And that historical fact could have suspicion falling on Cajeiri’s own mother, Lady Damiri herself, and particularly her maids, who were right under Tabini’s roof at the moment. The maids and staff that attended Damiri indeed might have a motive if the name of the game was another overthrow of the aiji her husband, this time with the half-Atageini heir firmly in their own hands.
And never leave out the Taibeni themselves—who hated the Atageini. Tabini’s bodyguard were new men, Taibeni, like Cajeiri’s young staff, but, no, one of that clan had been left lying unconscious in a passageway. Taibeni kidnappers would not have injured her and left her there, surely not, nor would her brother Jegari, under any reasonable circumstances, have betrayed his young lord—he just could not believe it of the boy. The aiji’s new guard, Jaidiri and his men, might turn into prime suspects—but never those two youngsters, not unless there was some completely hidden connection that no research had turned up, some man’chi undetected, that caught even atevi completely unawares— God help them all, he thought; they might well be on the verge of a second coup, this time to set up a regency for the underage heir, or possibly to dispose of an heir with unwelcome blood connections: either was possible, and there were all too many people in the aishidi’tat who wished the paidhi dead right along with the current administration.
He could not think about that. That danger was not even a consideration in the need to get the facts straight and most urgent of all, to find the boy and get him back.
Banichi had gone into the drawing room where the aiji was.
He came out again. “Come,” he said, and brought them both with him into the study, where Tabini and Damiri stood with Cenedi.
Both were engaged with Jaidiri and Madiri in very heated conversation. The nature of it all Bren could not immediately figure, except, from Jaidiri’s side, it regarded incompetence, a designation which one feared meant the dowager’s domestic staff.
Madiri looked as if he had something caught in his throat and wanted to spit it.
“The dowager knows no such thing,” Cenedi said strongly, “nor has she any knowledge. She is in the air at this moment, on her way here to answer her grandson’s questions in person— if we can get clearance for her plane to land.”
The latter with a burning glance at Jaidiri.
“She will have it,” Tabini said with a dismissive motion of his hand.
“Aiji-ma,” Jaidiri began in protest, and Cenedi cut him off short.
“We have three planes aloft that took off before anyone ever shut down the airport, gods less fortunate! We have trains moving, we had simple trucks coming and going for the better part of an hour before we had a report, let alone put up barriers. I have had time to get here on a scheduled flight, and what other trucks have now gone to outlying airports or train stations? No one knows!”
“That is being answered,” Banichi said somberly, as Tabini glowered and Damiri simply paced the floor, her arms folded and her lips pressed to a thin line.
“Aiji-ma,” Jago said quietly, arriving inside, and bowed, and came close, bowing again. “The young gentleman’s escort, Jegari, has just phoned from the airport. He lost contact with the kidnappers there.
He hoped he could stop them taking off, but two of the three planes had left the ground before he reached the airport security office, the third shortly after. There was no stopping them, aiji-ma. They are in the air.”
Damn, Bren thought. From there—south? It was a disaster.
“The Guild has grounded all other flights, aiji-ma,” Jago said.
“Too damned late,” Damiri said, from behind Tabini’s chair, the first words she’d uttered.
“The boy followed them?” Tabini asked sharply. “How?”
“One is given to understand,” Jago said, “that he escaped at the airport. He has not reported the identity of any aircraft. Guild is questioning him at this moment, aiji-ma.”
“The airport and these planes leaving may have been a diversion,” Jaidiri said from the side of the room. “They may have deliberately let the Taibeni boy escape, to give out that news.”
Jago had her own electronics, was into the information flow within the staff, clearly, and still listening with one ear, her finger pressing that unit close. “The boy jumped from a moving truck.
Cajeiri is now alone with these people and unconscious, as Jegari last saw. He observed their truck go toward the freight depot as he was trying to reach an office.” A pause as she, and by his look, Banichi, both listened to what was apparently an ongoing account.
“The boy said he knew the men, aiji-ma. He had seen them in the apartment, as the dowager’s guests—”
“Caiti,” Cenedi said sharply.
“Easterners,” Jaidiri muttered, as Cenedi’s back stiffened.
“The aiji-dowager is approaching the city,” Cenedi retorted, “and has no part in this. Her relations with Caiti are not close. Where was your staff, nadi?”
A sore point, clearly. “Men of yours as well, nadi.”
“Drugged,” Banichi said shortly. “The heir’s entire guard, nadiin.”
“Except the young attendants,” Jaidiri muttered.
“And who carried away my son?” Damiri asked sharply. “Who, on this staff, nadiin, drugged Guild security? And why is no one preventing that plane from landing in the south!”
The silence persisted a few beats. Nobody knew the first. Nobody had the resources for the second. Nothing outflew an airliner.
Ground resources in the south were scarce—not nonexistent: scarce, and difficult to contact in a secure mode.
“Banichi, Cenedi-nadi,” Tabini said, and beckoned them close.
“Nand’ paidhi.” Tabini beckoned to him.
He had not expected it. He went, and he bowed, and knelt down by Tabini’s chair, in intimate hearing. And what the aiji’s guard thought of this conference one could only imagine: the man must be seething.
But then Tabini said, “Jaidiri-nadi,” and beckoned that man to join them. Jaidiri did so, a stiff, disapproving presence.
“The culprits are likeliest Eastern,” Tabini said, “and our position is that we will not negotiate with them in whatever they demand.
If my grandmother goes East, nand’ paidhi, you will join her.”
“Yes, aiji-ma.”
That the kidnappers were Eastern was certainly the most logical assumption in the current situation—and Tabini’s position was the only position he could take in the situation. Both Tabini and his grandmother had to maintain their grip, and after them, that boy, and, no, Ilisidi might actually have done in a husband and maybe a son and might conceivably be aiming at her grandson, Tabini, but the boy she alone had raised— God, had that been part of Tabini’s motive in sending his son and Ilisidi on that voyage? To forge that sense of connection, that unbreakable man’chi? To make his son and heir safe from his own great-grandmother?
The mind jolted absolutely sideways, when it needed desperately to be here and now, eye to eye with Tabini, as Tabini laid a hand on his shoulder, a grip that bruised. “You are valued, paidhi-aiji. You are valued.”
“Aiji-ma, my value in this situation is my persuasion. I beg to try.”
“Defend my grandmother,” Tabini said sharply. “Thankless though the task may be, keep her alive, paidhi-aiji, her and my son.
We want her back.”
“Aiji-ma.” Acceptance of his proposal—with all it meant.
Persuasion. He was profoundly touched, and simultaneously terrified.
Assure the aiji-dowager turned from Eastern to western man’chi?
Break the influence of her neighbors, if it was a factor—if, somehow, Ilisidi was in on this maneuver? Give her a politically safe turn-around if she was actually behind the kidnapping?