“With great appreciation, nandi,” Bren said, “for the good will of your lordship, under threat from the Kadigidi, which I am certain you disdain. One is particularly sensible that certain persons would hold the paidhi’s presence here as a statement of defiance, and certainly you run a risk, to open your doors to me. But I have every confidence the lord of the Atageini sets his own policy.”
Tatiseigi’s nostrils flared. A deep breath, a calculation in old, canny eyes. I know your infernal tricks, those eyes informed him. I know your flattery. My behavior will be my own, too.
But the respect was at least some face-saving to a lord who had, doubtless before his staff frequently, and loudly, cursed the paidhi and his human influence for years. Tatiseigi was so incredibly conservative and famously kabiu that the Kadigidi and the rebels in Shejidan themselves would hesitate to move against this house, a pillar of atevi culture, a bulwark against the very changes the rebellion publicly decried and wished to undo.
“The paidhi,” Tatiseigi said. “The white rooms, nand’ paidhi. Appropriate, one may say. There is a bath.”
White being the paidhi’s color. The neutral. The houseless. The impartial interpreter and advisor.
Bren bowed, slightly more deeply than courtesy dictated. The old man’s bitter insult was strangely comforting. Tatiseigi was angry with him. Tatiseigi had never been pleased with him, not from the beginning. And he argued, and made the dowager make a personal intervention for his welcome here… politics, politics. And a certain level of forthright detestation of him and the Taibeni. Whatever the strength of that old bond between Tatiseigi and the dowager, it still held; humans were still despised in this household, and on that frank detestation his safety seemed more likely. Treachery did not wear such evident resentment.
A manservant turned up to direct them up the stairs and deal with details, and Banichi and Tano and Algini went with him up the stairs, Jago going ahead of them to resume company with the dowager and the maidservant. Cajeiri and his young friends walked behind the dowager, accompanied by another young man, and with them, far in the lead, a old man who might be one of Tatiseigi’s bodyguard, but not wearing Guild leather, or carrying evident weapons.
Not the most cordial welcome, as it had evolved, but the room was lordly and the bath was glorious, fit for ten atevi at once. The manservant turned certain taps and went elsewhere to open up other lines in the antiquated system. Soon the pipe gurgled, then gave forth an explosion of air, then an abundant flow of cold, then warm, but never quite hot water gushing in with considerable force, hot water either piped in from another boiler or stolen from the distant heating system, or put at a secondary priority to the dowager’s and Cajeiri’s baths, as some of these older houses could arrange. Whatever the water-source, it was warm, it was clean, there was soap, and the flow from the two gold-plated faucets was capable of filling such a huge bath in short order.
Within the time it took them to shake the worst of the dirt off onto the tiles, it had become a very deep bath, sufficient for a human to float and for all the gentlemen of his staff to get in at once, no formalities, no objections, no precedences here.
He was ineffably glad to be rid of the clothes he had worn since the hotel, garments which he surrendered to the servants with apology. Bruises showed in amazing number on his pale skin, polka dots from head to foot. It took a truly bad bruise to show on his atevi companions, but there were a few that did, not to mention small cuts and scrapes.
He scrubbed the dirt he could see, slipped off the tile seat that ran the circumference of the tub, and ducked his head completely underwater, surfaced in bliss and used the provided soap to work up a thick lather. His hair and body felt as if he had picked up passengers. If there were, he cast them adrift. A good deal of scrubbing finally got the lingering smell of fish off his hands… he swore he’d imagined it, since the train, but now he was absolutely convinced it was gone from him and from his companions, replaced by the strong herbal scent of old-fashioned handmade soap. He scrubbed days of dirt from under his nails, and ducked under to rinse, hair streaming about his shoulders, until lack of air made him surface.
“Good,” Banichi said. “You have not drowned.”
“Clean,” he said with a sigh. Banichi at the moment was white-haired and spotted with lather, and bent under the water to rinse, sending islands of froth scudding on the waves Tano and Algini raised.
There was no deep conversation, none, what with the lord’s sharp-eared servants popping into and out of the room, carrying this, bringing that, soap, towels, lotions, every excuse and a hundred trips into the suite. But they needed no conversation. Exhaustion ruled. His staff had been as long out of the saddle as he had in their long voyage, they were surely as sore as he was, and, given their profession, they’d been at a level of tension and alertness he could only imagine for the last number of days. That alertness was still not quite abated, the quick reaction, the dart of attention to a suspicious noise in the bedroom. It was notable that, in Tatiseigi’s oh, so proper house, his staff hadn’t allowed the house servants to come near their weapons or their personal baggage, which sat defiantly, not in the master bedroom, but piled in the corner of the bath with them, in a dry spot on the tiles, tides from the filled tub occasionally washing near it, despite repeated indignant assurances from the staff that the baggage would be perfectly safe and untouched in the bedroom.
Seeing where they had disposed their critical items, Bren had put his gun there, too, with its ammunition, with his computer, with his personal bag. So there everything sat, sacrosanct, if in danger of water, still muddy, but with that in their control, they knew nothing could be added or subtracted. They felt ever so much safer, collectively.
The laundry and cleaning staff, meanwhile, had a major job on their hands, if they meant to restore ravaged clothes, scratched and rain-spattered leather, lace that had long since lost its starch and its whiteness. He had a change of clothes, but of coats he had only one, a formal one, and his staff owned only the coats they wore, which were in need of treatment they habitually attended to themselves. God knew what he would do if they had to ride with another load of frozen fish, or where he was going to get another pair of trousers his size—not to mention the boots, of which he had only the one pair, and those were in the hands of the servants. He had to muster something sufficiently respectable for this house, if they had to pay the courtesies and join Ilisidi downstairs, and oh, he dreaded that.
He shut his eyes. A shadow bent over him. A servant offered him a cordial glass on a tray.
He cast a brief, questioning look across the tub to Banichi, who blinked placidly, a signal Banichi judged it should be all right. He took it, then, but asked what it was. “Gija, nandi,” the servant said.
Safe. No alkaloids. He nodded and sipped the fruit-tasting item, which had a considerable alcohol content.
This staff had never in their lives had to wonder whether there was an alkaloid in certain foodstuffs, since it provided only a nice tang for them. They might make such a mistake in utter innocence. It became his own concern, to eat and drink only things he could identify and keep to simple foods, if his own cook had not prepared the meal—and Bindanda was up on the station, sleeping peacefully in his own bed at this hour, one hoped.
He sipped the drink, arms on the tiled rim, and felt the slow fire spread down his throat, into his stomach, through his veins. The atevi notion of a small drink was a bit excessive for a human and he left a percentage in the glass, when he abandoned it on the edge.
God, he didn’t want to move again. He didn’t know how long the painkiller would hold out. He had no blisters, at least. He’d wondered, this last few hours.