“It will not be easy for Taro to get up there,” Veijico said. “They have refused us clearance. They are being very stubborn on that.”
“They.” If it was any of his father’s guard, or his great-grandmother’s, he could deal with that.
“The Guild itself,” Veijico said. “Even Cenedi tried. But they will not clear us to have the codes.”
“Well, but Antaro is clever,” he said. Antaro could very often talk her way through things none of the rest of his aishid could manage.
And it was, after all, his room, his residence she was asking access for. If she could just get upstairs, even if his father’s major domo had sworn on his life not to unlock the apartment door, surely he could just get the paper from his pocket in the closet and slide it out to her.
Surely the rules were not that tight.
Once the major d’ talked to his father, he might have to admit to his father he had lost the paper, but his father would at least have to admit that he and his aishid had solved the problem.
And he would be perfect in his speech. So his father could not fault him.
· · ·
Sitting helped. Bren drew far easier breaths. The cool air from the vent helped even more. Banichi, however, would not take his seat and sit down. And he himself could not stay there. He nerved himself for a rise to his feet.
“Nandi,” Jago warned him just as he came upright, on his feet, and he saw, edging up on him—
Topari and two of his guard.
“Nand’ paidhi,” Topari said, reaching him, and sketched a bow.
How did he get an invitation? was Bren’s initial thought, but he put a smile on his face.
“Nandi. One hopes the evening finds you well.”
“Well enough,” Topari said without a bow. “Nand’ paidhi, you said there would be a meeting. Your office has not answered my letter.”
He had not instructed his secretarial office, not expecting Topari would take that route, and a single day did not put any ordinary message to the top of the stack in his secretarial office. He gave a small, automatic bow, not needing to feign mild surprise. “One rather expected you would simply send to me, nandi, directly, as indeed I invited you to do. What did this letter regard?”
“A meeting,” Topari said—the man had the manners of a mecheita in a mob run. “A meeting with the aiji-dowager.”
“Regarding?”
“I have exchanged messages with several of my neighbors. We have questions. We need to be consulted, more than that—considered—in this rail matter. We insist.”
“Indeed, nandi, there will certainly be a consideration of your interests.”
“Freight is one thing. Passengers are another. We maintain our sovereignty. We shall have no outsiders setting up business in our station.”
“I think it extremely likely we can do business, nandi.” Bren said to him, and thank God young Dur, out of nowhere, moved in with, “May one be introduced, nand’ paidhi?”
It was a rescue, an absolute, self-sacrificing rescue. “Ah! Nandi, nand’ Topari of Hasurjan, up in the southern mountains. His district maintains a rail station which could be quite important in the southern route, and he has concerns that Transport will certainly want to consider.—Nand’ Topari, nand’ Reijiri, whose father is lord of Dur, in the Coastal Association, and who is on the Transport Committee.”
“The father, that, is.”
“Indeed, nandi,” young Dur said, and Bren took the practiced shift of balance and step backward and away, disengagement, with deep gratitude, and without his bodyguard having to remind him of a fictitious other meeting. He extricated himself from the little cul-de-sac and made it all the way to the next aisle of displays. No telling to whom Reijiri might pass the man next, someone worthy, he hoped. He worked his way closer to the front of the hall, and out of convenient view.
There was, one was grateful to see, another air vent.
Then there was a massive waft of cooler air, as two of the four shut doors opened—security had had all the doors shut—and now evidently had relented. No few of the crowd murmured relief.
Antaro arrived inside, one noted, by one of those doors. One had no idea where she had been.
· · ·
“One cannot get through,” Antaro reported, in a tone under the general buzz of conversation in the hall. “I have tried the lifts, the stairs, and the servant passages, and they are all shut down. No one is allowed to operate the lifts and communications are not working. I succeeded in phoning your father’s apartment, and Eisi has retrieved the paper, but he cannot leave the apartment. Even the major domo cannot get clearance to come downstairs, and the guards on the stairs will not even talk to me, nandi. Veijico might. She has more seniority on the books. Or one could go to Cenedi.”
“He would tell mani,” Cajeiri said. “No. No, Taro-ji. It is almost too late as is. They have opened all the doors. Likely we will be going to the Audience Hall almost any moment.”
“One regrets, nandi, one greatly regrets this!”
“By no means,” he said. “I am the one who left the paper. I remember enough of it. I have almost all the pieces. My father will hardly notice. Certainly no one else will. It is by no means your fault.”
“One is very certain,” Antaro said, still breathing hard, “one is very certain it was composed to be felicitous. Be careful of numbers, nandi. Think through the numbers. Your father will have been very careful of that.”
“I shall. I can. It will be all right, Taro-ji. No one will notice it at all.”
“One earnestly hopes,” Antaro said. She had never seemed to be that distressed, even when people were shooting at them.
“It is stupid anyway,” he said, “that they do not recognize us. It is certainly not your fault. And I have it memorized. I just need to recall it.”
He did remember a lot of the speech. There was one line in the first statement he was not sure of, but he could get it back, if only people would let him alone for just a few moments, and if his aishid could protect him from more people wanting to congratulate him on his birthday. There was no way to get off in a corner for quiet. His father insisted he stand nearby, and most of the people who congratulated him he was sure just wanted an excuse to talk to his father.
He gained a few moments of quiet, however. He stood and tried to think of the missing words. He tried—
Then his father called him to meet an elderly lady from the northern coast, up where the world froze, and she asked him questions, and all the while the minutes were ticking down toward their shift to the Audience Hall.
· · ·
A nine-year-old’s birthday party, Bren thought. And the majority of attendees were over sixty. The three young guests flitted fairly sedately under Jase’s control, in quest of interesting things in the cases and trying very properly to keep their hands off the glass. The honoree of the day, meanwhile, remained bravely proper, still meeting and talking with elder guests, while his parents and great-grandmother did the same, while his great-uncle sat signing ribboned cards and likely discussing pottery glazes.
There were all these wonderful things to explore and Cajeiri could not even come near his own three guests, who did not rank high enough to stand by him, nor even see the exhibit. He’d become one, along with the rest of his family.
Poor kid.
“And these guests,” one elderly lady asked of Bren. “What will they report in the heavens? What will the ship-aiji say, with all these terrible goings-on at Tirnamardi?”
“Jase-aiji is a strong ally of the aiji, and he and his bodyguards have reassured the children—not forgetting at all that these children are very strongly loyal to the young gentleman.”