“Remarkably early snow,” Drien said.
“It makes searching inconvenient.”
“Gods unfortunate! Impatient even at your own disadvantage!”
“There is a boy, your own cousin, badly handled by the likes of Caiti and other fools, and you are prepared to be tolerant of this circumstance! We are appalled, Cousin!”
“I had no part in your decision to bed down with western barbarians! Anything you got of that error is not my concern!”
A small pause and a dark stare. “My great-grandson remains your cousin, Drien-daja. Blood is blood.”
“Unwillingly!”
A longer pause. “Your neighbors came under my roof presenting compliments,” Ilisidi said. “They entered under our residence. They sat at our table. They complimented our cook. They spoke disparagingly of you, in particular.”
Drien’s nostils flared. “So cheap a ploy.”
“But true, nandi. They said nothing specific against you— certainly nothing quite accusatory. But one is certain they were perfectly willing to do so, had we indicated we were at all willing to hear it. They later suborned a maid of our staff, a woman with ties to the lowlands. Perhaps they threatened the woman or her relations to gain her cooperation. She breached the doors. She admitted them by way of the servant accesses.”
“Perhaps she was a lowland scoundrel.”
“Ah. Indeed. Perhaps she was. Or perhaps she harbored an honest grudge against us. We only fed and housed her for four years, for very little work. During the last two, with Murini sitting in authority in the Bu-javid, perhaps she began to form other man’chi.”
“Then back you come, like an old bone, several times buried.”
Ilisidi laughed silently. “We are extremely hard to bury, cousin.
You know that. You declined to come visiting with them. Why?”
Drien seemed, reluctantly, in better humor. She snapped her fingers, and the maid collected the cups for another round of tea.
The whole room stood still while the two indulged in yet another cup, and the cups went, click and click, down on the side tables.
“My great-grandson,” Ilisidi said, “is faultless in this dispute, Drien-aba. I have ridden a snowy road to enlist your understanding in this matter.”
“And you bring this under my roof.” Drien made a flick of the finger in Bren’s direction, almost without a glance, as if she were disposing of lint on her sleeve. “To sleep here! How dare you?”
“One relies on your adventurous nature,” Ilisidi said dryly.
“Nothing affrights you, Drien-aba.”
“Nothing affrights me, nadi, but this abomination offends me.”
“Bren-paidhi.” Ilisidi moved her hand, and indicated his place beside her. He walked over to the side of her chair. He bowed to her, moreover, with perfect understanding of the degree of inclination requisite.
“Well-trained,” Drien said. It was the word one used of a mecheita.
“Drien-daja.” Bren offered a second bow, perfectly impassive.
“One is honored to address the lady of Ardija.” That was the district name. “If my presence offends the lady, I shall lodge with the servants.”
Provocation. Deliberate, and he could all but feel Ilisidi gathering her moral force should Drien take him at his word. Ilisidi would have him in her own quarters before she sent him to Drien’s staff: he was sure of that.
“Sit,” Drien said sharply.
That was a thunderbolt of protocol. He bowed a third time in courteous deliberation and took the third chair. Ilisidi, in the tail of his eye, simply signaled to the servant herself for another round of tea.
It came. They all three drank.
“So,” Drien said. “Was it for amusement, cousin, that you brought this foreigner under our roof?”
“It was for your edification, cousin.”
“Indeed.” A brow lifted, rousing an architecture of wrinkles.
“Mine? You go traipsing off to the heavens and associate with humans. You mingle in their affairs at their behest, and they reward us all by picking quarrels with still other foreigners—after which, my esteemed cousin returns to the world to cry alarm and take up habitation with—what is the lord’s name?”
The chairs were set in a triangle. Bren had a fair view of both ladies, and sat still and tense. But a hint of wicked still humor hovered about the dowager’s mouth. “Which one?”
Drien’s eyebrow lifted. “Oh, come now, nadi. There can be no such abundance of midland lords.”
“Your gathering of gossip seems at least adequate.” A sharp frown came down between Ilisidi’s brows. “Where is my great-grandson, Dri-daja?”
“Why apply to me?”
“Because there was a reason you did not join Caiti. What was it?”
“Recognition of fools in action.”
“So you knew what they were going to do.”
“One had not the least notion. Foolishness has every direction open to it. Wisdom is much more limited in choice.”
“Well? What direction does our wise cousin take now?”
The lady held out her cup for a refill. Her arm hardly reached full extension before tea was in the cup. She sipped it thoughtfully.
“Perhaps not a direction. A position. Caiti was born a fool, lives a fool, will likely die a fool. And you let him to your table. But then you allow humans, too.” A small silence, in which Ilisidi said nothing. “Were you not aware, cousin, of Caiti’s ambitions? Perhaps if you visited your estate more often, you might become aware.”
“The thing of which we were not aware,” Ilisidi snapped, “was the corruption of my staff in my absence.”
“A child stolen right under your roof,” Drien said sweetly. “And whisked through the heart of the Bu-javid and the whole width of Shejidan. You are not yourself, cousin.”
“Where is he, Drien-ji?”
“One believes, with Caiti.”
“Where?”
“In the Haidamar.”
The lady, Bren thought, was extremely well informed—for a lady using live flame to light her front hall. And they had been detected at the front gate, quite readily: hell, they had been detected approaching the front gate—it took time to saddle a herd of mecheiti.
“One rather suspects,” Drien added, “that my neighbors fear Caiti.”
“Do you fear him?” Ilisidi shot back.
“That depends, ’Sidi-ji, on which side I take.”
“You call him a fool,” Ilisidi said.
Drien’s brow lifted. “He is. But there are more sides than two.”
“Consider mine,” Ilisidi said.
“I do,” Drien answered. “I choose to answer your questions. He was in the Saibai’tet, in his winter home, before he and his associates went to Shejidan. He takes residence in the Haidamar.
He knows you will come. And look to your safety if you do.”
The Haidamar, the fortress of Caiti’s domain, held the other end of the considerable lake. It sat on one of the rivers that fed into the north of the lake, had historically suffered from its easy access to the flatlands just beyond and had proved a soft target many a time, where it regarded forces coming up from the plains, but that meant, in the modern age, fairly easy access to an airport—and communications.
A schemer with allies, Bren said to himself, needed communications, and dared not bottle himself into a dead end like the Saibai’tet, which nestled on flat land eastward, where the foothills gave way to wide plainsc agriculture had been Caiti’s forte. Until now. Now it became something else.
“You think my great-grandson is with him in the Haidamar, nandi?”
“Possibly, cousin. One certainly might be very suspicious.”
“We have grounds for discussion, Dri-daja.”
“Do we? Perhaps we might manage a late snack. Will this join us?” With a wave at Bren.
“The Lord of the Heavens will join us,” Ilisidi said firmly. He had had better invitations in his life.