had better figure how to make peace with him or it would turn out very badly for them.
Probably his father was thinking the same thing, by now, and one was sure Great-grandmother was not going to forgive what the Marid had done, but he wished he knew what his father was doing, and one neverknew entirely what Great-grandmother was going to do, but it could be grim.
It was a scary, worrisome thing, to send Guild out on a mission. Nand’ Bren had had to send Banichi and Jago out, and Jago had gotten hurt, which he was really sorry about. And if things got really bad, they were going to have to send a lot of Guild out, and people he knew could get killed. He hated even thinking about that.
He just wished the Marid lords would do something really stupid and that his father’s men—mostly strangers—would go in and settle with them before somebody he knew got hurt.
But the Marid sat down in their land and had their fingers in everything, including, apparently, trying to finagle or bluff their way into Geigi’s clan, if what Lucasi and Veijico occasionally reported back was true. The Marid had possibly infiltrated the Maschi, and Great-grandmother was making a lot of phone calls, but his informants had no idea what she was saying or who she was calling, except it was code.
And Lord Geigi and nand’ Bren were planning to go take Kajiminda back.
And the Edi thought they were going to replace his father’s Guild, who were occupying it at the moment.
And meanwhile Guild was investigating things on the other side of Kajiminda, down in Separti Township, because Marid agents had set up down there.
But that was not all that was going on, because once Lord Geigi had taken Kajiminda, he was going to go inland and visit his cousins in the Maschi stronghold, and it was possible he was going to tell the current Maschi lord to retire so Lord Geigi could take over the whole clan. How this was going to work, one was not certain, but it sounded risky, and people were likely to say no to thatc
And if the Maschi lord agreed, and Geigi moved in at Targai, there was the Marid right next door. It looked to him as if Lord Geigi was setting up to be real trouble to the Marid, and if it looked that way to him, being a kid, one could expect the Marid was going to figure it out—and figure they had one choice at that point: give up annoying the west, or go after Geigi.
He really hoped the Marid would decide then, just like in chess, that they really should not make the next few moves. That was the way he saw it: just like the chessboard—which he played pretty well, but not as well as mani, not nearly as well as mani. And there was nand’ Bren, being the Advisor; and Geigi, being the Rider and moving by zigs and zags; and the Marid could see them maneuvering.
The piece they knew they needed to watch—that was the Consort. And if they were not stupid, they would know that.
Which was whythey had to have everything shuttered up, and whyeverybody was so grim. If they were stupid, they would try to go straight for the Consort, that was mani. And mani knew it.
Mani had taught him that game on the ship. She said it was a human game, but atevi were generally better at it. And he had thought—he had been just six, then—that it was funny that mani ever played games. But she and Cenedi played, sometimes, and early on he had thought all that sitting and staring was just boring.
Sit down, she had said when he said so. And she had proceeded to teach him. He played it with Gene and Artur, the both of them against him, and then they had gotten Irene to join in, so it was him against all of them. Just occasionally they had won, and when they did, he would have learned something.