He understood his situation. He understood the threat hanging over him. He had to behave here, and learn his court verbs beyond any mistake, or he would be back in the Bujavid with grown-up guards at every corner.
So after a little while he grew entirely bored with the slingshota and the circumstances they had, and took his aishid back to their suite to think about what they coulddo in the house. Lucasi and Veijico being still new to his service, they were getting used to things, though they really wereGuild, unlike Antaro and Jegari. They were brother and sister like Antaro and Jegari, and everybody older said they were very goodc but.
There was always that butc with Lucasi and Veijico.
The butthat did not let them find out everything they wanted to from senior Guild.
Butc that made Cenedi look grim when he talked about them.
Butc that made Banichi and Jago sigh and talk together in very low voices.
If Lucasi and Veijico had been younger (they were felicitous nineteen and the year after) people would probably call them what they called him: precocious—which was a way of admiring somebody while calling him a pest. Precocious. Pert. Sometimes, even toward him, they were stuck-up; and they were far too inclined to tell Antaro and Jegari they were wrong about something, even about how they sat and how they stood at attention, even when Antaro and Jegari were not allowed to wear a Guild uniform yet. It was just a pest, their know-it-all manner, and it made him mad, but Antaro said, with a sigh, when he mentioned it: “We need to learn, nandi.”
It really was true: having two real Guild in his aishid meant Jegari and Antaro were learning things around the clock now, not just going out for a few hours to the Guild hall. Even he could see a change in how they stood and just the way their eyes tracked—which was probably really good. Jegari and Antaro seemed glad to talk about Guild stuff with Lucasi and Veijico, even if the newcomers weresnotty about it—snotty was one of Gene’s words, up on the ship, or the space station, now, where Gene lived; and it was a good word for those two. Snotty.
And full of themselves. That was another of Gene’s expressions.
The fact was, though, they were smart, they knew they were smart, and they were short of patience with other people, which was going to get them in trouble if they were not just very careful. He was just a year short of nine and hecould see it on the horizonc but not Veijico and Lucasi, oh, no, they were far too smart to take personal criticism from somebody who was infelicitous eight.
Well, heknew they were not smarter than Banichi and Jago and Cenedi, or Tano and Algini—and Cenedi and Algini in particular had no long patience with fools. Algini had been very high up in the Guild before he sort of retired from that job, and one could just see Algini’s eyes looking right at Lucasi’s back in a not-very-good way.
“We did not authorize them to ask!” he had almost blurted out on one occasion, when those two had repeated a request to which Banichi had said no. He had witnessed that second request, and Algini had looked mad. But they were his aishid, and he was responsible for anything they did, so he had only said, later, “You made Algini mad, nadiin-ji.”
“We report to your father, nandi,” Veijico had said quite smoothly and with a shrug. “Not to them.”
“You will not disrespect them!” he had shot back, very sharply, and that had backed them up just a bit. “And if you do it again, nadiin, Ishall report to my father!”
That had set them back for at least an hour.
The thing was, there was a fairly fine dividing line between precocious and foolc he knew that better than most, having crossed that line a few times and having had to hear Great-grandmother tell him where that line was in great detail, interspersed with: “Tell mewhere you made mistakes, boy. Go think!”
Maybe the Guild instructors had told Lucasi and Veijico that exact same thing a few times, too, but Lucasi and Veijico were never going to listen to Guild instructors the way he knew to listen to Great-grandmother—who had used to thump him on the same ear so often he swore it was larger than the other. Great-grandmother probably still made his fatherthink of ear-thumping: she was that fierce.
But clearly the Guild instructors had not set the proper fear in Lucasi and Veijico, and by the way they carried themselves, maybe they had lacked a great-grandmother, up in the high mountains, where they came from.
Maybe, he thought, he should maneuver those two afoul of his great-grandmother and sit back and watch the outcome. That would be interesting. But he was not sure he would ever get them back if they did. So he kept that in reserve.
And thus far he was managing things. At least today Lucasi and Veijico seemed to be showing a little improvement, and being much more polite to everybody all morning. So maybe his threat yesterday had worked. He hated being mad at people. It was like the business with the slingshota. Theywere so sure they would never miss that they thought they could shoot it in the garden hall, never mind the woodwork. Never mind Ramaso would scold them all and hewould get in trouble for it.
And never mind Lucasi had stolen five teacakes from the kitchen this morning, when they had no need to steal at alclass="underline" Lucasi had rather steal because, he said, it kept him sharp—never mind that some servant might get in trouble for the miscount. It was not Lucasi’s habit, to think of things like that. Great-grandmother would thwack his ear for not thinking about it—if she knew it. But tattling to her was hardly grown-up.
He had a dilemma, was what. He had to make Lucasi and Veijico care.
More, he had to make Lucasi and Veijico care what hethought.
His father was very clever. His father was a great strategist and absolutely ruthless, which was what his father’s enemies said, even though his father was really good to people who deserved his good opinion. His father was so smooth that sometimes people had trouble telling which he was being at the moment—ruthless, or good.
He had thought, a few days ago, that his father had given him two very good guards, despite the suddenness of the surprise; and they were real Guild, and young, and he was going to like them just the way they were and everything was going to be splendid.
Not so easy.
It was like dealing with Great-grandmother. About the time one thought one had her figured out, Great-grandmother proved to be a few moves ahead. Dealing with his father was like that, more than anybody else he had ever met, and he thought about it, sitting in his little sitting-room at his desk, parsing his verbs, and watching Jegari and Antaro over in the corner with Lucasi and Veijico. Jegari and Antaro were listening, all respectful, to something Lucasi and Veijico were telling them—and he thought—
I was stupid when I thought I could ever bring somebody that smart in that fast. I was too nice.
These two are not easy to manage and they come with no ties to me the way Jegari and Antaro have. These two cheat. They lie. They sneak. And that would be all right, except—they disrespect me. They annoy me. One has to be smarter than they are to make them behave themselves, there is nokinship between us, and the fight has to go on all the time—because their man’chi is notto me nor to anybody in the whole midlands— maybe not to anybody up in their mountains, who knows?