He is a minor child!”
It was an ungraceful moment; it embarrassed the old lord, who was not coping well with the situation. The displacement was a family embarrassment, the Ajuri were already unhappy, but perhaps not so unhappy as Ilisidi, and the Guild was not a comfortable neighbor to anyone.
“They may have my room, great-uncle,” Cajeiri said in his high, distinctive voice, “since I am moving in with great-grandmother.”
“He is perfectly welcome,” Ilisidi said frostily, “since this visitor is so arrogant as to make demands the aiji of Shejidan himself would scruple to make on a historic and damaged house. He has interrupted our supper with his demands, he has tracked sawdust on the floor, he has been inconvenient, inconsiderate and late! He brings no documentation, he begins his investigations in the dark of night, and he disrespects his hostc”
That alone, echoing in the lofty ceiling, accompanied by the sharp crack of Ilisidi’s cane for emphasis, created a stir in the room, and at that very moment, piling confusion dangerously atop disorganization, an entirely new party arrived through the double doors, escorted in by a handful of Taibeni rangers and a cluster of young men in an unlikely mix of worn hunting gear and lordly dress and casuals.
The center of the arriving commotion, hurried along by this unlikely guard, was a frail and elderly gentleman, his queue half undone and his white hair wisping about his beaming face.
Grigiji, Astronomer Emeritus, blithely ignored the glowering Guild, ignored Tabini-aiji as if he had seen him not half an hour ago, and his face lit in thorough, undisguised, childlike delight as his eyes discovered Bren and the dowager.
“Ah, dowager-ji! One was absolutely sure you would be here! We saw the ship from the little telescope. My students informed me, we informed the aiji, of course—” A little bow toward Tabini. “And we came here as fast as we could. How was the voyage? Have you brought data for us?”
Bren rose desperately in a hall not his own, and gave a little bow, trying to manage the situation with this good old man before Guild indignation unraveled everything. “The dowager has brought back the most astounding things, nand’ Astronomer.” No lie at all, but with that lure, he had gained the Astronomer Emeritus’ absolute attention, and was aware simultaneously the hostile Guild was hearing all of it—not with the same delight that shone in the old court Astronomer’s face, and possibly to very different political effect. He aggressively expanded on his statement. “We have documents. The mission was an unqualified success. The danger to the aishidi’tat is much abated—but grown complex.”
“Indeed,” Ilisidi said.
The Guild, meanwhile, stood clearly upstaged in its own moment.
“A chair for the Astronomer,” Tatiseigi said meaningfully, but in vain, as Grigiji moved to pay a bow to Ilisidi, to exchange a few pleasantries, and only then meandered on to Tabini and Damiri, all as if he were at some social gathering— and knowing Grigiji, one could think perhaps that great and childlike mind had quite missed the significance of the Guild presence: They weren’t people he knew, and Bren held his breath for fear the old man would wander on and introduce himself to them. The Guild for its part was thoroughly insulted, no doubt of it, and they glowered at the major domo who had let the Astronomer in, and who attempted, in the small lull, to inform the Guildsmen where they might lodge.
The Guild senior muttered something ungracious. Then in a voice that suddenly carried over all the chaos: “We are here to observe, and what we observe we will take into account, nandiin. Where we wish information, we will ask it. We may and we may not proceed to formal hearing on your question.”
With which the Guildsmen turned and walked out, a black clot of ill will, in a silence still quivering with those deep tones.
The doors shut, hard, with no one to manage them.
“Well,” said Grigiji, “well.” With those perpetually astonished eyes. He was out of breath, windblown, so frail-looking his physical body seemed faded. The life that was in him burned through, all the same, like a star through the fear the Guild had brought in, while his students dispersed about the peripheries of the hall as his bodyguard. These youths, of various social classes, in various shades of dust and informality of dress, mingled with frowning Guildsmen all about the hall. Grigiji’s bodyguard: His students, a motley group of gangling collegiates, but far more martial were his second escort of graceful, silent Taibeni, with their personal armament of hunting rifles and knives. “Those gentlemen seem rather out of countenance, do they not?”
“One doubts,” Tabini said dryly, “that they depart more disturbed than they arrived.”
“Ha,” Ilisidi said, leaning on her cane. “Very welcome termination of that sorry display. Bravely done, Gri-ji.”
“Very dangerously done,” Lord Tatiseigi muttered. “And under my roof!”
“Pish! Wisely handled, Tati-ji, wisely and deftly managed. Nand’ Bren, very deftly done.”
“Nand’ dowager.” Bren managed a bow and sank back into his chair, wishing he were back upstairs, and far from confident he had been at all wise to drop that information into the pool.
“But where are these records you name?” the Astronomer asked.
“Might we see them?”
“In due time, nand’ Astronomer,” Tabini said, getting to his feet.
“A staff meeting may be in order at this point, to bring everyone up to the moment. Will any of your young gentlemen choose to attend, nand’ Astronomer?”
Staff meeting. Almost universally Guild staff, that was the irony—a meeting regarding the deadly presence that had entered their midst, with events and perhaps other Assassins subtly percolating through the countryside, all aiming here, at Tabini. And new information in the mix: the non-appearance of legislators summoned to the capital, the claim of these three Guild officers to an authority the validity of which no outsider to their Guild had the means to determine. The whole business had the ominous tension of a landslide just on the verge, and at least the Astronomer’s students, not being as unworldly as the Astronomer, all looked worried at their inclusion in that suggestion.
“Aiji-ma,” the senior of that lot said, bowing his head, while Kadiyi of Ajuri clan moved close for a word with his niece, Damiri casting up a worried, frowning glance at that whispering.
Bren sucked in a deep breath and cast a look to his own right, where Banichi loomed; not a word had he had from Banichi or Jago, although he was sure they had observations.
The Atageini and the aiji’s guard had fortified a line out there with buses and trucks and farmers with hunting rifles but clearly that wasn’t how the greatest threat had come to them. It had come up as three men at their door, answering a letter, and demanding to spend the night under their roof, right in the heart of their defenses.
And they still weren’t that sure of the men around Tabini.
“Are we to have supper at all?” the older Ajuri lord asked petulantly, amid all this. “Are we finally to be served the rest of our supper at some time this evening, respecting the noble efforts of your poor cook, nandi?”
The very thought of food turned Bren’s stomach.
But on the other hand having dinner was a practical notion. It fortified them against the night. It flew the banner of the completely ordinary in the face of that arrogant intrusion. It gave staffs time to confer without lordly interference. Tatiseigi, appearing quite glad to have the distraction from present dangers, gathered himself up and said yes, they should resume their dinner, and in short order, too—the new arrivals were to have a cold supper sent to their quarters.