Be assured I will abide by your wise decision.
I ask you to destroy this message utterly and send a message back with the bearer, with the confidence that I shall likewise destroy the message beyond recovery.
He wrote it out by hand, set his seal on it, and went and gave it to Banichi. “She will reply,” he said, and settled down to an intolerable wait, staring out the window, with nothing to think about but disasters, and routes, and defenses.
It took much longer than he hoped. Perhaps Ilisidi had taken offense at his advice. Perhaps she and Banichi and Cenedi were down the hall having a bitter argument, which might bar Banichi from further consultations.
Worst thought—Tatiseigi might have gotten curious, or tried to intercept his message or her reply. Sit and wait. Sit and wait. Steps approached the door. Banichi came in and brought him a sealed message.
“Stay,” Bren said. “Nadiin-ji, all of you.”
Everyone took chairs near him as he pried loose the wax seal and unrolled the tight curl of the message.
The aiji-dowager to the paidhi-aiji. When has the paidhi joined the Assassins? Your arguments have already made several trips here wearing Banichi’s face.
Damn, he thought. He’d failed.
In advance of any move against the Kadigidi, we have decided to consult our host regarding your interesting notion, and if he is amenable, to send one of our great-grandson’s attendants back to Taiben to test their willingness to join in defense.
Taiben. For God’s sake, it was not the point of his letter. It was a side argument.
If the Atageini will consent and if Taiben will respond to defend the Atageini, this would be unprecedented. But yours is an excellent proposal. There has never been such heredity as my great-grandson’s. He has always been one of my best ideas.
Tatiseigi has sent your letter by courier.
Come to the library for tea within the hour.
He felt a little light-headed as he passed the note to Banichi, who read it impassively, and then with a little lift of the brows
Banichi passed it to Jago. It went from her to Algini, and to Tano, and Tano read it and proffered it back.
“Destroy it, nadi-ji,” he said, and Tano went to the desk and lit the wax-jack, then burned the message, and crumpled the incriminating ash to an irrecoverable smear across his hand.
Chapter 11
Afternoon tea meant well and away a higher-dress event than breakfast. There was no Narani to see to a proper coat and lace cuffs—there was no truly proper coat, for that matter, and no source for him to find one… Cajeiri’s might almost have done, if Cajeiri had had a spare, which he did not. So Banichi and Jago brushed his morning coat, steamed the wrinkles from it and his shirt in the bath, and had him at least presentable.
All the same he felt ill at ease, going downstairs, and with Banichi and Jago having to ask their way of dimly cooperative servants, who said, guardedly, yes, m’lord was expecting him in the library for tea.
No security stood outside. He might be early. He slipped through the ornate, lily-carved doors and, seeing Lord Tatiseigi sitting by the fire, made as unobtrusive a bow as possible, wondering if there was any graceful way to slip out again and await the dowager. But no, there was no way to retreat now. Banichi and Jago had stayed at the door. The lord was here unprotected—ostensibly. But there was, at the far end of the room, another door.
It might be a test. An incredibly important test. “Nandi.” A second small bow as he approached a chair. The old lord was resplendent in dark gold brocade, in a flood of pointed lace down the front of his shirt. He—was shabby, to say the least. “One regrets ever so much the inability to honor your hospitality with appropriate dress. This is so elegant a house, and my baggage was packed for rough living.”
“You did not foresee a welcome here?”
“One extravagantly hoped to be received for an interview, perhaps gain permission to cross your lands, nandi.” He still stood. Tatiseigi had not invited him to sit. “But one would not have presumed to take a welcome for granted.”
“Ha.” Tatiseigi looked not to believe it of him. He was a handsome old man, extremely jealous of his proprieties in a world that had changed far too fast for him. He was going some even to receive a human alone, in this inner sanctum, though they had talked before… in the Bu-javid, principally, where social interaction was compelled and carefully choreographed—well, where such was supposed to be the case. There had been a most unfortunate evening…
“And does this gracious solicitude,” Tatiseigi asked, “extend to gunfire under my roof?”
“One hopes not to endanger this household in any particular, nandi.” There was the unfortunate affair of the lilies, besides the first one. Tatiseigi would never let that go. “I am particularly sensible of the passions which confront my return from this mission, nandi, a quite reasonable demand for an accounting, which I am prepared to give. One would never wish to bring political difficulty on this house, or to provoke the Kadigidi. I understand there is an imminent threat.”
Tatiseigi simply gave him a fish-stare and kept staring, and had not yet invited him to sit down. The old lord had sent his letter, Ilisidi had said. He had dispatched a courier from his staff at considerable risk. But clearly it was not done for his sake.
The jaw moved. Briefly. “We will not countenance Kadigidi intrusion.”
“One is informed, nandi, that the Atageini are very formidable in that regard.”
“Ha. Spies, is it? Your Taibeni brats?”
At that point Ilisidi arrived, a rescue, a decided rescue. Tatiseigi rose to hand the dowager to a favored and comfortable chair.
“We see elegance, despite the circumstances of travel, Sidi-ji,” Tatiseigi said, quite pointedly regarding the paidhi’s less than splendid appearance, Bren was sure; and in fact the dowager with her black garments and blood-red lace made a very brave show, in a dark color in which packing wrinkles, if they were possibly allowed to exist, would not show. Much more practical, that, than his pale coat.
Ilisidi sat down with her hands on her walking-stick, ramrod straight. Bren took hers as a blanket permission to sit down, and he took the lefthand chair.
“Flatterer,” Ilisidi said primly. “But we accept it. One notes there has not been complete warfare between you and the paidhi in my absence.”
A small silence in which Tatiseigi, who might have protested that the paidhi had been perfectly gracious and polite in conversation, did not.
“Lord Tatiseigi has been very patient,” Bren said dutifully, and Ilisidi’s right eyebrow arched.
“Well?” she asked. “Patient, is it? A good thing, considering. And the letter has gone. Ah,” she said, deliberately diverting her attention and deflecting argument as Cajeiri came trailing in. “Great-grandson.”
“Mani-ma. Nandiin.” A stiff little bow, and Cajeiri walked to the one of the chairs—there were five—next Ilisidi’s right hand, and sat down, hands gripping the cushion edge. Late arrival, and very tight-lipped. One wondered what had occasioned the tardiness.
At that point, however, tea arrived through the main doors, a huge porcelain service in the hands of a very strong servant in green, followed by three young maidservants in soft gold and lily white coats.
No business was possibly appropriate while formal tea service went on in such a hall, nor, again, was it possible while the tea was being drunk. There were, at Ilisidi’s request, two rounds of service… and then a third. Tatiseigi had been impatient. Now he became edgy and frustrated, raising an eyebrow at Ilisidi. Cajeiri looked at his great-uncle, then at his great-grandmother, and back again in increasing frustration.