“Go,” Jago said. “Have your own bath, Bren-ji. We have told the aiji’s staff the gist of things. More than that, Cenedi will brief them, if they will not hear us.”
Cenedi, the dowager’s chief of security, was clearly their best hope: whatever Tabini’s feelings toward the paidhi-aiji, the aiji-dowager would get through, and Cenedi, in her name, could grab staff by the lapels and talk urgent sense to themc all sorts of urgent sense. But one also had to worry whether Tabini, with new staff around him, the others having perished, might not be subject to a new filter of information. They were Taibeni, but not all; and Bren had never known them.
“I shall, then,” he said.
“We have sent for clothes,” Jago said. “One still hopes.”
It was by no means his security’s job. But his clothing, adult but child-sized, posed a major problem: It was not as if they could run to a local shop, even for the most basic items, and Tatiseigi’s hospitality had provided no domestic services ordinary to such a house. Their host was extremely harried, one had to understand, his housekeeping staff already pressed to the limits, and as exhausted as the security staffc but the plain fact was Tatiseigi detested humans as much as he hated Taibeni, with as much history behind the feeling: he hated their look, hated their influence, their technology, and their continued presence on the planet, and having a human house-guest attendant on the general destruction of his lawn, his hedges, and the tranquility of his province had clearly not made him change his mind on the topic.
And if all that were not enough, Tatiseigi personally and as a close relative resented the paidhi’s former influence with Tabini-aiji and his current influence with the dowager. Most particularly Tatiseigi resented his relationship with the young lord, the aiji’s son—Tatiseigi’s own great-grandnephew, who had stood up for the paidhi in no uncertain terms.
Oh, the paidhi was under Lord Tatiseigi’s roof on tolerance, no question, no matter that he and his staff—and the aforementioned young lord, with the detested Taibeni—had helped rescue the house from destruction last night. Lord Tatiseigi’s view was that the house would never have been attacked and damaged in the first place if not for the paidhi’s past influence, his support of this radical new space technology, its economic disruption, and the upheaval it wrought among the provinces. Consequently, the paidhi and his atevi staff could quite nicely go to hell—so long as the aiji-dowager didn’t notice his departure. So, no, there were no domestic servants to help them, it was hardly graceful to protest it from his tenuous position, and he had no wish to provoke another argument downstairs.
But the sad truth was, he, born a nice democratic Mospheiran fellow, had grown pitifully dependent on clothes turning up miraculously arranged in his closet, the socially appropriate garments appearing in the hands of servants who would help him dress. Lace would be starched and hand pressed, every detail of his attire and his bodyguards’ black leather rendered immaculate without their much thinking about it or questioning what they were to wear on what occasion. Everything would be perfect—if his own staff were here. If he needed delicately hint at something, his staff would talk to house staff, or to any other lord’s staff, and miracles would happen, appointments would turn up, protocols would be settled, and he would never hear about the difficulties.
His staff being up on the station, he now had to think about such details, down to finding clean socks. And the paidhi’s odd-sized wardrobe, at the moment, consisted of a single change of clean formal clothes packed into a soft traveling bag that had been tossed onto fishy ice, thrown down into dirt, bounced around a bus, tied onto a mecheita, tossed into this room, and shoved against a baseboard during last night’s armed assault. What he had worn yesterday was a total loss. The pale trousers were brown with dirt about the seat and knees, black with soot, and stained with blood, not to mention ripped from fence wire and branches. His cold-weather coat, no cleaner than the trousers, was ripped by the selfsame wire the length of the lower arm. His white, lace-cuffed shirt, where the coat had not covered it, was stained with every substance possible to find in the landscape, not to mention human and atevi blood. His boots had a seam parting along the right toe, in addition to the scuffs and mud.
As it was, he decided if Tabini was not going to be available and if no printer was to be had, he should put his computer back into the hiding place that had protected it through the attack—they had no way of knowing at what time another alarm might sound—and see what he could do about the clothing situation on his own. Jago certainly wasn’t his valet, and his security staff had enough on their hands.
Hefting the light computer case back up into its safe place hurt.
Getting into his baggage on the floor and searching into the tangled mess of clothing inside discovered splinters in his palms he had not yet found. And the clean shirt he pulled out of the duffle was, as he had foreseen, by no means ready to wear. The lace had gone mostly limp. The body was more than rumpled: it had pressed-in wrinkles.
The remaining spare trousers likewise showed fold and crumple marks.
But they were at least clean. He found clean underwear. And socks. He got up and hung the clothes in the closet, which he should have thought to do yesterday, and began, stupidly, to strip off what he was wearing, right there in the bedroom, as he would have done on the ship.
Someone rapped at the outer foyer door. He dived, caught up his pistol from his dirty coat out of the pile of clothing he had just dropped on the floor, and, both sleeves in one hand, held the coat for cover, moving into clear shot of that door as Jago, armed, walked out into the short inner hall to answer it.
Two arrivals. They looked like domestic staff, in Atageini colors, muted green and gold. One was a woman, a rather substantial woman. And with a little bow and the exchange, presumably, of courtesies and names, they excused themselves right past Jago’s bemused stare and came in to survey the premises and the situation. Bren stood holding his gun in one hand and anchoring the coat with the other, and the two servants bowed and reported themselves to Banichi as if the lord of the establishment were part of the furniture. Jago had followed them in; she stood behind the pair, hand on her pistol, just stood, wearing no peaceable look. Tano and Algini stood in mirror image, hands likewise positioned.
“We are instructed,” the man said with a sideward, embarrassed glance at Bren, “to provide assistance to the paidhi’s household.”
Staff help. From Lord Tatiseigi. The sky would fall next. Then he decided it might not be a lie. The aiji-dowager or Tabini himself might have requested special dispensation for them—if either had happened to notice the conditions in which the old lord had settled them.
But it would be impolite to seem astonishedc no matter he suspected their sashay past Jago’s forbidding presence might be a reconnaissance for Tatiseigi as much as a desire to report themselves properly to Banichi, as de facto head of staff. House servants might be Guild, just the same as bodyguards in uniform, and if they were reconnoitering, seeing if he had pocketed the bath soap, then he was prepared to be annoyed beyond the slight they paid.
“The premises are presently secure, nadiin,” Banichi said curtly.
“We need laundry done. Boots seen to.” Menial tasks, all. The most menial. Banichi was likewise highly annoyed; if human ears could pick that up with no problem at all, the intruders could certainly figure it out. And as the pair’s survey of the room finally included the very obvious human, Bren held his coat in front of him and bowed his head in as pricklishly gracious an acceptance as a man could give while standing naked in view of strangers.
“Clean clothes would be delightful,” he said, “nadiin. There has been a problem in that regard.”