There was oneplace to go with such a confusing situation: man’chi was a clear guide on that matter. When he took his leave of his mother, he gathered his aishid and went back to his father’soffice, interrupting his father’s work one more time.
He bowed slightly and said, quietly, “Honored Father, Mother has asked me to ask Great-grandmother for a hairdresser.”
“Gods less fortunate!” His father shoved his chair back from his desk and looked at him, up and down.
“One feared there might be a problem with that, honored Father.”
“Who first suggested this?”
“I think Great-grandmother might have offered. When they were at the party.”
His father had no expression at all for several heartbeats. Then he lifted an eyebrow and said, “Women.”
“Shall I ask mani, honored Father?”
“Oh, do. Better mygrandmother than heruncle.” His father kept looking at him, or through him. He stood still. It was never a good idea to interrupt his father’s thinking.
“It is not,” his father said, “a bad idea. —And you did not suggest it.”
“No, honored Father.”
His father waved a dismissal. “Go. Send a message to your great-grandmother. You are not to leave the apartment until she sends for you. She is occupied with the legislation. But she will read your letter.”
He had not at all expected to be able to go in person. They were still under the security alert, about Grandfather. “Yes,” he said, bowed again, went out to the hall and took his aishid back to his own sitting room.
“What happened?” Jegari asked.
I think my mother is sniping at my father,was what he thought. She knew his father did notwant Great-grandmother entangled in his affairs. He had fought that all his life.
But Father himself had had a lot of trouble getting staff. The aishid and staff his father had grown up with had died in the coup. The ones he had gotten next had tried to kill him. He had picked distant relatives that he knew he could trust, and now there were a lot of lords andthe Guild upset about it.
Mani’s bodyguards . . . nobody fussed about.
So maybe it was a good thing. Maybe his mother was being very practical. His mother had looked sad and different, now. Her hair very plain, her nails unpolished. Maybe his mother simply did not feel like dressing up, with headaches and all. But her servants had used to do her hair, and press the lace, and the two girls from the kitchen probably could not be trusted with the iron and the lace.
So . . . he had better write a letter and have one of his aishid take it before his mother changed her mind.
He was very careful about it. He had no wish to have everything collapse into another argument from mani’s side. He wrote:
To mani, honored Great-grandmother, from Cajeiri, your Great-grandson. My mother has no staff. She has asked me to write to you asking for help which you offered at the party. She does not feel well now. She particularly wants a hairdresser. She wants a woman who has had a child.
He took a new piece of paper and changed the words: instead of wants,which was rude, he wrote, she particularly wishes to have,and she also wishes to have.
He wrote, after that: I have told my father too and he thinks it is a good idea.
That was hedging the truth a little. But it made a good ending and it might make Great-grandmother curious enough to go along with it.
If Great-grandmother could geta good hairdresser. She might have to fly somebody in from Malguri.
It will make me happy if you can make my mother happy. Please do it.
And then he remembered the whole other business, astonished that it could all have slipped from his mind.
Mani, my guests are coming early, and my father says I shall go to you as soon as you send for me, and you will be in charge of everything we do just as soon as you send for me. My mother wishes the party to be here, in our apartment—but all the days before and after, until my guests go home on the shuttle, I shall be staying with you, or with nand’ Bren if I am inconvenient. I am very happy. I am very much looking forward to this. I shall pack right away.
He revised it in a third copy, just because he had been careless in his penmanship. He wanted it perfect.
Then he dashed off a letter to nand’ Bren, who did not care about his penmanship.
He put the one to mani in his best message cylinder, and sent that one with Lucasi. He put the other in his second-best, and sent it with Veijico.
Then he sat down in his own little sitting room, on the edge of his chair, all happiness, and looked at Antaro and Jegari, who still amazed him, they looked so official and grown-up.
“We are going to stay with Great-grandmother,” he said. “We have to pack. We have to take Boji with us, but Eisi and Lieidi are going with us, too.” He drew a deep, shuddery breath, and let it go. “I think, I think, nadiin-ji, that my birthday is really about to happen.”
10
The Committee on Finance was meeting, and the committee room doors were shut. The paidhi, down the hall in the legislative lounge, was on his second pot of strong tea, while his aishid kept contact with the dowager’s—who were in touch with Tatiseigi’s bodyguard, Tatiseigi being a very important force behind those closed doors, and doing a great deal of talking, on that committee.
Reports came in slowly, by runners who stood at the front of the room and reported succinctly on the progress of the bill. The bill was being read. Again.
He had two of his secretarial staff doing exactly the same thing, from the gallery of the large meeting room, observing not only the progress of the bill, but who was talking to whom that might be significant. The two cycled back to him in turns, bringing him notes, occasionally a whispered word—not the only such runners communicating with individuals in the lounge.
There were motions to table. Again.
Damn, Bren thought. And there was not a thing he could do. The aiji might intervene, as the alleged author of the bill, but even Tabini didn’t have the clout with Finance that the dowager did . . . and she had enemies in that room, too.
And the fact that he, the paidhi had written much of the bill—was notsomething its supporters were advertising to anybody in that conservative-dominated meeting room. One had to wonder if that fact might yet get out and sway votes.
The bill didn’t need any more problems. It was a sensitive matter, the inclusion of the tribal peoples as equals in the aishidi’tat. It meant dismantling the tribes’ special status, giving them a voice in the Bujavid, and releasing, for many of the clans, an ancient prejudice, at least, that held the tribes as foreign to the mainland.
On the other side of the scales, tribal peoples would agree to abandon their independence and their separate languages for official use—the only exception being their own ceremonial and festival observances. It alsoentailed something the conservatives wanted: an agreement to accept operations of all guilds within the former tribal lands, and, by separate agreement with the tribes, they would not insist on tribal peoples serving only their own clan—they would adopt, in essence, the same rule the Ragi clans followed, which it would put Edi and Gan in service in households all across the aishidi’tat. Tatiseigi and the dowager weren’t making any noise about that matter, yet, just letting that separate little bomb skitter through unnoticed.
In effect, if it passed, there would be a fairly rapid blending of the tribal peoples into the mainstream of the aishidi’tat. The centuries-old practice of allowing special, nearly rule-free local branches of some guilds to exist in the Marid, and in sections of the East, was going to be used one last time, to get the tribal peoples within the Guild system—after which the tribes themselves—and the Marid, and the East, would all remove that provision. He didn’t personally like it: that practice had provided the shelter that had let the Shadow Guild get organized, and he wanted it gone.