And that alliance would tie the west coast firmly to Malguri, which was Cajeiri’sinheritance, until he produced an heir for it.
God. On the chessboard of politics, that was a potential earthquake. The great houses employed not only numbers experts, they employed genealogists to track this sort of thing. They would see it—but they likely would give way to it, in the interests of peace.
“One would agree,” Geigi said, “if this can be arranged.”
“Good, good,” Ilisidi said. “So you may think on it and tell me your thoughts when you have had time to mull it over. Perhaps we should have our last round and let you get to your bed, Geigi-ji. You must be exhausted.”
“One admits to it,” Geigi said. “And I shall indeed think on your proposal, ’Sidi-ji. I shall think on it very favorably.” He turned then to Toby and Barb, and said, in very passable ship-speak: “We discuss politics. Unavoidable. One wishes a more tranquil conversation.”
“An extravagant honor, nandi,” Toby said, one of his courtly phrases of Ragi. “One is gratified by your notice.”
He got it out without saying orange drink, a close thing, with the word notice. Bren was astonished.
But then—Toby had spent the last couple of years running messages between the Resistance and the Island, and his vocabulary hadn’t exactly rusted.
“You speak a fair amount of Ragi, nandi,” Geigi said.
“About boats, navigation, hello, and goodbye, nandi.”
“- se,” Bren tossed in, the felicitous false-one, since Toby had given a list of infelicitous four. It was natural as breathing.
“- se,” Toby added in the next breath. “We hear, but do not talk, nandi.”
Geigi laughed. “ Verywell done!” And continued, in ship-speak: “The station knows you as Frozen Dessert.”
Toby and Barb both laughed.
Frozen Dessert? Bren wondered.
“Our code name,” Toby said to Bren, “when the authorities had to refer to us.”
Bren translated that for the dowager, and for Cajeiri. “That was the word referring to them and their boat, during the Resistance, aiji-ma, young gentleman. When they were running messages.”
“And bravely done!” Geigi said. “The enemy would appear and the dessert would melt in the sun.”
“Little boat,” Toby said in Ragi. “Hard to spot.”
“Very good work,” Geigi said in ship-speak, and in Ragi: “Tell them that they will be welcome as my personal guests in Kajiminda, when I have done a little housecleaning.”
“He says you’re welcome as his guests at Kajiminda when he has things there under control,” Bren said, thinking the while that Geigi could not possibly follow through on that, and, please God, would never have to give up his station post to do so. But there was another round of polite sentiments, all the same.
Then a tap of the dowager’s cane. “We must let this gentleman get to his bed, paidhi-ji.”
“Indeed, aiji-ma.” As host, he made the suggestion. “Geigi-ji, please let my staff escort you to your rooms.”
Geigi’s bodyguard, among other things, had to be bone-tired, exhausted, after standing the last while, and those two still needed to brief and debrief with the rest of his aishid, and with the aiji-dowager’s people. Theyhad several more hours to go before they saw their beds.
“We are quite weary,” Geigi said obligingly, and in a series of small signals, the dowager gathering up her cane and signaling Cenedi; and Bren, as host, making a sign to Banichi and Jago, Geigi gathered his considerable bulk up from his chair, everyone got up, and there were goodnight bows all around as he left. Cajeiri and Barb and Toby hung back until the dowager and Geigi had gotten out the door.
For Bren, exhaustion came down on him, not just for this day, but for several days before. He waited while Cajeiri joined his bodyguard on the way out; and then heaved a deep sigh, feeling the effects of just about two sips too much brandy. “So sorry you have to hike down to the boat,” he said to Barb and Toby. And added: “Very well done, extremely well done. Frozen Dessert.”
They laughed, assured him an after-dinner hike wasn’t at all a hard thing for them, and he walked them to the door.
Then, in an attack of unease, and thinking of that long, dark set of steps amid the scrub evergreen, and that exposed dock below, he said to Banichi and Jago: “Nadiin-ji, one hates to ask, but would you go with them?”
“Yes,” Banichi said. “Let us pick up some equipment, and we shall be glad to do so.”
“I hate to bother them,” Toby protested. “Surely just house staff—”
“—is in no wise equipped to take care of untoward situations,” he said. “Indulge me. Geigi’s just arrived, with all that means. If our enemies aren’t asleep or more disrupted than we think, they’ll know he’s here, they’ll know meetings are going on, they’ll want more than anything to know what we’ve said, and I’m almost inclined to move out some more staff and house you two in the basement with Baiji tonight. Frozen Dessert, indeed. You’re too well informed. Scarily well-informed. And I don’t want the Marid getting their hands on you.”
“Is thatall?” Toby laughed. “I thought it was brotherly concern.”
“That, too, is somewhere in the stew. Just take the protection. And if you’re harboring any moresecrets, bring me up to date on them.”
“Oh, you knew we were running messages. Most of the time we didn’t have a clue about the content. At least on thisside of the water.”
“But you did know what Mospheira was up to.”
“Nothing not well-known now.”
“The Marid may not think so. You’re just a bit more fluent than makes me comfortable, brother. Unguessed talents.” That Toby had never outright told him how fluent he was getting— that bothered him; but Toby worked for Shawn, the President of Mospheira, the way he himself had once worked for Shawn in the State Department, and there were secrets and secrets in government employ.
“It’s getting better,” Toby said lightly. “I haven’t been around people talking before. I’m starting to pick out words. Figure out others.”
“I still can’t put a sentence together,” Barb said. “Toby’s far braver about that. But we absorb things. I’m picking up a lot about the boat from the work crews.”
“Well, you just be careful going down there, and get the hell away from dock if you don’t like the look of what’s headed your way. Even if you just get nervous. Stand off from shore and be ready to get out to the middle of the bay if you don’t like the feel of things at any time you’re down there. Better a little inconvenience than a mistake the other way.”
“Got it,” Toby said, and by then Banichi and Jago were coming back, carrying rifles, and with their outdoor jackets on— bulletproof and heavy as sin.
No surprise to Toby or Barb, who were used to Guild working gear. Bren saw them all out the door.
“Kindly go straight to the room and stay there, nandi,” Jago said.
“I shall,” he promised her. “Immediately.”
And he walked straight in that direction the moment the front door shut.
His two personal staff, Koharu and Supani, weren’t long arriving in his suite, a characteristic knock on the outermost door. Staff in the hall would have reported he was retiring, and his valets showed up almost before he’d gotten his own coat off.
He handed the garment in question to Supani, who hung it on a hanger, and that on a hook on the door: the coat would go away with them and come back refreshed and pressed by morning. Likewise the shirt and trousers and the ribbon that tied his queue, which he finger-combed out. He automatically sat down and let Koharu apply a brush to his past-the-shoulder hair.