“In finesse and tradition, I say! That boy can parse the tribes and the rights of the East, yours among them! He knows the heraldry and the machimi—I taught him! He knows the law of rights and the law of succession, the law of land and the law of usage. He knows the worth of bringing these principles into the west, and he is his father’s heir, undisputed, blood of mine, blood of yours, Dri-daja, blood of the Ragi and the North. And any rumors of our disaffection toward the East are utter fiction!”
A small silence followed. Drien folded her hands in her lap, and Drien’s nostrils flared, a deep, long intake of breath. “Ardija. I will have Ardija, and this estate, and I will not bargain for it.”
“You wish justice, Drien-daja,” Bren said, entirely out of turn, and in the next instant not knowing what had possessed him—it was one of those downhill moments, when for a flash of a second he saw the course through the rocks, and in the next blink it would be lost, irrevocable. He spoke out of turn, and saw in slow motion the dowager’s glance and the lady’s astonished stare.
The lady said nothing for a moment. The dowager said nothing.
The silence went on, over the crackling of the fire in the hearth.
Bren cleared his throat—anything to fill that deadly, downward-sliding silence. “Nand’ dowager, one begs to say, there is kinship here. But an unfortunate number exists, an Infelicity of Two. If that were adjustedc” The dowager was no more superstitious than she was gullible. But the language of numbers conveyed the situation. Two. Divided. Never one.
“Independence, Cousin,” the dowager said then, and Bren’s heart quietly resumed its beats.
“At his behest?” the lady cried, indignant. “When we have sued for centuries?”
“No,” the dowager said. “Not at all at his behest. At his reasonable explanation.”
“Explanation! What was never clear? What, fortunate gods, was never clear?”
“He rarely objects. He does so with careful thought. Clearly, we make an Unfortunate Two in this situation. We would need a third to complete us, and one has no notion where to find that third, in the East as it is now.”
“Apparent! But why should I join you?”
“We are survivors of our age, you and I. We are old, old adversaries. And if anything of the gracious old way is to continue, the tradition will not lie in the south. It will lie with us. Ardija is yours, by my grantc while I live.”
“Damn you,” Drien cried.
An actual smile spread on the dowager’s thin lips. “But nevertheless, I stand by my word. You are free. Take your own course. And we shall go on to the Haidamar and free my great-grandson.”
“You need help,” Drien said, “you stubborn fool. By no means should you go! Stay and let my staff make inquires. No good will come of your killing yourself!”
“You will make yourself trouble, Dri-ji.”
“You are the trouble in my life!” Drien reached beside her and picked up a small brass bell, which she rang vigorously. Doors at either end of the room flew open, and the one from the hall, where their own staff waited: Cenedi and Nawari were there; so were Banichi and Jago, on the alert.
“Beds for our guests, nadiin-ji!” Drien ordered, and waved a hand.
“Kasi, ride up to Malguri and advise them our guests are staying.”
“No need for your staff to trouble itself for such a journey, cousin,” Ilisidi murmured. “Proprieties aside—”
“You have your cursed radios,” Drien said in disgust, and in that moment, in that fire-crackling stillness, every ateva clearly heard something. Motion stopped. People listened. Then Bren heard it, in such a deep quiet, remote from all hum of electrics, the faint, faint sound of a laboring engine.
Drien’s face held utter disapproval. “Is that yours, Cousin?”
“Mine?” Ilisidi asked. “Malguri has no such.”
The room and the house waited, hushed, and the sound was clearer, as if the source had passed the cliffs and come onto the road.
“That infernal machine,” Drien muttered.
“The airport?” Ilisidi inquired, logically enough: airports and train terminals were the usual source of transport connections. “Are you expecting anyone to arrive tonight?”
“By no means. That is a bus. That is a miserable bus,” Drien said.
“One knows that motor. That wretched vehicle! What delivery has civilized business arriving at this hour!” She addressed her staff.
“What does it require for our privacy, nadiin? That we shoot the driver?”
“One would hardly counsel that, on this night in particular,”
Ilisidi said with a grim look. “In our present circumstances, one wishes information, of whatever source. And the Malguri bus sits at our doors at present. It may be some visitor from the airport or from Malguri itself.”
“Go,” Drien ordered one of her staff, “and discover what this intrusion wants, nadi.”
It was a cause for anxiety. Bren looked at Ilisidi, and Ilisidi remarked, “Perhaps Banichi might investigate, as well.”
Bren nodded, and Banichi left. Jago did not. There was no way that any bus could negotiate the final part of the road: whoever it had brought would have to walk up to the gates.
“Well, well, well,” Drien said comfortably, “we sit, and we wait. A brandy to pass the time?”
12
Banichi was gone a lengthy period of time. Possibly he reported in the interim to Jago, who had resumed her watch at the door. For his own part, Bren had far rather be in on the Guild’s information flow, but that was not the available choice. He fretted, keeping his ear tuned meanwhile to the conversational tidbits that fell during the wait—Lady Drien discussed her neighbors, discussed the doings of Ilisidi’s staff during her absence. It seemed that Djinana had at some point personally ejected a member of Drien’s staff from the gates of Malguri, in a memorable confrontation over a rowboat that had come unmoored in a stormc the boat had been, one gathered, eventually repatriated to the Cobesthen shore through a neutral party down in Malguri Township.
“Perhaps,” the dowager said, regarding the complaint, “we may, nandi, improve feelings between our staffs. We would never doubt your claim of ownership of such a boat if we were in residence. It would not have happened.”
“Who but the rightful owner would ever know a boat had drifted?” Drien had a gift for pursuing a quarrel far past any useful boundaries. “Are they fools, that they think we would claim some other person’s boat?”
“We do assure you to the contrary, nandi.” Ilisidi’s tone grew just a little icier. “And one will assume my capable staff might have responded differently to your visitation had there been any communication in advance of a party intruding onto Malguri grounds.”
“The common lakeshore!”
“We do not concur! That is Malguri land!”
“The common lakeshore, I say!”
“Nandiin,” Bren said, desperately seeking to head off renewed warfare. “Ought not Banichi to be—”
Back by now, he had meant to say, when there was, indeed, the sound of movement on the snow, that crunching of crusted ice that heralded multiple people arriving on the outside steps.
“Well,” Drien said, still ruffled, but she dispatched servants to the outer hall.
There was some little to-do outside, by the sound of it.
Then came the sound of the outer door opening, a cold draft that sucked at the fire in the grate, attended by a stamping of feet and Banichi’s deep voice overlain by servant voices.
Banichi was giving orders out there, regarding something. It was a peaceful arrival, or there would have been more noise than that, Bren told himself.
And a moment later the lady’s servants returned to the doorway.
“Lady Agilisi has arrived, nandi,” the servant reported.