“We saw the kidnappers, nandi. We chased them to stop them.” She bit her lip. Then said nothing at all.
But heknew he had called out to stop the kidnappers. And she did not offer that excuse to him.
That was way better behavior than he had seen.
“You followed my order,” he said.
She gave a little nod, a bow, and said: “We ignored procedures, you being both a minor, forgive me, nandi, and a civilian. One is aware we did not exercise mature judgement.”
“Did Banichi tell you that, nadi?”
“Algini-nadi did, nandi,” she said. Algini was the grimmest of Lord Bren’s bodyguard, and not the one Cajeiri would personally like to have reprimand him. He could imagine Algini, who said very little, might have said exactly those words and made every one of them sting.
He was sorry for her. But he did not forget that she had been rude to Jegari and Antaro, and if he said he was sorry, she might move back in and start running things again, and telling himhow to behave, and ignoring all his orders except the one she absolutely should not have obeyed.
She obeyed orders, he thought uncomfortably, the same way he obeyed orders—he picked the ones he liked and managed not to be there in any official way to hear the others.
So off she and Lucasi had gone to be important and do the big thing, getting Barb-daja back, because they knew they had just made a huge mistake in putting Barb-daja and nand’ Toby in danger.
He had less sympathy for her and her partner when he thought about that.
And about her attitude toward Jegari and Antaro.
And then suddenly, in the middle of remembering all the reasons he had been angry with her, it struck him what he was feeling, right in the middle of his stomach. He discovered the reason she made him nervous, and the reasonhe was just a little scared of her and never really believed she was going to do what he told her.
“You have no man’chi here,” he said to her, right out in the open. “You were never mine, not from the time you came here. Maybe your man’chi is to my father, nadi, but it never was to me.”
There was a lengthy silence after that, and Veijico did not look him in the eyes. She had clasped her hands behind her, and her head stayed a little bowed.
“ Isyour man’chi to my father?” he asked.
A lengthy silence, and she never looked up. She was thinking about that, he thought, or the answer was no, and she was not telling him what she was thinking.
So he did what mani did. He did not give her an answer. He waited.
And waited.
“Nandi,” she said quietly, long after that silence had become uncomfortable. “One is only just realizing—”
He might get the rest of it if he shut up and let her figure out her sentence. So he did, and she still was not looking at him.
“We thought we might be brought into your father’s service,” she said eventually. “But that proved not the case. We were left asi-man’chi.” That was to say, on their own family man’chi to each other, no one else’s. “We did not feel at ease here. We did not find a place.”
“Because I am a child? Or because you do not really have man’chi to my father, either?”
“We began to have, to him,” Veijico said in a low voice. “We thought we might. We wanted to, nandi. But he gave us away. And we tried. But we found none here. We had no idea—”
It was hard to wait. He was entirely upset with what she was saying. But she was getting the words to the surface, finally. And on mani’s example, he just waited, no matter how uncomfortable it was or how long it took. And when she understood that was how it was, she began to answer him.
“We had no idea, nandi, what was wrong here. We did not find a place. We tried. But we—”
Another lengthy silence. He still let it continue.
Veijico cleared her throat. “Nandi, one has no idea of the man’chi in this entire household.
We came here willing to join this household. But it seems to us—”
Third silence.
“It seems to us, nandi,” Veijico said, looking up once, if briefly, “that yourman’chi is not to your father the aiji but to the aiji-dowager. And to nand’ Bren. And even to persons up on the station.”
He took in his breath. Hehad no such idea. “I shall be aiji,” he said angrily. “And I shall haveno man’chi.”
“But now you do, young lord. Or you seem to.”
“Well, there is nothing wrong with it, nadi! Nor are you in authority over me! We are two months short of a felicitous year!”
“One is trying to explain, young lord. Not to offend you.”
Second deep breath. “Do explain, then.”
There was another long silence. And Veijico still stood looking generally elsewhere.
“We understood you would be a child,” Veijico said. “And we were prepared for that. That you have a student regard for the aiji-dowager—is expected. But your regard for nand’
Brenc We were not prepared for that, in coming here.”
“Nand’ Bren is a very important man! My father trusts him! Mani trusts him! And I trust him!”
“I have just spent time with nand’ Bren and his aishid in Tanaja, nandi. I do not say I understand him, but one respects his patience and his consideration with one he need not have regarded. He has placed me very much in his debt. One understands, now, your estimation of his advice.”
“So does my great-grandmother regard his advice,” he retorted. But there, he had had an outburst of anger, and he had let her stray right off the track. And: never suggest the direction of your thoughts, mani had told him, and never suggest how to please you, if you want to know the truth from someone. So he said: “Finish what you were telling me.”
The room went very quiet for several moments. “Just that—we were not prepared for this household, nandi.”
She was getting away from him. He had let her get off the track, and she was not coming back to it.
“That is not all of it,” he said. And he realized that she had never yet looked him quite in the eye. “Look at me. If you want to be here, do not lie to me.”
More silence. But she did look at him—she had to look down at him—everybody did. But he folded his arms and stared right back up at her, with his father’s look. He had practiced it.
“You are a remarkable boy,” she said.
“I shall be aiji,” he repeated. “And my bodyguard has to be mine.”
“That it must, nandi.”
“So canyou be?”
Again that glance to the side. She was going to dodge the question. And then she looked back, straight at him. “When we came here, when we came here, nandi, we found no connections. This household—is full of directions that made no sense. They are strong directions. There is nand’ Bren. Lord Geigi. Your great-grandmother, not least. Cenedi.
Banichi. They are not unified, though they cooperate. And we seemed most apt to fall under Cenedi’s orders, but if we connected with house systems, your great-grandmother was in charge; and nand’ Bren runs the household, with Banichi. And then there is Ramaso-nadi.
And then the Edi, who are foreigners. And agreements that by all we can tell run counter to your father the aiji. Then nand’ Toby is here, and hehas connections to the Presidenta of Mospheira. All, all are very powerful interests, and one has no idea how they intersect. So we did not know what was happening or what orders we might get or what effect they might have. We tried to succeed for you. But we had no clear sense of whose orders we were following.”